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SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE
AND WORK

(( ill

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE
~~ AND WORK

BEING AN ABRIDGMENT, CHIEFLY FOR THE
USE OF STUDENTS, OF

A LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

£W) SIDNEY LEE
'«<

EDITOR OF ' THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY '
HONORARY DOCTOR OF LETTERS IN THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906

At. rights reserved

PR.
2894

Set up and electrotyped November, 1900. Reprinted December,
1902 ; July, 1904 ; July, 1906.

Norfoaotr

J. 8. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

• TO THE GREAT VARIETY OF READERS'

SHAKESPEARE'S First Folio, Sig. A 3

THIS work is a reprint, with some omissions and abbrevia
tions, of the author's ' Life of William Shakespeare,' and is
designed for the rise of students and general readers who
seek a complete and accurate account of the great drama
tist's career and achievement in a small space at a moderate
cost. The aim of the volume is to present, in language as
terse and definite as possible, the net results of trustworthy
research respecting Shakespeare's life and writings. In
regard to topics of controversy the author confines himself
to a statement of his final conclusions, and ventures to refer
to the unabbreviated editions of the book all who desire to
examine the grounds on which those conclusions are based.
The footnotes in the larger editions give ample references
to original authorities and discuss in detail points of doubt
and difficulty ; but although these footnotes are now omitted,
the more pertinent pieces of illustrative information which
they contain are incorporated in the present text. In ac
cordance, too, with the distinctive scheme of this volume,
the chapters which in former editions dealt at length with
the character and significance of Shakespeare's sonnets have
been greatly abridged, and those sections of the Appendix
which were deemed essential to the exhaustive discussion
of the subject have been excluded. But sufficient informa
tion has been retained to make the story of the sonnets
perfectly coherent, and to indicate the precise lines of study

that have led the author to the solutions, which he offers
here, of the difficult problems which the poems present.

At the end of the volume will be found, as in the former
editions, a succinct bibliography of Shakespearean literature
and a note on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. The
pictorial illustrations include the ' Droeshout ' painting or
* Flower portrait ' of Shakespeare in photogravure, facsimiles
of all surviving specimens of his handwriting, a reproduc
tion of the title-page of the First Folio edition of his works,
and a facsimile of the contemporary inscription in Jaggard's
presentation copy of the First Folio, now belonging to Mr.
Coningsby Sibthorp. The full list of contents is intended
to serve the purpose of a chronological table of the events
and literature of which the book treats. Finally, it is hoped
that the elaborate index will give the student ready control
of the somewhat varied stores of information which the
volume brings under his survey.

CONTENTS

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH

Distribution of the
name of Shakespeare

The poet's ancestry

The poet's father

His settlement at Strat
ford

The poet's mother . 4
1564, April. The poet's birth

and baptism . . 5

Alleged birthplace . 5

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE

The father in municipal

office . • . .6
Brothers and sisters . 7
The father's financial

difficulties . . 7
\i57i-7 Shakespeare's educa
tion. ... 7
His classical equipment 8
Shakespeare's know
ledge of the Bible . 9
{1575 Queen Elizabeth at

Kenilworth . . 10
1577 Withdrawal from school 10

1582, Dec. The poet's mar

riage . . .10
Richard Hathaway of

Shottery . . .10
Anne Hathaway . .II
Anne Hathaway's cot
tage . . .11
The bond against im
pediments . .11

1583, May. Birth of the

poet's daughter Su
sanna . . 13
Formal betrothal prob
ably dispensed with. 13

III

THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD

Early married life . 1 5
Poaching at Charlecote 16
Unwarranted doubts of
the tradition . .16

Justice Shallow . .17
1585 The flight from Strat
ford- . . 17

Vlll

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

ON THE LONDON STAGE

1586 The journey to London 19
Richard F'ield, Shake
speare's townsman . 19
Theatrical employment 20
A playhouse servitor . 20
The acting companies . 21
The Lord Chamber
lain's company . 22
Shakespeare a member
of the Lord Cham
berlain's company . 22

PAGE

The London theatres . 22
Place of residence in

London . . .23
Actors' provincial tours 24
Shakespeare's alleged

travels . . 25

In Scotland . . 25
In Italy . . .26
Shakespeare's roles . 26
His alleged scorn of an

actor's calling . . 27

EARLY DRAMATIC WORK

1591
1591

The period of Shake
speare's dramatic
work, 1591-1611

His borrowed plots

The revision of plays .

Chronology of the plays

Metrical tests

Love's Labour's Lost .

Two Gentlemen of Ve-

1592 Comedy of Errors
1592 Romeo and Juliet
1592, March. Henry VI
1592, Sept. Greene's attack

on Shakespeare
Chettle's apology
Divided authorship of

Henry VI

Shakespeare's coad
jutors

Shakespeare's assimi
lative power
Lyly's influence in
comedy .

28
28
29
29
29
30

1593
1593

1593
1594,

1594
1594,

Marlowe's influence in
tragedy .

Richard III

Richard II .

Shakespeare's acknow
ledgments to Mar
lowe

Titus Andronicus
August. The Merchant
of Venice

Shylock and Roderigo
Lopez

King John .
Dec. 28. Comedy of
Errors in Gray's Inn
Hall

Early plays doubtfully
assigned to Shake
speare

Arden of Feversham
(1592) .

Edward III

Mucedorus .

Faire Em (1592)

THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC

1593, April. Publication of

Venus and Adonis . 46

1594, May. Publication of

Lwrece . . -47

33
38
39

39
40

44
44
44
45

Enthusiastic reception
of the poems . . 48

Shakespeare and Spen
ser . . . .49

Patrons at Court . . 50

CONTENTS

VII

THE SONNETS

The vogue of the Eliza
bethan sonnet . . 52

Shakespeare's first ex
periments . . 52
1594 Majority of Shake
speare's sonnets com
posed ... 53

Their literary value . 53

The form of Shake
speare's sonnets . 54

Their want of conti
nuity . . -54

Lack of genuine senti
ment in Elizabethan
sonnets . . -55

Shakespeare's scornful
allusions to sonnets
in his plays . . 55

Slender autobiographi
cal element in Shake
speare's sonnets . 56

The imitative element. 56

Shakespeare's claims of
immortality for his
sonnets a borrowed
conceit . . « 57

Vituperative sonnets ad
dressed to a woman . 58

The intrigue with the
poet's mistress . . 59

Willobie his Aviso,
(1594) ... 59

VIII

THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Biographic fact in the
'dedicatory' sonnets 62

The Earl of Southamp
ton the poet's sole
patron . . .62

Rivals in Southamp
ton's favour . . 64

Barnabe Barnes proba
bly the chief rival . 65

Sonnets of friendship . 66

Extravagances of liter
ary compliment . 66

Direct references to
Southampton in the
sonnets of friendship 67

His youthfulness . . 67

The evidence of por
traits ... 68

Sonnet cvii. the last of
the series . . 68

Allusions to Queen
Elizabeth's death . 69

Allusions to Southamp
ton's release from
prison . . .69

Circulation of the son
nets in manuscript . 70

Their piratical publica
tion in 1609 . . 70

A Lover's Complaint . 71

Thomas Thorpe and
'Mr. W. H.' . . 72

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER

Summary of conclu
sions respecting the
sonnets .

1594-5 Midsummer Nighfs
Dream . . •

1595 All's Well that Ends
Well ...

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

1595 The Taming of The

Shrew . . . 78
Stratford allusions in

the Induction . . 78

Wincot . . '79

1597 Henry IV . . .80

Falstaff . . .82

1597 The Merry Wives of

Windsor. . . 83

1598 Henry V . . .84
Essex and the rebellion

of 1601 . . .85

Shakespeare's popular
ity and influence . 86
Shakespeare's friend
ship with Ben Jonson 87
The Mermaid meetings 87
1598 Meres's eulogy . . 88
Value of his name to

publishers . . 88
*599 The Passionate Pil
grim . . .90
1 60 1 The Phoenix and the

Turtle . . .90

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE

Shakespeare's practical

temperament . . 92
His father's difficulties 92
His wife's debt . . 93
Shakespeare's return to

Stratford . . -93
1596-9 The coat of arms . 94
1597, May 4. The purchase

of New Place . • 97
1598 Fellow-townsmen ap
peal to Shakespeare
for aid . . . 98

Shakespeare's financial

position before 1599 98
Shakespeare's financial

position after 1599 . zoo
His later income . 102

Incomesoffellow-actors 102
1601-1610 Shakespeare's for
mation of his estate
at Stratford . .103
1605 The Stratford tithes . 104
1600-1609 Recovery of small

debts . . .104

MATURITY OF GENIUS

IS99

1599
I6OO

1601

tng .
As You Like It

Literary work in 1599 105
Much Ado about Noth-

T-welfth Night . . 107
Julius Ccesar . . 108

The strife between adult
actors and boy-actors 109

Shakespeare's refer
ences to the struggle 1 10

Ben Jonson's Poetaster III

Shakespeare's alleged
partisanship in the
theatrical warfare . 112

Ben Jonson on Julius
CcBsar . . . 113

1602 Hamlet . . .113
The problem of its pub
lication . . .114

The First Quarto, 1603 114
The Second Quarto,

1604 . . .114
The Folio version, 1623 115
Popularity of Hamlet . 115

1603 Troilus and Cressida . 116
Treatment of the theme 117

1603, March 24. Queen Eliza
beth's death . . 118
James I's patronage . 1 1 8

CONTENTS

XII

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY

PAGE

1604, NOV. Othello . .121
1604, Dec. Measure for Meas
ure . . . • . 122

1606 Macbeth . . .123

1607 King Lear . . .126

PAGE

1608 Timon of Athens . 126

1608 Pericles . . .126

1608 Antony and Cleopatra 128

1609 Coriolanus . . .128

XIII
THE LATEST PLAYS

The placid temper of
the latest plays . 130

1610 Cymbeline . . . 131

1611 A Winter's Tale . 131
l6u The Tempest . .132

Fanciful interpretations

of The Tempest . 134
Unfinished plays . . 135

1613 The lost play of Car-

denio . . .136
The Two Noble Kins
men . . .136
1613 Henry VIII . . 137
1613, June 29. The burning

of the Globe Theatre 137

XIV

THE CLOSE OF LIFE

Plays at Court in 1613 139
Actor-friends . -139
1611 Final settlement at

Stratford. . . 140
Domestic affairs . .140

1613, March. Purchase of a

house in Blackfriars 141

1 6 1 4, Oct. Attempt to enclose

the Stratford com
mon fields . -143
1616, April 23. Shakespeare's

death . . . 144

1616, April 25. Shakespeare's

burial . . . 144
The will . . . 145
Shakespeare's bequest

to his wife . . 145
Shakespeare's heiress . 146
Legacies to friends . 146
The tomb in Stratford

Church . . . 146
Shakespeare's personal

character . . 147

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS

Mrs. Judith Quiney
(1585-1662) . . 149

Mrs. Susanna Hall
(1583-1649) . .150

The last descendant . 150
Shakespeare's brothers,
Edmund, Richard,
and Gilbert . -11

Xll

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

XVI

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS

PAGE

Extant specimens of
Shakespeare's hand
writing . . .152
His mode of writing . 152
The poet's spelling of

his surname . -153
' Shakespeare ' the ac
cepted form . .154
Shakespeare's portraits 154
The Stratford bust .155
The 'Stratford portrait ' 155
Droeshout's engraving 155

FAGB

The ' Droeshout ' paint
ing . . . . 156
Later portraits . .158
The Chandos portrait . 158
The ' Jansen' portrait . 159
The ' Felton ' portrait . 159
The ' Soest ' portrait . 159
Miniatures . . .160
The Garrick Club bust 1 60
Alleged death-mask . 160
Memorials in sculpture 161
Memorials at Stratford 161

XVII

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editions of the poems

in the poet's lifetime 163
Posthumous editions of

the poems . . 163
The ' Poems ' of 1640 . 163
Quartos of the plays in

the poet's lifetime . 164
Posthumous quartos of

the plays . . .165
1623 The First Folio . .166
The publishing syndi
cate . . . 166
The prefatory matter . 167
The value of the text . 169
The order of the plays 169
The typography . .169
Unique copies . .170
The Sheldon copy . 170
Jaggard's presentation •
copy of the First
Folio . . . 171
Estimated number of

extant copies . .172
Reprints of the First

Folio . . .173
1632 The Second Folio . 173
1663-4 Tne Third Folio . 173
1685 The Fourth Folio . 174
Eighteenth-century ed
itors . . .174
Nicholas Rowe (1674-
1718) . . . 174

Alexander Pope (1688-

1744) . . .175
Lewis Theobald (1688-

1744) . • .175
Sir Thomas Hanmer

(1677-1746) . . 176
Bishop Warburton

(1698-1779) . . 177
Dr. Johnson (1709-

1783) . . .177
Edward Capell (1713-

1781) . . .178
George Steevens(i 736-

1800) . . .178
Edmund Malone (1741-

1812) . . . 179
Variorum editions . 179
Nineteenth-century ed
itors . . .180
Alexander Dyce (i 798-

1869) . . .180
Howard Staunton (1810-

1874) . . .180
Nikolaus Delius (1813-

1888) . . .180
The Cambridge edition

(1863-6) . .1.81

The Bankside edition . 181
Other nineteenth-cen
tury editions . .181

CONTENTS

xiii

XVIII

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION

PAGE

Views of Shakespeare's

contemporaries . 183
Ben Jonson's tribute . 183
English opinion be

tween 1 660 and 1702 184
Dryden's view . .185
Restoration adapta

tions . . .186
English opinion from

1702 onwards . . 186
Stratford festivals . 187
Shakespeare on the

English stage . .
The first appearance of

actresses in Shake

spearean parts . .188
David Garrick (1717-

1779) . . .
John Philip Kemble

(1757-1823) . . 189
Mrs. Sarah Siddons

187

188

Edmund Kean (1787-
1833) . . .190

William Charles Mac-
ready (1793-1873) . 190

PAGE

Recent revivals . . 191
Shakespeare in English

music and art . .191
Boydell's Shakespeare

Gallery . . .192
Shakespeare in America 192
Translations . . 192
Shakespeare in Ger
many . . -193
German translations . 193
Modern German critics 194
Shakespeare on the

German stage . . 195
Shakespeare in France 196
Voltaire's strictures . 196
French critics' gradual
emancipation from
Voltairean influence 197
Shakespeare on the

French stage . .198
Shakespeare in Italy . 198
In Holland. . .199
In Russia . . .199
In Poland . . .199
In Hungary . .199
In other countries . 199

XIX

GENERAL ESTIMATE

General estimate . 201
Shakespeare's defects . 201
Character of Shake
speare's achievement 202

Its universal recogni
tion. . 202*

XIV

SHAKESPEARE*S LIFE AND WORK

APPENDIX

THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

PAGE

Contemporary records
abundant . . 203

First efforts in biogra
phy . . . .203

Biographers of the nine
teenth century . . 204

Stratford topography . 205

Specialised studies in
biography . . 205

PAGE

Epitomes . . . 205
Aids to study of plots

and text . . . 205
Modern editions of the
sonnets and theories

respecting them . 206

Concordances . . 207

Bibliographies . . 207

Critical studies . . 207

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY

Its source . . . 208
The argument from

parallelisms . . 208
Toby Matthew's letter

of 1621 . . . 209

Chief exponents of the

theory . . . 210

Its vogue in America . 210

Extent of the literature 210

Absurdity of the theory 211

INDEX

213

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Frontispiece

From the 'Droeshout' painting or 'Flower portrait' now
in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford-
on-Avon.

PAGE

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED
TO THE PURCHASE-DEED OF A HOUSE IN BLACK-
FRIARS ON MARCH 10, 1612-13 .... to face 152

Reproduced from the original document now preserved
in the Guildhall Library, London.

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED
TO A DEED MORTGAGING HIS HOUSE IN BLACK-
FRIARS ON MARCH II, 1612-13 „ 154

Reproduced from the original document now preserved
in the British Museum.

THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES SEVERALLY WRIT
TEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THE THREE SHEETS
OF HIS WILL ON MARCH 25, l6l6 . . . „ 156

Reproduced from the original document now at Somer
set House, London.

FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST

BOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS . . „ 1 68

From the copy in the Grenville Library at the British
Museum.

CONTEMPORARY INSCRIPTION IN JAGGARD'S PRE
SENTATION COPY OF THE FIRST FOLIO . . 171

Now belonging to Mr. Coningsby Sibthorp.

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH

SHAKESPEA&B came of a family whose surname was borne Distribu-
through the middle ages by residents in very many parts of ^ame* th
England — at Penrith in Cumberland, at Kirkland and
Doncaster in Yorkshire, as well as in nearly all the midland
counties. The surname had originally a martial signifi
cance, implying capacity in the wielding of the spear. Its
first recorded holder is William Shakespeare or 'Sakspere/
who was convicted of robbery and hanged in 1 248 ; he
belonged to Clapton, a hamlet (about seven miles south of
Stratford-on-Avon) in the hundred of Kiftergate, Glouces
tershire. The second recorded holder of the surname is
John Shakespeare, who in 1279 was living at ' Freyndon,'
perhaps Frittenden, Kent. The great mediaeval guild of
St. Anne at Knowle, whose members included the leading
inhabitants of Warwickshire, was joined by many Shake-
speares in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the surname is found far more
frequently in Warwickshire than elsewhere. The archives
of no less than twenty-four towns and villages there contain
notice of Shakespeare families in the sixteenth century, and
as many as thirty-four Warwickshire towns or villages were
inhabited by Shakespeare families in the seventeenth century.
Among them all William was a common Christian name.
At Rowington, twelve miles to the north of Stratford, and
in the same hundred of Barlichway, one of the most prolific
Shakespeare families in Warwickshire resided in the sixteenth
century, and no less than three Richard Shakespeares of
Rowington, whose extant wills were proved respectively in
1560, 1591, and 1614, were fathers of sons called William.
At least one other William Shakespeare was during the

B I

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

The poet's
ancestry.

The poet's
father.

period a resident in Rowington. As a consequence, the
poet has been more than once credited with achievements
which rightly belong to one or other of his numerous
contemporaries who were identically named.

The poet's ancestry cannot be defined with absolute
certainty. The poet's father, when applying for a grant of
arms in 1596, claimed that his grandfather (the poet's great
grandfather) received for services rendered in war a grant
of land in Warwickshire from Henry VII (see p. 94). No
precise confirmation of this pretension has been discovered,
and it may be, after the manner of heraldic genealogy,
fictitious. But there is a probability that the poet came of
good yeoman stock, and that his ancestors to the fourth
or fifth generation were fairly substantial landowners.
Adam Shakespeare, a tenant by military service of land at
Baddesley Clinton in 1389, seems to have been great
grandfather of one Richard Shakespeare who held land at
Wroxhall in Warwickshire during the first thirty-four years
(at least) of the sixteenth century. Another Richard
Shakespeare who is conjectured to have been nearly akin to
the Wroxhall family was settled as a farmer at Snitterfield,
a village four miles to the north of Stratford-on-Avon, in
1528. It is probable that he was the poet's grandfather.
In 1550 he was renting a messuage and land at Snitter
field of Robert Arden; he died at the close of 1560, and
on February 10 of the next year letters of administration of
his goods, chattels, and debts were issued to his son John
by the Probate Court at Worcester. His goods were
valued at 357. 17^., which would be equivalent to 2867. i6s.
in modern currency, the purchasing power of money being
then eight times what it is now. Besides the son John,
Richard of Snitterfield certainly had a son Henry ; while a
Thomas Shakespeare, a considerable landholder at Snitter
field between 1563 and 1583, whose parentage is undeter
mined, may have been a third son. The son Henry
remained all his life at Snitterfield, where he engaged in
farming with gradually diminishing success; he died in
embarrassed circumstances in December 1596. John, the
son, who administered Richard's estate, was in all likelihood
the poet's father.

About 1551 John Shakesp-.-are left SnitiorfieUl, which
was his birthplace, to seek a career in the neighbouring
borough of btratford-on-Avon. There he soon set up as a

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 3

trader in all manner of agricultural produce. Corn, wool,
rnalt, meat, skins, a;. a leather were among the commodities
in which he dealt. Documents of a somewhat later date often
describe him as a glover. Aubrey, Shakespeare's first bio
grapher, reported the tradition that he was a butcher. But
though both designations doubtless indicated important
branches of his business, neither can be regarded as disclos
ing its full extent. The land which his family farmed at Snit-
terfield supplied him with his varied stock-in-trade. As long
as his father lived he seems to have been a frequent visitor
to Snitterfield, and, like his father and brothers, he was until
the date of his father's death occasionally designated a farmer
or ' husbandman ' of that place. But it was with Stratford-
on-Avon that his life was mainly identified.

In April 1552 he was living there in Henley Street, a His settle'
thoroughfare leading to the market town of Henley-in-
Arden, and he is first mentioned in the borough records as
paying in that month a fine of twelvepence for having a
dirt-heap in front of hi.- house. His frequent appearance
in the years that follow as onher plaintiff or defendant in
suits heard in the local court of record for the recovery of
small debts suggest that he was a keen man of business.
In early life he prospered in trade, and in October 1556
purchased two freehold tenements at Stratford — one, with
a garden, in Henley Street (it adjoins that now known as
the poet's birthplace), and the other in Greenhill Street
with a garden and croft. Thenceforth he played a promi
nent part in municipal affairs. In 1557 he was elected
an ale-taster, whose duty it was to test the quality of
malt liquors and bread. About the same time he was
elected a burgess or town councillor, and in September
1558, and again on October 6, 1559, he was appointed one
of the four petty constables by a vote of the jury of the
court-leet. Twice — in 1559 and 1561 — he was chosen one
of the affeerors — officers appointed to determine the fines
for those offences which were punishable arbitrarily, and
for which no express penalties were prescribed by statute.
In 1561 he was elected one of the two chamberlains of the
borough, an office of responsibility which he held for two
years. He delivered his second statement of accounts to
the corporation in January 1564. When attesting docu
ments he occasionally made his mark, but there is evidence
in the Stratford archives that he could write with facility;

4 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

and he was credited with financial aptitude. The muni
cipal accounts, which were checked by tallies and counters,
were audited by him after he ceased to be chamberlain,
and he more than once advanced small sums of money to
the corporation.

The poet's WJh characteristic shrewdness he chose a wife of nssured
fortune — Ma~y, youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a
wealthy fmiicr of \Gi;n;,ote in the parish of Aston Cantlovve,
neav Rcra.ford. Vhe Arden family in its chief branch, which
was settled at Parkhall, Warwickshire, ranked with the most
influential of the county. Robert Arden, a progenitor of
that branch, was sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire
in 1438 (16 Hen. VI), and this sheriffs direct descendant,
Edward Arden, who was himself high sheriff of Warwickshire
in 1575, was executed in 1583 for alleged complicity in a
Roman Catholic plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth.
John Shakespeare's wife belonged to a humbler branch of
the family, and there is no trustworthy evidence to determine
the exact degree of kinship between the two branches. Her
grandfather, Thomas Arden, purchased in 1501 an estate at
Snitterfield, which passed, with other property, to her father
Robert; John Shakespeare's father, Richard, was one of
this Robert Arden's Snitterfield tenants. By his first wife,
whose name is not known, Robert Arden had seven
daughters, of whom all but two married ; John Shakespeare's
wife seems to have been the youngest. Robert Arden's
second wife, Agnes or Anne, widow of John Hill (d. 1545),
a substantial farmer of Bearley, survived him ; but by her
he had no issue. When he died at the end of 1556, he
owned a farmhouse at Wilmcote and many acres, besides
some hundred acres at Snitterfield, with two farmhouses
which he let out to tenants. The post-mortem inventory
of his goods, which was made on December 9, 1556, shows
that he had lived in comfort ; his house was adorned by as
many as eleven 'painted cloths,' which then did duty for
tapestries among the middle class. The exordium of his
will, which was drawn up on November 24, 1556, and
proved on December 16 following, indicates that he was an
observant Catholic. For his two youngest daughters, Alice
and Mary, he showed especial affection by nominating them
his executors. Mary received not only 61. 13^. $d. in
money, but the fee-simple of Asbies, his chief property at
Wilmcote, consisting of a house with some fifty acres of

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 5

land. She also acquired, under an earlier settlement, an
interest in two messuages at Snitterfield. But, although she
was well provided with worldly goods, she was apparently
without education; several extant documents bear her
mark, and there is no proof that she could sign her name.
John Shakespeare's marriage with Mary Arden doubtless
took place at Aston Cantlowe, the parish church of \Yilmcote,
in the autumn of 1557 (the church registers begin at a later
date). On September 15, 1558, his first child, a daughter,
Joan, was baptised, in the church of Stratford. A second
child, another daughter, Margaret, was baptised on Decem
ber 2, 1562; but both these children died in infancy. The The poet's
poet William, the first sen r.ud third child, was born on ^irth.and

., , . . ,, , baptism.

April 22 or 23, 1564. ihe latter dale is generally accepted
as his birthday, mainly (it would appear) on the ground
that it was the day of his death. There is no positive
evidence on the subject, but the Stratford parish registers
attest that he was baptised on April 26.

Some doubt is justifiable as to the ordinarily accepted Alleged
scene of his birth. Of two adjoining houses now forming t
a detached building on the north side of Henley Street, that
to the east was purchased by John Shakespeare in 1556,
but there is no evidence that he owned or occupied the
house to the west before 1575. Yet this western house has
been known since 1759 as the poet's birthplace, and a room
on the first floor is claimed as that in which he was born.
The two houses subsequently came by bequest of the poet's
granddaughter to the family of the poet's sister, Joan Hart,
and while the eastern tenement was let out to strangers for
more than two centuries, and by them converted into an
inn, the 'birthplace ' was until 1806 occupied by the Harts,
who latterly carried on there the trade of butcher. The
fact of its long occupancy by the poet's collateral descend
ants accounts for the identification of the western rather than
the eastern tenement with his birthplace. Both houses
were purchased in behalf of subscribers to a public fund on
September 16, 1847, and, after extensive restoration, were
converted into a single domicile for the purposes of a pub
lic museum. They were presented under a deed of trust
to the corporation of Stratford in 1866. Much of the
Elizabethan timber and stonework survives, but a cellar
under the 'birthplace ' is the only portion which remains as
it was at the date of the poet's birth.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE

The father IN july 1564, when William was three months old, the
dp™/1111 plague raged with unwonted vehemence at Stratford, and
office. his father liberally contributed to the relief of its poverty-
stricken victims. Fortune still favoured him. On July 4,
1565, he reached the dignity of an alderman. From 1567
onwards he was accorded in the corporation archives the
honourable prefix of 'Mr.' At Michaelmas 1568 he attained
the highest office in the corporation gift, that of bailiff, and
during his year of office the corporation for the first time
entertained actors at Stratford. The Queen's Company
and the Earl of Worcester's Company each received from
John Shakespeare an official welcome. The circumstance
that he was the first bailiff to encourage actors to visit
Stratford proves that his religion was not that of the
contemporary puritan, whose hostility to all forms of
dramatic representations was one of his most persistent
characteristics. On September 5, 1571, John Shakespeare
was chief alderman, a post which he retained till Septem
ber 30 the following year. In 1573 Alexander Webbe, the
husband of his wife's sister Agnes, made him overseer of
his will; in 1575 he bought two houses in Stratford, one of
them doubtless the alleged birthplace in Henley Street;
in 1576 he contributed twelvepence to the beadle's salary.
But after Michaelmas 1572 he took a less active part in
municipal affairs; he grew irregular in his attendance
at the council meetings, and signs were soon apparent
that his luck had turned. In 1578 he was unable to pay,
with his colleagues, either the sum of fourpence for the
relief of the poor or his contribution 'towards the furniture
of three pikemen, two bellmen, and one archer ' who were
sent by the corporation to attend a muster of the trained
bands of the county.

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE ^

Meanwhile his family was increasing. Four children Brothers
besides the poet — three sons, Gilbert (baptised October 13,
1566), Richard (baptised March n, 1574), and Edmund
(baptised May 3, 1580), with a daughter Joan (baptised
April 15, 1569) — reached maturity. A daughter Ann was
baptised September 28, 1571, and was buried on April 4,
1579. To meet his growing liabilities, the father borrowed
money from his wife's kinsfolk, and he and his wife
mortgaged, on November 14, 1578, Asbies, her valuable
property at Wilmcote, for 4O/. to Edmund Lambert of
Barton-on-the-Heath, who had married her sister, Joan
Arden. Lambert was to receive no interest on his loan,
but was to take the 'rents and profits ' of the estate.
Asbies was thereby alienated for ever. Next year, on
October 15, 1579, John and his wife made over to Robert
Webbe, doubtless a relative of Alexander Webbe, for the
sum apparently of 4O/., his wife's property at Snitterfield.

John Shakespeare obviously chafed under the humilia- The
tion of having parted, although as he hoped only tern- *.ather'.s
porarily, with his wife's property of Asbies, and in the diffi""'
autumn of 1580 he offered to pay off the mortgage; but his cuities.
brother-in-law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were
owing, and he would accept all or none. The negotiation,
which was the beginning of much litigation, thus proved
abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor, John Brown,
was embarrassingly importunate, and, after obtaining a
writ of distraint, Brown informed the local court that the
debtor had no goods on which distraint could be levied.
On September 6, 1586, John was deprived of his alderman's
gown, on the ground of his long absence from the council
meetings.

Happily John Shakespeare was at no expense for the Educa-
education of his four sons. They were entitled to free tion>
tuition at the grammar school of Stratford, which was
reconstituted on a mediaeval foundation by Edward VI.
The eldest son, William, probably entered the school in
1571, when Walter Roche was master, and perhaps he
knew something of Thomas Hunt, who succeeded Roche
in 1577. As was customary in provincial schools, he was
taught to write the 'Old English ' character, which resembles
that still in vogue in Germany. He was never taught the
Italian script, which at the time was rapidly winning its way
in fashionable cultured society, and is now universal among

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

The poet's
classical
equip
ment.

Englishmen. Until his death Shakespeare's 'Old English '
handwriting testified to his provincial ed'K-atior. The
general instruction that lu- received was mainly confined 10
the T it ;t? i,. Triage ?md literature. From the Latin acci
dence, beys <-<)" die period, at schools of the type of that
at Stratford, were led, through conversation books like the
'Sententias Pueriles ' and Lily's grammar, to the perusal of
such authors as Seneca, Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Plautus,
Ovid, and Horace. The eclogues of the popular renaissance
poet, Mantuanus, were often preferred to Virgil's for begin
ners. The rudiments of Greek were occasionally taught
in Elizabethan grammar schools to very promising pupils;
but such coincidences as have been detected between
expressions in Greek plays and in Shakespearean drama
seem due to accident, and not to Shakespeare's study,
either at school or elsewhere, of the Athenian drama.

Dr. Farmer enunciated in his 'Essay on Shakespeare's
Learning' (1767) the theory that Shakespeare knew no
language but his own, and owed whatever knowledge he
displayed of the classics and of Italian and French litera
ture to English translations. But several of the books in
French and Italian whence Shakespeare derived the plots
of his dramas — Belief crest's 'Histoires Tragiques,' Ser
Giovanni's 'II Pecorone,' and Cinthio's 'Hecatommithi,'
for example — were not accessible to him in English trans
lations; and on more general grounds the theory of his
ignorance is adequately confuted. A boy with Shakespeare's
exceptional alertness of intellect, during whose schooldays
a training in Latin classics lay within reach, could hardly
lack in future years all means of access to the literature of
France and Italy.

W'th the Latin and French languages, indeed, and with
many Latin poets of Uie school <:urricnlnm, Shakespeare in
his writing;1, cm ply .^ViowieJged his acquaintance. In
'Hemy V ' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on
in French which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic.
In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holof ernes in 'Love's
Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of
Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly
from Lily's grammar, from the 'Sententiae Pueriles,' and
from 'the good old Mantuan. ' The influence of Ovid,
especially the 'Metamorphoses,' was apparent throughout
his earliest literary work, both poetic and dramatic, and is

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 9

discernible in the 'Tempest,' his latest play (v. i. 33 seq.).
In the Bodleian Library there is a copy of the Aldine
edition of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses ' (1502), and on the title
is the signature 'Wm. She.,' which experts have declared —
not quite conclusively — to be a genuine autograph of
the poet. Ovid's Latin text was certainly familiar to
him. His closest adaptations of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses '
often reflect, however, the phraseology of the popular
English version by Arthur Golding, of which some seven
editions were issued between 1565 and 1597. From Plautus
Shakespeare drew the plot of the 'Comedy of Errors,' and it
is just possible that Plautus' s comedies, too, were accessible
in English. Shakespeare K--r! rn 'it!? to rank as a classical
scholar, and he did not disaain a liberal use of translations.
His lack of exact scholarship fully accounts for the 'small
Latin and less Greek ' with which he was credited by his
scholarly friend, Ben Jonson. But Aubrey's report that
'he understood Latin pretty well ' need not be contested,
and his knowledge of French may be estimated to have
equalled his knowledge of Latin, while he doubtless pos
sessed just sufficient acquaintance with Italian to enable
him to discern the drift of an Italian poem or novel.

Of the few English books accessible to him in his Shake-
schooldays, the rhitf wr.s th? English Bib";*, cither in the spe?T^

_ . ' , . . and the

popular Genevan v:, sion, first issued in a complete form Bible,
in 1560, or in the Bishops' revision of 1568, which the
Authorised Version of 1611 closely followed. References
to scriptural characters and incidents are not conspicuous
in Shakespeare's plays, but, such as they are, they are
drawn from all parts of the Bible, and indicate that general
acquaintance with the narrative of both Old and New
Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire
either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shake
speare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater
frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical his
tory. But many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency,
and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed
from Holinshed's 'Chronicles ' and secular works whence he
drew his plots. As a rule his use of scriptural phraseology,
as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence
and the assimilative tendency of the mind in a stage of
early development rather than close and continuous study
of the Bible in adult life.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

The poet's
marriage.

Richard
Hath
away of
Shottery.

Shakespeare was a schoolboy in July 1575, when Queen
Elizabeth made a progress through Warwickshire on a visit
to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, at his castle of
Kenilworth. References have been detected in Oberon's
vision in Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream ' (n. ii.
148-68) to the fantastic pageants and masques with which
the Queen during her stay was entertained in Kenilworth
Park. Leicester's residence was only fifteen miles from
Stratford, and it is possible that Shakespeare went thither
with his father to witness some of the open-air festivities;
but two full descriptions which were published in 1576, in
pamphlet form, gave Shakespeare knowledge of all that took
place. Shakespeare's opportunities of recreation outside
Stratford were in any case restricted during his schooldays.
His father's financial difficulties grew steadily, and they
caused his '•enioval fro:,i school at an unusually early age.
Probably in 1577, when he was thiueen, he was enlisted by
his father in an effort to restore his decaying fortunes. 'I
have been told heretofore,' wrote Aubrey, 'by some of the
neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's
trade, ' which, according to the writer, was that of a butcher.
It is possible that John's ill-luck at the period compelled
him to confine himself to this occupation, which in happier
days formed only one branch of his business. His son may
have been formally apprenticed to him. An early Stratford
tradition describes him as 'a butcher's apprentice.' 'When
he kill'd a calf,' Aubrey proceeds less convincingly, 'he
would doe it in a high style and make a speech. There
was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that
was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt,
his acquaintance, and coetanean, but dyed young.'

At the end of 1582 Shakespeare, when little more than
eighteen and a half, took a step which was little calculated
to lighten his father's anxieties. He married. His wife, ac
cording to the inscription on her tombstone, wno his senior
by eight years. Rowe, the poet's biographer of 1 709, stated
that she 'wns tru- daughter of one Hathaway, said to have
been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.'

On September i, 1581, Richard Hathaway, 'husband
man ' of Shottery, a hamlet in the parish of Old Stratford,
made his will, which was proved on July 9, 1582, and is
now preserved at Somerset House. His house and land,
'two and a half virgates, ' had been long held in copyhold

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 11

by his family, and he died in fairly prosperous circumstances.
His wife Joan, the chief legatee, was directed to carry on
the farm with the aid of her eldest son, Bartholomew, to
whom a share in its proceeds was assigned. Six other
children — three sons and three daughters — received sums
of money; Agnes, the eldest daughter, and Catherine, the
second daughter, were each allotted 6/. 13^. ^d., ' to be paid
at the day of her marriage,' a phrase common in wills of the
period. Anne and Agnes were in the sixteenth century
alternative spellings of the same Christian name; and
there is little doubt that the daughter 'Agnes ' of Richard
Hathaway' s will became, within a few months of Richard
Hathaway 's death, Shakespeare's wife.

The house at Shottery, now known as Anne Hathaway 's
cottage, and reached from Stratford by field-paths, un-
doubtedly once formed part of Richard Hathaway 's farm-
house, and, despite numerous alterations and renovations,
still preserves many features of a thatched farmhouse of
the Elizabethan period. The house remained in the
Hathaway family till 1838, although the male line became
extinct in 1746. It was purchased in behalf of the public
by the Birthplace trustees in 1892.

No record of the solemnisation of Shakespeare's mar
riage survives. Although the parish of Stratford included
Shottery, and thus both bride and bridegroom were parish
ioners, the Stratford parish register is silent on the sub
ject. A local tradition, which seems to have come into
being during the present century, assigns the ceremony to
the neighbouring hamlet or chapelry of Luddington, of
which neither the chapel nor parish registers now exist.
But one important piece of documentary evidence directly
bearing on the poet's matrimonial venture is accessible. In
the registry of the bishop of the diocese (Worcester) a deed
is extant wherein Fulk Sandells and John Richardson,
'husbandmen of Stratford,' bound themselves in the
bishop's consistory court, on November 28, 1582, in a
surety of 4O/., to free the bishop of all liability should a
lawful impediment — 'by reason of any precontract ' [i.e.
with a third party] or consanguinity — be subsequently dis
closed to imperil the validity of the marriage, then in con
templation, of William Shakespeare with Anne Hathaway.
On the assumption that no such impediment was known to
exist, and provided that Anne obtained the consent of her

Anne
Hatha-

Anne

^*$T
cottage.

The bond

12 SHAKESPEARE >S LIFE AND WORK

'friends,' the marriage might proceed 'with once asking
of the bannes of matrimony betwene them. '

Bonds of similar purport, although differing in signifi
cant details, are extant in all diocesan registries of the
sixteenth century. They were obtainable on the payment
of a fee to the bishop's commissary, and had the effect of
expediting the marriage ceremony while protecting the
clergy from the consequences of any possible breach of
canonical law. But they were not common, and it was
rare for persons ,in the comparatively humble position in
life of Anne Hathaway and young Shakespeare to adopt
such cumbrous formalities when there was always available
the simpler, less expensive, and more leisurely method of
marriage by 'thrice asking of the banns.' Moreover, the
wording of the bond which was drawn before Shakespeare's
marriage differs in important respects from that adopted in
all other known examples. In the latter it is invariably
provided that the marriage shall not take place without the
consent of the parents or governors of both bride and
bridegroom. In the case of the marriage of an 'infant'
bridegroom the formal consent of his parents was absolutely
essential to strictly regular procedure, although clergymen
might be found who were ready to shut their eyes to the
facts of the situation and to run the risk of solemnising the
marriage of an 'infant' without inquiry as to the parents'
consent. The clergyman who united Shakespeare in wed
lock to Anne Hathaway was obviously of this easy temper.
Despite the circumstance that Shakespeare's bride was of
full age and he himself was by nearly three years a minor,
the Shakespeare bond stipulated merely for the consent of
the bride's 'friends,' and ignored the bridegroom's parents
altogether. Nor was this the only irregularity in the docu
ment. In other pre-matrimonial covenants of the kind the
name either of the bridegroom himself or of the bridegroom's
father figures as one of the two sureties, and is mentioned
first of the two. Had the usual form been followed,
Shakespeare's father would have been the chief party to the
transaction in behalf of his 'infant ' son. But in the Shake
speare bond the sole sureties, Sandells and Richardson, were
farmers of Shottery, the bride's native place. Sandells was
a 'supervisor ' of the will of the bride's father, who there
describes him as 'my trustie friende and neighbour.' The
prominence of the Shottery husbandmen in the negotiations

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 13

preceding Shakespeare's marriage suggests the true position
of affairs. Sandells and Richardson, representing the lady's
family, doubtless secured the deed on their own initiative,
so that Shakespeare might have small opportunity of evad
ing a step which his intimacy with their friend's daughter
had rendered essential to her reputation. The wedding
probably took place, without the consent of the bridegroom's
parents -— it may be without their knowledge — soon after
the signing of the deed. Within six months — in May 1583 Birth of a
— a daughter was born to the poet, and was baptised in the daughter,
name of Susanna at Stratford parish church on the 26th.

Shakespeare's apologists have endeavoured to show that Formal
the public betrothal or formal 'troth-plight' which was at betr,otK,al

. r. probably

the time a common prelude to a wedding carried with it dispensed
all the privileges of marriage. But neither Shakespeare's with-
detailedydescription of a betrothal nor of the solemn verbal
contract that ordinarily preceded marriage lends the con
tention much support.

A contract of eternal bond of love,

Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,

Attested by the holy close of lips,

Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings;

And all the ceremony of this compact

Seal'd in my [i.e. the priest's] function by my testimony.

Twelfth Night, V. i. 160-4.

Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case render it
highly improbable that Shakespeare and his bride sub
mitted to the formal preliminaries of a betrothal. In that
ceremony the parents of both contracting parties invariably
played foremost parts, but the wording of the bond pre
cludes the assumption that the bridegroom's parents were
actors in any scene of the hurriedly planned drama of his
marriage.

A difficulty has been imported into the narration of the
poet's matrimonial affairs by the assumption of his identity
with one 'William Shakespeare,' to whom, according to an
entry in the Bishop of Worcester's register, a license was
issued on November 27, 1582 (the day before the signing of
the Hathaway bond), authorising his marriage with Anne
Whateley of Temple Grafton. The theory that the maiden
name of Shakespeare's wife was Whateley is quite un
tenable, and it is unsafe to assume that the bishop's clerk,
when making a note of the grant of the license in his

14 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

register, erred so extensively as to write 'Anne Whateley of
Temple Graf ton ' for 'Anne Hathaway of Shottery. ' The
husband of Anne Whateley cannot reasonably be identified
with the poet. He was doubtless another of the numerous
William Shakespeares who abounded in the diocese of
Worcester. Had a license for the poet's marriage been
secured on November 27, it is unlikely that the Shottery
husbandmen would have entered, next day into a bond
'against impediments,' the execution of which might well
have been demanded as a preliminary to the grant of a
license but was wholly supererogatory after the grant was
made.

THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 15

III

THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD

ANNE HATHAWAY'S greater burden of years and the likeli
hood that the poet was forced into marrying her by her
friends were not circumstances of happy augury. Although
it is dangerous to read into Shakespeare's dramatic utter
ances allusions to his personal experience, the emphasis
with which he insists that a woman should take in marriage
an 'elder than herself' ('Twelfth Night,' n. iv. 29), and
that prenuptial intimacy is productive of 'barren hate,
sour-ey'd disdain, and discord,' suggests a personal interpre
tation ('Tempest,' iv. i. 15-22). To both these unpromis
ing features was added, in the poet's case, the absence of
•a means of livelihood, and his course of life in the years
that immediately followed implies that he bore his domestic
ties with impatience. Early in 1585 twins were born to
him, a son (Hamnet) and a daughter (Judith); both were
baptised on February 2. All the evidence points to the
conclusion, which the fact that he had no more children
confirms, that in the later months of the year (1585) he left
Stratford, and that, although he was never wholly estranged
from his family, he saw little of wife or children for eleven
years. Between the winter of 1585 and the autumn of
1596 — an interval which synchronises with his first literary
triumph — there is only one shadowy mention of his name
in Stratford records. In April 1587 there died Edmund
Lambert, who held Asbies under the mortgage of 1578, and
a few months later Shakespeare's name, as owner of a con
tingent interest, was joined to that of his father and mother
in a formal assent given to an abortive proposal to confer
on Edmund's son and heir, John Lambert, an absolute title
to the estate on condition of his cancelling the mortgage
and paying 2o/. But the deed does not indicate that
Shakespeare personally assisted at the transaction.

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Poaching
at Charle-
cote.

Unwar
ranted
doubts of
the tra
dition.

Shakespeare's early literary work proves that while in
the country he eagerly studied birds, flowers, and trees, and
gained a detailed knowledge of horses and dogs. AH his
kinsfolk were farmers, and with them he doubtless as a
youth practised many field sports. Sympathetic references
to hawking, hunting, coursing, and angling abound in his
early plays and poems. And his sporting experiences
passed at times beyond orthodox limits. A poaching
adventure, according to a credible tradition, wm the im
mediate cause of his long severance i t r.i Lis native place.
'He had,' wrote Rowe in 1709, 'by a misfortune common
enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, jynong
them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing,
engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park
that belonged to [a wealthy country gentleman] Sir Thomas
Lucy of Charlecote [between four and five miles to the north
east of] Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gen
tleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order
to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him, and
though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost,
yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled
the prosecution against him to that degree that he was
obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire
and shelter himself in London.' The independent testi
mony of Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar of Saperton,
Gloucestershire, late in the seventeenth century, is to the
effect that Shakespeare 'was much given to all unluckiness
in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas
Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned,
and at last made him fly his native county to his great
advancement.' The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz.
cap. 21) punished deer-stealers with three months' imprison
ment and the payment of thrice the amount of the damage
done.

The tradition has been challenged on the ground that the
Charlecote deer-park was of later date than the sixteenth
century. But Sir Thomas Lucy was an extensive game-
preserver, and owned at Charlecote a warren in which a few
harts or does doubtless found an occasional home. Samuel
Ireland was informed in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the
deer not from Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few
miles off, and Ireland supplied in his 'Views on the
Warwickshire Avon,' 1795, an engraving of an old farm-

THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 17

house in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he asserted that
Shakespeare was temporarily imprisoned after his arrest.
An adjoining hovel was locally known for some years as
Shakespeare's 'deer-barn,' but no portion of Fulbroke
Park, which included the site of these buildings (now
removed) was Lucy's property in Elizabeth's reign, and
the amended legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir
Walter Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems
pure invention.

The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have
fastened on the park gates of Charlecote does not, as Rowe
acknowledged, survive. No authenticity can be allowed
the worthless lines beginning 'A parliament member, a
justice of peace,' which were represented to be Shake
speare's on the authority of an old man who lived near
Stratford and died in 1703. But such an incident as the tra
dition reveals has left a distinct impress on Shakesperean
drama. Justice Shallow is beyond doubt a reminiscence justice
of the owner of Charlecote. According to Archdeacon 5hallow«
Davies of Saperton, Shakespeare's 'revenge was so great that '
he caricatured Lucy as 'Justice Clodpate, ' who was (Davies
adds) represented on the stage as 'a great man,' and as
bearing, in allusion to Lucy's name, 'three louses rampant
for his arms.' Justice Shallow, Davies's 'Justice Clodpate,'
came to birth in the 'Second Part of Henry IV (1598),
arid he is represented in the opening scene of the 'Merry
Wives of Windsor ' as having come from Gloucestershire
to Windsor to make a Star-Chamber matter of a poaching
raid on his estate. The 'three luces hauriant argent ' were
the arms borne by the Charlecote Lucys, and the dramatist's
prolonged reference in this scene to the 'dozen white luces'
on Justice Shallow's 'old coat ' fully establishes Shallow's
identity with Lucy.

The poaching episode is best assigned to 1585, but it The flight
may be questioned whether Shakespeare, on fleeing from gtomtf d
Lucy's persecution, at once sought an asylum in London.
William Beeston, a seventeenth-century actor, remembered
hearing that he had been for a time a country schoolmaster
'in his younger years,' and it seems possible that on first
leaving Stratford he found some such employment in a
neighbouring village. The suggestion that he joined, at
the end of 1585, a band of youths of the district in serving
in the Low Countries under the Earl of Leicester, whose

1 8 SHAKESPEARE^ S LIFE AND WORK

castle of Kenilworth was within easy reach of Stratford, is
based on an obvious confusion between him and others of
his name. The knowledge of a soldier's life which Shake
speare exhibited in his plays is no greater and no less than
that which he displayed of almost all other spheres of
human activity, and to assume that he wrote of all or of
any from practical experience, unless the evidence be con
clusive, is to underrate his intuitive power of realising life
under almost every aspect by force of his imagination.

ON THE LONDON STAGE

To London Shakespeare naturally drifted, doubtless trudging The jour-
thither on foot during 1586, by way of Oxford and High
Wycombe. Tradition points to that as Shakespeare's
favoured route, rather than to the road by Banbury and
Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon, near Oxford,
'he happened to take the humour of the constable in
"Midsummer Night's Dream" ' — by which he meant, we
may suppose, 'Much Ado about Nothing ' — but there were
watchmen of the Dogberry type all over England, and
probably at Stratford itself. The Crown Inn (formerly
3 Cornmarket Street) near Carfax, at Oxford, was long
pointed out as one of his resting-places.

In London Shakespeare was among strangers. The
common assumption that Richard Burbage, the great actor
with whom he was subsequently associated, was a native
of Stratford, is wholly erroneous. Richard was born in
Shoreditch, and his father came from Hertfordshire. John
Heming, another of Shakespeare's actor-friends who has also
been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reason
able doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Similarly
Thomas Greene, a popular comic actor at the Red Bull
Theatre early in the seventeenth century, is conjectured to
have belonged to Stratford on no grounds that deserve atten
tion; and Shakespeare was never associated with him. To
only one resident in London is Shakespeare likely to
have been known previously to his arrival in 1586. Richard
Field, a native of Stratford, and son of a friend of Shake
speare's father, had left Stratford in 1579 to serve an
apprenticeship with Thomas Vautroilier, the London printer.
Field was made free of the Stationers' Company in 1587,
and resided for more than a quarter of a century afterwards
at his printing-office in Blackfriars near Ludgate. He and

Richard
Field, his
towns
man.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Theatrical
employ
ment.

A play
house
servitor.

Shakespeare were soon associated as author and publisher;
but the theory that Field found work in Vautrollier's
printing-office for Shakespeare on his arrival in London is
fanciful. No more can be said for the attempt to prove
that he obtained employment as a lawyer's clerk. In view
of his general quickness of apprehension, Shakespeare's
accurate use of legal terms, which deserves all the attention
that has been paid it, may be attributable in part to his
observation of the many legal processes in which his father
was involved, and in part to early intercourse with members
of the Inns of Court.

Tradition and common-sense alike point to one of the
only two theatres (The Theatre or The Curtain) that existed
in London at the date of his arrival as an early scene of his
regular occupation. The compiler of the ' Lives of the Poets,
by Theophilus Gibber' (1753) was the first to relate the
story that his original connection with the playhouse was as
holder of the horses of visitors outside the doors. Accord
ing to the same writer, the story was related by Sir Will
iam D'Avenant to the actor Betterton; but Rowe, to whom
Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The two
regular theatres of the time were both reached on horseback
by men of fashion, and the owner of The Theatre, James
Burbage, kept a livery stable at Smithfield. There is no
inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson's ampli
fied version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organ
ising a service of boys for the purpose of tending visitors'
horses, sounds apocryphal.

There is every indication that Shakespeare was speedily
offered employment insid-. the playhouse. In 1587 the
two chief companies of actors, claiming respectively the
nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester, re
turned to London from a provincial tour, during which
they visited Stratford. Two subordinate companies, one
of which claimed the patronage of the Earl of Essex and
the other that of Lord Stafford, also performed in the town
during the same year. Shakespeare's friends may have
called the attention of the strolling players to the homeless
youth, rumours of whose search for employment about the
London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. From
such incidents seems to have sprung the opportunity which
offered Shakespeare fame and fortune. According to
Rowe's vague statement, ' he was received into the company

ON THE LONDON STAGE 21

then in being at first in a very mean rank.' William
Castle, the parish clerk of Stratford at the end of the
seventeenth century, was in the habit of telling visitors that
he entered the playhouse as a servitor. Malone recorded
in 1780 a stage tradition 'that his first office in the theatre
was that of prompter's attendant' or call-boy. His intel
lectual capacity and the amiability with which he turned
to account his versatile powers were probably soon recog
nised, and thenceforth his promotion was assured.

Shakespeare's earliest reputation was made as an actor, The acting
and, although his work as a dramatist soon eclipsed his c°™j~es
histrionic fame, he remained a prominent member of the
actor's profession till near the end of his life. By an Act
of Parliament of 1571 (14 Eliz. cap. 2), which was re-
enacted in 1596 (39 Eliz. cap. 4), players were under the
necessity of procuring a license to pursue their calling from
a peer of the realm or 'personage of higher degree';
otherwise they were adjudged to be of the status of rogues
and vagabonds. The Queen herself and many Elizabethan
peers were liberal in the exercise of their licensing powers,
and few actors failed to secure a statutory license, which
gave them a rank of respectability, and relieved them of
all risk of identification with vagrants or 'sturdy beggars.'
From an early period in Elizabeth's reign licensed actors
were organised into permanent companies. In 1587 and
following years, besides three companies of duly licensed
boy-actors that were formed from the choristers of St.
Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel Royal and from West
minster scholars, there were in London at least six com
panies of fully licensed adult actors; five of these were
called after the noblemen to whom their members respec
tively owed their licenses (viz. the Earls of Leicester,
Oxford, Sussex, and Worcester, and the Lord Admiral,
Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham), and one of them
whose actors derived their license from the Queen was
called the Queen's Company.

The patron's functions in relation to the companies
seem to have been mainly confined to the grant or renewal
of the actors' licenses. Constant alterations of name,
owing to the death or change from other causes of the
patrons, render it difficult to trace with certainty each
company's history. But there seems no doubt that the
most influential of the companies named — that under the

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

The Lord
Chamber
lain's
Company.

A member
of the
Lord

Chamber
lain's.

The

London

theatres.

nominal patronage of the Earl of Leicester — passed on his
death in September 1588 to the patronage of Ferdinando
Stanley, Lord Strange, who became Earl of Derby on
September 25, 1592. When the Earl of Derby died on
April 1 6, 1594, his place as patron and licenser was suc
cessively filled by Henry Carey, first lord Hunsdon, Lord
Chamberlain (d. July 23, 1596), and by his son and heir,
George Carey, second lord Hunsdon, who himself became
Lord Chamberlain in March 1597. After King James's
succession in May 1603 the company was promoted to be
the King's players, and, thus advanced in dignity, it fully
maintained the supremacy which, under its successive titles,
it had already long enjoyed.

It is fair to infer that this was the company that
Shakespeare originally joined and adhered to through life.
Documentary evidence proves that he was a member of it
in December 1594; in May 1603 he was one of its leaders.
Four of its chief members — Richard Burbage, the greatest
tragic actor of the day, John Heming, Henry Condell, and
Augustine Phillips — were among Shakespeare's lifelong
friends. Under this company's auspices, moreover, Shake
speare's plays first saw the light. Only two of the plays
claimed for him — 'Titus Andronicus ' and '3 Henry VI '
— seem to have been performed by other companies (the
Earl of Sussex's men in the one case, and the Earl of Pem
broke's in the other).

When Shakespeare became a member of the company
it was doubtless performing at The Theatre, the playhouse
in Shoreditch which James Burbage, the father of the
great actor, Richard Burbage, had constructed in 1576;
it abutted on the Finsbury Fields, and stood outside the
City's boundaries. The only other London playhouse
then in existence — the Curtain in Moorfields — was near
at hand; its name survives in Curtain Road, Shoreditch.
But at an early date in his acting career Shakespeare's
company sought and found new quarters. While known as
Lord Strange 's men, they opened on February 19, 1592, a
third London theatre called the Rose, which Philip Hens-
lowe, the speculative theatrical manager, had erected on the
Bankside, Southwark. At the date of the inauguration of
the Rose Theatre Shakespeare's company was temporarily
allied with another company, the Admiral's men, who
numbered the great actor Edward Alleyn among them.

ON THE LONDON STAGE 23

Alleyn for a few months undertook the direction of the
amalgamated companies, but they quickly parted, and no
further opportunity was offered Shakespeare of enjoying
professional relations with Alleyn. The Rose Theatre was
doubtless the earliest scene of Shakespeare's pronounced
successes alike as actor and dramatist. Subsequently for a
short time in 1594 he frequented the stage of another new
theatre at Newington Butts, and between 1595 and 1599
the older stages of the Curtain and of The Theatre in
Shoreditch. The Curtain remained open till the Civil
Wars, although its vogue after 1600 was eclipsed by that of
younger rivals. In 1599 Richard Burbage and his brother
Cuthbert demolished the old building of The Theatre and
built, mainly out of the materials of the dismantled fabric,
the famous theatre called the Globe on the Bankside. It
was octagonal in shape, and built of wood, and doubtless
Shakespeare described it (rather than the Curtain) as 'this
wooden O' in the opening chorus of 'Henry V (1. 13).
After 1599 the Globe was mainly occupied by Shake
speare's company, and in its profits he acquired an impor
tant share. From the date of its inauguration until the
poet's retirement, the Globe — which quickly won the first
place among London theatres — seems to have been the
sole playhouse with which Shakespeare was professionally
associated. The equally familiar Blackfriars Theatre,
which was created out of a dwelling-house by James Bur
bage, the actor's father, at the end of 1596, was for many
years afterwards leased out to the company of boy-actors
known as 'the Queen's children of the Chapel; ' it was not
occupied by Shakespeare's company until December 1609
or January 1610, when his acting days were nearing their
end. The site of the Blackfriars Theatre is now occupied
by the offices of the 'Times ' newspaper in Queen Victoria
Street, E.G.

In London Shakespeare resided near the theatres. Place of

According to a memorandum by Alleyn (which Malone Fesjdence

j\ i i j j • , c^ T> /-• j • m London,

quoted), he lodged in 1596 near the Bear Garden in

Southwark.' In 1598 one William Shakespeare, who was
assessed by the collectors of a subsidy in the sum of i^s. 4^.
upon goods valued at 5/., was a resident in St. Helen's
parish, Bishopsgate, but it is not certain that this tax-payer
was the dramatist.

The chief differences between the methods of theatrical

24 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

representation in Shakespeare's day and our own lay in the
fact that neiiher scenery nor women-actors were known
to the Elizabethan stage. All female roles were, until the
Restoration in 1660, assumed in the public theatres by
men or boys. Shakespeare alludes to the appearance of
men or boys in women's parts when he makes Rosalind,
in the epilogue to 'As you like it,' say laughingly to the
men of the audience, l If I were a woman, I would kiss as
many of you as had beards. ' Similarly, Cleopatra on her
downfall in 'Antony and Cleopatra, ' v. ii. 220 seq., laments :

the quick comedians

Extemporally will stage us ... and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.

Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks. In
'Midsummer Night's Dream ' (i. ii. 53), Flute is bidden by
Quince play Thisbe 'in a mask.' Similarly in Shakespeare's
day the public stages were bare of any scenic contrivance ex
cept a front curtain opening in the middle and a balcony or
upper platform resting on pillars at the back of the stage;
from this balcony portions of theMialogue were sometimes
spoken, but occasionally it seems to have been occupied by
spectators. Sir Philip Sidney humorously described the
spectator's difficulties in an Elizabethan playhouse, where,
owing to the absence of stage scenery, he had to imagine
the bare boards to present in rapid succession a garden, a
rocky coast, a cave, and a battlefield ('Apologie for Poetrie, '
p. 52). The absence of scenery, coupled with the substitu
tion of boys for women, implies that the skill needed, on the
part of actors, to rouse in the audience the requisite illusions
was far greater in Shakespeare's day than at later periods.
Actors' Although the scenic principles of the theatre of the six-

t>oursindal teenth and seventeenth centuries widely differed from those
of the theatre of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
professional customs of Elizabethan actors approximated in
many respects more closely to those of their modern succes
sors than is usually recognised. The practice of touring in
the provinces was followed with even greater regularity then
than now. Few companies remained in London during
the summer or early autumn, and every country town with
two thousand or more inhabitants could reckon on at least
one visit from travelling actors between May and October.
A rapid examination of the extant archives of some

ON THE LONDON STAGE 25

seventy municipalities selected at random shows that
Shakespeare's company between 1594 and 1614 frequently
performed in such towns as Barnstaple, Bath, Bristol, Shake-
Coventry, Dover, Faversham, Folkestone, Hythe, Leicester, In^ed.5
Maidstone, Marlborough, New Romney, Oxford, Rye in travels.
Sussex, Saffron Walden, and Shrewsbury. Shakespeare
may be credited with faithfully fulfilling all his professional
functions, and some of the references to travel in his
sonnets were doubtless reminiscences of early acting tours.
It has been repeatedly urged, moreover, that Shakespeare's in Scot
company visited Scotland, and that he went with it. In land-
November 1599 English actors arrived in Scotland under
the leadership of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin, and
were welcomed with enthusiasm by the king. Fletcher
was a colleague of Shakespeare in 1603, but is not known
to have been one earlier. Shakespeare's company never
included an actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the
visit in October 1601. There is nothing to indicate that
any of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's com
pany. In like manner, Shakespeare's accurate reference in
'Macbeth ' to the 'nimble ' but 'sweet ' climate of Inver
ness —

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses {Macbeth, I. vi. 1-6) —

and the vivid impression the dramatist conveys of the aspects
of wild Highland heaths, have been judged to be the certain
fruits of a personal experience; but the passages in ques
tion, into which a more definite significance has possibly
been read than Shakespeare intended, can be satisfactorily
accounted for by his inevitable intercourse with Scotsmen
in London and the theatres after James I's accession.

A few English actors in Shakespeare's day occasionally
combined to make professional tours through foreign lands,
where Court society invariably gave them a hospitable
reception. In Denmark, Germany, Austria, Holland, and
France, many dramatic performances were given before
royal audiences by English actors between 1580 and 1630.
That Shakespeare joined any of these expeditions is highly
improbable. Actors of small account at home mainly
took pa*t in them, and Shakespeare's name appears in no
extant list of those who paid professional visits abroad.
It is, in fact, unlikely that Shakespeare ever set foot on the

26 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

continent of Europe in either a private or professional
capacity. He repeatedly ridicules the craze for foreign
travel. To Italy, it is true, and especially to cities of
in Italy. Northern Italy, like Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and
Milan, he makes frequent and familiar reference, and he
supplied many a realistic portrayal of Italian life and senti
ment. But the fact that he represents Valentine in the
'Two Gentlemen of Verona' (i. i. 71) as travelling from
Verona to Milan by sea, and Prospero in the 'Tempest '
as embarking on a ship at the gates of Milan (i. ii. 129-44),
renders it almost impossible that he could have gathered
his knowledge of Northern Italy from personal observation.
He doubtless owed all to the verbal reports of travelled
friends or to books, the contents of which he had a rare
power of assimilating and vitalising.

Shake- The publisher Chettle wrote in 1592 that Shakespeare

r!s/jjre: was 'exelent in the qualitie [i.e. calling] he professes,' and
the old actor William Beeston asserted in the next century
that Shakespeare 'did act exceedingly well.' But the roles
in which he distinguished himself are imperfectly recorded.
Few surviving documents refer directly to performances by
him. At Christmas 1594 he joined the popular actors
William Kemp, the chief comedian of the day, and Richard
Burbage, the greatest tragic actor, in 'two several comedies
or interludes ' which were acted on St. Stephen's Day and
on Innocents' Day (December 26 and 28) at Greenwich
Palace before the Queen. The players received 'xiii/z'. v]s.
\'\\\d., andbywaye of her Majesties rewardevi//. xiiu. iiij</.,
in all xx/z. ' Neither plays nor parts are named. Shake
speare's name stands first on the list of those who took part
in the original performances of Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in
his Humour' (1598). In the original edition of Jonson's
'Se Janus' (1603) the actors' names are arranged in two
columns, and Shakespeare's name heads the second column,
standing parallel with Burbage' s, which heads the first.
But here again the character allotted to each actor is not
stated. Rowe identified only one of Shakespeare's parts,
'the Ghost in his own "Hamlet,"' and Rowe asserted
his assumption of that character to be 'the top of his
performance.' John Davies of Hereford noted that he
'played some kingly parts in sport.' One of Shakespeare's
younger brothers, presumably Gilbert, often came, wrote
Oldys, to London in his younger days to see his brother act

ON THE LONDON STAGE

in his own plays; and in his old age, when his memory
was failing, he recalled his brother's performance of Adam
in 'As you like it." In the 1623 folio edition of Shake
speare's 'Works ' his name heads the prefatory list 'of the
principall actors in all these playes. '

That Shakespeare chafed under some of the conditions Alleged
of the actor's calling is commonly inferred from the scornoi
'Sonnets.' There he reproaches himself with becoming 'a calling,
motley to the view ' (ex. 2), and chides fortune for having
provided for his livelihood nothing better than 'public
means that public manners breed,' whence his name re
ceived a brand (cxi. 4-5). If such self-pity is to be literally
interpreted, it only reflected an evanescent mood. His
interest in all that touched the efficiency of his profession
was permanently active. He was a keen critic of actors'
elocution, and in 'Hamlet ' shrewdly denounced their
common failings, but clearly and hopefully pointed out the
road to improvement. His highest ambitions lay, it is true,
elsewhere than in acting, and at an early period of his
theatrical career he undertook, with triumphant success, the
labours of a playwright. But he pursued the profession
of an actor loyally and uninterruptedly until he resigned
all connection with the theatre within a few years of his
death.

SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND WORK

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS

Dramatic THE whole of Shakespeare's dramatic work was probably
work. begun and ended within two decades (1591-1611), between

his twenty-seventh and forty-seventh year. If the works
traditionally assigned to him include some contributions
from other pens, he was perhaps responsible, on the other
hand, for portions of a few plays that are traditionally
claimed for others. When the account is balanced,
Shakespeare must be credited with the production, during
these twenty years, of a yearly average of two plays, nearly
all of which belonged to the supreme rank of literature.
Three volumes of poems must be added to the total. Ben
Jonson was often told by the players that 'whatsoever he
penned he never blotted out [i.e. erased] a line.' The
editors of the First Folio attested that 'what he thought
he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received
from him a blot in his papers. ' Signs of hasty workmanship
are not lacking, but they are few when it is considered how
rapidly his numerous compositions came from his pen, and
they are in the aggregate unimportant.

By borrowing his plots he to some extent economised
his energy, but he transformed most of them, and it was not
probably with the object of conserving his strength that he
systematically levied loans on popular current literature like
Holinshed's 'Chronicles, ' North's translation of 'Plutarch,'
widely read romances, and successful plays. In this regard
he betrayed something of the practical temperament which
is traceable in the conduct of the affairs of his later life.
It was doubtless with the calculated aim of ministering to
the public taste that he unceasingly adapted, as his genius
dictated, themes which had already, in the hands of inferior
writers or dramatists, proved capable of arresting public
attention.

His bor
rowed
plots.

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 29

The professional playwrights sold their plays outright to The
one or other of trie acting companies, and they retained no revision
legal interest in them after the manuscript had passed into
the hands of the theatric al manager. It was not unusual
for the manager to invite extensive revision of a play at the
hands of others than its author before it was produced on
the stage, and again whenever it was revived. Shakespeare
gained his earliest experience as a dramatist by revising or
rewriting behind the scenes plays that had become the
property of his manager. It is possible that some of his
labours in this direction remain unidentified. In a few
cases his alterations were slight, but as a rule his fund of
originality was too abundant to restrict him, when working
as an adapter, to mere recension, and the results of most
of his labours in that capacity are entitled to rank among
original compositions.

^The determination of the exact order in which Chro-
Shakespeare's plays were written depends largely on con
jecture. External evidence is accessible in only a few
cases, and, although always worthy of the utmost con
sideration, is not invariably conclusive. The date of pub
lication rarely indicates the date of composition. Only
sixteen of the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to
Shakespeare were published in his lifetime, and it is
questionable whether any were published under his super
vision. But subject-matter and metre both afford rough
clues to the period in his career to which each play may be
referred. In his early plays the spirit of comedy or tragedy
appears in its simplicity; as his powers gradually matured
"Ke~depicted Tife in its most complex involutions, and
portrayed with masterly insight the subtle gradations of
human sentiment and the mysterious workings of human
passion. Comedy and tragedy are gradually blended; and
his work finally developed a pathos such as could only
come of ripe experience. Similarly the metre undergoes
emancipation from the hampering restraints of fixed rule
and becomes" flexible enough to respond to every phase of
human feeling. In the blank verse of the early plays a Metrical
pause is strictly observed at the close of each line, and tests-
rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually the poet over-l
rides such artificial restrictions; rhyme largely disappears;
recourse is more frequently made to prose; the pause is
varied indefinitely; extra syllables are, contrary to strict

30 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

metrical law, introduced at the end of lines, and at times in
the middle; the last word of the line is often a weak and
unemphatic conjunction or preposition. To the latest
plays fantastic and punning conceits which abound in early
work are rarely accorded admission. But, while Shake
speare's achievement from the beginning to the end of his
career offers clearer evidence than that of any other writer
of genius of the steady and orderly growth of his poetic
faculty, some allowance must be made for ebb and flow in
the current of his artistic progress. Early work occasionally
anticipates features that become habitual to late work, and
late work at times embodies traits that are mainly identified
with early work. No exclusive reliance in determining the
precise chronology can be placed on the merely mechanical
tests afforded by tables of metrical statistics. The chrono
logical order can only be deduced with any confidence
from a consideration of all the internal characteristics^
well as the known external history of each play. The pre
misses are often vague and conflicting, and no chronology
hitherto suggested receives at all points universal assent.

There is no external evidence to prove that any piece in
which Shakespeare had a hand was produced before the
spring of 1592. No play by him was published before 1597,
and none bore his name on the title-page till 1598. But
his first essays have been with confidence allotted to 1591.
•Love's To 'Love's Labour's Lost' may reasonably be assigned
Lost?"Ur priority in point of time of all Shakespeare's dramatic pro
ductions. Internal evidence alone indicates the date of
composition, and proves that it was an early effort; but the
subject-matter suggests that its author had already enjoyed
extended opportunities of surveying London life and man
ners, such as were hardly open to him in the very first years
of his settlement in the metropolis. 'Love's Labour's
Lost ' embodies keen observation of contemporary life in
many ranks of society, both in town and country, while the
. speeches of the hero Biron clothe much sound philosophy
in masterly rhetoric. Its slender plot stands almost alone
among Shakespeare's plots, in that it is not known to have
been borrowed, and stands quite alone in openly travestying
known traits and incidents of current social and political
life. The names of the chief characters are drawn from the
leaders in the civil war in France, which was in progress
between 1589 and 1594, and was anxiously watched by the

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 31

English public. The hero is the King of Navarre, in whose
dominions the scene is laid. The two chief lords in
attendance on him in the play, Biron and Longaville, bear
the actual names of the two most strenuous supporters of
the real King of Navarre. The name of the Lord Dumain
in 'Love's Labour's Lost' is a common anglicised version
of that Due de Maine or Mayenne whose name was so
frequently mentioned in popular accounts of French affairs
in connection with Navarre's movements that Shakespeare
was led into the error of numbering him, although an
enemy of Navarre, among his supporters. Mothe, or La
Mothe, the name of the pretty, ingenious page, was that of
a French ambassador who was long popular in London.
Again, Armado, 'the fantastical Spaniard' who haunts
Navarre's Court in the play, and is dubbed by another
courtier 'a phantasm, a Monarcho,' is a caricature of a half-
crazed Spaniard known as ' fantastical Monarcho ' who for
many years hung about Elizabeth's Court, and was under
the delusion that he owned the ships arriving in the port of
London. The name Armado was doubtless suggested by
the Spanish 'Armada ' of 1588. The scene ('Love's Labour's
Lost,' v. ii. 158 sqq.) in which the princess's lovers press
their suit in the disguise of Russians follows a description of
the reception in 1584, by ladies at Elizabeth's Court, of Rus
sian ambassadors who came to London to seek a wife among
the ladies of the English nobility for the Tsar. Elsewhere
the piece satirises with good humour contemporary projects
of academies for disciplining young men] fashions of speech
and dress current in fashionable circles; the inefficiency of
rural constables and the pedantry of village schoolmasters
and curates. The play was revised in 1597, probably for a
performance at Court. It was first published next year by
Cuthbert Burbie, a liveryman of the Stationers' Company
with a shop in Cornhill adjoining the Royal Exchange, and
on the title-page, which described the piece as 'newly cor
rected and augmented,' Shakespeare's name first appeared
in print as that of author of a play.

Less gaiety characterised another comedy of the same -TWO
date, 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which dramatises a Gentle-
romantic story of love and friendship. There is every likeli- Verona,
hood that it was an adaptation — amounting to a re-forma
tion — of a lost 'History of Felix and Philomena, ' which had
been acted at Court in 1584. The story is the same as

32 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

that of 'The Shepardess Felismena ' in the Spanish pastoral
romance of 'Diana ' by George de Montemayor, which long
enjoyed popularity in England. No complete English trans
lation of 'Diana ' was published before that of Bartholomew
Yonge in 1598, but a manuscript version by Thomas Wilson,
which was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton in 1596,
was possibly circulated far earlier. Some verses from
'Diana ' were translated by Sir Philip Sidney and were
printed with his poems as early as 1591. Barnabe Rich's
story of 'Apollonius and Silla ' (from Cinthio's 'Hecatom-
mithi'), which Shakespeare employed again in 'Twelfth
Night,' also gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating
conceits abound in the 'Two Gentlemen,' but passages of
high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the
clowns, Launce and Speed — the precursors of a long line of
whimsical serving-men — overflow with farcical drollery.
The 'Two Gentlemen ' was not published in Shakespeare's
lifetime; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having,
in all probability, undergone some revision.

•Comedy Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the 'Comedy of

of Errors.' Errors' (commonly known at the time as 'Errors'), at
boisterous farce. It also was first published in 1623. Again,
as in 'Love's Labour's Lost," allusion was made to the civil
war in France. France was described as 'making war
against her heir' (m. ii. 125). Shakespeare's farcical
comedy, which is by far the shortest of all his dramas, may
have been founded on a play, no longer extant, called 'The
Historic of Error,' which was acted in 1576 at Hampton
Court. In subject-matter it resembles the 'Menaschmi ' of
Plautus, and treats of mistakes of identity arising from the
likeness of twin-born children. The scene (act HI. sc. i.) in
which Antipholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house,
while his brother and wife are at dinner within, recalls one
in the 'Amphitruo ' of Plautus. Shakespeare doubtless had
direct recourse to Plautus as well as to the old play, and he
may have read Plautus in English. The earliest translation
of the 'Menaechmi ' was not licensed for publication before
June ib, 1594, and was not published until the following
year. No translation of any other play of Plautus appeared
before. But it was stated in the preface to this first pub
lished translation of the 'Mensechmi ' that the translator,
W. W., doubtless William Warner, a veteran of the Eliza
bethan world of letters, had some time previously 'Eng-

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 33

lished* that and 'divers' others of Plautus's comedies, and
had circulated them in manuscript 'for the use of and
delight of his private friends, who, in Plautus's own words,
are not able to understand them.'

Such plays as these, although each gave promise of a 'Romeo
dramatic capacity out of the common way, cannot be with ^ ,
certainty pronounced to be beyond the ability of other men.
It was in 'Romeo and Juliet,' Shakespeare's first tragedy, .
that he proved himself the possessor of a poetic and dramatic \
instinct of unprecedented quality. In 'Romeo and Juliet '
he turned to account a tragic romance in great vogue in
Italy, and popular throughout Europe. The story has been
traced back to the Greek romance of 'Anthia and Abro-
comas ' by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the second
century, but it seems to have been first told in modern
Europe about 1470 by the Italian novelist Masuccio in his
'Novellino ' ^Nu. xxxiii.). It was adapted from Masuccio
by Bandello in his 'Novelle' (1554, pt. ii., No. ix.) and
Bandello's version became classical. It was through
Bandello that the tale reached France, Spain, and England.
His version was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau
de Launay, an occasional collaborator in the 'Histoires
Tragiques ' of Francois de Belief orest (Paris, 1559), and
it was in process of dramatisation by both French and
Spanish writers about the same time that Shakespeare
was writing 'Romeo and Juliet.' Arthur Broke rendered
into English verse the Italian version of Bandello in
1562, and William Painter published it in English prose
in his 'Palace of Pleasure' in 1567. Shakespeare made
acquaintance with the tale in Broke's verse. He intro
duced little change in the plot, but he impregnated it
with poetic fervour, and relieved the tragic intensity by
developing the humour of Mercutio, and by investing with
an entirely new and comic significance the character of the
Nurse. The ecstasy of youthful passion is portrayed by
Shakespeare in language of the highest lyric beauty, and
although a predilection for quibbles and conceits occasion
ally passes beyond the author's control, his 'Romeo and
Juliet,' as a tragic poem on the theme of love, has no
rival in any literature. If the Nurse's remark, "Tis since
the earthquake now eleven years ' (i. iii. 23), be taken lit
erally, the composition of the play must be referred to 1591,
for no earthquake in the sixteenth century was experienced

34 SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND WORK

in England after 1580. There are a few parallelisms with
Daniel's 'Complaint of Rosamond,' published in 1592, and
it is probable that Shakespeare completed the piece in that
year. The piece probably underwent revision after its first
production. The tragedy was issued in quarto in 1597
anonymously and surreptitiously — 'as it hath been often
(with great applause) plaid publiquely by the right honour
able the L[ord] of Hunsdon his servants.' The printer and
publisher of the work was John Danter, a very notorious
trader in books, with a shop in Hosier Lane, near Holborn
Conduit; as 'Danter the printer, ' a trafficker in the licentious
products of academic youth, he figured without disguise of
name in the dramatis persona of the academic play of 'The
Returne from Parnassus' (1600?). A second quarto of
'Romeo and Juliet' — 'newly corrected, augmented, and
amended as it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted by
the right honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants '
— was published, from an authentic version, in 1599, by a
stationer of higher reputation, Cuthbert Burbie of Cornhill.
Of the original representation on the stage of three other
pieces of the period we have more explicit information.
These reveal Shakespeare undisguisedly as an adapter of
plays by other hands. Though they lack the interest
attaching to his unaided work, they throw invaluable light
on some of his early methods of composition and his early
relations with other dramatists.

•Henry On March 3, 1592, a new piece, called 'Henry VI,' was

VL> acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange' s men. It

was no doubt the play which was subsequently known as
Shakespeare's 'The First Part of Henry VI.' On its first
performance it won a popular triumph. 'How would it
have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French),' wrote
Nash in his 'Pierce Pennilesse ' (1592, licensed August 8),
in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot' s death (iv. vi.
and vii.), 'to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred
yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the
Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares
of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who,
in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they
behold him fresh bleeding ! ' There is no categorical
record of the production of a second piece in continua
tion of the theme, but such a play quickly followed; for a
third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 35

VFs reign, attracted much attention on the stage early in
the following autumn.

The applause attending the completion of this historical
trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical profession.
The older dramatists awoke to the fact that their popularity
was endangered by the young stranger who had set up his
tent in their midst, and one veteran uttered without delay a
rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on Septem
ber 3, 1592, wrote on his deathbed an ill-natured farewell to
life, entitled 'A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million
of Repentance.' Addressing three brother dramatists — Greene's
Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge — he bade them beware attack-
of puppets 'that speak from our mouths,1 and of 'antics
garnished in our colours.' 'There is,' he continued, 'an
upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his
Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well
able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and
being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his owne con
ceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie. . . . Never more
acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, for it
is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the
pleasures of such rude groomes.' The 'only Shake-scene '
is a punning denunciation of Shakespeare. The italicised
quotation travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy
of Shakespeare's 'Henry VI ' :

Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.

The tirade was probably inspired by an established author's
resentment at the energy of a young actor — the theatre's
factotum — in revising the dramatic work of his seniors with
such masterly effect as to imperil their hold on the esteem
of manager and playgoer. But Shakespeare's amiability chettie's
of character and versatile ability had already won him apology,
admirers, and his successes excited the sympathetic regard
of colleagues more kindly than Greene. In December 1592
Greene's publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for
Greene's attack on the young actor to his 'Kind Hartes
Dreame, ' a tract reflecting on phases of contemporary social
life. 'I am as sory, ' Chettle wrote, 'as if the originall fault
had beene my fault, because myselfe have scene his [i.e.
Shakespeare's] demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent
in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have

36 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty,
and his facetious grace in writing that aprooves his art.'

The first of the three plays dealing with the reign of
Henry VI was originally published in the collected edition
Divided of Shakespeare's works; the second and third plays were
oT'hHenrP Previ°usly printed in a form very different from that which
VI.' they subsequently assumed when they followed the first part

in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond doubt that in
these three plays Shakespeare did no more than add, re
vise, and correct other men's work. In 'The First Part of
Henry VI ' the scene in the Temple Gardens, where white
and red roses are plucked as emblems by the rival political
parties (n. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps
the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the impress of
Shakespeare's style. The play dealing with the second part
of Henry VI' s reign was first published in 1594 anonymously
from a rough stage copy by Thomas Millington, a stationer
of Cornhill, to whom a license for the publication was granted
on March 12, 1593-4. The volume, which was printed by
Thomas Creede of Thames Street, bore the title 'The first
part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of
Yorke and Lancaster.' The play dealing with the third part
of Henry VI's reign was first printed with greater care next
year by Peter Short of Bread Street Hill, and was published,
as in the case of its predecessor, by Millington. This quarto
bore the title 'The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of
Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was
sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.'
In both these plays, which Millington reissued in 1600,
Shakespeare's revising hand can be traced. The humours
of Jack Cade in 'The Contention ' can owe their savour to
him alone. It is clear that after he had hastily revised
with another's aid the original drafts of the three pieces,
they were put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts
by his own company (Lord Strange 's men), and the third,
under some exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke's
men. But Shakespeare was not content to leave them thus.
Within a brief interval, possibly for a revival, he undertook
a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with another
writer. 'The First Part of The Contention' was thoroughly
overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in
the folio 'The Second Part of Henry VI; ' there more
than half the lines are new. 'The True Tragedie,' which

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS

became in the folio 'The Third Part of Henry VI,' was less
drastically handled; two-thirds of it was left practically
untouched; only a third was thoroughly remodelled.

Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two succes
sive revisions of the trilogy of 'Henry VI' is matter for
conjecture. The theory that Greene and Peele produced
the original draft of the three parts of 'Henry VI ' which
Shakespeare recast may help to account for Greene's indig
nant denunciation of Shakespeare as 'an upstart crow, beau
tified with the feathers ' of himself and his fellow dramatists.
Much can be said, too, in behalf of the suggestion that
Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatestof his predecessors,
in the first revision of which 'The Contention ' and 'The
True Tragedie ' were the outcome. Most of the new pas
sages in the second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare
alone, but a few suggest a partnership resembling that of
the first revision. It is probable that Marlowe began the
final revision, but his task was interrupted by his death, and
the lion's share of the work fell to his younger coadjutor.

Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that recep
tivity of mind which impels them to assimilate much of the
intellectual effort of their contemporaries and to transmute
it in the process from unvalued ore into pure gold. Had
Shakespeare not been professionally employed in recasting
old plays by contemporaries, he would doubtless have shown
in his writings traces of a study of their work. The verses
of Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Sir
Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge were certainly among
the rills which fed the mighty river of his poetic and lyric
invention. Kyd and Greene, among rival writers of tragedy,
left more or less definite impression on all Shakespeare's
early efforts in tragedy. It was, however, only to two of
his fellow dramatists that his indebtedness as a writer
of either comedy or tragedy was material or emphatically
defined. Superior as Shakespeare's powers were to those
of Marlowe, his coadjutor in 'Henry VI,' his early tragedies
often reveal him in the character of a faithful disciple of that
vehement delineator of tragic passion. Shakespeare's early
comedies disclose a like relationship between him and Lyly.

Lyly is best known as the author of the affected ro
mance of 'Euphues, ' whence in later life Shakespeare, in
'Hamlet,' borrowed Polonius's advice to Laertes. Be
tween 1580 and 1592 Lyly produced eight trivial and

Shake
speare's
coadjutors.

Shake
speare's
assimila
tive
power.

Lyly's
influence
in comedy.

SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND WORK

Marlowe's
influence
in tragedy.

' Richard
III.1

insubstantial comedies, of which seven were written in
prose, and one was in rhyme. Much of the dialogue
in Shakespeare's comedies, from 'Love's Labour's Lost'
to 'Much Ado about Nothing,' consists in thrusting
and parrying fantastic conceits, puns, or antitheses.
This is the style of intercourse in which most of Lyly's
characters exclusively indulge. Three-fourths of Lyly's
comedies lightly revolve about topics of classical or fairy
mythology — in the very manner which Shakespeare first
brought to a triumphant issue in his 'Midsummer Night's
Dream.' Shakespeare's treatment of eccentric characters
like Don Armado and his boy Moth in 'Love's Labour's
Lost' reads like a reminiscence of Lyly's portrayal of Sir
Thopas, a fat vainglorious knight, and his boy Epiton in the
comedy of 'Endymion, ' while Lyly's watchmen in the same
play clearly adumbrate Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges.
The device of masculine disguise for love-sick maidens was
characteristic of Lyly's method before Shakespeare ventured
on it for the first of many times in 'Two Gentlemen of
Verona,' and the dispersal through Lyly's comedies of songs
possessing every lyrical charm is not the least interesting
of the many striking features which Shakespeare's achieve
ments in comedy seem to borrow from Lyly's comparatively
insignificant experiments.

Marlowe, who alone of Shakespeare's contemporaries
can be credited with exerting on his efforts in tragedy a
really substantial influence, was in 1592 and 1593 at the
zenith of his fame. Two of Shakespeare's earliest historical
tragedies, 'Richard III ' and 'Richard II,' with the story of
Shylock in his somewhat later comedy of the ' Merchant of
Venice,' plainly disclose a conscious resolve to follow in
Marlowe's footsteps.

In 'Richard III ' Shakespeare, working singlehanded,
takes up the history of England near the point at which
Marlowe and he, apparently working in partnership, left it
in the third part of 'Henry VI.' The subject was already
familiar to dramatists. A Latin piece about Richard III,
by Dr. Thomas Legge, had been in favour with academic
audiences since 1579, and in 1594 the 'True Tragedie of
Richard III ' from some other pen was published anony
mously; but Shakespeare's piece bears little resemblance to
either. Shakespeare sought his materials in the encyclo
paedic 'Chronicle ' of Holinshed, the rich quarry to which

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS

the whole series of his dramatic pictures of English history
was to stand largely indebted. Throughout Shakespeare's
'Richard III ' the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeniable.
The tragedy is, says Mr. Swinburne, 'as fiery in passion,
as single in purpose, as rhetorical often, though never so
inflated in expression, as Marlowe's "Tamburlaine " itself.'
The turbulent piece was naturally popular. Burbage-'s
impersonation of the hero was one of his most effective
performances, and his vigorous enunciation of 'A horse, a
horse ! my kingdom for a horse ! ' gave the line proverbial
currency.

'Richard II ' seems to have followed 'Richard III ' with
out delay. Prose is avoided throughout 'Richard II,' a
certain sign of early work. The piece was probably com
posed very early in 1593. Marlowe's tempestuous vein is
far less apparent in 'Richard II' than in 'Richard III.'
But although 'Richard II' be in style and treatment less
deeply indebted to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was
clearly suggested by Marlowe's 'Edward II.' Throughout
its exposition of the leading theme — the development and
pathetic collapse of the weak king's character — Shake
speare's historical tragedy closely imitates Marlowe's.
Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his embel
lishments are numerous, and include the magnificently elo
quent eulogy of England which is set in the mouth of John
of Gaunt. 'Richard III ' and 'Richard II ' were each pub
lished anonymously in one and the same year (1597) by
Andrew Wise at the sign of the Angel in St. Paul's Church
yard; they were printed as they had 'been publikely acted
by the right Honourable the Lorde Chamberlaine his ser
vants; ' but the deposition scene in 'Richard II,' which 'Richard
dealt with a topic distasteful to the Queen, was omitted n-'
from the impressions of 1597 and 1598, and it was first
supplied in the quarto of 1608.

In 'As You Like It' (in. v. 80) Shakespeare parentheti- Acknow-
cally commemorated his acquaintance with, and his general |od^^.nts
indebtedness to, Marlowe by apostrophising him in the lines : lowe.

Dead Shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might :
' Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? '

The second line is a quotation from Marlowe's poem 'Hero
and Leander ' (line 76). In the 'Merry Wives of Windsor '
(ni. i. 17-21) Shakespeare places in the mouth of Sir Hugh

40 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Evans snatches of verse from Marlowe's charming lyric,
'Come live with me and be my love.'

Between February 1593 and the end of the year the
London theatres were closed, owing to the prevalence of
the plague, and Shakespeare doubtless travelled with his
company in the country. But his pen was busily employed,
and before the close of 1594 he gave marvellous proofs of
his rapid powers of production.

'Titus Andronicus' was in his own lifetime claimed for
Shakespeare, but Edward Ravenscroft, who prepared a new
version in 1678, wrote of it: 'I have been told by some
anciently conversant with the stage that it was not origi
nally his, but brought by a private author to be acted,
and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the
principal parts or characters.' Ravenscroft's assertion
deserves acceptance. The tragedy, a sanguinary picture
of the decadence of Imperial Rome, contains powerful lines
and situations, but is far too repulsive in plot and treatment,
and too ostentatious in classical allusions, to take rank with
Shakespeare's acknowledged work. Ben Jonson credits
'Titus Andronicus ' with a popularity equalling Kyd's
'Spanish Tragedy,' and internal evidence shows that Kyd
was capable of writing much of 'Titus.' It was suggested
by a piece called 'Titus and Vespasian,' which Lord
Strange's men played on April n, 1592; this is only
extant in a German version acted by English players in
Germany, and published in 1620. 'Titus Andronicus ' was
obviously taken in hand soon after the production of
'Titus and Vespasian ' in order to exploit popular interest
in the topic. It was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on
January 23, 1593-4, when it was described as a new piece;
but that it was also acted subsequently by Shakespeare's
company is shown by the title-page of the first extant
edition of 1600, which describes it as having been per
formed by the Earl of Derby's and the Lord Chamberlain's
servants (successive titles of Shakespeare's company), as
well as by those of the Earls of Pembroke and Sussex. It
was entered on the 'Stationers' Register' on February 6,
1594, to John Banter, the printer, of Hosier Lane, who
produced the first (imperfect) quarto of 'Romeo and
Juliet.' Langbaine claims to have seen an edition of this
date, but none earlier than that of 1600 is now known.
The piece was then published, without the playwright's

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 41

supervision, by Edward White, a liveryman of the Stationers'
Company with a shop abutting on St. Paul's Churchyard.
The printer of the volume, James Roberts, who was in a
large way of business in the Barbican, had ready means of
access to theatrical manuscripts, whether or no the play
wright assented to their publication, for he was printer
and publisher of 'the players' bills' or programmes of the
theatre. This orifice Roberts had purchased in 1594 of its
previous holder, John Charlewood. He held it till 1613,
when he sold it to William Jaggard.

For part of the plot of 'The Merchant of Venice,' in -Merchant
which two romantic love stories are skilfully blended with of Venice.'
a theme of tragic import, Shakespeare had recourse to 'II
Pecorone,' a fourteenth-century collection of Italian novels
by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, which was not published till
1558. There a Jewish creditor demands a pound of flesh
of a defaulting Christian debtor, and the latter is rescued
through the advocacy of 'the lady of Belmont, ' who is wife
of the debtor's friend. The management of the plot in the
Italian novel is closely followed by Shakespeare. A similar
story is slenderly outlined in the popular mediaeval collec
tion of anecdotes called 'Gesta Romanorum, ' while the tale
of the caskets, which Shakespeare combined with it in the
'Merchant,' is told independently in another portion of the
'Gesta.' But Shakespeare's 'Merchant' owes much to
other sources, including more than one old play. Stephen
Gosson describes in his ' Schoole of Abuse ' ( 1 5 7 9) a lost play
called 'the Jew . . . showne at the Bull [inn] . . . represent
ing the greedinesse of worldly chusers and bloody mindes
of usurers.' This description suggests that the two stories
of the pound of flesh and the caskets had been combined
before for purposes of dramatic representation. The scenes
in Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates with
Shylock are roughly anticipated, too, by dialogues between
a Jewish creditor Gerontus and a Christian debtor in the
extant play of 'The Three Ladies of London,' by R[obert]
W[ilson], 1584. There the Jew opens the attack on his
Christian debtor with the lines :

Signor Mercatore, why do you not pay me? Think you I will
be mocked in this sort?

This three times you have flouted me — it seems you make thereat
a sport.

Truly pay me my money, and that even now presently,

Or by mighty Mahomet, I swear I will forthwith arrest thee.

42 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Subsequently, when the judge is passing judgment in favour
of the debtor, the Jew interrupts :

Stay, there, most puissant judge. Signor Mercatore, consider

what you do.
Pay me the principal, as for the interest I forgive it you.

Shyiock Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare in

Roderie 'The Merchant of Venice ' betrays the last definable traces
Lopez!S° of his discipleship to Marlowe. Although the delicate
comedy which lightens the serious interest of Shakespeare's
play sets it in a wholly different category from that of
Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta,' the humanised portrait of the
Jew Shyiock embodies distinct reminiscences of Marlowe's
caricature of the Jew Barabbas. But Shakespeare soon
outpaced his master, and the inspiration that he drew from
Marlowe in the ' Merchant ' touches only the general
conception of the central figure. Doubtless the popular
interest aroused by the trial in February 1594 and the
execution in June of the Queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo
Lopez, incited Shakespeare to a new and subtler study of
Jewish character. Lopez was the Earl of Leicester's phy
sician before 1586, and the Queen's chief physician from
that date. An accomplished linguist, with friends in all
parts of Europe, he acted in 1590, at the request of the
Earl of Essex, as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of
Philip IPs persecution, popularly called Don Antonio, whom
. Essex and his associates had brought to England in order

to stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain.
Spanish agents in London offered Lopez a bribe to poison
Antonio and the Queen. The evidence that he assented
to the murderous proposal is incomplete, but he was con
victed of treason, and was hanged at Tyburn on June 7,
1594. His trial and execution evoked a marked display of
anti-Semitism on the part of the London populace at a time
when very few Jews were domiciled in England. That a
Christian named Antonio should be the cause of the ruin
alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England a»d of
the greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama is a curious con
firmation of the theory that Lopez was the begetter of
Shyiock. It is to be borne in mind that Shyiock (not the
merchant Antonio) is the hero of Shakespeare's play, and
the main interest culminates in the Jew's trial and discomfi
ture. The bold transition from that solemn scene which
trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently poetic and

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 43

humorous incidents of the concluding act attests a mastery
of stagecraft; but the interest, although it is sustained to
the end, is, after Shylock's final exit, pitched in a lower key.
The 'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the manager,
produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was probably
the earliest version of 'The Merchant of Venice,' and it
was revised later. On July 17, 1598, the notorious James
Roberts, who printed 'Titus Andronicus ' and others of
Shakespeare's plays, secured a license from the Stationers'
Company for the publication of 'The Merchaunt of Venyce,
or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce,' on condition that
the Lord Chamberlain gave his assent to the publication.
It was not published till 1600, when two editions appeared,
each printed from a different stage copy. Both editions
came fromRoberts's press, and Roberts published as well as
printed the first quarto, which is more carefully printed than
the second. Thomas Heyes (or Hayes) was the publisher
of the second edition. Heyes 's quarto was the text selected
by the editors of the First Folio.

To 1594 must also be assigned 'King John,' which, 'King
like the 'Comedy of Errors' and 'Richard II,' alto- John/
gether eschews prose. The piece, which was not printed
till 1623, was directly adapted from a worthless play called
'The Troublesome Raigne of King John ' (1591), which was
fraudulently reissued in 1611 as 'written by W. Sh.,' and in
1622 as by W. Shakespeare.' There is very small ground
for associating Marlowe's name with the old play. Into the
adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy, and the theme
grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. The three chief
characters — the mean and cruel king, the grief-stricken and
desperately wronged Constance, and the soldierly humourist
Faulconbridge — are in all essentials of his own invention,
and are portrayed with the same sureness of touch that
marked in Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The
scene, in which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert
that the king has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as
affecting as any passage in tragic literature.

At the close of 1594 a performance of Shakespeare's ' Comedy (
early farce, 'The Comedy of Errors,' gave him a passing ^Gray's
notoriety that he could well have spared. The piece was inn Hall,
played on the evening of Innocents' Day (December 28),
1594, in the hall of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience
of benchers, students, and their friends. There was some

44 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

disturbance during the evening on the part of guests from
the Inner Temple, who, dissatisfied with the accommodation
afforded them, retired in dudgeon. 'So that night,' the
contemporary chronicler states, 'was begun and continued
to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon
it was ever afterwards called the "Night of Errors."'
Shakespeare was acting on the same day before the Queen
at Greenwich, and it is doubtful if he were present. On the
morrow a commission of oyer and terminer inquired into
the causes of the tumult, which was casuistically attributed
to a sorcerer having 'foisted a company of base and common
fellows to make up our disorders with a play of errors and
confusions.'

Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public at
tention during the period under review (1591-4) — 'Arden
of Feversham ' (licensed for publication April 3, 1592,
and published in 1592) and 'Edward III' (licensed for
publication December i, 1595, and published in 1596).
Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the
ground that their dramatic energy is of a quality not to be
discerned in the work of any contemporary whose writings
are extant. There is no external evidence in favour of
Early Shakespeare's authorship in either case. 'Arden of Fever-

PIa>? sham ' dramatises with intensity and insight a sordid

assigned murder of a husband by a wife which took place at Faver-
to Shake- sham in 1551, and was fully reported by Holinshed. The
speare. subject is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is
known to have treated, and although the play may be, as
Mr. Swinburne insists, 'a young man's work,' it bears no
relation either in topic or style to the work on which
young Shakespeare was engaged at a period so early as 1591
or 1592. 'Edward III' is a play in Marlowe's vein, and
has been assigned to Shakespeare on even more shadowy
grounds. Capell reprinted it in his 'Prolusions' in 1760,
and described it as 'thought to be writ by Shakespeare.'
Many speeches scattered through the drama, and one whole
scene — that in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses
the advances of Edward III — show the hand of a master
(n. ii.). But there is even in the style of these contributions
much to dissociate them from Shakespeare's acknowledged
productions, and to justify their ascription to some less
gifted disciple of Marlowe. A line in act n. sc. i. ('Lilies
that fester smell far worse than weeds ') reappears in

EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 45

Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' (xciv. 1. 14). It was contrary to
his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line in the
play was doubtless borrowed from a manuscript copy of
the 'Sonnets.'

Two other popular plays of the period, 'Mucedorus' 'Muce-
and 'Faire Em,' have also been assigned to Shakespeare dorus-'
on slighter provocation. In Charles II's library they were
bound together in a volume labelled 'Shakespeare, Vol. I.,'
and bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify the
misnomer.

'Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic comedy,
dates from the early years of Elizabeth's reign; it was first
published, doubtless after undergoing revision, in 1595,
and was reissued, 'amplified with new additions,' in 1610.
Mr. Payne Collier, who included it in his privately printed
edition of Shakespeare in 1878, was confident that a scene
interpolated in the 1610 version (in which the King of
Valentia laments the supposed loss of his son) displayed
genius which Shakespeare alone could compass. However
readily critics may admit the superiority in literary value of
the interpolated scene to anything else in the piece, few will
accept Mr. Collier's extravagant estimate. The scene was
probably from the pen of an admiring but faltering imitator
of Shakespeare.

'Faire Em,' although not published till 1631, was acted 'Faire
by Shakespeare's company while Lord Strange was its
patron, and some lines from it are quoted for purposes of
ridicule by Robert Greene in his 'Farewell to Folly' at
so early a date as 1592. It is another rudimentary en
deavour in romantic comedy, and has not even the preten
sion of 'Mucedorus' to one short scene of conspicuous
literary merit.

46 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

VI
THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC

DURING the busy years (1591-4) that witnessed his first
pronounced successes as a dramatist, Shakespeare came
before the public in yet another literary capacity. On
April 1 8, 1593, Richard Field, the printer, who was his
fellow-townsman, obtained a license for the publication of
'Venus and Adonis,' a metrical version of a classical tale*
Pubiica- o{ love. It was published a month or two later, without
•Venus an author's name on the title-page, but Shakespeare
and appended his full name to the dedication, which he ad-

Adonis, dressed in conventional style of obsequiousness to Henry
Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The Earl, who
was in his twentieth year, was reckoned the handsomest
man at Court, with a pronounced disposition to gallantry.
He had vast possessions, was well educated, loved literature,
and through life extended to men of letters a generous
patronage. 'I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare
now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to
your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choos
ing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. . . .
But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I
shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.' 'The first heir
of my invention ' implies that the poem was written, or at
least designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is
affluent in beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, but
imbued with a tone of license which may be held either to
justify the theory that it was a precocious product of the
author's youth, or to show that Shakespeare was not unready
in mature years to write with a view to gratifying a patron's
somewhat lascivious tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful
Latin motto from Ovid's 'Amores: '

Vilia miretur vulgus ; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

Marlowe in his translation of Ovid's 'Amores ' had

FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 47

already rendered these lines into somewhat awkward
English thus :

Let base conceited wits admire vile things;
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' springs !

The influence of Ovid, who told the story of Venus and
Adonis in his 'Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the
details of Shakespeare's poem. But the theme was doubt
less first suggested to him by a contemporary effort. Lodge's
'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not
only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming
a b a b cc), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents
in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare
drew from Lodge some of his inspiration.

A year after the issue of 'Venus and Adonis,' in 1594,
Shakespeare published another poem in like vein, but far
more mature in temper and execution. The digression
(11. 939-59) on the destroying power of Time, especially, is
in an exalted key of meditation which is not sounded in
the earlier poem. The metre, too, is changed; seven-line
stanzas (Chaucer's rhyme royal, a b a b b c c) take the place
of six-line stanzas. The second poem was entered in the
'Stationers' Registers' on May 9, 1594, under the title
of 'A Booke intitled the Ravyshement of Lucrece,' 'Lucrece.'
and was published in the same year under the title
'Lucrece.' Richard Field printed it, and John Harrison
published and sold it at the sign of the White Greyhound
in St. Paul's Churchyard. The classical story of Lucretia's
ravishment and suicide is briefly recorded in Ovid's
'Fasti,' but Chaucer had retold it in his 'Legend of Good
Women, ' and Shakespeare must have read it there. Again,
in topic and metre the poem reflected a contemporary
poet's work. Samuel Daniel's 'Complaint of Rosamond,'
with its seven-line stanza (1592), stood to 'Lucrece' in
even closer relation than Lodge's 'Scilla, ' with its six-line
stanza, to 'Venus and Adonis.' Rosamond, in Daniel's
poem, muses thus when King Henry challenges her honour :

But what? he is my King and may constraine me;
Whether I yeeld or not, I live defamed; *

The World will thinke Authoritie did gaine me;
I shall be judg'd his Love and so be shamed;
We see the faire condemn'd that never gamed;

And if I yeeld, 'tis honourable shame;

If not, I live disgrac'd, yet thought the same.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Enthusias
tic recep
tion of the
poems.

The pathetic accents of Shakespeare's heroine are those of
Daniel's heroine purified and glorified. The passage on Time
in 'Lucrece' is elaborated from one in Watson's 'Passionate
Centurie of Love' (No. Ixxvii.), and Watson acknowledges
that he adapted his lines from an Italian poem by Serafino.

Shakespeare dedicated his second volume of poetry to
the Earl ot Southampton, the patfon of his first, but the
tone of the dedicatory epistle is changed. The poet now
addressed the earl in terms of devoted friendship. Such
expressions were not uncommon at the time in communica
tions between patrons and poets, but, in their present con
nection, they suggest that Shakespeare's relations with the
brilliant young nobleman had grown closer since he dedi
cated 'Venus and Adonis ' to him in colder language a year
before. 'The love I dedicate to your lordship, ' Shakespeare
wrote in the opening pages of 'Lucrece, ' 'is without end,
whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous
moiety. . . . What I have done is yours; what I have to
do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.'

In these poems Shakespeare made his earliest appeal
to the world of readers, and the reading public welcomed
his addresses with unqualified enthusiasm. The London
playgoer already knew Shakespeare's name as that of a
promising actor and playwright, but his dramatic efforts
had hitherto been consigned in manuscript, as soon as the
theatrical representations ceased, to the coffers of their
owner, the playhouse manager. His early plays brought him
at the outset little reputation as a man of letters. It was
not as the myriad-minded dramatist, but in the restricted
rdle of adapter for English readers of familiar Ovidian
fables, that he first impressed a wide circle of his contem
poraries with the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect
sweetness of the verse and the poetical imagery in 'Venus
and Adonis ' and 'Lucrece ' practically silenced censure of
the licentious treatment of the themes on the part of the
seriously minded. Critics vied with each other in the
exuberance of the eulogies in which they proclaimed that
the fortunate author had gained a place in permanence on
the summit %f Parnassus. 'Lucrece,' wrote Michael Dray-
ton in his 'Legend of Matilda' (1594), was 'revived to
live another age.' In 1595 William Clerke in his 'Poli-
mantela ' gave 'all praise ' to 'sweet Shakespeare ' for
his 'Lucrecia.' John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to

FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 49

'honey-tongued Shakespeare' in his 'Epigrams' (1595),
eulogised the two poems as an unmatchable achievement,
although he mentioned the plays 'Romeo' and 'Richard'
and 'more whose names I know not. ' Richard Carew at
the same time classed him with Marlowe as deserving the
praises of an English Catullus. Printers and publishers
of the poems strained their resources to satisfy the demands
of eager purchasers. No fewer than seven editions of
'Venus' appeared between 1594 and 1602; an eighth
followed in 1617. 'Lucrece' achieved a fifth edition in
the year of Shakespeare's death.

There is a likelihood, too, that Spenser, the greatest of Shake-
Shakespeare's poetic contemporaries, was first drawn by IpenTer
the poems into the ranks of Shakespeare's admirers. It is
hardly doubtful that Spenser described Shakespeare in
'Colin Clouts come home againe ' (completed in 1594),
under the name of 'Action' — a familiar Greek proper
name derived from aero?, an eagle:

And there, though last not least is Action;

A gentler Shepheard may no where be found,
Whose muse, full of high thought's invention,

Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound.

The last line seems to allude to Shakespeare's surname.
We may assume that the admiration was mutual. At any
rate, Shakespeare acknowledged acquaintance with Spenser's
work in a plain reference to his 'Teares of the Muses '
(1591) in 'Midsummer Night's Dream ' (v. i. 52-3). There
we read how

The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceased in beggary,

was the theme of one of the dramatic entertainments
wherewith it was proposed to celebrate Theseus' s marriage.
In Spenser's 'Teares of the Muses' each of the Nine
lamented in turn her declining influence on the literary and
dramatic effort of the age. Theseus dismissed the suggestion
with the not inappropriate comment :

That is some satire keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in the
same poem referred figuratively to Shakespeare when he

50 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

made Thalia deplore the recent death of 'our pleasant
Willy.'

All these and all that els the Comick Stage

With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced,

By which mans life in his likest image

Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced . . .

And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made

To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate,

With kindly counter under mimick shade,

Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late;

With whom all joy and jolly meriment

Is also deaded and in dolour drent (11. 199-210).

The name Willy was frequently used in contemporary
literature as a term of familiarity without relation to the
baptismal name of the person referred to. Sir Philip
Sidney was addressed as 'Willy ' by some of his elegists.
A comic actor, 'dead of late ' in a literal sense, was clearly
intended by Spenser, and there is no reason to dispute the
view of an early seventeenth-century commentator that
Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English comedy had
lately sustained by the death of the comedian, Richard
Tarleton. Similarly the 'gentle spirit ' who is described by
Spenser in a later stanza as sitting 'in idle cell ' rather than
turn his pen to base uses cannot be reasonably identified
with Shakespeare.

But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe,
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell (11. 217-22).

Patrons at Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal esteem
Court. outside the circles of actors and men of letters. His genius
and 'civil demeanour ' of which Chettle wrote arrested the
notice not only of Southampton but of other noble patrons
of literature and the drama. His summons to act at Court
with the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas of
1594 was possibly due in part to personal interest in
himself. Elizabeth quickly showed him special favour.
Until the end of her reign his plays were repeatedly acted
in her presence. The revised verson of 'Love's Labour's
Lost' was given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and
tradition credits the Queen with unconcealed enthusiasm

FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 51

for Falstaff, who came into being a little later. Under
Elizabeth's successor Shakespeare greatly strengthened his
hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed that the
Queen's appreciation equalled that of James I. When
Jonson wrote in his elegy on Shakespeare of

those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James/

he was mindful of many representations of Shakespeare's
plays by the poet and his fellow-actors at the palaces of
Whitehall, Richmond, and Greenwich during the last
decade of Elizabeth's reign.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

VII

The vogue
of the
Eliza
bethan
sonnet.

Shake
speare's
first expe
riments.

THE SONNETS

IT was doubtless to Shakespeare's personal relations with
men and women of the Court that his sonnets owed their
existence. In Italy and France the practice of writing and
circulating series of sonnets inscribed to great men and
women flourished continuously throughout the sixteenth
century. In England, until the last decade of that
century, the vogue was intermittent. Wyatt and Surrey
inaugurated sonnetteering in the English language under
Henry VIII, and Thomas Watson devoted much energy to
the pursuit when Shakespeare was a boy. But it was not
until 1591, when Sir Philip Sidney's collection of sonnets
entitled 'Astrophel and Stella ' was first published, that the
sonnet enjoyed in England any conspicuous or continuous
favour. For the half-dozen years following the appearance
of Sir Philip Sidney's volume the writing of sonnets, both
singly and in connected sequences, engaged more literary
activity in this country than it engaged at any period here or
elsewhere. Men and women of the cultivated Elizabethan
nobility encouraged poets to celebrate in single sonnets
their virtues and graces, and under the same patronage
there were produced multitudes of sonnet-sequences which
more or less fancifully narrated, after the manner of Petrarch
and his successors, the pleasures and pains of love.
Between 1591 and 1597 no aspirant to poetic fame in the
country failed to seek a patron's ears by a trial of skill
on the popular poetic instrument, and Shakespeare, who
habitually kept abreast of the currents of contemporary
literary taste, applied himself to sonnetteering with all the
force of his poetic genius when the fashion was at its height.
Shakespeare had lightly experimented with the sonnet
from the outset of his literary career. Three well-turned
examples figure in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' probably his

THE SONNETS

earliest play; two of the choruses in 'Romeo and Juliet'
are couched in the sonnet form; and a letter of the heroine
Helen in 'All's Well that Ends Well,' which bears traces of
very early composition, takes the same shape. It has, too,
been argued ingeniously, if not convincingly, that he was
author of the somewhat clumsy sonnet, 'Phaeton to his
friend Florio,' which prefaced in 1591 Florio's 'Second
Frutes,' a series of Italian-English dialogues for students.

But these were sporadic efforts. It was not till the
spring of 1593, after Shakespeare had secured a nobleman's
patronage for his earliest publication, 'Venus and Adonis,'
that he became a sonnetteer on an extended scale. Of the
hundred and fifty-four sonnets that survive outside his plays,
the greater number were in all likelihood composed between
that date and the autumn of 1594, during his thirtieth and
thirty-first years. His occasional reference in the sonnets to
his growing age was a conventional device — traceable to
Petrarch — of all sonnetteers of the day, and admits of no
literal interpretation. In matter and in manner the bulk of
the poems suggests that they came from the pen of a man
not much more than thirty. Doubtless he renewed his
sonnetteering efforts occasionally and at irregular intervals
during the nine years which elapsed between 1594 and the
accession of James I in 1603. But to very few of the
extant examples can a date later than 1594 be allotted with
confidence. Sonnet cvii., in which plain reference is made
to Queen Elizabeth's death, may be fairly regarded as a
belated and a final act of homage on Shakespeare's part to
the importunate vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet. All the
evidence, whether internal or external, points to the con
clusion that the sonnet exhausted such fascination as it
exerted on Shakespeare before his dramatic genius attained
its full height.

In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably
unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and meditative
energy that are hardly to be matched elsewhere in poetry.
The best examples are charged with the mellowed sweetness
of rhythm and metre, the depth of thought and feeling, the
vividness of imagery and the stimulating fervour of expres
sion which are the finest fruits of poetic power. On the
other hand, many sink almost into inanity beneath the
burden of quibbles and conceits. In both their excellences
and their defects Shakespeare's sonnets betray near kin-

Majority of

Shake
speare's
sonnets
composed
in 1594.

Their

literary

value.

SHAKESPEARE' *S LIFE AND WORK

The form
of Shake
speare's
Sonnets.

Want of
conti
nuity ot
subject-
matter.

ship to his early dramatic work, in which passages of the
highest poetic temper at times alternate with unimpres
sive displays of verbal jugglery. In phraseology the sonnets
often closely resemble such early dramatic efforts as 'Love's
Labour's Lost ' and 'Romeo and Juliet.' There is far more
concentration in the sonnets than in 'Venus and Adonis '
or in 'Lucrece, ' although occasional utterances of Shake
speare's Roman heroine show traces of the intensity that
characterises the best of them. The superior and more
evenly sustained energy of the sonnets is to be attributed,
not to the accession of power that comes with increase of
years, but to the innate principles of the poetic form, to
metrical exigencies, which impelled the sonnetteer to aim
at a uniform condensation of thought and language.

Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' ignore the somewhat complex
scheme of rhyme adopted by Petrarch, whom the Elizabethan
sonnetteers, like the French sonnetteers of the sixteenth
century, recognised to be in most respects their master.
Following the example originally set by Surrey and Wyatt
and generally pursued by Shakespeare's contemporaries, his
sonnets aim at far greater metrical simplicity than the Italian
or the French. They consist of three decasyllabic quatrains
with a concluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alter
nately. A single sonnet does not always form an indepen
dent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets of the
period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and
Drayton, the same train of thought is at times pursued con
tinuously through two or more. The collection of Shake
speare's 154 sonnets thus presents the appearance of an
extended series of independent poems, many in a varying
number of fourteen-line stanzas. The longest sequence
(i.-xvii.) numbers seventeen sonnets, and in the original
edition opens the volume.

It is unlikely that the order in which the poems were
first printed follows the ctder in which they were written.
Fantastic endeavours have been made to detect in the
original arrangement of the poems a closely connected
narrative, but the thread is on any showing constantly inter
rupted. The whole'series is commonly separated by critics
into two 'groups'' — the first consisting of sonnets i. tocxxvi.,
all of which are usually described as being addressed to a
young man, and the second consisting of sonnets cxxvii. to
cliv., all of which are usually described as addressed to a

THE SONNETS

woman (a 'dark lady'). But both groups as a matter of
fact include several meditative soliloquies in the form of
sonnets that are addressed to no person at all, and a few
of the sonnets in the first group might, as far as internal
indications go, have been addressed to a woman. Readers
and publishers of the seventeenth century acknowledged no
sort of significance in the order in which the poems first
saw the light. When the sonnets were printed for a second
time in 1640 — thirty-one years after their first appearance —
they were presented in a completely different order. The
short descriptive titles which were then supplied to single
sonnets or to short sequences proved that the collection
was regarded as a disconnected series of occasional poems
in more or less amorous vein.

In whatever order Shakespeare's sonnets be studied, the
claim that has been advanced in their behalf to rank as
autobiographical documents can only be accepted with many
qualifications. Elizabethan sonnets were commonly the
artificial products of the poet's fancy. A strain of personal
emotion is occasionally discernible in a detached effort,
and is vaguely traceable in a few sequences; but autobio
graphical confessions were very rarely the stuff of which the
Elizabethan sonnet was made. The typical collection of
Elizabethan sonnets was a mosaic of plagiarisms, a medley
of imitative studies. Echoes of the French or of the Italian
sonnetteers, with their Platonic idealism, are usually the
dominant notes. With good reason Sir Philip Sidney warned
the public that 'no inward touch ' was to be expected from
sonnetteers of his day, whom he describes as

[Men] that do dictionary's method bring
Into their rhymes running in rattling rows;
[Men] that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes
With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing.

The dissemination of false sentiment by the sonnetteers,
and the mechanical monotony with which they treated 'the
pangs of despised love ' or the joys of requited affection, did
not escape the censure of contemporary criticism. The air
soon rang with sarcastic protests from the most respected
writers of the day. Echoes of the critical hostility are heard,
it is curious to note, in nearly all the references that Shake
speare himself makes to sonnetteering in his plays. 'Tush,
none but minstrels like of sonnetting, ' exclaims Biron in
'Love's Labour's Lost' (iv. iii. 158). In the 'Two Gen-

Lack of
genuine
sentiment
in Eliza
bethan
sonnets.

Shake
speare's
scornful
allusion to
sonnets in
his plays.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Slender
autobio
graphical
element in
Shake
speare's
sonnets.

The

imitative
element.

tlemen of Verona' (in. ii. 68 seq.) there is a satiric touch
in the recipe for the conventional love-sonnet which
Proteus offers the amorous Duke :

. You must lay lime to tangle her desires

' By wailful sonnets whose composed rime
Should be full fraught with serviceable vows . . .
Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your sighs, your tears, your heart.

At a first glance a far larger proportion of Shakespeare's
sonnets give the reader the illusion of personal confessions
than those of any contemporary, but when allowance has
been made for the current conventions of Elizabethan
sonnetteering, as well as for Shakespeare's unapproached
affluence in dramatic instinct and invention — an affluence
which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of
human emotion — the autobiographic element in his son
nets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to
shrink to slender proportions. As soon as the collection is
studied comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that
the printing presses of England, France, and Italy poured
forth during the last years of the sixteenth century, a vast
number of Shakespeare's performances prove to be little
more than professional trials of skill, often of superlative
merit, to which he deemed himself challenged by the efforts
of contemporary practitioners. The thoughts and words of
the sonnets of Daniel, Drayton, Watson, Barnabe Barnes,
Constable, Spenser, and Sidney were frequently assimilated
by Shakespeare in his poems with as little compunction as
were the plays and novels of his contemporaries in his dra
matic work. , The imitative element in his sonnets is large
enough to refute the assertion that in them as a whole he
sought to 'unlock his heart.' It is true that the sonnets in
which the writer reproaches himself with sin, or gives expres
sion to a sense of melancholy, offer at times a convincing
illusion of autobiographic confessions; and it is just possi
ble that they stand apart from the rest, and reveal the writer's
inner consciousness. But they may be, on the other hand,
merely literary meditations, conceived by the greatest of dra
matists, on infirmities incident to all human nature, and only
attempted after the cue had been given by rival sonnetteers.
At any rate, even their energetic lines are often adapted
from the less forcible and less coherent utterances of con-

THE SONNETS

Shake
speare's

borrowed
conceit.

temporary poets, and the themes are common to almost all
Elizabethan collections of sonnets.

For example, in the numerous sonnets in which Shake-
speare boasted that his verse was so certain of immortality
that it was capable of immortalising the person to whom it
was addressed, he gave voice to no conviction that was pecul- taiity for
iar to his mental constitution, to no involuntary exaltation of
spirit, or spontaneous ebullition of feeling. He was merely
proving that he could at will, and with superior effect,
handle a theme that Ronsard and Desportes, emulating
Pindar, Horace, Ovid, and other classical poets, had lately
made a commonplace of the poetry of Europe. Sir Philip
Sidney, in his 'Apologie for Poetrie ' (1595), wrote that it
was the common habit of poets 'to tell you that they will
make you immortal by their verses.' 'Men of great calling,'
Nash wrote in his 'Pierce Pennilesse, ' 1593, 'take it of merit
to have their names eternised by poets.' In the hands
of Elizabethan sonnetteers the 'eternising' faculty of their
verse became a staple and indeed an inevitable topic.
Spenser wrote in his 'Amoretti ' (1595, Sonnet Ixxv.) :

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.

Again, when commemorating the death of the Earl of
Warwick in the 'Ruinesof Time ' (c, 1591), Spenser assured
the Earl's widowed Countess,

Thy Lord shall never die the whiles this verse
Shall live, and surely it shall live for ever :
For ever it shall live, and shall rehearse
His worthie praise, and vertues dying never,
Though death his soul doo from his body sever;
And thou thyself herein shalt also live :
Such grace the heavens doo to my verses give.

Drayton and Daniel developed the conceit with unblushing
iteration. Shakespeare, in his references to his 'eternal
lines' (xviii. 12) and in the assurances that he gives the
subject of his addresses that the sonnets are, in Daniel's
exact phrase, his 'monument ' (Ixxxi. 9, cvii. 13), was
merely accommodating himself to the prevailing taste.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Vitupera
tive son
nets ad
dressed to
a woman.

Characteristically in Sonnet Iv. he invested the topic with a
splendour that was not approached by any other poet :

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgement that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

The imitative element is no less conspicuous in most
of the sonnets at the end of the volume which Shakespeare
addresses to a woman. In twelve of them Shakespeare
abandons the sugared sentiment which characterises the
greater number of his hundred and forty-two remaining
sonnets. He grows vituperative and pours a volley of pas
sionate abuse upon a 'dark lady' whom he represents
as disdaining his advances. The declamatory parade of
figurative extravagance which he betrays in his sonnets of
vituperation at once suggests that the emotion is feigned
and that the poet is striking an attitude. But external
evidence is conclusive as to the artificial construction
of the vituperative sonnets. Every sonnetteer of the
sixteenth century, at some point in his career, devoted
his energies to vituperation of a cruel siren, usually of dark
complexion. The monotonous and artificial regularity with
which the sonnetteers sounded the identical vituperative
stop, alternately with their notes of adulation, excited
ridicule in both England and 'France. It is quite possible
that Shakespeare may have met in real life a dark-com
plexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have fared
ill at her disdainful hands. But no such incident is needed
to account for the presence of the 'dark lady ' in the sonnets.
It was the exacting conventions of the sonnetteering conta
gion, and not his personal experiences or emotions, that im
pelled Shakespeare to celebrate the cruel disdain of a 'dark
lady ' in his 'Sonnets.' Shakespeare's 'dark lady ' has been
compared, not very justly, with his splendid creation of

THE SONNETS

Cleopatra in his play of 'Antony and Cleopatra.' From one
point of view the same criticism may be passed on both.
There is no greater and no less ground for seeking in
Shakespeare's personal environment, rather than in the world
of his imagination, the original of the 'dark lady" of his
sonnets than for seeking there the original of his Queen of
Egypt.

Only in one group, composed of six sonnets scattered
through the collection, is there traceable a strand of wholly
original sentiment, boldly projecting from the web into
which it is wrought and not to be readily accounted for.
This series of six sonnets deals with a love adventure of no
normal type. Sonnet cxliv. opens with the lines :

Two loves I have of comfort and despair

Which like two angels do suggest (i.e. tempt) me still;

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.

The woman, the sonnetteer continues, has corrupted the The
man and has drawn him from his 'side.' Five other sonnets
treat the same theme. In three addressed to the man (xl., poet's
xli., and xlii.) the poet mildly reproaches a youthful friend mistress,
for having sought and won the favours of a woman whom
he himself loved 'dearly,' but the trespass is forgiven on
account of the friend's youth and beauty. In the two re
maining sonnets Shakespeare addresses the woman (cxxxiii.
and cxxxiv.), and he rebukes her for having enslaved not only
himself but 'his next self — his friend. The definite element
of intrigue that is suggested here is not found anywhere else
in the range of Elizabethan sonnet literature, and may
possibly reflect a personal experience. But it may be an
error to treat the episode too seriously. A vague half-
jesting reference, which deprives of serious import the
amorous misadventure that is recorded in the six specified
sonnets, and gives it a place in the annals of gallantry, was
apparently made to it by a literary comrade in a poem that
was published in September 1594, under the title of 'Willo-
bie his Avisa, or the True Picture of a Modest Maid and of
a Chaste and Constant Wife.'

In this volume, which mainly consists of seventy-two can
tos in varying numbers of six-line stanzas, the chaste heroine,
Avisa, holds converse — in the opening section as a maid, and
in the later section as a wife — with a series of passionate

'Willobie
his Avisa.'

60 SHAKESPEARE^S LTFE AND WORK

adorers. In every case she firmly repulses their advances.
Midway through the book its alleged author — Henry Willo-
bie — is introduced in his own person as an ardent admirer,
and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his woes and
Avisa's obduracy. To this section there is prefixed an argu
ment in prose (canto xliv.). It is there stated that Willobie,
'being suddenly affected with the contagion of a fantastical
wit at the first sight of Avisa, pineth a while in secret grief.
At length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of
so fervent a humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease
unto his familiar friend W. S., who not long before had tried
the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered
of the like infection. Yet [W. S.], finding his friend let
blood in the same vein, took pleasure for a time to see him
bleed, and instead of stopping the issue, he enlargeth the
wound with the sharp razor of willing conceit,' encouraging
Willobie to believe that Avisa would ultimately yield 'with
pains, diligence, and some cost in time.' 'The miserable
comforter ' [W. S.], the passage continues, was moved to
comfort his friend 'with an impossibility,' for one of two
reasons. Either he 'now would secretly laugh at his friend's
folly ' because he 'had given occasion not long before unto
others to laugh at his own." Or 'he would see whether
another could play his part better than himself, and, in
viewing after the course of this loving comedy,' would 'see
whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor
than it did for the old player. But at length this comedy
was like to have grown to a tragedy by the weak and feeble
estate that H. W. was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's
unflinching rectitude. Happily, 'time and necessity '
effected a cure. In two succeeding cantos in verse W. S.
is introduced in dialogue with Willobie, and he gives him,
in oratio recta, light-hearted and mocking counsel which
Willobie accepts with results disastrous to his mental health.
Identity of initials, on which the theory of Shakespeare's
identity with H. W. 's unfeeling adviser mainly rests, is not a
strong foundation, and doubt is justifiable as to whether the
story of 'Avisa' and her lovers is not fictitious. But the
mention of 'W. S. ' as 'the old player,' and the employment
of theatrical imagery in discussing his relations with Willo
bie, must be coupled with the fact that Shakespeare, at a
date when mentions of him in print were rare, was eulogised
by name as the author of 'Lucrece ' in some prefatory verses

THE SONNETS 61

to Willobie's volume. From such considerations the theory
of * W. S. 's ' identity with Willobie's acquaintance acquires
substance. If we assume that it was Shakespeare who took
a roguish delight in watching his friend Willobie suffer the
disdain of 'chaste Avisa ' because he had 'newly recovered '
from the effects of such an experience as he pictured in the
six sonnets in question, it is to be inferred that the alleged
theft of his mistress by another friend caused him no deep
or lasting distress. The allusions that were presumably
made to the episode by the author of 'Avisa' bring it, in
fact, nearer the confines of comedy than of tragedy. At any
rate they may be held to illustrate the slenderness of the
relations that subsisted between the poetic sentiment which
coloured even the most speciously intimate of Shakespeare's
sonnets and the sentiment which actually governed him in
life.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

VIII

Biographic
fact in
the ' dedi
catory '
sonnets.

The Earl
of South
ampton
the poet's
sole
patron.

THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Bur if very few of Shakespeare's sonnets can be safely
treated as genuinely autobiographic revelations of senti
ment, there lurk amid those specifically addressed to a
young man, more or less literal hints of the circumstances
in Shakespeare's external life that attended the poems' com
position. Many offer direct evidence of the relations in
which he stood to a patron, and to the position that he
sought to fill in the circle of that patron's literary retainers.
Twenty sonnets, which may for purposes of exposition be
entitled 'dedicatory' sonnets, are addressed to one who is
declared without periphrasis and without disguise to be a
patron of the poet's verse (Nos. xxiii., xxvi., xxxii., xxxvii.,
xxxviii., Ixix., Ixxvii.-lxxxvi., c., ci., ciii., cvi.). In one of
these — Sonnet Ixxviii. — Shakespeare asserted :

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
And found such fair assistance in my verse
As every alien pen hath got my use
And under thee their poesy disperse.

Subsequently he regretfully pointed out how his patron's
readiness to accept the homage of other poets seemed to be
thrusting him from the enviable place of pre-eminence in
his patron's esteem.

Shakespeare states unequivocally that he has no patron
but one.

Sing \sc. O Muse !] to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument (c. 7-8).
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell (ciii. 11-12).

The Earl of Southampton, the patron of his narrative poems,
is the only patron of Shakespeare that is known to bio
graphical research. No contemporary document or tradition

PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 63

gives the faintest suggestion that Shakespeare was the per
sonal friend or dependent of any other man of rank. A
trustworthy tradition corroborates the testimony respecting
Shakespeare's close intimacy with the Earl that is given
in the dedicatory epistles of his 'Venus and Adonis ' and
'Lucrece, ' penned respectively in 1593 and 1594. Accord
ing to Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first adequate
biographer, 'there is one instance so singular in its
magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had
not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir
William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted
with his affairs, I should not venture to have inserted; that
my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand
pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which
he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great and very
rare at any time.'

There is no difficulty in detecting the lineaments of the
Earl of Southampton in those of the man who is distinc
tively greeted in the sonnets as the poet's patron. Three
of the twenty 'dedicatory ' sonnets merely translate into
the language of poetry the expressions of devotion which
had already done duty in the dedicatory epistle in prose
that prefaces 'Lucrece. ' That epistle to Southampton runs :

The love [i.e. in the Elizabethan sense of friendship] I dedicate to
your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning,
is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable dis
position, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of
acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours;
being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my
duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lord
ship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.
Your lordship's in all duty,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Sonnet xxvi. is a gorgeous rendering of these sentences :

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,

To thee I send this written ambassage,

To witness duty, not to show my wit :

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,

But that I hope some good conceit of thine

In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it;

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,

Points on me graciously with fair aspect,

64 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect :

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee ;

Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me.

Rivals in The identification of the rival poets whose 'richly com-

ampton's piled ' 'comments ' of his patron's 'praise ' excited Shake-
favour, speare's jealousy is a more difficult inquiry than the
identification of the patron. The rival poets with their
'precious phrase by all the Muses filed ' (Ixxxv. 4) must be
sought among the writers who eulogised Southampton and
are known to have shared his patronage. The field of
choice is not small. Southampton from boyhood cultivated
literature and the society of literary men. In 1594 no
nobleman received so abundant a measure of adulation
from the contemporary world of letters. Thomas Nash
justly described the Earl, when dedicating to him his
'Life of Jack Wilton' in 1594, as 'a dear lover and
cherisher as well of the lovers of poets as of the poets
themselves.' Nash addressed to him many affectionately
phrased sonnets. The prolific sonnetteer Barnabe Barnes
and the miscellaneous literary practitioner Gervase Mark-
ham confessed, respectively in 1593 and 1595, yearnings
for Southampton's countenance in sonnets which glow hardly
less ardently than Shakespeare's with admiration for his
personal charm. Similarly John Florio, the Earl's Italian
tutor, who is traditionally reckoned among Shakespeare's
literary acquaintances, wrote to Southampton in 1598, in
his dedicatory epistle before his 'Worlde of Wordes ' (an
Italian-English dictionary) : 'As to me and many more, the
glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused
light and life.'

Shakespeare magnanimously and modestly described
that protege of Southampton, whom he deemed a specially
dangerous rival, as an 'able' and 'better' 'spirit,' 'a
worthier pen,' a vessel 'of tall building and of goodly
pride,' compared with whom he was himself 'a worthless
boat.' He detected a touch of magic in the man's writing.
His 'spirit,' Shakespeare hyperbolically declared, had been
'by spirits taught to write above a mortal pitch,' and 'an
affable familiar ghost ' nightly gulled him with intelligence.
Shakespeare's dismay at the fascination exerted on his
patron by 'the proud full sail of his [rival's] great verse'

PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 65

sealed for a time, he declared, the springs of his own
invention (Ixxxvi.).

The conditions of the problem are satisfied by the rival's
identification with the young writer Barnabe Barnes, a
poetic panegyrist of Southampton and u prolific sonnet-
teer, who was deemed by contemporary critics certain to
prove a great poet and scholar. His first collection of
sonnets, 'Parthenophil and Parthenophe, ' with many odes
and madrigals interspersed, was printed in 1593; and his
second, 'A Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets,' in 1595. In a
sonnet that Barnes addressed in this earliest volume to Barnabe
the 'virtuous' Earl of Southampton he declared that his BraJ£e£j
patron's eyes were 'the heavenly lamps that give the Muses shake-
light ' and that his sole ambition was 'by flight to rise ' to speare's
a height worthy of his patron's 'virtues.' Shakespeare ^ai.
sorrowfully pointed out in Sonnet Ixxviii. that his lord's
eyes

that taught the dumb on high to sing,
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
Have added feathers to the learned's wing,
And given grace a double majesty;

while in the following sonnet he asserted that the 'worthier
pen ' of his dreaded rival when lending his patron 'virtue '
was guilty of plagiarism, for he 'stole that word ' from his
patron's 'behaviour.' The emphasis laid by Barnes on the
inspiration that he sought from Southampton's 'gracious
eyes ' on the one hand, and his reiterated references to his
patron's 'virtue ' on the other, suggest that Shakespeare in
these sonnets directly alluded to Barnes as his chief com
petitor in the hotly contested race for Southampton's
favour. When, too, Shakespeare in Sonnet Ixxx. employs
nautical metaphors to indicate the relations of himself and
his rival with his patron —

My saucy bark inferior far to his ...

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, —

he seems to write with an eye on Barnes's identical choice
of metaphor:

My fancy's ship tossed here and there by these \sc. sorrow's floods]
Still floats in danger ranging to and fro.
How fears my thoughts' swift pinnace thine hard rock !
F

SHAKESPEARE^ S LIFE AND WORK

Sonnets of
friendship.

Extrava
gances of
literary
compli
ment.

Many critics argue that the numbing fear of his rival's
genius and of its influence on his patron to which Shake
speare confessed in the sonnets was more likely to be evoked
by the work of George Chapman than by that of any other
contemporary poet. But Chapman h-ad produced no con
spicuously 'great verse ' till he began his translation of
Homer in 1598; and although he appended in i6iotoa
complete edition of his translation a sonnet to Southampton,
it was couched in the coldest terms of formality, and it was
one of a series of sixteen sonnets each addressed to a dis
tinguished nobleman with whom the writer implies that he
had no previous relations.

Many besides the 'dedicatory' sonnets are addressed
to a handsome youth of wealth and rank, for whom the
poet avows 'love ' in the Elizabethan sense of friendship.
Although no specific reference is made outside the twenty
'dedicatory ' sonnets to the youth as a literary patron, and
the clues to his identity are elsewhere vaguer, there is good
ground for the conclusion that the sonnets of disinterested
love or friendship also have Southampton for their sub
ject. The sincerity of the poet's sentiment is often open
to doubt in these poems, but they seem to illustrate a real
intimacy subsisting between Shakespeare and a young
Maecenas.

Sir Philip Sidney described with admirable point the
adulatory excesses to which Elizabethan patrons of literature
were habituated by literary dependents. He gave the warning
that as soon as a man showed interest in poetry or its pro
ducers, poets straightway pronounced him 'to be most fair,
most rich, most wise, most all.' 'You shall dwell upon
superlatives. . . . Your soule shall be placed with Dante's
Beatrice.' The warmth of colouring which distinguishes
many of the sonnets that Shakespeare, under the guise of
disinterested friendship, addressed to the youth can be
matched at nearly all points in the adulation, in the style
described by Sidney, that patrons were habitually receiv
ing throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James I from
literary dependents.

It is likely enough that beneath all the conventional
adulation bestowed by Shakespeare on his patron there lay
a genuine affection, but it is improbable that his sonnets to
the youth were involuntary ebullitions of a disinterested
friendship; they were celebrations of a patron's favour in

PATRON-AGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 67

the terminology — often raised by Shakespeare's genius to
the loftiest heights of poetry — that was invariably conse
crated to such a purpose by a current literary convention.

We know Shakespeare had only one literary patron, the
Earl of Southampton, and the view that that nobleman is the
hero of the sonnets of friendship is strongly corroborated
by such definite details as can be deduced from the vague
eulogies in those poems of the youth's gifts and graces.
Every compliment, in fact, paid by Shakespeare to the youth,
whether it be vaguely or definitely phrased, applies to
Southampton without the least straining of the words. In
real life beauty, birth, wealth, and wit sat 'crowned ' in the
Earl, whom poets acclaimed the handsomest of Elizabethan
courtiers, as plainly as in the hero of the poet's verse.
Southampton has left in his correspondence ample proofs
of his literary learning and taste, and, like the hero of the
sonnets, was 'as fair in knowledge as in hue.' The open
ing sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank
and wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so that
'his fair house ' may not fall into decay, can only have been
addressed to a young peer like Southampton, who was as
yet unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the sole male
representative of his family. The sonnetteer's exclamation,
'You had a father, let your son say so,' had pertinence to
Southampton at any period between his father's death in
his boyhood and the close of his bachelorhood in 1598.
To no other peer of the day are the words exactly appli
cable. The 'lascivious comment' on his 'wanton sport'
which pursues the young friend through the sonnets, and is
so adroitly contrived as to add point to the picture of his
fascinating youth and beauty, obviously associates itself with
the reputation for sensual indulgence that Southampton
acquired both at Court and was, according to Nash, a theme
of frequent comment among men of letters.

There is no force in the objection that the young man
of the sonnets of 'friendship ' must have been another than
Southampton because the terms in which he is often ad
dressed imply extreme youth. In 1594, a date to which
I refer most of the sonnets, Southampton was barely twenty-
one, and the young man had obviously reached manhood.
In Sonnet civ. Shakespeare notes that the first meeting
between him and his friend took place three years before
that poem was written, so that, if the words are to be taken

Direct
references
to South
ampton in
the son
nets of
friendship.

His youth-
fulness.

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

The evi
dence of
portraits.

Sonnet
cvii., the
last of the
series.

literally, the poet may have at times embodied reminiscences
of Southampton when he was only seventeen or eighteen.
But Shakespeare, already worn in worldly experience,
passed his thirtieth birthday in 1594, and he probably
tended, when on the threshold of middle life, to exaggerate
the youthfulness of his noble admirer almost ten years his
junior, who even later impressed his acquaintances by his
boyish appearance and disposition.

But the most striking evidence of the identity of the
youth of the sonnets of 'friendship' with Southampton is
found in the close resemblance between the youth's 'fair'
eyes and complexion and his 'golden tresses,' as described
in the poet's verse, and the chief characteristics of the extant
pictures of Southampton as a young man. Many times does
Shakespeare tell us that the youth is fair in complexion, and
that his eyes are fair. In Sonnet Ixviii. he points to his
young friend's face as a map of what beauty was 'without all
ornament, itself and true ' — before fashion sanctioned the
use of artificial 'golden tresses ' — and he obviously implies
that an unusual wealth of locks fell about the young man's
neck. Shakespeare's many references to his youth's
'painted counterfeit' (xvi., xxiv., xlvii., Ixvii.) suggest,
too, that his hero often sat for his portrait. Southampton's
countenance survives in probably more canvases than that of
any of his contemporaries. At least fifteen extant portraits
have been identified on good authority — ten paintings,
three miniatures (two by Peter Oliver and one by Isaac
Oliver), and two contemporary prints. Most of these, it is
true, portray their subject in middle age, when the roses of
youth had faded, and they contribute nothing to the present
argument. But the two portraits that are now at Welbeck,
the property of the Duke of Portland, give all the infor
mation that can be desired of Southampton's aspect 'in
his youthful morn.' One of these pictures represents the
Earl at twenty-one, and the other at twenty-five or twenty-
six. From either of the two Welbeck portraits which
depict Southampton as a young man with fair eyes and
complexion and with auburn hair falling below his shoulder,
might Shakespeare have directly drawn his picture of the
youth in the 'Sonnets.'

A few only of the sonnets that Shakespeare addressed to
the youth can be allotted to a date subsequent to 1594;
only two bear on the surface signs of a later composition.

PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON' 69

In Sonnet Ixx. the poet no longer credits his hero with
juvenile wantonness, but with a 'pure, unstained prime,'
which has 'passed by the ambush of young days.' Sonnet
cvii., apparently the last of the series, was penned almost
a decade after the mass of its companions, for it makes
references that cannot be mistaken to three events that took
place in 1603 — to Queen Elizabeth's death, to the acces
sion of James I, and to the release from prison of the Earl
of Southampton, who had been convicted in 1601 of com
plicity in the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. The first two
events are thus described :

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

It is in almost identical phrase that every pen in the
spring of 1603 was felicitating the nation on the unexpected
turn of events, by which Elizabeth's crown had passed,
without civil war, to the Scottish King, and thus the revolu
tion that had been foretold as the inevitable consequence of
Elizabeth's demise was happily averted. Cynthia (i.e. the
moon) was the Queen's recognised poetic appellation. It
is thus that she figures in the verse of Barnfield, Spenser,
Fulke Greville, and Ralegh, and her elegists, following the
same fashion, invariably likened her death to the 'eclipse '
of a heavenly body. At the same time James was constantly
said to have entered on his inheritance 'not with an olive
branch in his hand, but with a whole forest of olives round
about him, for he brought not peace to this kingdom alone '
but to all Europe.

'The drops of this most balmy time,' in this same
sonnet, cvii., is an echo of another current strain of fancy.
James came to England in a springtide of rarely rivalled
clemency, which was reckoned of the happiest augury.
One source of grief alone was acknowledged : Southampton
was still a prisoner in the Tower, 'supposed ' (in Shake
speare's language) 'as forfeit to a confined doom.' The
wish for his release was fulfilled quickly. On April 10,
1603, his prison gates were opened by 'a warrant from the
king.' So bountiful a beginning of the new era, wrote John
Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton two days later, 'raised all

Allusion to
Elizabeth's
death.

Allusions
to South
ampton's
release
from
prison.

70 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

men's spirits . . . and the very poets with their idle pam
phlets promised themselves ' great things. Samuel Daniel
and John Davies celebrated Southampton's release in buoy
ant verse. It is improbable that Shakespeare remained silent.
'My love looks fresh,' he wrote in the concluding lines of
this Sonnet cvii., and he finally repeated the conventional
promise that he had so often made before, that his friend
should live in his 'poor rhyme,' 'when tyrants' crests and
tombs of brass are spent.' It is impossible to resist the in
ference that Shakespeare thus saluted his patron on the close
of his days of tribulation. Shakespeare's genius had then
won for him a public reputation that rendered him indepen
dent of any private patron's favour, and he made no further
reference in his writings to the patronage that Southampton
had extended to him in earlier years. But the terms in which
he greeted his former protector for the last time in verse
justify the belief that, during his remaining thirteen years
of life, the poet cultivated friendly relations with the Earl
of Southampton, and was mindful to the last of the encour
agement that the young peer offered him while he was still
on the threshold of the temple of fame.

Circula
tion of the
' Sonnets '
in manu
script.

In accordance with a custom that was not uncommon,
Shakespeare did not publish his sonnets; he circulated
them in manuscript. But their reputation grew, and public
interest was aroused in them in spite of his unreadiness to
give them publicity. A line from one of them :

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds (xciv. 14),

was quoted in the play of 'Edward III,' which was probably
written before 1595. Meres, writing in 1598, enthusiasti
cally commends Shakespeare's 'sugred sonnets among his
private friends,' and mentions them in close conjunction
with his two narrative poems. William Jaggard piratically
inserted in 1599 two °f tne most mature of the series (Nos.
cxxxviii. and cxliv.) in his /Passionate Pilgrim.'

At length, in 1609, the sonnets were surreptitiously sent
to press. Thomas Thorpe, the moving spirit in the design
of their publication, was a camp-follower of the regular
publishing army. He was professionally engaged in
procuring for publication literary works which had been

PUBLICATION OF THE SONNETS 71

widely disseminated in written copies, and had thus passed Their
beyond their authors' control; for the law then recognised pubiica-
no natural right in an author to the creations of his brain, tion in
and the full owner of a manuscript copy of any literary l6°9-
composition was entitled to reproduce it, or to treat it as
he pleased, without reference to the author's wishes. On
May 20, 1609, he obtained a license for the publication
of 'Shakespeares Sonnets,' and this tradesmanlike form
of title figured not only on the 'Stationers' Company's
Registers,' but on the title-page. 'Sonnets by William
Shakespeare ' was the form of title natural to a book that
was issued by a living author under strictly regular condi
tions. Thorpe employed George Eld to print the manu
script, and two booksellers, William Aspley and John
Wright, to distribute the volume to the public. On half the
edition Aspley 's name figured as that of the seller, and on
the other half that of Wright. The book was issued in June,
and the owner of the 'copy ' left the public under no mis
apprehension as to his share in the production by printing
above his initials a dedicatory preface from his own pen.
The appearance in an Elizabethan or Jacobean book of a
dedication from the publisher's (instead of from the author's)
pen was, unless the substitution was specifically accounted
for on other grounds, an accepted sign that the author had
no hand in the publication. Except in the case of his two
narrative poems, which were published in 1593 and 1594
respectively, Shakespeare made no effort to publish any of
his works, and uncomplainingly submitted to wholesale
piracies of his plays and to the ascription to him of books
by other hands. Such practices were encouraged by his
passive indifference and the contemporary condition of the
law of copyright. He cannot be credited with any respon
sibility for the publication of Thorpe's collection of his
sonnets in 1609. With characteristic insolence Thorpe 'A Lover's
took the added liberty of appending a previously unprinted Complaint.'
poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of 'Lu-
crece ') entitled 'A Lover's Complaint,' in which a girl
laments her betrayal by a deceitful youth. The poem, in
a gentle Spenserian vein, has no connection with the
'Sonnets.' If, as is possible, it be by Shakespeare, it must
have been written in very early days.

A misunderstanding respecting Thorpe's dedicatory
preface and his part in the publication has led many critics

72 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

into a serious misinterpretation of Shakespeare's poems.
Thorpe's dedication ran thus:

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF.

THESE . INSVING . SONNETS .

Mr. W. H. ALL . HAPPINESSE .

AND . THAT . ETERNITIE .

PROMISED .

BY .
OUR . EVER-LIVING . POET .

WISHETH .

THE . WELL-WISHING .

ADVENTURER . IN .

SETTING .

FORTH .

T.T.

The words are fantastically arranged. In ordinary gram
matical order they would run : 'The well-wishing adventurer
in setting forth [i.e. the publisher], T[homas] T[horpe]
wisheth Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing
sonnets, all happiness and that eternity promised by our
ever-living poet.'

Thomas Thorpe used throughout the bombastic language which

and^Mr. was habitual to him. He advertised Shakespeare as 'our
W. H.' ever-living poet. ' As the chief promoter of the undertaking,
he called himself 'the well-wishing adventurer in setting
forth,' and in resonant phrase designated as the patron of
the venture, 'Mr. W. H.,' who was in all probability only a
partner in the speculation. In the conventional dedicatory
formula of the day — the precise words may be read in scores
of contemporary dedications — he 'wisheth' 'Mr. W. H.'
'all happiness ' and 'eternity,' such eternity as Shakespeare
in the text of the sonnets conventionally foretold for his own
verse. When Thorpe was organising under similar circum
stances the issue of Marlowe' s' First Book of Lucan ' in 1600,
he sought the patronage of Edward Blount, a friend in the
trade. ' \V. H. ' was doubtless in a like position. He is best
identified with a stationer's assistant, William Hall, who was
professionally engaged, like Thorpe, in procuring 'copy.'
In 1606 Hall, who commonly conducted his operations
under cover of the familiar initials 'W. H.,' won a con
spicuous success of the predatory kind. In that year ' W. H. '
announced that he had procured a neglected manuscript
poem — 'A Fourefould Meditation ' — by the Jesuit Robert
Southwell who had been executed in 1595, and he published

PUBLICATION OF THE SONNETS 73

it with a dedication (signed 'W. H.') vaunting his good
fortune in meeting with such treasure-trove. When Thorpe
dubbed 'Mr. W. H.,' with characteristic magniloquence,
'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' he used 'be
getter ' in the sense of 'getter,' 'obtainer,' or 'procurer,'
which was not uncommon in Elizabethan English, and he
merely indicated in his Pistol-like dialect that 'Mr. W. H.'
was a friendly member of the pirate-publisher fraternity who
by getting into his hands, or procuring a manuscript copy
of Shakespeare's sonnets, supplied the 'onlie ' opportunity
for their surreptitious issue. In accordance with custom,
Thorpe gave Hall's initials only, because he was an intimate
associate who was known by those initials to their common
circle of friends. Hall was not a man of sufficiently wide
public reputation to render it probable that the printing of
his full name would excite additional interest in the book
or attract buyers.

The common assumption that Thorpe in this boastful
preface was covertly addressing, under the initials 'Mr. W.
H.,' a young nobleman, to whom the sonnets were originally
addressed by Shakespeare, ignores the elementary princi
ples of publishing transactions of the day, and especially
of those of the type to which Thorpe's efforts were confined.
There was nothing mysterious or fantastic, although from
a modern point of view there was much that lacked princi
ple, in Thorpe's method of business. His choice of patron
for this, like all his volumes, was dictated solely by his
mercantile interests. He was under no inducement and in
no position to take into consideration the affairs of Shake
speare's private life. Shakespeare, through all but the earli
est stages of his career, belonged socially to a world that was
cut off by impassable barriers from that in which Thorpe
pursued his undignified calling. It was wholly outside
Thorpe's aims in life to seek to mystify his customers by
investing a dedication with any cryptic significance.

No peer of the day, moreover, bore a name which could
be represented by the initials 'Mr. W. H. ' Shakespeare
was never on terms of intimacy (although the contrary has
often been recklessly assumed) with William, third Earl of
Pembroke, when a youth. Seven years after Shakespeare's
death, the first collected edition of his plays was jointly
dedicated, in accordance with a fashion very widely fol
lowed at the moment by authors and publishers, to the Earl

74 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

of Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, and to his brother
the Earl of Montgomery. The words of the dedication —
which dubs Shakespeare the patrons' 'servant' — confute
the theory of the existence of close relations in early life
between Shakespeare and Pembroke; they merely affirm
that the repeated performances of Shakespeare's plays at
Court in James I's reign had drawn to him and to his
work the favourable attention of Pembroke and his brother
(seep. 168). But were complete proofs of Shakespeare's
acquaintanceship with Pembroke forthcoming, they would
throw no light on Thorpe's 'Mr. W. H.' The Earl of
Pembroke was, from his birth to the date of his succession
to the earldom in 1601, known by the courtesy title of Lord
Herbert and by no other tjame, and he could not have been
designated at any period of his life by the symbols 'Mr.
W. H. ' In 1609 Pembroke was a high officer of state, and
numerous books were dedicated to him in all the splendour
of his many titles. Star-Chamber penalties would have
been exacted" of any publisher or author who denied him
in print his titular distinctions. Thorpe had occasion to
dedicate two books to the Earl in later years, and he there
showed not merely that he was fully acquainted with the
compulsory etiquette, but that his sycophantic temperament
rendered him only eager to improve on the conventional
formulas of servility. Laws of evidence compel the con
clusion that no thought of the Earl of Pembroke presented
itself, either to Shakespeare, when writing his sonnets, or to
Thorpe, when preparing them for publication.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 75

IX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER

THE .processes of construction which are discernible in General
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' are thus seen to be identical with c?nclu-

• 11-1 • ««•«• i sions re-

those that are discernible in the rest of his literary work, specting
They present one more proof of his punctilious regard for the'Son-
the demands of public taste, and of his marvellous genius n
and skill in adapting and transmuting for his own purposes
the labours of other workers in the field that for the moment
engaged his attention. Most of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets '
were produced in 1594 under the incitement of that freakish
rage for sonnetteering which, taking its rise in Italy and
sweeping over France on its way to England, absorbed for
some half-dozen years in this country a greater volume of
literary energy than has been applied to sonnetteering within
the same space of time here or elsewhere before or since.
The thousands of sonnets that were circulated in England
between 1591 and 1597 were of every literary quality, from
sublimity to inanity, and they illustrated in form and topic
every known phase of sonnetteering activity. Shakespeare's
collection, which was put together at haphazard and pub
lished surreptitiously many years after the poems were
written, was a medley, at times reaching heights of literary
excellence that none other scaled, but as a whole reflecting
the varied features of the sonnetteering vogue. Apostro
phes to metaphysical abstractions, vivid picturings of the
beauties of nature, adulation of a patron, and vehement
denunciation of the falseness and frailty of womankind — all
appear as frequently in contemporary collections of. sonnets
as in Shakespeare's. He borrowed very many of his com
petitors' words and thoughts, but he so fused them with his
fancy as often to transfigure them. Genuine emotion or the
writer's personal experience very rarely inspired the Eliza- •
bethan sonnet, and Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' proved no ex
ception to the rule. A personal note may have escaped him

76 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

involuntarily in the sonnets in which he gives voice to a sense
of melancholy and self-remorse, but his dramatic instinct
never slept, and there is no positive proof that he is doing
more even in those sonnets than produce dramatically the
illusion of a personal confession. Only in one scattered
series of six sonnets, where he introduced a topic, unknown
to other sonnetteers, of a lover's supersession by his friend
in a mistress's graces, does he seem to show independence of
his comrades and draw directly on an incident in his own life,
but even there the emotion may be wanting in seriousness.
The sole biographical inference deducible from the 'Sonnets'
is that at one time in his career Shakespeare strained all his
energies, after the fashion habitual to men of letters of the
day, in an endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patron
age of a young man of rank. External evidence agrees with
internal evidence in identifying the belauded patron with the
Earl of Southampton. Thus the real value of Shakespeare's
'Sonnets ' to the poet's biographer is the corroboration they
offer of the ancient tradition that the Earl of Southampton,
to whom his two narrative poems were openly dedicated,
gave Shakespeare at an early period of his literary career help
and encouragement, which entitles him to a place in the
poet's biography resembling that filled by the Duke Alfonso
d'Este in the biography of Ariosto, or like that filled by
Margaret, duchess of Savoy, in the biography of Ronsard.

But all the while that Shakespeare, in his 'Sonnets,' was
fancifully assuring his patron

[How] to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell,

his dramatic work was steadily advancing. His 'verses ' were
in fact tending in many other and very different directions.
To the winter season of 1595 probably belongs 'Midsummer
Night's Dream,' although no edition appeared before 1600;
then two were published, the earlier by Thomas Fisher, the
later by James Roberts. Roberts's quarto, which corrects
some misprints in the first version, was reprinted in the First
Folio. The comedy may well have been written to celebrate
a marriage in court circles — • perhaps the marriage of the
universal patroness of poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward
Russell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594; or
that of William Stanley, sixth earl of Derby, at Greenwich,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 77

on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate compliment to the
Queen, 'a fair vestal throned by the west' (n. i. 157 seq.),
was at once an acknowledgment of past marks of royal
favour and an invitation for their extension to the future.
Oberon's fanciful description (n. ii. 148-68) of the spot
where he saw the little western flower called 'Love-in-
idleness ' that he bids Puck fetch for him, has been inter
preted as a reminiscence of one of the scenic pageants
with which the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Eliza
beth on her visit to Kenilworth in 1575. The whole play
is in the airiest and most graceful vein of comedy. Hints
for the story can be traced to a variety of sources — to
Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale,' to Plutarch's 'Life of Theseus,'
to Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (bk. iv.), and to the story of
Oberon, the fairy-king, in the French mediaeval romance of
'Huon of Bordeaux,' of which an English translation by
Lord Berners was first printed in 1534. The influence
of John Lyly is perceptible in the raillery in which both
mortals and immortals indulge. In the humorous presen
tation of the play of 'Pyramus and Thisbe ' by the 'rude
mechanicals ' of Athens, Shakespeare improved upon a
theme which he had already employed in 'Love's Labour's
Lost.' But the final scheme of the 'Midsummer Night's
Dream ' is of the author's freshest invention, and by endow
ing — practically for the first time in literature — the phan
toms of the fairy world with a genuine and a sustained
dramatic interest, Shakespeare may be said to have con
quered a new realm for art.

More sombre topics engaged him in the comedy of 'All's 'All's
Well that Ends Well,' which may be tentatively assigned ^aetnE
to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Well.'
Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This
title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to
'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also
been identified with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter
claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well, ' like
that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was accessible in Painter's
'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.). The original source
is Boccaccio's 'Decamerone' (giorn. iii. nov. 9). Shake
speare, after his wont, grafted on the touching 'story of
Helena's love for the unworthy Bertram the comic char
acters of the braggart Parolles, the pompous Lafeu, and a
clown (Lavache) less witty than his compeers. Another

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

' Taming
of The
Shrew.'

Stratford
allusions
in the
Induction.

original creation, Bertram's mother, Countess of Roussil-
lon, is a charming portrait of old age. In frequency of
rhyme and other metrical characteristics the piece closely
resembles 'The Two Gentlemen,' but the characterisation
betrays far greater power, and there are fewer conceits or
crudities of style. The pathetic element predominates.
The heroine Helena, whose 'pangs of despised love ' are
expressed with touching tenderness, ranks, despite her
defiance of the dictates of maidenly modesty, with the
greatest of Shakespeare's female creations.

'The Taming of The Shrew ' —which, like 'All's Well,'
was first printed in the folio — was probably composed soon
after the completion of that solemn comedy. It is a revision
of an old play on lines somewhat differing from those which
Shakespeare had followed previously. From 'The Taming
of A Shrew,' a comedy first published in 1594, Shakespeare
drew the Induction and the scenes in which the hero
Petruchio conquers Catherine the Shrew. He first infused
into them the genuine spirit of comedy. But while following
the old play in its general outlines, Shakespeare's revised
version added an entirely new underplot — the story of Bianca
and her lovers, which owes something to the 'Supposes'
of George Gascoigne, an adaptation of Ariosto's comedy
called 'I Suppositi.' Evidence of style — the liberal intro
duction of tags of Latin and the exceptional beat of the
doggerel — makes it difficult to allot the Bianca scenes to
Shakespeare; those scenes were probably due to a coadjutor.

The Induction to 'The Taming of The Shrew ' has a
direct bearing on Shakespeare's biography, for the poet
admits into it a number of literal references to Stratford and
his native county which are of his own invention, and do
not figure in the old play. Such personalities are rare in
Shakespeare's plays, and can only be paralleled in two of
slightly later date — the 'Second Part of Henry IV and
the 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' All these local allusions
may well be attributed to such a renewal of Shakespeare's
personal relations with the town as is indicated by external
facts in his history of the same period (see p. 93). In the
Induction to 'The Taming of The Shrew,' the tinker,
Christopher Sly, describes himself as 'Old Sly's son of
Burton Heath.' Burton Heath is Barton-on-the-Heath,
the home of Shakespeare's aunt, Edmund Lambert's
wife, and of her sons. The tinker in like vein confesses

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 79

that he has run up a score with Marian Hacket, the fat ale-
wife of Wincot. The references to Wincot and the Rackets
are singularly precise. The name of the maid of the inn is
given as Cicely Hacket, and the alehouse is described in
the stage direction as 'on a heath.'

Wincot was the familiar designation of three small Wincot.
Warwickshire villages, and a good claim has been set up on
behalf of each to be the scene of Sly's drunken exploits.
There is a very small hamlet named Wincot within four
miles of Stratford now consisting of a single farmhouse
which was once an Elizabethan mansion; it is situated on
what was doubtless in Shakespeare's day, before the land
there was enclosed, an open heath. This Wincot forms
part of the parish of Quinton, where, according to the pa
rochial registers, a Hacket family resided in Shakespeare's
day. On November 21, 1591, 'Sara Hacket, the daughter
of Robert Ilacket, ' was baptised in Quinton church. Yet by
Warwickshire contemporaries the Wincot of the 'Taming
of The Shrew ' was unhesitatingly identified with Wilne-
cote, near Tamworth, on the Staffordshire border of War
wickshire, at some distance from Stratford. That village,
whose name was pronounced 'Wincot,' was celebrated for
its ale in the seventeenth century, a distinction which is
not shown by contemporary evidence to have belonged to
any place of like name. The Warwickshire poet, Sir Aston
Cokain, within half a century of the production of Shake-
peare's 'Taming of The Shrew,' addressed to 'Mr. Clement
Fisher of Wincott ' (a well-known resident of Wilnecote)
verses which begin :

Shakspeare your Wincot ale hath much renowned,
That fox'd a Beggar so (by chance was found
Sleeping) that there needed not many a word
To make him to believe he was a Lord.

In the succeeding lines the writer promises to visit 'Wincot '
(i.e. Wilnecote) to drink

Such ale as Shakspeare fancies
Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances.

It is therefore probable that Shakespeare consciously
invested the home of Kit Sly and of Kit's hostess with
characteristics of Wilnecote as well as of the hamlet near
Stratford.

8o SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Wilmcote, the native place of Shakespeare's mother, is
also said to have been popularly pronounced 'Wincot.' A
tradition which was first recorded by Capell as late as 1780
in his notes to 'The Taming of The Shrew ' is to the effect
that Shakespeare often visited an inn at 'Wincot ' to enjoy
the society of a 'fool who belonged to a neighbouring
mill, ' and the Wincot of this story is, we are told, locally
associated with the yillage of Wilmcote. But the links that
connect Shakespeare's tinker with Wilmcote are far slighter
than those which connect him with Wincot and Wilnecote.

The mention of Kit Sly's tavern comrades —

Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece,
And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernell —

was in all likelihood a reminiscence of contemporary War
wickshire life as literal as the name of the hamlet where the
drunkard dwelt. There was a genuine Stephen Sly who
was in the dramatist's day a self-assertive citizen of Strat
ford; and 'Greece,' whence 'old John Naps' derived his
cognomen, is an obvious misreading of Greet, a hamlet
by Winchcomb in Gloucestershire, not far removed from
Shakespeare's native town. According to local tradition
Shakespeare was acquainted with Greet, Winchcomb, and
all the villages in the immediate neighbourhood, and he is
still credited with the authorship of the local jingle which
enumerates the chief hamlets and points of interest in the
district. The lines run :

Dirty Gretton, dingy Greet,
Beggarly Winchcomb, Sudely sweet;
Hartshorn and Wittington Bell,
Andoversford and Merry Frog Mill.

'Henry In 1597 Shakespeare turned once more to English his-

IVt> tory. He studied Holinshed's 'Chronicle ' anew, together

with a valueless but very popular drama entitled ' The Famous
Victories of Henry V,' which was repeatedly acted between
1588 and 1595, and being licensed for publication in 1594,
was published in 1598. Out of such materials Shakespeare
worked up with splendid energy two plays on the reign of
Henry IV. They form one continuous whole, but are known
respectively as parts i. and ii. of 'Henry IV.'

The 'First Part of Henry IV ' was on February 25, 1598,
licensed for publication to the publisher Andrew Wise, who

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 81

had already fathered Shakespeare's Richard Hand Richard
III. It was printed soon afterwards by Peter Short, with
the title 'The History of Henrie the Fovrth; With the
battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry
Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North. With the
humorous conceits of Sir John Falstalffe.' The popularity
of the piece led to frequent reissues of this quarto edition —
in 1599, 1604, 1608, and 1613.

The 'Second Part of Henry IV,1 which was licensed for
publication much later — on August 23, 1600 — along with
'Much Ado About Nothing,' was printed by Valentine
Sims for Andrew Wise, now in partnership with William
Aspley; it bore the title 'The Second part of Henrie the
fourth, continuing to his death, and coronation of Henrie
the fift. With the humours of Sir John Falstaffe, and
swaggering Pistoll. As it hath been sundrie times publikely
acted by the right honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his
seruants. Written by William Shakespeare.' Smaller suc
cess attended the venture than in the case of the First Part,
and no reissue was called for in Shakespeare's lifetime.

The 'Second Part of Henry IV ' is almost as rich as the
Induction to 'The Taming of The Shrew' in direct refer
ences to persons and districts familiar to Shakespeare. Two
amusing scenes pass at the house of Justice Shallow in
Gloucestershire, a county which touched the boundaries of
Stratford (in. ii. and v. i.). When, in the second of these
scenes, the justice's factotum, Davy, asked his master 'to
countenance William Visor of Woncot against Clement
Perkes of the Hill, ' the local references are unmistakable.
Woodmancote, where the family of Visor or Vizard has
flourished since the sixteenth century, is still pronounced
Woncot. (The quarto of 1600 reads Woncote; all the
folios read Woncot. Yet Malone in the Variorum of 1803
introduced the new and unwarranted reading of Wincot,
which has been unwisely adopted by succeeding editors.)
Adjoining Woodmancote stands Stinchcombe Hill . (still
familiarly known to natives as 'The Hill '), which was in the
sixteenth century the home of the family of Perkes. Very
precise, too, are the allusions to the region of the Cotswold
Hills, which were easily accessible from Stratford. 'Will
Squele, a Cotswold man,' is noticed as one of Shallow's
friends in youth (m. ii. 23); and when Shallow's servant
Davy receives his master's instructions to sow 'the headland'

&2 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

'with red wheat, ' in the early autumn, there is an obvious
reference to the custom almost peculiar to the Cotswolds
of sowing 'red lammas ' wheat at an unusually early season
of the agricultural year.

The kingly hero of the two plays of 'Henry IV had
figured as a spirited young man in 'Richard II;1 he was
now represented as weighed down by care and age. With
him are contrasted (in part i.) his impetuous and ambitious
subject Hotspur and (in both parts) his son and heir
Prince Hal, whose boisterous disposition drives him from
Court to seek adventures among the haunters of taverns.
Hotspur is a vivid and fascinating portrait of a hot-headed
soldier, courageous to the point of rashness, and sacrificing
his life to his impetuous sense of honour. Prince Hal,
despite his vagaries, is endowed by the dramatist with far
more self-control and common sense.

Falstaff. On the first, as on every subsequent, production of

'Henry IV ' the main public interest was concentrated
neither on the King, nor on his son, nor on Hotspur, but
on the chief of Prince Hal's riotous companions. At the
outset the propriety of that great creation was questioned
on a political or historical ground of doubtful relevance.
Shakespeare in both parts of 'Henry IV ' originally named
the chief of the prince's associates after Sir John Oldcastle,
a character in the old play of 'The Famous Victories of
Henry V.' But Henry Brooke, eighth lord Cobham, who
succeeded to the title early in 1597, and claimed descent
from the historical Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard leader,
raised objection; and when the first part of the play was
published with the acting-company's authority in 1598,
Shakespeare bestowed on Prince Hal' s tun-bellied follower the
new and deathless name of Falstaff. A trustworthy edition
of the second part of ' Henry IV ' also appeared with Falstaff' s
name substituted for that of Oldcastle in 1600. There the
epilogue expressly denied that Falstaff had any characteristic
in common with the martyr Oldcastle: 'Oldcastle died a
martyr, and this is not the man. ' But the substitution of the
name 'Falstaff' did not pass without protest. It hazily recalled
Sir John Fastolf, an historical warrior of repute and wealth
of the fifteenth century who had already figured in 'Henry
VI,' and was owner at one time of the Boar's Head Tavern
in Southwark. An Oxford scholar, Dr. Richard James, writ
ing about 1625, protested that Shakespeare, after offending

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 83

Sir John Oldcastle's descendants by giving his 'buffoon '
the name of that resolute martyr, 'was put to make an
ignorant shift of abusing Sir John Fastolf, a man not
inferior in vertue, though not so famous in piety as the
other.' George Daniel of Beswick, the Cavalier poet,
similarly complained in 1647 of the ill use to which
Shakespeare had put Fastolf 's name in order to escape the
imputation of vilifying the Lollard leader. Fuller in his
'Worthies,' first published in 1662, while expressing satis
faction that Shakespeare had 'put out ' of the play Sir John
Oldcastle, was eloquent in his avowal of regret that 'Sir
John Fastolf' was 'put in,' on the ground that it was
making overbold with a great warrior's memory to make
him a 'Thrasonical puff and emblem of mock-valour.'

The offending introduction and withdrawal of Oldcastle's
name left a curious mark on literary history. Humbler
dramatists (Munday, Wilson, Drayton, and Hathaway),
seeking to profit by the attention drawn by Shakespeare to
the historical Oldcastle, produced a poor dramatic version
of Oldcastle's genuine history. They pretended to vindi
cate the Lollard's memory from the slur that Shakespeare's
identification of him with his fat knight had cast upon it.
In the prologue to the play of 'Oldcastle' (1600) appear
the lines:

It is no pampered glutton we present,

Nor aged councellor to youthful sinne;

But one whose vertue shone above the rest,

A valiant martyr and a vertuous Peere.

Nevertheless of two editions of 'Sir John Oldcastle '
published in 1600, one printed for T[homas] P[avier] was
impudently described on the title-page as by Shakespeare.
But it is not the historical traditions which are con
nected with Falstaff that give him his perennial attraction.
It is the personality that owes nothing to history with which
Shakespeare's imaginative power clothed him. The knight's
unfettered indulgence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant
mendacity, and his love of his own ease are purged of
offence by his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast
between his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies
that tinge of melancholy which is inseparable from the
highest manifestations of humour. The Elizabethan public,
despite the protests of historical critics, recognised the
triumphant success of the effort, and many of Falstaff s

84 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

telling phrases, with the names of his foils, Justice Shallow
and Silence, at once took root in popular speech. Shake
speare's purely comic power culminated in Falstaff; he
may be claimed as the most humorous figure in literature.
•Merry In all probability 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' a

Windsor ' cornedy inclining to farce, and unqualified by any pathetic
interest, followed close upon 'Henry IV.' In the epilogue
to the 'Second Part of Henry IV' Shakespeare had
written: 'If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat,
our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in
it ... where for anything I know Falstaff shall die of a
sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions.'
Rowe asserts that 'Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased
with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of
"Henry IV" that she commanded him to continue it for
one play more, and to show him in love.' Dennis, in the
dedication of 'The Comical Gallant' (1702), noted that
the 'Merry Wives' was written at the Queen's 'command
and by her direction; and she was so eager to see it acted
that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and
was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased with
the representation.' In his 'Letters ' (1721, p. 232) Dennis
reduces the period of composition to ten days — 'a pro
digious thing,' added Gildon, 'where all is so well contrived
and carried on without the least confusion.' The locali
sation of the scene at Windsor, and the complimentary
references to Windsor Castle, corroborate the tradition that
the comedy was prepared to meet a royal command. A
license for the publication of the play was granted by the
Stationers' Company to John Busby of the Crane in St.
Paul's Churchyard on January 18, 1601-2. An imperfect
draft was printed in 1602 by Thomas Creede of Thames
Street, and was published at the Fleurde Luce in St. Paul's
Churchyard by Arthur Johnson, who took the venture over
from Busby; but the folio of 1623 first supplied a complete
version of the 'Merry Wives.' The plot was probably sug
gested by an Italian novel. A tale from Straparola's 'Notti '
(iv. 4), of which an adaptation figured in the miscellany of
novels called Tarleton's 'Newes out of Purgatorie ' (1590);
another Italian tale from the 'Pecorone ' of Ser Giovanni
Fiorentino (i. 2) ; and a third romance, the Fishwife's tale of
Brainford, in the collection of stories called 'Westward for
Smelts, ' which is said by both Malone and Steevens to have

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 85

been published in 1603, although no edition earlier than 1620
is now known, — these three tales supply incidents distantly
resembling episodes in the play. Nowhere has Shakespeare
so vividly reflected the bluff temper of contemporary
middle-class society. The presentment of the buoyant
domestic life of an Elizabethan country town bears distinct
impress of Shakespeare's own experience. Again, there
are literal references to the neighbourhood of Stratford.
Justice Shallow, whose coat-of-arms is described as con
sisting of 'luces,' is thereby openly identified with Shake
speare's early foe, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. When
Shakespeare makes Master Slender repeat the report that
Master Page's fallow greyhound was 'outrun on Cotsall
[i.e. Cotswold] ' (i. i. 93), he testifies to his interest in the
coursing matches for which the Cotswold district was famed.

The spirited character of Prince Hal was peculiarly ' Henry V.'
congenial to its creator, and in 'Henry V Shakespeare,
during 1598, brought his career to its close. The play
was performed early in 1599, probably in the newly built
Globe Theatre. A very imperfect draft was published in
1600 jointly by Thomas Millington of Cornhill and John
Busby of 'St. Paul's Churchyard; it was printed, as in the
case of the imperfect draft of the ' Merry YVives,' by Thomas
Creede of Thames Street. This inadequate edition of
'Henry V,' which was ordered by the Stationers' Company
'to be stayed' on August 4, 1600, was twice reissued — in
1602 and 1608 — before a complete version was supplied in
the First Folio of 1623. The dramatic interest of 'Henry V '
is slender. There is abundance of comic element, but
death has removed Falstaff, whose last moments are
described with the simple pathos that comes of a matchless
art, and, though Falstaff's companions survive, they are thin
shadows of his substantial figure. New comic characters
are introduced in the persons of three soldiers respectively
of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish nationality, whose racial traits
are contrasted with telling effect. The irascible Irishman,
Captain MacMorris, is the only representative of his
nation who figures in the long list of Shakespeare's
dramatis persona. The scene in which the pedantic but
patriotic Welshman, Fluellen, avenges the sneers of the
braggart Pistol at his nation's emblem, by forcing him to
eat the leek, overflows with vivacious humour. The piece
in its main current presents a series of loosely connected

86 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

episodes in which the hero's manliness is displayed as
soldier, ruler, and lover. The topic reached its climax in
the victory of the English at Agincourt, which powerfully
appealed to patriotic sentiment. Besides the 'Famous
Victories of Henry V,' there was another lost piece on that
subject, which Henslowe produced for the first time on
November 28, 1595. 'Henry V may be regarded as
Shakespeare's final experiment in the dramatisation of
English history, and it artistically rounds off the series of
his 'histories ' which form collectively a kind of national
epic. For 'Henry VIII,' which was produced very late
in his career, he was only in part responsible, and that
'history' consequently belongs to a different category.
Essex A glimpse of autobiography may be discerned in the

"bLffio direct mention by Shakespeare in 'Henry V ' of an exciting
ofi6oi. episode in current history. In the prologue to act v.
Shakespeare foretold for Robert Devereux, second earl of
Essex, the close friend of his patron Southampton, an
entnusiastic reception by the people of London when he
should come home after 'broaching' rebellion in Ireland.

Were now the general of our gracious empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him ! (Act v. Chorus, 11. 30-4.)

Essex had set out on his disastrous mission as the would-
be pacificator of Ireland on March 27, 1599. The fact that
Southampton went with him probably accounts for Shake
speare's avowal of sympathy. But Essex's effort failed.
He was charged, soon after 'Henry V ' was produced, with
treasonable neglect of duty, and he sought in 1601, again
with the support of Southampton, to recover his position
by stirring up rebellion in London. Then Shakespeare's
reference to Essex's popularity with Londoners bore
perilous fruit. The friends of the rebel leaders sought the
dramatist's countenance. They paid 40-$-. to Augustine
Phillips, a close friend of Shakespeare and a leading member
of his company, to induce him to revive at the Globe Theatre
'Richard II ' (beyond doubt Shakespeare's play), in the hope
that its scene of the killing of a king might encourage a
popular outbreak. Phillips subsequently deposed that he
prudently told the conspirators who bespoke the piece that
'that play of Kyng Richard' was 'so old and so long out of

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 87

larity and
influence-

use as that they should have small or no company at it.'
None the less the performance took place on Saturday
(February 7, 1601), the day preceding that fixed by Essex
for the rising. The Queen, in a later conversation with
William Lambarde (on August 4, 1601), complained that
'this tragedie ' of 'Richard II,' which she had always viewed
with suspicion, was played at the period with seditious
intent 'forty times in open streets and houses.' At the trial
of Essex and his friends, Phillips gave evidence of the cir
cumstances under which the tragedy was revived at the Globe
Theatre. Essex was executed, and Southampton was impris
oned until the Queen's death. No proceedings were taken
against the players, but Shakespeare wisely abstained, for
the time, from any public reference to the fate either of
Essex or of his patron Southampton.

Such incidents served to accentuate Shakespeare's Shake-
growing reputation. For several years his genius as drama- o^.6
tist and poet had been acknowledged by critics and play-
goers alike, and his social and professional position had
become considerable. Inside the theatre his influence
was supreme. When, in 1598, the manager of the company
rejected Ben Jonson's first comedy — his 'Every Man in
his Humour' — Shakespeare intervened, according to a
credible tradition (reported by Rowe but denounced by
Gifford), and procured a reversal of the decision in the
interest of the unknown dramatist, who was his junior by
nine years. He took a part when the piece was performed.
Jonson was of a difficult and jealous temper, and subse
quently he gave vent to an occasional expression of scorn at
Shakespeare's expense, but, despite passing manifestations
of his unconquerable surliness, there can be no doubt that
Jonson cherished genuine esteem and affection for Shake
speare till death. Within a very few years of Shakespeare's
death Sir Nicholas L' Estrange, an industrious collector of
anecdotes, put into writing an anecdote for which he made
Ur. Donne responsible, attesting the amicable relations that
habitually subsisted between Shakespeare and Jonson.
'Shakespeare,' ran the story, 'was godfather to one of
Ben Jonson's children, and after the christening, being in a
deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and asked him
why he was so melancholy. "No, faith, Ben," says he,
"not I, but I have been considering a great while what
should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-

88 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

child, and I have resolv'd at last." "I pr'ythee, what?"
sayes he. "I' faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good
Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them." ! (Latten is
a mixed metal resembling brass.)

The creator of Falstaff could have been no stranger to
tavern life, and he doubtless took part with zest in the
convivialities of men of letters. Tradition reports that
Shakespeare joined, at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street,
those meetings of Jonson and his associates which Beau
mont described in his poetical 'Letter ' to Jonson:

What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.

'Many were the wit-combats,' wrote Fuller of Shake
speare in his 'Worthies' (1662), 'betwixt him and Ben
Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon
and an English man of war; Master Jonson (like the
former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in
his performances. Shakespear, with the English man-of-
war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all
tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the
quickness of his wit and invention. '

Of the many testimonies paid to Shakespeare's literary
reputation at this period of his career, the most striking was
Meres's that of Francis Meres. Meres was a learned graduate of
eulogy, Cambridge University, a divine and schoolmaster, who
brought out in 1598 a collection of apophthegms on morals,
religion, and literature which he entitled 'PalladisTamia.'
In the book he interpolated 'A comparative discourse of
our English poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian poets,'
and there exhaustively surveyed contemporary literary effort
in England. Shakespeare figured in Meres's pages as the
greatest man of letters of the day. 'The Muses would
speak Shakespeare's fine filed phrase,' Meres asserted, 'if
they could speak English.' 'Among the English,' he
declared, 'he was the most excellent in both kinds for the
stage ' (i.e. tragedy and comedy). The titles of six
comedies ('Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'Errors,' 'Love's
Labour's Lost,' 'Love's Labour's Won," 'Midsummer

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 89

Night's Dream,' and 'Merchant of Venice') and of six
tragedies ('Richard II,' 'Richard III,' 'Henry IV,' 'King
John,' 'Titus,' and 'Romeo and Juliet') were set forth,
and mention followed of his 'Venus and Adonis,' his
'Lucrece, ' and his 'sugred sonnets among his private
friends.' These were cited as proof 'that the sweet witty
soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake
speare.' In the same year a rival poet, Richard Barnfield,
in 'Poems in divers Humors,' predicted immortality for
Shakespeare with no less confidence.

And Shakespeare, thou whose honey-flowing vein
(Pleasing the world) thy Praises doth obtain,
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweet and chaste)
Thy name in Fame's immortal Book have placed,
Live ever you, at least in fame live ever :
Well may the Body die, but Fame dies never.

Shakespeare's name was thenceforth of value to unprin- Value of
cipled publishers, and they sought to palm off on their J1js^me
customers as his work the productions of inferior pens. As Ushers,
early as 1595, Thomas Creede, the surreptitious printer of
'Henry V ' and the 'Merry Wives,' had issued the crude
'Tragedie of Locrine,' as 'newly set foorth, overseene and
corected. By W. S. ' It appropriated many passages from
an older piece called 'Selimus,' which was possibly by
Greene, and certainly came into being long before Shake
speare had written a line of blank verse. The same initials
— ' W. S. ' —figured on the title-page of 'The True Chronicle
Historic of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, ' which was licensed
on August n, 1602, was printed for William Jones in that
year, and was reprinted verbatim by Thomas Snodham in
1613. On the title-page of the comedy entitled 'The Puri-
taine, or the Widdow of Watling Streete, ' which George
Eld printed in 1 607, ' W. S. ' was again stated to be the author.
Shakespeare's full name appeared on the title-pages of 'The
Life of Oldcastle' in 1600 (printed for T[homas] P[avier]),
of 'The London Prodigall ' in 1605 (printed by T. C. for
Nathaniel Butter), and of 'The Yorkshire Tragedy ' in 1608
(by R. B. or Thomas Pavier). None of these six plays has
any internal claim to Shakespeare's authorship; nevertheless
all were uncritically included in the third folio of his
collected works (1664). Schlegel and a few other critics of
repute have, on no grounds that merit acceptance, detected
signs of Shakespeare's genuine work in one of the six, 'The

90 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Yorkshire Tragedy'; it is a 'coarse, crude, and vigorous
impromptu,' which is clearly by a far less experienced
hand.

The fraudulent practice of crediting Shakespeare with
valueless plays from the pens of comparatively dull-witted
contemporaries was in vogue among enterprising traders in
literature both early and late in the seventeenth century.
The worthless old play on the subject of King John was
attributed to Shakespeare in the reissues of 1611 and 1622.
Humphrey Moseley, a reckless publisher of a later period,
fraudulently entered on the 'Stationers' Register ' on
September 9, 1653, two pieces which he represented to be
in whole or in part by Shakespeare, viz. 'The Merry Devill
of Edmonton' and the 'History of Cardenio, ' a share in
which was assigned to Fletcher. 'The Merry Devill of
Edmonton,' which was produced on the stage before the
close of the sixteenth century, was entered on the 'Station
ers' Register,' October 22, 1607, and was first published
anonymously in 1608; it is a delightful comedy, abounding
in both humour and romantic sentiment; at times it recalls
scenes of the 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' but no sign of
Shakespeare's workmanship is apparent. The 'History of
Cardenio ' is not extant (see p. 136). Francis Kirkman,
another active London publisher, who first printed William
Rowley's 'Birth of Merlin ' in 1662, described it on the title-
page as 'written by William Shakespeare and William Row
ley; ' it was reprinted at Halle in a so-called 'Collection
of pseudo-Shakespearean plays' in 1887.

'The But poems no less than plays, in which Shakespeare

Pilgrim*46 hac^ no nand, were deceptively placed to his credit as soon
as his fame was established. In 1599 William Jaggard, a
well-known pirate publisher, issued a poetic anthology
which he entitled 'The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shake
speare.' The volume opened with two sonnets by
Shakespeare which were not previously in print, and there
followed three poems drawn from the already published
'Love's Labour's Lost; ' but the bulk of the volume was
• by Richard Barnfield and others. A third edition of the
'Passionate Pilgrim ' was printed in 1612 with unaltered
title-page, although the incorrigible Jaggard had added
two new poems which he silently filched from Thomas
Heywood's 'Troia Britannica. ' Heywood called attention
to his own grievance in the dedicatory epistle before his

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 91

'Apology for Actors' (1612), and he added that Shake
speare resented the more substantial injury which the
publisher had done him. 'I know,' wrote Heywood of
Shakespeare, '[he was] much offended with M. Jaggard that
(altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold
with his name.' In the result the publisher seems to have
removed Shakespeare's name frojn the title-page of a few
copies. This is the only instance on record of a protest
on Shakespeare's part against the many injuries which he
suffered at the hands of contemporary publishers.

In 1 60 1 Shakespeare's full name was appended to 'a 'The
poetical essaie on the Phoenix and the Turtle,' which was ^ndthe
issued in an appendix to Robert Chester's 'Love's Martyr, or Turtle.'
Rosalins complaint, allegorically shadowing the Truth of Love
in the Constant Fate of the Phcenix and Turtle, ' — a volume
published by Edward Blount. The drift of Chester ' s crabbed
verse is not clear, nor can the praise of perspicuity be allowed
to the appendix to which Shakespeare contributed, together
with Marston, Chapman, Ben Jonson, and 'Igndto.' The
appendix is introduced by a new title-page running thus :
'Hereafter follow diverse poeticall Essaies on the former
subject, viz. : the Turtle and Phrenix. Done by the best
and chiefest of our modern writers, with their names sub
scribed to their particular workes: never before extant.'
Shakespeare's alleged contribution consists of thirteen four-
lined stanzas in trochaics, each line being of seven syllables,
with the rhymes disposed as in Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.'
The concluding 'threnos ' is in five three-lined stanzas, also
in trochaics, each stanza having a single rhyme. The poet
describes in enigmatic language the obsequies of the
Phcenix and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life
by the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be a
mere play of fancy without recondite intention, or it may be
of allegorical import; but whether it bear relation to pend
ing ecclesiastical, political, or metaphysical controversy,
or whether it interpret popular grief for the death of some
leaders of contemporary society, is not easily determined.
Happily Shakespeare wrote nothing else of like character.

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Shake
speare's
practical
tempera
ment.

His

father's

difficulties.

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE

SHAKESPEARE, in middle life, brought to practical affairs a
singularly sane and sober temperament. In 'Ratseis Ghost '
(1605), an anecdotal biography of Gamaliel Ratsey, a
notorious highwayman, who was hanged at Bedford on
March 26, 1605, the highwayman is represented as compel
ling a troop of actors whom he met by chance on the road
to perform in his presence. At the close of the performance
Ratsey, according to the memoir, addressed himself to a
leader of the company, and cynically urged him to practise
the utmost frugality in London. 'When thou feelest thy
purse well lined (the counsellor proceeded), buy thee some
place or lordship in the country that, growing weary of
playing, thy money may there bring thee to dignity and
reputation. ' Whether or no Ratsey 's biographer consciously
identified the highwayman's auditor with Shakespeare, it
was the prosaic course of conduct marked out by Ratsey
that Shakespeare literally followed. As soon as his position
in his profession was assured, he devoted his energies to re
establishing the fallen fortunes of his family in his native
place, and to acquiring for himself and his successors the
status of gentlefolk.

His father's pecuniary embarrassments had steadily
increased since his son's departure. Creditors harassed him
unceasingly. In 1587 one Nicholas Lane pursued him for
a debt for which he had become liable as surety fpr his
brother Henry, who was still farming their father's lands at
Snitterfield. Through 1588 and 1589 John Shakespeare
retaliated with pertinacity on a debtor named John Tomp-
son. But in 1591 a creditor, Adrian Quiney, obtained a writ
of distraint against him, and although in 1592 he attested
inventories taken on the death of two neighbours, Ralph
Shaw and Henry Field, father of the London printer, he was

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 93

on December 25 of the same year 'presented' as a recusant
for absenting himself from church. The commissioners
reported that his absence was probably due to 'fear of
process for debt.' He •figures for the last time in the
proceedings of the local court, in his customary role of
defendant, on March 9, 1595. He was then joined with
two fellow traders — Philip Green, a chandler, and Henry
Rogers, a butcher — as defendant in a suit brought by Adrian
Quiney and Thomas Barker for the recovery of the sum of
five pounds. Unlike his partners in the litigation, his name
is not followed in the record by a mention of his calling, and
when the suit reached a later stage his name was omitted
altogether. These may be viewed as indications that in the
course of the proceedings he finally retired from trade, which
had been of late prolific in disasters for him. In January
1596-7 he conveyed a slip of land attached to his dwelling
in Henley Street to one George Badger.

There is a likelihood that the poet's wife fared, in the His wife's
poet's absence, no better than his father. The only con- debt-
temporary mention made of her between her marriage in
1582 and her husband's death in 1616 is as the borrower
at an unascertained date (evidently before 1595) of forty
shillings from Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been
her father's shepherd. The money was unpaid when
Whittington died in 1601, and he directed his executor to
recover the sum from the poet and distribute it among the
poor of Stratford.

It was probably in 1596 that Shakespeare returned, after Shake-
nearly eleven years' absence, to his native town, and worked ^ufm f0
a revolution in the affairs of his family. The prosecutions Stratford
of his father in the local court ceased. Thenceforth the in IS96-
poet's relations with Stratford were uninterrupted. He still
resided in London for most of the year; but until the close
of his professional career he paid the town at least one
annual visit, and he was always formally described as 'of
Stratford-on-Avon, gentleman.' He was no doubt there on
August ii, 1596, when his only son, Hamnet, was buried in
the parish church; the boy was eleven and a half years old.

At the same date the poet's father, despite his pecuniary
embarrassments, took a step, by way of regaining his prestige,
which must be assigned to the poet's intervention. He made
application to the College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms.
It is still customary at the College of Arms to inform an

94 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

applicant for a coat-of-arms who has a father alive that the
application should be made in the father's name, and the
transaction conducted as if the father were the principal. It
was doubtless on advice of this kind that Shakespeare was
acting in his negotiations with the heralds. Then, as now,
the heralds when bestowing new coats-of-arms commonly
credited the applicant's family with an imaginary antiquity,
and little reliance need be placed on the biographical or
The coat- genealogical statements alleged in grants of arms. The
of-arms. poet's father or the poet himself when first applying to the
College stated that John Shakespeare, in 1568, while he was
bailiff of Stratford, and while he was by virtue of that office
a justice of the peace, had obtained from Robert Cook, then
Clarenceux herald, a 'pattern ' or sketch of an armorial coat.
This allegation is not noticed in the records of the College,
and may be a formal fiction designed by John Shakespeare
and his son to recommend their claim to the notice of the
heralds in 1596. The negotiations of 1568, if they were not
apocryphal, were certainly abortive; otherwise there would
have been no necessity for the further action of 1596. In
any case, on October 20, 1596, a draft, which remains in
the College of Arms, was prepared under the direction
of William Dethick, Garter King-of-Arms, granting John's
request for a coat-of-arms. Garter stated, with characteristic
vagueness, that he had been 'by credible report ' informed
that the applicant's 'parentes and late antecessors were for
theire valeant and faithfull service advanced and rewarded
by the most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of
famous memorie, sythencewhiche tyme they have continewed
at those partes [i.e. Warwickshire] in good reputacion and
credit; ' and that 'the said John [had] maryed Mary,
daughter and heiress of Robert Arden, of Wilmcote, gent.'
In consideration of these titles to honour, Garter declared
that he assigned to Shakespeare this shield, viz. : 'Gold, on
a bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his crest or cog
nizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent, standing on
a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as
aforesaid.' In the margin of this draft-grant there is a pen
sketch of the arms and crest, and above them is written the
motto, 'Non Sanz Droict.' A second copy of the draft,
also dated in 1596, is extant at the College. The only altera
tions are the substitution of the word 'grandfather ' for
'antecessors ' in the account of John Shakespeare's ancestry,

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 95

and the substitution of the word 'esquire ' for 'gent.' in the
description of his wife's father, Robert Arden. At the foot
of this draft, however, appeared some disconnected and
unverifiable memoranda which John Shakespeare or his son
had supplied to the heralds, to the effect that John had
been bailiff of Stratford, had received a 'pattern ' of a shield
from Clarenceux Cook, was a man of substance, and had
married into a worshipful family.

Neither of these drafts was fully executed. It may have
been that the unduly favourable representations made to the
College respecting John Shakespeare's social and pecuniary
position excited suspicion even in the habitually credulous
minds of the heralds, or those officers may have deemed the
profession of the son, who was conducting the negotiation,
a bar to completing the transaction. At any rate, Shake
speare and his father allowed three years to elapse before
(as far as extant documents show) they made a further
endeavour to secure the coveted distinction. In 1599 their
efforts were crowned with success. Changes in the interval
among the officials at the College may have facilitated the
proceedings. In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become Earl
Marshal and chief of the Heralds' College (the office had
been in commission in 1596); while the great scholar and
antiquary, William Camden, had joined the College, also in
1597, as Clarenceux King-of-Arms. The poet was favour
ably known to both Camden and the Earl of Essex, the
close friend of the Earl of Southampton. His father's
application now took a new form. No grant of arms was
asked for. It was asserted without qualification that the
coat, as set out in the draft-grants of 1596, had been assigned
to John Shakespeare while he was bailiff, and the heralds
were merely invited to give him a 'recognition ' or 'ex
emplification ' of it. An 'exemplification ' was invariably
secured more easily than a new grant of arms. The heralds
might, if they chose, tacitly accept, without examination,
the applicant's statement that his family had borne arms
long ago, and they thereby regarded themselves as relieved
of the obligation of close inquiry into his present status.
At the same time John Shakespeare asked permission for
himself to impale, and his eldest son and other children to
quarter, on 'his ancient coat-of-arms ' that of the Ardens of
Wilmcote, his wife's family. The College officers were
characteristically complacent. A draft was prepared under

96 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

the hands of Dethick, the Garter King, and of Camden, the
Clarenceux King, granting the required 'exemplification'
and authorising the required impalement and quartering.
On one point only did Dethick and Camden betray con
scientious scruples. Shakespeare and his father obvi
ously desired the heralds to recognise the title of Mary
Shakespeare (the poet's mother) to bear the arms of the
great Warwickshire family of Arden, then seated at Park
Hall. But the relationship, if it existed, was undetermined;
the Warwickshire Ardens were gentry of influence in the
county, and were certain to protest against any hasty
assumption of identity between their line and that of the
humble farmer of Wilmcote. After tricking the Warwick
shire Arden coat in the margin of the draft-grant for the
purpose of indicating the manner of its impalement, the
heralds on second thoughts erased it. They substituted in
their sketch the arms of an Arden family living at Alvanley
in the distant county of Cheshire. With that stock there
was no pretence that Robert Arden of Wilmcote was line
ally connected; but the bearers of the Alvanley coat were
unlikely to learn of its suggested impalement with the
Shakespeare shield, and the heralds were less liable to the
risk of litigation. But the Shakespeares wisely relieved
the College of all anxiety by omitting to assume the Arden
coat. The Shakespeare arms alone are displayed with full
heraldic elaboration on the monument above the poet's
grave in Stratford Church; they alone appear on the seal
and on the tombstone of his elder daughter, Mrs. Susanna
Hall, impaled with the arms of her husband; and they
alone were quartered by Thomas Nash, the first husband of
the poet's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall.

Some objection was taken a few years later to the grant
even of the Shakespeare shield, but it was based on vexa
tious grounds that could not be upheld. Early in the
seventeenth century Ralph Brooke, who was York herald
from 1593 till his death in 1625, and was long engaged in
a bitter quarrel with his fellow-officers at the College, com
plained -that the arms 'exemplified' to Shakespeare usurped
the coat of Lord Mauley, on whose shield 'a bend sable '
also figured. Dethick and Camden, who were responsible
for any breach of heraldic etiquette in the matter, answered
that the Shakespeare shield bore no more resemblance to
the Mauley coat than it did to that of the Harley and the

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 97

Ferrers families, which also bore 'a bend sable,' but that in
point of fact it differed conspicuously from all three by the
presence of a spear on the 'bend.' Dethick and Camden
added, with customary want of precision, that the person to
whom the grant was made had 'borne magistracy and was
justice of peace at Stratford-on-Avon; he maried the
daughter and heire of Arderne, and was able to maintain
that Estate.'

Meanwhile, in 1597, the poet had taken openly in his Purchase
own person a more effective step in the way of rehabilitat- ~ New
ing himself and his family in the eyes of his fellow-towns
men. On May 4 he purchased the largest house in the town,
known as New Place. It had been built by Sir Hugh
Clopton more than a century before, and seems to have
fallen into a ruinous condition. But Shakespeare paid for
it, with two barns and two gardens, the then substantial
sum of 6o/. Owing to the sudden death of the vendor,
William Underbill, on July 7, 1597, the original transfer of
the property was left at the time incomplete. Underbill's
son Fulk died a felon, and he was succeeded in the family
estates by his brother Hercules, who on coming of age,
May 1602, completed in a new deed the transfer of New
Place to Shakespeare. On February 4, 1597-8, Shake
speare was described as a householder in Chapel Street
ward, in which New Place was situated, and as the owner
of ten quarters of corn. The inventory was made owing to
the presence of famine in the town, and only two inhabi
tants were credited with a larger holding. In the same
year (1598) he procured stone for the repair of the house,
and before 1602 had planted a fruit orchard. He is
traditionally said to have interested himself in the garden,
and to have planted with his own hands a mulberry-tree,
which was long a prominent feature of it. When this was
cut down, in 1758, numerous relics were made from it,
and were treated with an almost superstitious veneration.
Shakespeare does not appear to have permanently settled
at New Place till 1611. In 1609 the house, or part of it,
was occupied by the town clerk, Thomas ^ Greene, 'alias
Shakespeare,' who claimed to be the poet's cousin. His
grandmother seems to have been a Shakespeare. He often
acted as the poet's legal adviser.

It was doubtless under their son's guidance that Shake
speare's father and mother set on foot in November 1597 —
H

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Appeals
for aid
from his
fellow-
townsmen.

Financial
position
before
1599-

six months after his acquisition of New Place — a lawsuit
against John Lambert for the recovery of the mortgaged
estate of Asbies in Wilmcote. The litigation dragged on
for some years without result.

Three letters written during 1598 by leading men at
Stratford are still extant among the Corporation's archives,
and leave no doubt of the reputation for wealth and
influence with which the purchase of New Place invested
the poet in his fellow- townsmen's eyes. Abraham Sturley,
who was once bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently to a
brother in London, says: 'This is one special remembrance
from our father's motion. It seemeth by him that our
countryman, Mr. Shakspere, is willing to disburse some
money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or
near about us: he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move
him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instructions
you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make
therefor, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and
would do us much good. ' Richard Quiney, another towns
man, father of Thomas (afterwards one of Shakespeare's
two sons-in-law), was, in the autumn of the same year,
harassed by debt, and on October 25 appealed to Shake
speare for a loan of money. 'Loving countryman,' the
application ran, 'I am bold of you as of a friend crav
ing your help with xxx //.' Quiney was staying at the Bell
Inn in Carter Lane, London, and his main business in
the metropolis was to procure exemption for the town of
Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. Abraham Sturley,
writing to Quiney from Stratford ten days later (on
November 4, 1598), pointed out to him that since the town
was wholly unable, in consequence of the dearth of corn, to
pay the tax, he hoped 'that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak.,
would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall
hear when, and where, and how. '

The financial prosperity to which this correspondence
and the transactions immediately preceding it point has
been treated as one of the chief mysteries of Shakespeare's
career, but the difficulties are gratuitous. There is practi
cally nothing in Shakespeare's financial position that a study
of the contemporary conditions of theatrical life does not
fully explain, although in estimating the present value of
Shakespeare's income we must multiply each of its items
by eight. It was not until 1599, when the Globe Theatre was

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 99

built, that he acquired any share in the profits of a play
house. But his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor
were by no means contemptible at an earlier date. His
gains in the capacity of dramatist formed the smaller source
of income. The highest price known to have been paid
before 1599 to an author for a play by the manager of an act
ing company was 1 i/. ; 6/. was the lowest rate. A small ad
ditional gratuity — rarely apparently exceeding ten shillings
— was bestowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first pro
duction was especially well received; and the author was by
custom allotted, by way of 'benefit,' a certain proportion of
the receipts of the theatre on the production of a play for the
second time. Other sums, amounting at times to as much as
4/., were bestowed on the author for revising and altering an
old play for a revival. The nineteen plays which may be set
to Shakespeare's credit between 1591 and 1599, combined
with such revising work as fell to his lot during those eight
years, cannot consequently have brought him less than 2oo/.,
or some 2O/. a year. Eight or nine of these plays were
published during the period, but the publishers operated
independently of the author, taking all the risks and, at the
same time, all the receipts. The publication of Shake
speare's plays in no way affected his monetary resources,
although his friendly relations with the printer Field doubt
less secured him, despite the absence of any copyright
law, some part of the profits in the large and continuous
sale of his poems.

But it was as an actor that at an early date he acquired
a genuinely substantial and secure income. There is abun
dance of contemporary evidence to show that the stage was
for an efficient actor an assured avenue to comparative
wealth. In 1590 Robert Greene describes in his tract
entitled 'Never too Late ' a meeting with a player whom he
took by his 'outward habit' to be 'a gentleman of great
living' and a 'substantial man.' The player informed
Greene that he had at the beginning of his career travelled
on foot, bearing his theatrical properties on his back, but
he prospered so rapidly that at the time of speaking
'his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for
2oo/.' Among his neighbours 'where he dwelt' he was
reputed able 'at his proper cost to build a windmill.'
In the university play, 'The Return from Parnassus '
(1601 ?), a poor student enviously complains of the wealth

ioo SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

, i

and position which a successful actor derived from his

calling.

England affords those glorious vagabonds,

That carried erst their fardles on their backs,

Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,

Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,

And pages to attend their masterships;

With mouthing words that better wits had framed,

They purchase lands and now esquires are made.

The travelling actors, from whom the highwayman
Gamaliel Ratsey extorted a free performance in 1604, were
represented as men with the certainty of a rich competency
in prospect. An efficient actor received in 1635 as large
a regular salary as i8o/. The lowest known valuation set
an actor's wages at $s. a day or about 457. a year.
Shakespeare's emoluments as an actor before 1599 are not
likely to have fallen below ioo/. ; while the remuneration
due to performances at Court or in noblemen's houses, if
the accounts of 1594 be accepted as the basis of reckoning,
added some i5/.

Thus over 1307. (equal to i,o4o/. of to-day) would be
Shakespeare's average annual revenue before 1599. Such
a sum would be regarded as a very large income in a coun
try town. According to the author of 'Ratseis Ghost,'
the actor, who may well have been meant for Shakespeare,
practised in London a strict frugality, and there seems no
reason why Shakespeare should not have been able in 1597
to draw from his savings 6o/. wherewith to buy New Place.
His resources might well justify his fellow-townsmen's
opinion of his wealth in 1598, and suffice between 1597 and
1599 to meet his expenses, in rebuilding the house, stocking
the barns with grain, and conducting various legal pro
ceedings. But, according to tradition, he had in the Earl
of Southampton a wealthy and generous friend who on one
occasion gave him a large gift of money to enable 'him to
go through with ' a purchase to which he had a mind. A
munificent gift, added to professional gains, leaves nothing
unaccounted for in Shakespeare's financial position before

Financial After 1599 his sources of income from the theatre greatly

position increased. In 1635 the heirs of the actor Richard Burbage

were engaged in litigation respecting their proprietary rights

in the two playhouses, the Globe and the Blackf riars theatres.

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 101

The documents relating to this litigation supply authentic,
although not very detailed, information of Shakespeare's
interest in theatrical property. Richard Burbage, with his
brother Cuthbert, erected at their sole cost the Globe
Theatre in the winter of 1598-9, and the Blackfriars Theatre,
which their father was building at the time of his death in
1597, was also their property. After completing the Globe
they leased out, for twenty-one years, shares in the receipts
of the theatre to 'those deserving men Shakespeare,
Hemings, Condell, Philips, and others.' All the share
holders named were, like Burbage, active members of Shake
speare's company of players. Trie shares, which numbered
sixteen in all, carried with them the obligation of providing
for the expenses of the playhouse, and were doubtless in the
first instance freely bestowed. Hamlet claims, in the play
scene (m. ii. 293), that the success of his improvised
tragedy deserved to 'get him a fellowship in a cry of players '
— a proof that a successful dramatist might reasonably
expect such a reward for a conspicuous effort. In 'Hamlet,'
moreover, both a share and a half -share of 'a fellowship in
a cry of players ' are described as assets of enviable value
(in. ii. 294-6). How many shares originally fell to Shake
speare there is no means of determining. Records of
later subdivisions suggest that they did not exceed two.
The Glooe was an exceptionally large and popular play
house. It would accommodate some two thousand spec
tators, whose places cost them sums varying between
twopence and half a crown. The receipts were therefore
considerable, hardly less than 25/. daily, or some 8,ooo/. a
year. According to the documents of 1635, an actor-sharer
at the Globe received above 2oo/. a year on each share
besides his actor's salary of i8o/. Thus Shakespeare drew
from the Globe Theatre, at the lowest estimate, more than
5oo/. a year in all.

His interest in the Blackfriars Theatre was comparatively
unimportant, and is less easy to estimate. The often-
quoted documents on which Collier depended to prove him
a substantial shareholder in that playhouse have long been
proved to be forgeries. The pleas in the lawsuit of 1635
show that the Burbages, the owners, leased the Blackfriars
Theatre after its establishment in 1597 for a long term of
years to the master of the Children of the Chapel, but
bought out the lessee at the end of 1609, and then 'placed '

102

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Later in
come.

Incomes
of fellow-
actors.

in it 'men-players which were Hemings, Condell, Shake
speare, &c.' To these and other actors they allotted shares
in the receipts, the shares numbering eight in all. The
profits were far smaller than at the Globe, and if Shakespeare
held one share (certainty on the point is impossible), it
added not more than ioo/. a year to his income, and that
not until 1610.

His remuneration as dramatist between 1599 and 1611
was also by no means contemptible. Prices paid to
dramatists for plays rose rapidly in the early years of the
seventeenth century. In 1613 Robert Daborne, a play
wright of insignificant reputation, charged for a drama as
much as 25/. Similarly the value of the author's 'benefits '
grew with the growing vogue of the theatre. The excep
tional popularity of Shakespeare's plays after 1599 gave him
the full advantage of higher rates of pecuniary reward in all
directions, and the seventeen plays which were produced by
him between that year and the close of his professional
career in 1611 probably brought him an average return of
2O/. each or 340/. in all — nearly 3o/. a year. At the same
time the increase in the number of Court performances
under James I, and the additional favour bestowed on
Shakespeare's company, may well have given that source of
income the enhanced value of 2o/. a year.

Thus Shakespeare in the later period of his life was
earning above 6oo/. a year in money of the period. With
so large a professional income he could easily, with good
management, have completed those purchases of houses and
land at Stratford on which he laid out, between 1599 and
1613, a total sum of gyo/., or an annual average of yo/.
These properties, it must be remembered, represented
investments, and he drew rent from most of them. He
traded, too, in agricultural produce. There is nothing
inherently improbable in the statement of John Ward, the
seventeenth-century vicar of Stratford, that in his last years
'he spent at the rate of a thousand a year, as I have heard,'
although we may reasonably make allowance for exaggera
tion in the round figures.

Shakespeare realised his theatrical shares several years
before his death in 1616, when he left, according to his will,
35o/. in money in addition to an extensive real estate and
numerous personal belongings. There was nothing excep
tional in this comparative affluence. His friends and

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 103

fellow-actors, Heming and Condell, amassed equally large,
if not larger, fortunes. Burbage died in 1619 worth 3oo/.
in land, besides personal property; while a contemporary
actor and theatrical proprietor, Edward Alleyn, purchased
the manor of Dulwich for io,ooo/. (in money of his own
day), and devoted it, with much other property, to public
uses, at the same time as he made ample provision for his
family out of the residue of his estate. Gifts from patrons
may have continued occasionally to augment Shakespeare's
resources, but his wealth can be satisfactorily assigned to
better attested agencies. There is no ground for treating it
as of mysterious origin.

Between 1599 and 1611, while London remained Shake
speare's chief home, he built up at Stratford a large landed
estate which his purchase of New Place had inaugurated.
In 1601 his father died, being buried on September 8. He
apparently left no will, and the poet, as the eldest son,
inherited the houses in Henley Street, the only portion of
the property of the elder Shakespeare or of his wife which
had not been alienated to creditors. Shakespeare permitted
his mother to reside in one of the Henley Street nouses till
her death (she was buried September 9, 1608), and he de
rived a modest rent from the other. On May i, 1602, he Forma-
purchased for 3207. of the rich landowners William and ^ne°[at
John Combe of Stratford 107 acres of arable land near the atstrat-
town. The conveyance was delivered, in the poet's absence, f°7d-
to his brother Gilbert, 'to the use of the within named
William Shakespeare.' A third purchase quickly followed.
On September 28, 1602, at a court baron of the manor of
Rowington, one Walter Getley transferred to the poet a
cottage and garden which were situated at Chapel Lane,
opposite the lower grounds of New Place. They were held
practically in fee-simple at the annual rental of 2s. 6d. It
appears from the roll that Shakespeare did not attend the
manorial court held on the day fixed for the transfer of the
property at Rowington, and it was consequently stipulated
then that the estate should remain in the hands of the lady
of the manor until he completed the purchase in person.
At a later period he was admitted to the copyhold, and he
settled the remainder on his two daughters in fee. In
April 1 6 10 he purchased from the Combes 20 acres of
pasture land, to add to the 107 of arable land that he had
acquired of the same owners in 1602.

104

SHAKESPEARE >S LIFE AND WORK

The

Stratford

tithes.

Recovery
of small
debts.

As early as 1598 Abraham Sturley had suggested that
Shakespeare should purchase the tithes of Stratford. Seven
years later, on July 24, 1605, he bought for 4407. of Ralph
Huband an unexpired term of thirty-one years of a ninety-
two years' lease of a moiety of the tithes of Stratford, Old
Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. The moiety was
subject to a rent of iy/. to the corporation, who were the
reversionary owners on the lease's expiration, and of 5/. to
John Barker, the heir of a former proprietor. The invest
ment brought Shakespeare, under the most favourable
circumstances, no more than an annuity of 387., and the
refusal of persons who claimed an interest in the other
moiety to acknowledge the full extent of their liability to the
corporation led that body to demand from the poet payments
justly due from others. After 1609 he joined with two
interested persons, Richard Lane of Awston and Thomas
Greene, the town clerk of Stratford, in a suit in Chancery
to determine the exact responsibilities of all the tithe-
owners, and in 1612 they presented a bill of complaint to
Lord-chancellor Ellesmere, with what result is unknown.
His acquisition of a part-ownership in the tithes was fruitful
in legal embarrassments.

Shakespeare inherited his father's love of litigation, and
stood rigorously by his rights in all his business relations.
In March 1600 he recovered in London a debt of 7/. from
one John Clayton. In July 1604, in the local court at
Stratford, he sued one Philip Rogers, to whom he had
supplied since the preceding March malt to the value of
i/. 19.?. iod., and had on June 25 lent 2$. in cash. Rogers
paid back 65-., and Shakespeare sought the balance of the
account, i/. iS-y. io*/. During 1608 and 1609 he was at
law with another fellow-townsman, John Addenbroke. On
February 15, 1609, Shakespeare, who was apparently rep
resented by his solicitor and kinsman, Thomas Greene,
obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the
payment of 6/., and i/. 5-r. costs, but Addenbroke left the
town, and the triumph proved barren. Shakespeare avenged
himself by proceeding against one Thomas Horneby, who
had acted as the absconding debtor's bail.

MATURITY OF GENIUS 105

MATURITY OF GENIUS

WITH an inconsistency that is more apparent than real, Literary
the astute business transactions of these years (1597-1611) work in
synchronise with the production of Shakespeare's noblest
literary work — of his most sustained and serious efforts in
comedy, tragedy, and romance. In 1599, after abandoning
English history with ' Henry V, ' he addressed himself to the
composition of his three most perfect essays in comedy, —
'Much Ado about Nothing,' 'As You Like It,' and 'Twelfth
Night.' Their good-humoured tone seems to reveal their
author in his happiest frame of mind; in each the gaiety and
tenderness of youthful womanhood are exhibited in fascinat
ing union; while Shakespeare's lyric gift bred no sweeter
melodies than the songs with which the three plays are
interspersed. At the same time each comedy enshrines such
penetrating reflections on mysterious problems of life as
mark the stage of maturity in the growth of the author's
intellect. The first two of the three plays were entered on
the 'Stationers' Registers' before August 4, 1600, on which
day a prohibition was set on their publication, as well as on
the publication of 'Henry V ' and of Ben Jonson's 'Every
Man in his Humour.' This was one of the many efforts of
the acting company to stop the publication of plays in the
belief that the practice was injurious to their rights. The
effort was only partially successful. 'Much Ado,' like
'Henry V,' was published before the close of the year, being
licensed for publication to Andrew Wise and William
Aspleyon August 23, 1600, at the same time as the 'Second
Part of Henry VI.' Neither 'As You Like It' nor 'Twelfth
Night,' however, was printed till it appeared in the Folio.

In 'Much Ado,' which appears to have been written in 'Much
1599, the brilliant and spirited comedy of Benedick and ^°
Beatrice, and of the blundering watchmen Dogberry and Nothing.'

106 SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND WORK

Verges, is wholly original; but the sombre story of Hero
and Claudio, about which the comic incident revolves, is
traceable to an Italian source. Bandello had first narrated
the sad experiences of the heroine, whom he christened
Fenicia, in his 'Novelle' (No. xxii.); Bandello's version
was translated in Belleforest's 'Histoires Tragiques, ' and
Ariosto grafted it on his 'Orlando Furioso ' (canto v.).
Ariosto's rendering of the story, in which the injured heroine
is called Ginevra and her lover Ariodante, was dramatised
in England long before Shakespeare designed his comedy.
According to the accounts of the Court revels, 'A Historic
of Ariodante and Ginevra was shown before her Majestic
on Shrovetuesdaie at night' in 1583. In 1591 Ariosto's
account was turned into English by Sir John Harington in
his spirited translation of 'Orlando Furioso.' Either the
dramatised 'Historic ' (which has not survived in print or
manuscript) or Harington' s verse may be regarded as the
immediate source of the serious plot of 'Much Ado.'
Throughout the play Shakespeare blended with a con
vincing naturalness the serious aspects of humanity, which
the Italian story suggested, and the ludicrous aspects, which
he wholly illustrated by incident of his own invention. The
popular comic actor William Kemp filled the role of Dog
berry, and Cowley appeared as Verges. In both the Quarto
in 1600 and the Folio of 1623 these actors' names are pre
fixed by a copyist's error to some of the speeches allotted to
the two characters (act iv., scene ii.).

•As You 'As You Like It,' which quickly followed, is a dramatic

Like It.' adaptation of Lodge's romance, 'Rosalynde, Euphues
Golden Legacie ' (1590), but Shakespeare added three new
characters of first-rate interest — Jaques, the meditative
cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all
Shakespeare's fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for
the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the Wrestler,
and for Touchstone's description of the diverse shapes of a
lie, were clearly drawn from a book called 'Saviolo's Prac
tise,' a manual of the art of self-defence, which appeared
in 1595 from the pen of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian
fencing-master in the service of the Earl of Essex. None
of Shakespeare's comedies breathes a more placid temper
or approaches more nearly to a pastoral drama. Yet there
is no lack of intellectual or poetic energy in the enunciation
of the contemplative philosophy which is cultivated in the

MATURITY OF GENIUS 107

Forest of Arden. In Rosalind, Celia, Phrebe, and Audrey
four types of youthful womanhood are contrasted with the
liveliest humour.

The date of 'Twelfth Night' is probably 1600, and its 'Twelfth
name, which has no reference to the story, doubtless com- Nl£ht>
memorates the fact that it was designed for a Twelfth Night
celebration. 'The new map with the augmentation of the
Indies,' spoken of by Maria (in. ii. 86), was a respectful
reference to the great map of the world or 'hydrographical
description ' which was first issued with Hakluyt's 'Voyages,'
in 1599 or 1600, and first disclosed the full extent of recent
explorations of the 'Indies' in the New World and the Old.
Like the 'Comedy of Errors,' 'Twelfth Night ' achieved the
distinction, early in its career, of a presentation at an Inn
of Court. It was produced at Middle Temple Hall on
February 2, 1601-2, and Manningham, a barrister who was
present, described the performance. Manningham wrote
that the piece was 'much like the "Comedy of Errors" or
"Menechmi " in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in
Italian called "Inganni."' Two sixteenth-century Italian
plays entitled 'Gl' Inganni' ('The Cheats'), and a third
called 'Gl' Ingannati ' ('The Dupes'), bear resemblance to
'Twelfth Night.' It is just possible that Shakespeare had
recourse to the last, which was based on Bandello's novel of
Nicuola, and, being first published at Siena in 1538, became
popular throughout Italy. But in all probability he drew
the story solely from the 'Historic of Apolonius and Silla,'
which was related in 'Riche his Farewell to Militarie
Profession' (1581). The author of that volume, Barnabe
Riche, translated the tale either direct from Bandello's Italian
novel or from the French rendering of Bandello's work in
Belief crest's 'Histoires Tragiques.' Romantic pathos, as in
'Much Ado,' is the dominant note of the main plot of
'Twelfth Night,' but Shakespeare neutralises the tone of
sadness by his mirthful portrayal of Malvolio, Sir Toby
Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian, the clown Feste,
and Maria, all of whom are his own creations. The ludicrous
gravity of Malvolio proved exceptionally popular on the stage.

In 1 60 1 Shakespeare made a new departure by drawing
a plot from North's noble translation of 'Plutarch's Lives.'
Plutarch is the king of biographers, and the deference which
Shakespeare paid his work by adhering to the phraseology
wherever it was practicable illustrates his literary discrimina-

io8 SHAKESPEARE'S LfFE AND WORK

tion. On Plutarch's lives of Julius Caesar, Brutus, and
Antony, Shakespeare based his historical tragedy of 'Julius
•Juiius( Caesar.' Weever, in 1601, in his 'Mirror of Martyrs, ' plainly
1601^' refers to the masterly speech in the Forum at Caesar's funeral
which Shakespeare first put into Antony's mouth. There is
no suggestion of the speech in Plutarch; hence the com
position of 'Julius Caesar ' may be held to have preceded
the issue of Weever's book in 1601. The general topic was
already familiar on the stage. Polonius told Hamlet how,
when he was at the university, he 'did enact Julius Caesar;
he was kill'd in the Capitol: Brutus kill'd him.' A play of
the same title was known as early as 1589, and was acted in
1594 by Shakespeare's company. Shakespeare's piece is a
penetrating study of political life, and, although the murder
and funeral of Caesar form the central episode and not the
climax, the tragedy is thoroughly well planned and balanced.
Caesar is ironically depicted in his dotage. The characters of
Brutus, Antony, and Cassius, the real heroes of the action,
are exhibited with faultless art. The fifth act, which presents
the battle of Philippi in progress, proves ineffective on the
stage, but the reader never relaxes his interest in the fortunes
of the vanquished Brutus, whose death is the catastrophe.

While 'Julius Caesar ' was winning its first laurels on the
stage, the fortunes of the London theatres were menaced by
two manifestations of unreasoning prejudice on the part of
the public. The earlier manifestation, although speciously
the more serious, was in effect innocuous. The puritans
of the city of London had long agitated for the suppression
of all theatrical performances, and it seemed as if the agita
tors triumphed when they induced the Privy Council on
June 22, 1600, to issue to the officers of the Corporation of
London and to the justices of the peace of Middlesex and
Surrey an order forbidding the maintenance of more than
two playhouses — one in Middlesex (Alleyn's newly erected
playhouse, the 'Fortune ' in Cripplegate) and the other in
Surrey (the 'Globe ' on the Bankside). The contemplated
restriction would have deprived very many actors of employ
ment, and driven others to seek a precarious livelihood in
the provinces. Happily, disaster was averted by the failure
of the municipal authorities and the magistrates of Surrey
and Middlesex to make the order operative. All the
London theatres that were already in existence went on
their way unchecked.

MATURITY OF GENIUS

109

More calamitous was a temporary reverse of fortune The strife
which Shakespeare's company, in common with the other a^fand
companies of adult actors, suffered soon afterwards at the boy actors,
hands, not of fanatical enemies of the drama, but of play
goers who were its avowed supporters. The company of
boy-actors, chiefly recruited from the choristers of the
Chapel Royal, and known as 'the Children of the Chapel,'
had since 1597 been installed at the new theatre in Black-
friars, and after 1600 the fortunes of the veterans, who
occupied rival stages, were put in jeopardy by the extrava
gant outburst of public favour that the boys' performance
evoked. In 'Hamlet ' (n. ii. 348-94), the play which followed
'Julius Caesar,' Shakespeare pointed out the perils of the
situation. The adult actors, Shakespeare asserted, were pre
vented from performing in London through no falling off in
their efficiency, but by the 'late innovation ' or 'novelty ' of
the children's vogue. They were compelled to go on tour in
the provinces, at the expense of their revenues and reputa
tion, because 'an aery [i.e. nest] of children, little eyases
[i.e. young hawks],' dominated the theatrical world, and
monopolised public applause. 'These are now the
fashion,' the dramatist lamented, and he made the topic
the text of a reflection on the fickleness of public taste :

HAMLET. Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ. Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load
too.

HAMLET. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark,
and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.

Jealousies in the ranks of the dramatists accentuated
the actor's difficulties. Ben Jonson was, at the end of
the sixteenth century, engaged in a fierce personal quarrel
with two of his fellow-dramatists, Marston and Dekker.
The adult actors generally avowed sympathy with Jonson's
foes. Jonson, by way of revenge, sought an offensive
alliance with 'the Children of the Chapel.' Under careful
tuition the boys proved capable of performing much the
same pieces as the men. To 'the children ' Jonson offered
in 1600 his comical satire of 'Cynthia's Revels,' in which
he held up to ridicule Dekker, Marston, and their actor-
friends. The play, when acted by 'the children' at the
Blackfriars Theatre, was warmly welcomed by the audience.
Next year Jonson repeated his manoeuvre with greater

I io SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

effect. He learnt that Marston and Dekker were con
spiring with the actors of Shakespeare's company to attack
him in a piece called 'Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of
the Humourous Poet.' He anticipated their design by
producing, again with 'the Children of the Chapel,' his
'Poetaster,' which was throughout a venomous invective
against his enemies — dramatists and actors alike. Shake
speare's company retorted by producing Dekker and
Marston 's 'Satiro-Mastix ' at the Globe Theatre next year.
But Jonson's action had given new life to the vogue of the
children. Playgoers took sides in the struggle, and their
attention was for a season riveted, to the exclusion of
topics more germane to their province, on the actors' and
dramatists' boisterous war of personalities.

Shake- In his detailed references to the conflict in 'Hamlet'

references Shakespeare protested against the abusive comments on the

to the men-actors of 'the common stages' or public theatres

struggle. which were put into the children's mouths. Rosencrantz

declared that 'the children so berattle [i.e. assail] the

common stages — so they call them — that many wearing

rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come

thither [i.e. to the public theatres].' Hamlet in pursuit of

the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the

vogue of the 'child-actors ' did them a poor service, because

when the boys should reach men's estate they would run

the risk, if they continued on the stage, of the same insults

and neglect which now threatened their seniors.

HAMLET. What are they children? Who maintains 'em? how
are they escoted [i.e. paid]? Will they pursue the quality [i.e. the
actor's profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say
afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players — as it
is most like, if their means are no better — their writers do them wrong
to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides,
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre [i.e. incite] them to controversy :
there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and
the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET. Is it possible ?

GUILDENSTERN. O, there has been much throwing about of
brains !

Shakespeare clearly favoured the adult actors in their
rivalry with the boys, but he wrote more like a disinterested
spectator than an active partisan when he made specific
reference to the strife between the poet Ben Jonson and

MATURITY OF GENIUS in

the players. In the prologue to 'Troilus and Cressida,'
which he penned in 1603, he warned his hearers, with
obvious allusion to Ben Jonson's battles, that he hesitated
to identify himself with either actor or poet. Passages in
Ben Jonson's 'Poetaster,' moreover, pointedly suggest that
Shakespeare cultivated so assiduously an attitude of neu
trality that Jonson acknowledged him to be qualified for
the role of peacemaker. The gentleness of disposition with
which Shakespeare was invariably credited by his friends
would have well fitted him for such an office.

Jonson figures personally in the 'Poetaster' under the Jonson's
name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his friends,
Tibullus and Gallus, eulogise the work and genius of
another character, Virgil, in terms so closely resembling
those which Jonson is known to have applied to Shake
speare that they may be regarded as intended to apply to
him (act v. sc. i.). Jonson points out that Virgil, by his
penetrating intuition, achieved the great effects which
others laboriously sought to reach through rules of art.

His learning labours not the school-like gloss

That most consists of echoing words and terms . . .

Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance —

Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts • —

But a direct and analytic sum

Of all the worth and first effects of arts.

And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life

That it shall gather strength of life with being,

And live hereafter, more admired than now.

Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings
touched with telling truth upon every vicissitude of human
existence.

That which he hath writ
Is with such judgment laboured and distilled
Through all the needful uses of our lives
That, could a man remember but his lines,
He should not touch at any serious point
But he might breathe his spirit out of him.

Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Caesar to act as
judge between Horace and his libellers, and he advises the
administration of purging pills to the offenders. That
course of treatment is adopted with satisfactory results.

As against this interpretation, one contemporary witness
has been held to testify that Shakespeare stemmed the tide

112 SHAKESPEARE *S LIFE AND WORK

of Jonson's embittered activity by no peace-making inter
position, but by joining his foes, and by administering to
him, with their aid, the identical course of medicine
which in the 'Poetaster' is meted out to his enemies. In
the same year (1601) as the 'Poetaster' was produced,
'The Return from Parnassus' — a third piece in a trilogy
of plays — was 'acted by the students in St. John's College,
Cambridge.' In this piece, as in its two predecessors,
Shakespeare received, both as a playwright and a poet, high
commendation, although his poems were judged to reflect
somewhat too largely 'love's lazy foolish languishment.'
The actor Burbage was introduced in his own name in
structing an aspirant to the actor's profession in the part
of Richard III, and the familiar lines from Shakespeare's
play —

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York —

are recited by the pupil as part of his lesson. Subsequently
in a prose dialogue between Shakespeare's fellow-actors
Burbage and Kempe, Kempe remarks of university drama
tists, 'Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all
down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson
is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace, giving the
poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a
purge that made him bewray his credit.' Burbage adds:
'He is a shrewd fellow indeed.' This perplexing passage
has been held to mean that Shakespeare took a decisive
part against Jonson in the controversy with Dekker and
Dekker's actor friends. But such a conclusion is nowhere
corroborated, and seems to be confuted by the eulogies of
Virgil in the 'Poetaster ' and by the general handling of the
Shake- theme in 'Hamlet.' The words quoted from 'The Return
aneged.5 from Parnassus ' hardly admit of a literal interpretation,
partisan- Probably the 'purge ' that Shakespeare was alleged by the
ship. author of 'The Return from Parnassus' to have given

Jonson meant no more than that Shakespeare had signally
outstripped Jonson in popular esteem. As the author of
'Julius Cassar,' he had just proved his command of topics
that were peculiarly suited to Jonson's vein, and had in
fact outrun his churlish comrade on his own ground.

Jonson's resentment at the success of 'Julius Caesar'
is not open to question. It is on record. The most

MATURITY OF GENIUS 113

scornful criticism that Jonson is known to have passed on Ben jon-
any composition by Shakespeare was aimed at a passage in f°n on
'Julius Caesar,' and as Jonson's attack is barely justifiable
on literary grounds, it is fair to assume that the play was
distasteful to him from other considerations. 'Many
times,' Jonson wrote of Shakespeare in his 'Timber,' 'hee
fell into those things [which] could not escape laughter: As
when hee said in the person of Ccesar, one speaking to him
[z.^. Caesar]; Ccesar, thou dost me wrong , Hee [i.e. Caesar]
replyed : CcRsar did never wrong, butt with just cause : and
such like, which were ridiculous. ' Jonson derisively quoted
the same passage in the induction to 'The Staple of News '
(1625): 'Cry you mercy, you did not wrong but with just
cause.' Possibly the words that were ascribed by Jonson
to Shakespeare's character of Caesar appeared in the
original version of the play, but, perhaps owing to Jonson's
captious criticism, they do not figure in the Folio version,
the sole version that has reached us. The only words there
that correspond with Jonson's quotation are Caesar's remark:

Know, Gesar doth not wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied

(m. i. 47-8). The rhythm and sense seem to require the
reinsertion after the word 'wrong ' of the phrase 'but with
just cause,' which Jonson needlessly reprobated.

The superior popularity of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar '
in the theatre to Ben Jonson's Roman play of 'Catiline '
is brought into strong relief in the eulogistic lines on Shake
speare by his admiring critic, Leonard Digges (1588-1635),
which appeared in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's
'Poems ' :

So have I seen when Caesar would appear,

And on the stage at half-sword parley were

Brutus and Cassius — oh, how the audience

Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence

When some new day they would not brook a line

Of tedious, though well laboured, Catiline.

At any rate, in the tragedy that Shakespeare brought
out in the year following the production of 'Julius Caesar,'
he finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far ' Hamlet,'
behind both in achievement and reputation. This new l6°2-
exhibition of the force of his genius re-established, too, the
ascendency of the adult actors who interpreted his work,
and the boys' supremacy was quickly brought to an end.

114

SHAKESPEARE^ LIFE AND WORK

The prob
lem of
its publi
cation.

The First

Quarto,

1603.

The
Second
Quarto,
1604.

In 1602 Shakespeare produced 'Hamlet,' 'that piece of
his which most kindled English hearts. ' The story of the
Prince of Denmark had been popular on the stage as early
as 1589 in a lost dramatic version by another writer — doubt
less Thomas Kyd, whose tragedies of blood, 'The Spanish
Tragedy' and 'Jeronimo,' long held the Elizabethan stage.
To that lost version of 'Hamlet' Shakespeare's tragedy
certainly owed much. The story was also accessible in the
'Histoires Tragiques ' of Belief orest, who adapted it from
the 'Historia Danica ' of Saxo Grammaticus. No English
translation of Belief orest' s 'Hystorie of Hamblet' appeared
before 1608; Shakespeare doubtless read it in the French.
But his authorities give little hint of what was to emerge
from his study of them.

Burbage created the title-part in Shakespeare's tragedy,
and its success on the stage led to the play's publication
immediately afterwards. The bibliography of 'Hamlet'
offers a puzzling problem. On July 26, 1602, 'A Book
called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it
was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his Servants, '
was entered on the Stationers' Company's Registers by the
printer James Roberts, and it was published in quarto next
year by Nicholas] L[ing] and John Trundell. The title-
page stated that the piece had been 'acted divers times in
the city of London, as also in the two universities of Cam
bridge and Oxford and elsewhere.' The text here appeared
in a rough and imperfect state. In all probability it was a
piratical and carelessly transcribed copy of Shakespeare's
first draft of the play, in which he drew largely on the older
piece.

A revised version, printed from a more complete and
accurate manuscript, was published in 1604 as 'The
Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, by
William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and enlarged to
almost as much again as it was, according to the true and
perfect copy. ' This was printed by I [ames] R[oberts] for
the publisher N[icholas] L[ing]. The concluding words —
'according to the true and perfect copy ' —of the title-page
of the Second Quarto were intended to stamp its prede
cessor as surreptitious and unauthentic. But it is clear that
the Second Quarto was not a perfect version of the play.
It was itself printed from a copy which had been curtailed
for acting purposes.

MATURITY OF GENIUS

A third version (long the textus receptus) figured in the The Folio
Folio of 1623. Here many passages, not to be found in varsion-
the quartos, appear for the first time, but a few others that
appear in the quartos are omitted. The Folio text prob
ably came nearest to the original manuscript; but it, too,
followed an acting copy which had been abbreviated some
what less drastically than the Second Quarto and in a
different fashion. Theobald in his 'Shakespeare Restored '
(1726) made the first scholarly attempt to form a text from
a collation of the First Folio with the Second Quarto, and
Theobald's text with further embellishments by Sir Thomas
Hanmer, Edward Capell, and the Cambridge editors of
1866, is now generally adopted.

' Hamlet ' was the only drama by Shakespeare that was Popu-
acted in his lifetime at the two Universities. It has
since attracted more attention from actors, playgoers, and
readers of all capacities than any other of Shakespeare's
plays. Its world-wide popularity from its author's day to
our own, when it is as warmly welcomed in the theatres
of France and Germany as in those of England and
America, is the most striking of the many testimonies
to the eminence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct. At
a first glance there seems little in the play to attract the
uneducated or the unreflecting. 'Hamlet' is mainly a
psychological effort, a study of the reflective temperament
in excess. The action develops slowly; at times there is
no movement at all. The piece is the longest of Shake
speare 'splays, reaching a total of over 3,900 lines. ('Ham
let' is thus some nine hundred lines longer than 'Antony
and Cleopatra ' — the play by Shakespeare that approaches
it most closely in numerical strength of lines. (At the same
time the total length of Hamlet's speeches far exceeds that
of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other of his char
acters. Humorous relief is, it is true, effectively supplied
to the tragic theme by Polonius and the grave-diggers, and
if the topical references to contemporary theatrical history
(n. ii. 350-89) could only count on an appreciative recep
tion from an Elizabethan audience, the pungent censure of
actors' perennial defects is calculated to catch the ear of
the average playgoer of all ages. But it is not to these sub
sidiary features that the universality of the play's vogue can
be attributed. It is the intensity of interest which Shake
speare contrives to excite in the character of the hero that

ii6 SHAKESPEARE ^S LIFE AND WORK

explains the position of the play in popular esteem. The
play's unrivalled power of attraction lies in the pathetic
fascination exerted on minds of almost every calibre by the
central figure — a high-born youth of chivalric instincts and
finely developed intellect, who, when stirred to avenge in
action a desperate private wrong, is foiled by introspective
f workings of the brain that paralyse the will.

•Troiius Although the difficulties of determining the date of

Cressida' 'Troiius and Cressida' are very great, there are many
grounds for assigning its composition to the early days
of 1603. In 1599 Dekker and Chettle were engaged by
Henslowe to prepare for the Earl of Nottingham's company
— a rival of Shakespeare's company — a play of 'Troiius and
Cressida, ' of which no trace survives. It doubtless suggested
the topic to Shakespeare. On February 7, 1602-3, James
Roberts obtained a license for 'the booke of Troiius and
Cresseda as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men,'
i.e. Shakespeare's company. Roberts printed the Second
Quarto of 'Hamlet,' and others of Shakespeare's plays; but
his effort to publish 'Troiius ' proved abortive owing to the
interposition of the players. Roberts' s 'book ' was probably
Shakespeare's play. The metrical characteristics of Shake
speare's 'Troiius and Cressida' — the regularity of the blank
verse — powerfully confirm the date of composition which
Roberts' s license suggests. Six years later, however, on
January 28, 1608-9, a new license for the issue of 'a booke
called the history of Troylus and Cressida ' was granted to
other publishers, Richard Bonian and Henry Walley, and
these publishers, more fortunate than Roberts, soon printed
a quarto with Shakespeare's full name as author. The text
seems fairly authentic, but exceptional obscurity attaches to
the circumstances of the publication. Some copies of the
book bear an ordinary type of title-page stating that the
piece was printed 'as it was acted by the King's majesties
servants at the Globe.' But in other copies, which differ in
no way in regard to the text of the play, there was substituted
for this title-page a more pretentious announcement running :
'The famous Historic of Troylus and Cresseid, excellently
expressing the beginning of their loues with the conceited
wooing of Pandarus, prince of Lacia. ' After this pompous
title-page there was inserted, for the first and only time in
the case of a play by Shakespeare that was published in his
lifetime, an advertisement or preface. In this interpolated

MATURITY OF GENIUS 117

page an anonymous scribe, writing in the name of the
publishers, paid bombastic and high-flown compliments to
Shakespeare as a writer of 'comedies,' and defiantly boasted
that the 'grand possessers ' — i.e. the owners — of the manu
script deprecated its publication. By way of enhancing the
value of what were obviously stolen wares, it was falsely
added that the piece was new and unacted. This address
was possibly the brazen reply of the publishers to a»more
than usually emphatic protest on the part of players or
dramatist against the printing of the piece. The editors of
the Folio evinced distrust of the Quarto edition by printing
their text from a different copy showing many deviations,
which were not always for the better.

The work, which in point of construction shows signs
of haste, and in style is exceptionally unequal, is the least
attractive of the efforts of Shakespeare's middle life. The Treatment
story is based on a romantic legend of the Trojan war, °* the
which is of mediaeval origin. Shakespeare had possibly read
Chapman's translation of Homer's 'Iliad,' but he owed his
plot to Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseid ' and Lydgate's
'Troy Book.' In defiance of his authorities he presented
Cressida as a heartless coquette; the poets who had pre
viously treated her story — Boccaccio, Chaucer, Lydgate,
and Robert Henryson — had imagined her as a tender
hearted, if frail, beauty, with claims on their pity rather than
on their scorn. But Shakespeare's innovation is dramati
cally effective, and accords with strictly moral canons. The
charge frequently brought against the dramatist that in
'Troilus and Cressida ' he cynically invested the Greek
heroes of classical antiquity with contemptible characteris
tics is ill supported by the text of the play. Ulysses, Nes
tor, and Agamemnon figure in Shakespeare's play as brave
generals and sagacious statesmen, and in their speeches
Shakespeare concentrated a marvellous wealth of pithily
expressed philosophy, much of which has fortunately
obtained proverbial currency. Shakespeare's conception
of the Greeks followed traditional lines except in the case
of Achilles, whom he transforms into a brutal coward. And
that portrait quite legitimately interpreted the selfish,
unreasoning, and exorbitant pride with which the warrior
was credited by Homer and his imitators.

Shakespeare's treatment of his theme cannot therefore
be fairly construed, as some critics construe it, into a petty-

ii8 SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND WORK

minded protest against the honour paid to the ancient

Greeks and to the form and sentiment of their literature by

more learned dramatists of the day, like Ben Jonson and

Chapman. Although Shakespeare knew the Homeric

version of the Trojan war, he worked in 'Troilus and

Cressida ' upon a mediaeval romance, which was practically

uninfluenced either for good or evil by the classical spirit.

Queen Despite the association of Shakespeare's company with

death36*'5 the rebellion of l6oi> and its difficulties with the Children

March 24, of the Chapel Royal, he and his fellow-actors retained their

1603- hold on Court favour till the close of Elizabeth's reign. As

late as February 2, 1603, the company entertained the dying

Queen at Richmond. Her death on March 24, 1603, drew

from Shakespeare's early eulogist, Chettle, a vain appeal to

him, under the fanciful name of Melicert, to

Drop from his honied muse one sable teare,
To mourne her death that graced his desert,
And to his laies opened her royal eare.

But, except on sentimental grounds, the Queen's death
justified no lamentation on the part of Shakespeare. On
the withdrawal of one royal patron he and his friends at
once found another, who proved far more liberal and
appreciative.

On May 19, 1603, James I, very soon after his acces
sion, extended to Shakespeare and other members of the
Lord Chamberlain's company a very marked and valuable
recognition. To them he granted under royal letters patent
a license 'freely to use and exercise the arte and facultie of
playing comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralls,
pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other like as they have
already studied, or hereafter shall use or studie as well for
the recreation of our loving subjectes as for our solace and
pleasure, when we shall thinke good to see them during our
pleasure. ' The Globe Theatre was noted as the customary
scene of their labours, but permission was granted to them
to perform in the town-hall or moot-hall of any country
James I's town. Nine actors are named. Lawrence Fletcher stands
patronage. ^rgt on ^ j-gt. j^ ^a(j aireac}y performed before James

in Scotland in 1599 and 1601. Shakespeare comes second
and Burbage third. The company to which they belonged
was thenceforth styled the King's company; its members
became 'the King's Servants,' and they took rank with the

MATURITY OF GENIUS 119

Grooms of the Chamber. Shakespeare's plays were thence
forth repeatedly performed in James's presence, and there
is a credible tradition that James wrote to Shakespeare 'an
amicable letter ' in his own hand, which was long in the
possession of Sir William D'Avenant. This circumstance
was first set forth in print, on the testimony of 'a credible
person then living,' by Bernard Lintot the bookseller, in
the preface to his edition of Shakespeare's poems in 1710.
Oldys suggested that the 'credible person' who saw the
letter while in D'Avenant's possession was John Sheffield,
Duke of Buckingham (1648-1721).

In the autumn and winter of 1603 the prevalence of the
plague led 1.0 the closing of the theatres in London. The
King's players were compelled to make a prolonged tour in
the provinces, which entailed some loss of income. For
two months from the third week in October, the Court was
temporarily installed at Wilton House, the residence of
William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, and late in
November the company was summoned by the royal officers
to perform in the royal presence. The actors travelled from
Mortlake to Salisbury 'unto the Courte aforesaide,' and
their performance took place at Wilton House on Decem
ber 2. They received next day 'upon the Councells warrant '
the large sum of 307. 'by way of his majesties reward.'
Many other gracious marks of royal favour followed. On
March 15, 1604, Shakespeare and eight other actors of the
company walked from the Tower of London to Westminster
in the procession which accompanied the King on his
formal entry into London. Each actor received four and a
half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion,
and in the document authorising the grant Shakespeare's
name stands first on the list. The dramatist Dekker was
author of a somewhat bombastic account of the elaborate
ceremonial, which accompanied a splendid series of copper
plate engravings of the triumphal arches spanning the
streets. On April 9, 1604, the King gave further proof of
his friendly interest in the fortunes of his actors by causing
an official letter to be sent to the Lord Mayor of London
and the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex and Surrey,
bidding them 'permit and suffer' the King's players to
'exercise their playes' at their 'usual house,' the Globe.
Four months later — in August — every member of the
company was summoned by the King's order to attend at

120 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Somerset House during the fortnight's sojourn there of
the Spanish ambassador extraordinary, Juan Fernandez de
Velasco, duke de Frias and Constable of Castile, who
came to London to ratify the treaty of peace between Eng
land and Spain, and was magnificently entertained by the
English Court. Between All Saints' Day [November i] and
the ensuing Shrove Tuesday, which fell early in February
1605, Shakespeare's company gave no fewer than eleven
performances at Whitehall in the royal presence.

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 121

XII

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY

UNDER the incentive of such exalted patronage. Shake- 'Othello'
speare's activity redoubled, but his work shows none of the ??d
conventional marks of literature that is produced in the forMea-
blaze of Court favour. The first six years of the new reign sure.'
saw him absorbed in the highest themes of tragedy, and an
unparalleled intensity and energy, which bore few traces of
the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illumined every scene
that he contrived. To 1604 the composition of two plays
can be confidently assigned, one of which — 'Othello' —
ranks with Shakespeare's greatest achievement; while the
other — 'Measure for Measure' — although as a whole far
inferior to 'Othello,' contains one of the finest scenes
(between Angelo and Isabella, n. ii. 43 seq.) and one of the
greatest speeches (Claudio on the fear of death, ra. i.
116-30) in the range of Shakespearean drama. 'Othello'
was doubtless the first new piece by Shakespeare that was
acted before James. It was produced at Whitehall on
November i. 'Measure for Measure ' followed on Decem
ber 26. Neither was printed in Shakespeare's lifetime.
The plots of both ultimately come from the same Italian
collection of novels — Giraldi Cinthio's 'Hecatommithi, '
which was first published in 1565.

Cinthio's painful story of 'Un Capitano Moro, ' or 'The
Moor of Venice ' (Deca. iii. Nov. vii. ), is not known to have
been translated into English before Shakespeare dramatised
it in the play on which he bestowed the title of 'Othello.'
He followed the main drift of the Italian romance with
fidelity; but he rechristened all the personages excepting
Desdemona; he introduced the new character of Roderigo,
and first gave definite significance to the character of Emilia,
lago, who lacks in Cinthio's tale any feature to distinguish
him from the conventional criminal of Italian fiction, became

122 SHAKESPEARE >S LIFE AND WORK

in Shakespeare's hands the subtlest of all studies of intel
lectual villainy and hypocrisy. But Shakespeare's genius
declared itself most signally in his masterly reconstruction
of the catastrophe. He invested Desdemona's tragic fate
with a wholly new and fearful intensity by making lago's
cruel treachery known to Othello at the last — just after
lago's perfidy had impelled the noble-hearted Moor, in
groundless jealousy, to murder his gentle and innocent wife.
The whole tragedy displays to magnificent advantage the dra
matist's fully matured powers. An unfaltering equilibrium
is maintained in the treatment of plot and characters alike.
Cinthio made the perilous story of 'Measure for
Measure ' the subject not only of a romance, but of a
tragedy called 'Epitia.' Before Shakespeare wrote his play,
Cinthio' s romance had been twice rendered into English by
George Whetstone. Whetstone had not only given a some
what altered version of the Italian romance in his unwieldy
play of 'Promos and Cassandra' (in two parts of five acts each,
1578), but he had also freely translated it in his collection
of prose tales, 'Heptameron of Civil Discources ' (1582).
Yet there is every likelihood that Shakespeare also knew
Cinthio' s play, which, unlike his romance, was untranslated;
the leading character, who is by Shakespeare christened
Angelo, was known by another name to Cinthio in his
story, but Cinthio in his play (and not in his novel) gives
the character a sister named Angela, which doubtless sug
gested Shakespeare's designation. In the hands of Shake
speare's predecessors the tale is a sordid record of lust and
cruelty. But Shakespeare prudently showed scant respect
for their handling of the narrative. By diverting the course
of the plofat a critical point he not merely proved his artistic
ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and moral elevation
to a degraded and repellent theme. In the old versions
Isabella yields her virtue as the price of her brother's life.
The central fact of Shakespeare's play is Isabella's inflex
ible and unconditional chastity. Others of Shakespeare's
alterations, like the Duke's abrupt proposal to marry Isa
bella, seem hastily conceived. But his creation of the
pathetic character of Mariana 'of the moated grange ' —
the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella's would-be
seducer — skilfully excludes the possibility of a settlement
(as in the old stories) between Isabella and Angelo on terms
of marriage. Shakespeare's argument is throughout philo-

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 123

sophically subtle. The poetic eloquence in which Isabella
and the Duke pay homage to the virtue of chastity, and the
many expositions of the corruption with which unchecked
sexual passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely
comic interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to
efface natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is
little in the play that seems designed to recommend it to
the Court before which it was first performed. But the two
emphatic references to a ruler's dislike of mobs, despite
his love of his people, were perhaps penned in deferential
allusion to James I, whose horror of crowds was notorious.
In act i. sc. i. 67-72 the Duke remarks:

I love the people,

But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement.
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.

Of like tenor is the succeeding speech of Angelo (act n.
sc. iv. 27-30):

The general \i.e. the public], subject to a well-wish'd king, . . .
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence.

In 'Macbeth,' his 'great epic drama,' which he began 'Macbeth,
in 1605 and completed next year, Shakespeare employed a
setting wholly in harmony with the accession of a Scottish
king. The story was drawn from Holinshed's 'Chronicle
of Scottish History,' with occasional reference, perhaps, to
earlier Scottish sources. The supernatural machinery of
the three witches accorded with the King's superstitious
faith in demonology; the dramatist lavished his sympathy
on Banquo, James's ancestor; while Macbeth's vision of
kings who carry 'twofold balls and treble sceptres' (iv.
i. 20) plainly adverted to the union of Scotland with Eng
land and Ireland under James's sway. The allusion by the
porter (n. iii. 9) to the 'equivocator . . . who committed
treason ' was perhaps suggested by the notorious defence of
the doctrine of equivocation made by the Jesuit Henry
Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share in
the 'Gunpowder Plot.' The piece was not printed until
1623. It is in its existing shape by far the shortest of all
Shakespeare's tragedies ('Hamlet ' is nearly twice as long),
and it is possible that it survives only in an abbreviated

124 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

acting version. Much scenic elaboration characterised the
production. Dr. Simon Forman witnessed a performance
of the tragedy at the Globe in April 1610, and noted that
Macbeth and Banquo entered the stage on horseback, and
that Banquo 's ghost was materially represented (m. iv. 40
seq. ). Like ' Othello, ' the play ranks with the noblest trage
dies either of the modern or the ancient world. The char
acters of hero and heroine — Macbeth and his wife — are
depicted with the utmost subtlety and insight. In three
points 'Macbeth ' differs somewhat from others of Shake
speare's productions in the great class of literature to which
it belongs. The interweaving with the tragic story of super
natural interludes in which Fate is weirdly personified is
not exactly matched in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies.
In the second place, the action proceeds with a rapidity that
is wholly without parallel in the rest of Shakespeare's plays.
Nowhere, moreover, has Shakespeare introduced comic relief
into a tragedy with bolder effect than in the porter's speech
after the murder of Duncan (n. iii. i seq.). The theory that
this passage was from another hand does not merit accept
ance. It cannot, however, be overlooked that the second
scene of the first act — Duncan's interview with the 'bleed
ing sergeant ' — falls so far below the style of the rest of the
play as to suggest that it was an interpolation by a hack of the
theatre. The resemblances between Thomas Middleton's
later play of 'The Witch ' (1610) and portions of 'Macbeth'
may safely be ascribed to plagiarism on Middleton's part. Of
two songs which, according to the stage directions, were to
be sung during the representation of 'Macbeth ' (m. v. and
iv. i.), only the first line of each is noted there, but songs
beginning with the same lines are set out in full in Mid
dleton's play; they were probably by Middleton, and were
interpolated by actors in a stage version of 'Macbeth '
after its original production.

•King « King Lear, ' in which Shakespeare's tragic genius moved

without any faltering on Titanic heights, was written during
1606, and was produced before the Court at Whitehall
on the night of December 26 of that year — a fact stated on
the title-page of the quartos. Eleven months later, on
November 26, 1607, two undistinguished stationers,. John
Busby and Nathaniel Butter, obtained a license for the
publication of the great tragedy, and Nathaniel Butter pub
lished a quarto edition in the following year (1608). This

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 125

was defaced by many gross typographical errors. Some of
the sheets were never subjected to any correction of the
press. The publisher, Butter, endeavoured to make some
reparation for the carelessness of the edition by issuing a
second quarto, which was designed to free the text of the
most obvious incoherences of the first quarto. But the
effort was not successful. Uncorrected sheets disfigured
the second quarto little less conspicuously than the first.
The first quarto is that in which Shakespeare's surname is
spelt on the title-page 'Shak-speare, ' and Butter gives his
full address 'at the signe of the Pide Bull neere St. Austin's
Gate.' The title-page of the second quarto gives the sur
name as 'Shakespeare,' and Butter's name appears without
any address. In the First Folio the play was printed from
a text different to that followed in the quartos, and the
Folio first supplied a satisfactory version of the play. Like
its immediate predecessor, 'Macbeth,' the tragedy of 'King
Lear ' was mainly founded on Holinshed's 'Chronicle. ' The
leading theme had been dramatised as early as 1593, but
Shakespeare's attention was no doubt directed to it by the
publication of a crude dramatic adaptation of Holinshed's
version in 1605 under the title of 'The True Chronicle History
of King Leirand his three Daughters — Gonorill, Ragan, and
Cordelia. ' Shakespeare did not adhere closely to his origi
nal. He invested the tale of Lear with a hopelessly tragic
conclusion, and on it he grafted the equally distressing tale
of Gloucester and his two sons, which he drew from Sidney's
'Arcadia.' Sidney tells the story in a chapter entitled 'The
pitiful state and story of the Paphlagonian unkind king and
his blind son; first related by the son, then by his blind
father ' (bk. ii. chap. 10, ed. 1590, 410; pp. 132-3, ed. 1674,
fol.). Hints for the speeches of Edgar when feigning mad
ness were drawn from Harsnet's 'Declaration of Popish
Impostures,' 1603. In every act of 'Lear' the pity and
terror of which tragedy is capable reach their climax. Only
one who has something of the Shakespearean gift of lan
guage could adequately characterise the scenes of agony —
'the living martyrdom ' — to which the fiendish ingratitude
of his daughters condemns the abdicated king — 'a very
foolish, fond old man, fourscore and upward.' The ele
mental passions burst forth in his utterances with all the
vehemence of the volcanic tempest which beats about his
defenceless head in the scene on the heath. The brutal

126

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

' Timon of
Athens."

' Pericles.'

blinding of Gloucester by Cornwall exceeds in horror any
other situation that Shakespeare created, if we assume that
he was not responsible for the like scenes of mutilation in
'Titus Andronicus.' At no point in 'Lear' is there any
loosening of the tragic tension. The faithful half-witted
lad who serves the king as his fool plays the jesting chorus
on his master's fortunes in penetrating earnest and deepens
the desolating pathos.

Although Shakespeare's powers showed no sign of ex
haustion, he reverted in the year following the colossal
effort of 'Lear ' (1607) to his earlier habit of collaboration,
and with another's aid composed two dramas — 'Timon of
Athens ' and 'Pericles.' An extant play on the subject of
'Timon of Athens' was composed in 1600, but there is
nothing to show that Shakespeare and his coadjutor were
acquainted with it. They doubtless derived a part of their
story from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' and from a short
digression in Plutarch's 'Life of Marc Antony,' where
Antony is described as emulating the life and example of
'Timon Misanthropes the Athenian.' The dramatists may,
too, have known a dialogue of Lucian entitled 'Timon,'
which Boiardo had previously converted into a comedy
under the name of 'II Timone.' Internal evidence makes
it clear that Shakespeare's colleague was responsible for
nearly the whole of acts in. and v. But the character of
Timon himself and all the scenes which he dominates are
from Shakespeare's pen. Timon is cast in the mould of Lear.

There seems some ground for the belief that Shake
speare's coadjutor in 'Timon' was George Wilkins, a
writer of ill-developed dramatic power, who, in 'The
Miseries of Enforced Marriage' (1607), first treated the
story that afterwards served for the plot of 'The Yorkshire
Tragedy.' At any rate, Wilkins may safely be credited
with portions of 'Pericles,' a romantic play which can be
referred to the same year as 'Timon.' Shakespeare con
tributed only acts m. andv. and parts of iv., which together
form a self-contained whole, and do not combine satis
factorily with the remaining scenes. The presence of a
third hand, of inferior merit to Wilkins, has been suspected,
and to this collaborator (perhaps William Rowley, a pro
fessional reviser of plays who could show capacity on
occasion) are best assigned the three scenes of purposeless
coarseness which take place in or before a brothel (iv. ii.,

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 127

v. and vi.). From so distributed a responsibility the piece
naturally suffers. It lacks homogeneity, and the story is
helped out by dumb shows and prologues before the acts.
But a matured felicity of expression characterises Shake
speare's own contributions, narrating the romantic quest
of Pericles for his daughter Marina, who was born in a
shipwreck and then separated from him. At many points
in the piece the dramatist anticipated his latest dramatic
effects. The shipwreck is depicted (iv. i.) as impres
sively as in the 'Tempest,' and Marina and her mother
Thaisa enjoy many experiences in common with Perdita
and Hermione in the 'Winter's Tale.' The prologues,
which were not by Shakespeare, were spoken by an
actor representing the mediaeval poet John Gower, who in
the fourteenth century had versified Pericles' s story in his
'Confessio Amantis ' under the title of 'Apollonius of
Tyre.' It is also found in a prose translation (from the
French), which was printed in Lawrence Twyne's 'Pat-
terne of Painfull Adventures' in 1576, and again in 1607.
After the play was produced, George Wilkins, one of the
alleged coadjutors, based on it a novel called 'The Painful
Adventures of Pericles, Prynce of Tyre, being the True
History of the Play of Pericles as it was lately presented by
the worthy and ancient Poet, John Gower' (1608). The
publisher Edward Blount, who subsequently took a chief
part in the production of the First Folio, obtained a license
for the publication of 'Pericles' on May 20, 1608.
'Pericles' was, however, actually published for the first
time in a very mangled form by Henry Gosson, of Pater
noster Row, in 1609. The bombastic form of title shows
that Shakespeare had no hand in the publication. The
title-page runs: 'The late, And much admired Play, called
Pericles, Prince of Tyre. With the true Relation of the
whole Historic, adventures, and fortunes of the said Prince :
As also, The no lesse strange, and worthy accidents, in the
Birth and Life, of his Daughter Marina. As it hath been
diuers and sundry times acted by his Maiesties seruants
at the Globe on the Banck-side. By William Shakespeare.
Imprinted at London for Henry Gosson, and are to be sold
at the signe of the Sunne in Pater-noster row, 1609.' A
second edition, without revision, followed within a year, and
it was reprinted in 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635. 'Pericles'
was not included in Shakespeare's collected works till 1664.

128 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

'Antony On the same day (May 20, 1608) that Edward Blount

aatrC>le°" Stained his license for the issue of 'Pericles' he secured
irom the Stationers' Company a second license, by the
authority of Sir George Buc, the licenser of plays, for the
publication of a far more impressive piece of literature — a
'booke called "Anthony and Cleopatra."' No copy of
this date is known, and once again the company probably
hindered the publication. The play was first printed in the
Folio of 1623. The source of the tragedy is the life of
Antonius in North's 'Plutarch.' Shakespeare closely fol
lowed the historical narrative, and assimilated not merely
its temper, but, in the first three acts, much of its phrase
ology. A few short scenes are original, but there is no
detail, in such a passage, for example, as Enobarbus's
gorgeous description of the pageant of Cleopatra's voyage
up the Cydnus to meet Antony (n. ii. 194 seq.), which is
not to be matched in Plutarch. In the fourth and fifth
acts Shakespeare's method changes and he expands his
material with magnificent freedom. The whole theme is in
his hands instinct with a dramatic grandeur which lifts into
sublimity even Cleopatra's moral worthlessness and An
tony's criminal infatuation. The terse and caustic com
ments which Antony's level-headed friend Enobarbus, in the
rdle of chorus, passes on the action accentuate its signifi
cance. Into the smallest as into the greatest personages
Shakespeare breathed all his vitalising fire. The 'happy
valiancy' of the style, too — to use Coleridge's admirable
phrase — set the tragedy very near the zenith of Shakespeare's
achievement, and while differentiating it from 'Macbeth,'
'Othello,' and 'Lear,' renders it a very formidable rival.
•Corio- 'Coriolanus ' (first printed from a singularly bad text in

lanus.1 1623) similarly owes its origin to the biography of the hero

in North's 'Plutarch,' although Shakespeare may have first
met his story in Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. iv.).
He again adhered to the text of Plutarch with the utmost
literalness, and at times — even in the great crises of the
action — repeated North's translation word for word. The
whole of Coriolanus's great speech on offering his services to
Aufidius, theVolscian general (iv. v. 7 1-107), which begins —

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces,
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname, Coriolanus . . .

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 129

closely follows Coriolanus's speech in North's translation
of Plutarch, which opens: 'I am Caius Martius, who
hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces
generally, great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for
my surname of Coriolanus that I bear.' Similarly Volum-
nia's stirring appeal to her son and her son's proffer of
submission, in act v. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce with equal
literalness North's rendering of Plutarch. 'If we held our
peace, my son,' Volumnia begins in North, 'the state of
our raiment would easily betray to thee what life we have
led at home since thy exile and abode abroad; but think
now with thyself, ' and so on. The first sentence of Shake
speare's speech runs:

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment

And state of bodies would bewray what life

We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . .

But the humorous scenes in 'Coriolanus' are wholly of
Shakespeare's invention, and the course of the narrative
was at times slightly changed for purposes of dramatic
effect. The metrical characteristics prove the play to have
been written about the same period as 'Antony and Cleo
patra,' probably in 1609. In its austere temper it con
trasts at all points with its predecessor. The courageous
self-reliance of Coriolanus's mother, Volumnia, is severely
contrasted with the submissive gentleness of Virgilia, Corio
lanus's wife. The hero falls a victim to no sensual flaw,
but to unchecked pride of caste, and there is a searching
irony in the emphasis laid on the ignoble temper of the
rabble, who procure his overthrow. By way of foil, the
speeches of Menenius give dignified expression to
the maturest political wisdom. The dramatic interest
throughout is as single and as unflaggingly sustained as
in 'Othello.'

130 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

XIII
THE LATEST PLAYS

The latest IN 'Cymbeline,' 'The Winter's Tale,' and 'The Tempest,'
plays. the three latest plays that came from his unaided pen,
Shakespeare dealt with romantic themes which all end
happily, but he instilled into them a pathos which sets
them in a category of their own apart alike from comedy
and tragedy. The placidity of tone conspicuous in these
three plays (none of which was published in his lifetime)
has been often contrasted with the storm and stress of the
great tragedies that preceded them. But the commonly
accepted theory that traces in this change of tone a corre
sponding development in the author's own emotions ignores
the objectivity of Shakespeare's dramatic work. All phases
of feeling lay within the scope of his intuition, and the
successive order in which he approached them bore no
explicable relation to substantive incident in his private life
or experience. In middle life, his temperament, like that
of other men, acquired a larger measure of gravity and his
thought took a profounder cast than characterised it in
youth. The highest topics of tragedy were naturally more
congenial to him, and were certain of a surer handling
when he was nearing his fortieth birthday than at an earlier
age. The serenity of meditative romance was more in
harmony with the fifth decade of his years than with the
second or third. But no more direct or definite con
nection can be discerned between the progressive stages of
his work and the progressive stages of his life. To seek in
his biography for a chain of events which should be calcu
lated to stir in his own soul all or any of the tempestuous
passions that animate his greatest plays is to under-estimate
and to misapprehend the resistless might of his creative
genius.

In 'Cymbeline ' Shakespeare freely adapted a fragment
of British history taken from Holinshed, interweaving with

THE LATEST PLAYS 131

it a story from Boccaccio's 'Decameron ' (day 2, novel ix.). 'Cymbe-
Ginevra, whose falsely suspected chastity is the theme of the line-'
Italian novel, corresponds to Shakespeare's Imogen. Her
story is also told in the tract called 'Westward for Smelts,'
which had already been laid under contribution by Shake
speare in the ' Merry Wives. ' The by-plot of the banishment
of the lord, Belarius, who in revenge for his expatriation
kidnapped the king's young sons and brought them up with
him in the recesses of the mountains, is Shakespeare's
invention. Although most of the scenes are laid in Britain
in the first century before the Christian era, there is no
pretence of historical vraisemblance. With an almost ludi
crous inappropriateness the British king's courtiers make
merry with technical terms peculiar to Calvinistic theology,
like 'grace' and 'election.' In i. i. 136-7 Imogen is de
scribed as 'past grace ' in the theological sense. In i. ii.
30-31 the Second Lord remarks: 'If it be a sin to make a
true election, she is damned. ' The action, which, owing to
the combination of three threads of narrative, is exception
ally varied and intricate, wholly belongs to the region of
romance. On Imogen, who is the central figure of the play,
Shakespeare lavished all the fascination of his genius. She
is the crown and flower of his conception of tender and
artless womanhood. Her husband Posthumus, her rejected
lover Cloten, her would-be seducer lachimo are contrasted
with her and with each other with consummate ingenuity.
The mountainous retreat in which Belarius and his fascinat
ing boy-companions play their part has points of resem
blance to the Forest of Arden in 'As You Like It ' ; but
life throughout 'Cymbeline ' is grimly earnest, and the
mountains nurture little of the contemplative quiet which
characterises existence in the Forest of Arden. The play
contains the splendid lyric 'Fear no more the heat of the
sun ' (iv. ii. 258 seq.). The 'pitiful mummery ' of the vision
of Posthumus (v. iv. 30 seq.) must have been supplied by
another hand. Dr. Forman, the astrologer who kept notes
of some of his experiences as a playgoer, saw 'Cymbeline '
acted either in 1610 or 1611.

'A Winter's Tale' was seen by Dr. Forman at the
Globe on May 15, 1611, and it appears to have been acted
at court on November 5 following. Camillo's reflections
(i. ii. 358) on the ruin that attends those who 'struck
anointed kings ' have been regarded, not quite conclusively,

132 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

as specially designed to gratify James I. The piece is based
upon Greene's popular romance which was called 'Pandosto'
in the first edition of 1588, and in numerous later editions,
but was ultimately in 1648 re-christened 'Dorastus and
Fawnia.' Shakespeare followed Greene, his early foe, in
allotting a seashore to Bohemia — an error over which Ben
Jonson and many later critics have made merry. A few
lines were obviously drawn from that story of Boccaccio
with which Shakespeare had dealt just before in' Cymbeline. '
But Shakespeare created the high-spirited Paulina and the
thievish pedlar Autolycus, whose seductive roguery has
become proverbial, and he invented the reconciliation of
Leontes, the irrationally jealous husband, with Hermione,
his wife, whose dignified resignation and forbearance lend
the story its intense pathos. In the boy Mamilius the poet
depicted childhood in its most attractive guise, while the
courtship of Florizel and Perdita is the perfection of gentle
romance. The freshness of the pastoral incident surpasses
that of all Shakespeare's presentations of country life.
'The 'The Tempest' was probably the latest drama that

Tempest. Shakespeare completed. In the summer of 1609 a fleet
bound for Virginia, under the command of Sir George
Somers, was overtaken by a storm off the West Indies, and
the admiral's ship, the 'Sea- Venture,' was driven on the
coast of the hitherto unknown Bermuda Isles. There they
remained ten months, pleasurably impressed by the mild
beauty of the climate, but sorely tried by the hogs which
overran the island and by mysterious noises which led them
to imagine that spirits and devils had made the island
their home. Somers and his men were given up for lost,
but they escaped from Bermuda in two boats of cedar to
Virginia in May 1610, and the news of their adventures and
of their safety was carried to England by some of the seamen
in September 1610. The sailors' arrival created vast public
excitement in London. At least five accounts were soon
published of the shipwreck and of the mysterious island,
previously uninhabited by man, which had proved the sal
vation of the expedition. 'A Discovery of the Bermudas,
otherwise called the He of Divels, ' written by Sylvester
Jourdain or Jourdan, one of the survivors, appeared as early
as October. A second pamphlet describing the disaster was
issued by the Council of the Virginia Company in Decem
ber, and a third by one of the leaders of the expedition, Sir

THE LATEST PLAYS 133

Thomas Gates. Shakespeare, who mentions the 'still vexed
Bermoothes ' (i. i. 229), incorporated in 'The Tempest'
many hints from Jourdain, Gates, and the other pamphle
teers. The references to the gentle climate of the island on
which Prospero is cast away, and to the spirits and devils
that infested it, seem to render its identification with the
newly discovered Bermudas unquestionable. But Shake
speare incorporated the result of study of other books of
travel. The name of the god Setebos whom Caliban
worships is drawn from Eden's translation of Magellan's
'Voyage to the South Pole' (in the 'Historic of Travell,'
I577)> where the giants of Patagonia are described as
worshipping a 'great devil they call Setebos.' No source
for the complete plot has been discovered, but the German
writer, Jacob Ayrer, who died in 1605, dramatised a some
what similar story in 'Die schone Sidea, ' where the
adventures of Prospero, Ferdinand, Ariel, and Miranda are
roughly anticipated. English actors were performing at
Nuremberg, where Ayrer lived, in 1604 and 1606, and may
have brought reports of the piece to Shakespeare. Or
perhaps both English and German plays had a common
origin in some novel that has not yet been traced. Gonzalo's
description of an ideal commonwealth (n. i. 147 seq.) is
derived from Florio's translation of Montaigne's essays
(1603), while into Prospero's great speech renouncing his
practice of magical art (v. i. 33-57) Shakespeare wrought
reminiscences of Gelding's translation of Medea's invo
cation in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (vii. 197-206). Gold-
ing's rendering of Ovid had been one of Shakespeare's
best-loved books in youth.

A highly ingenious theory, first suggested by Tieck,
represents 'The Tempest ' (which, excepting 'The Comedy
of Errors, ' is the shortest of Shakespeare's plays) as a masque
written to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth (like
Miranda, an island-princess) with the Elector Frederick.
This marriage took place on February 14, 1612-13, and
'The Tempest ' formed one of a series of nineteen plays
which were performed at the nuptial festivities in May 1613.
But none of the other plays produced seem to have been
new; they were all apparently chosen because they were
established favourites at Court and on the public stage, and
neither in subject-matter nor language bore obviously
specific relation to the joyous occasion. But 1613 is, in

134

SHAKES FEARERS LIFE AND WORK

Fanciful
interpre
tations of
'The
Tempest'

fact, on more substantial ground far too late a date to which
to assign the composition of 'The Tempest.' According
to information which was accessible to Malone, the play
had 'a being and a name ' in the autumn of 1611, and was
no doubt written some months before. The plot, which
revolves about the forcible expulsion of a ruler from his
dominions, and his daughter's wooing by the son of the
usurper's chief ally, is, moreover, hardly one that a shrewd
playwright would deliberately choose as the setting of an
official epithalamium in honour of the daughter of a mon
arch so sensitive about his title to the crown as James I.

In the theatre and at court the early representations of
'The Tempest ' evoked unmeasured applause. The success
owed something to the beautiful lyrics which were dispersed
through the play and had been set to music by Robert Johnson,
a lutenist in high repute. Harmonised scores of Johnson's
airs for the songs 'Full Fathom Five ' and 'Where the Bee
sucks,' are preserved in Wilson's 'Cheerful Ayres or Ballads
set for three voices,' 1660. Like its predecessor 'A Winter's
Tale,' 'The Tempest' long maintained its first popularity
in the theatre, and the vogue of the two pieces drew a
passing sneer from Ben Jonson. In the Induction to his
'Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 1614, he wrote: 'If
there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can
help it he [i.e. the author] says? nor a nest of Antics. He
is loth to make nature afraid in his plays like those that
beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries.' The
'servant-monster' was an obvious allusion to Caliban, and
'the nest of Antics ' was a glance at the satyrs who figure
in the sheepshearing feast in 'A Winter's Tale.'

Nowhere did Shakespeare give rein to his imagination
with more imposing effect than in 'The Tempest.' As in
'Midsummer Night's Dream,' magical or supernatural
agencies are the mainsprings of the plot. But the tone is
marked at all points by a solemnity and profundity of
thought and sentiment which are lacking in the early comedy.
The serious atmosphere has led critics, without much reason,
to detect in the scheme of 'The Tempest ' something more
than the irresponsible play of poetic fancy. Many of the
characters have been represented as the outcome of specula-
tionrespectingthe least soluble problems of human existence.
Little reliance should be placed on such interpretations.
The creation of Miranda is the apotheosis in literature of

THE LATEST PLAYS 135

tender, ingenuous girlhood unsophisticated by social inter
course, but Shakespeare had already sketched the outlines
of the portrait in Marina and Perdita, the youthful heroines
respectively of 'Pericles ' and 'A Winter's Tale,' and these
two characters were directly developed from romantic
stories of girl-princesses, cast by misfortune on the mercies
of nature, to which Shakespeare had recourse for the plots
of the two plays. It is by accident, and not by design,
that in Ariel appear to be discernible the capabilities of
human intellect when detached from physical attributes.
Ariel belongs to the same world as Puck, although he is
delineated in the severer colours that were habitual to
Shakespeare's fully developed art. Caliban — Ariel's anti
thesis — did not owe his existence to any conscious endeavour
on Shakespeare's part to typify human nature before the
evolution of moral sentiment. Caliban is an imaginary
portrait, conceived with matchless vigour and vividness, of
the aboriginal savage of the New World, descriptions of
whom abounded in contemporary travellers' speech and
writings, and universally excited the liveliest curiosity.
When Shakespeare wrote 'Troilus and Cressida,' he had
formed some conception of a character of the Caliban type;
Thersites says of Ajax (m. iii. 264), 'He's grown a very
land-fish, languageless, a monster. ' In Prospero, the guid
ing providence of the romance of 'The Tempest, ' who resigns
his magic power in the closing scene, traces have been sought
of the lineaments of the dramatist himself, who in this play
probably bade farewell to the enchanted work of his life.
Prospero is in the story a scholar-prince of rare intellectual
attainments, whose engrossing study of the mysteries of
science has given him command of the forces of nature.
His magnanimous renunciation of his magical faculty as
soon as by its exercise he has restored his shattered fortunes
is in perfect accord with the general conception of his just
and philosophical temper. Any other justification of his
final act is superfluous.

While there is every indication that in 161 1 Shakespeare Unfinished
abandoned dramatic composition, there seems little doubt
that he left with the manager of his company unfinished
drafts of more than one play which others were summoned
at a later date to complete. His place at the head of the
active dramatists was at once filled by John Fletcher, and
Fletcher, with some aid possibly from his friend Philip

136

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

The lost

play of

' Cardenio.'

'Two
Noble
Kinsmen.'

Massinger, undertook the working up of Shakespeare's
unfinished sketches. On September 9, 1653, the publisher
Humphrey Moseley obtained a license for the publication
of a play which he described as 'History of Cardenio, by
Fletcher and Shakespeare.' This was probably identical
with the lost play, 'Cardenno, ' or 'Cardenna, ' which was
twice acted at Court by Shakespeare's company in 1613
— in May during the Princess Elizabeth's marriage festivi
ties, and on June 8 before the Duke of Savoy's ambassador.
Moseley, whose description may have been fraudulent,
failed to publish the piece, and nothing is otherwise known
of it with certainty; but it was no doubt a dramatic version
of the adventures of the lovelorn Cardenio which are
related in the first part of 'Don Quixote' (ch. xxiii.-xxxvii.).
Cervantes' s amorous story, which first appeared in Eng
lish in Thomas Shelton's translation in 1612, offers much
incident in Fletcher's vein. When Lewis Theobald, the
Shakespearean critic, brought out his 'Double Falsehood,
or the Distrest Lovers,' in 1727, he mysteriously represented
that the play was based on an unfinished and unpublished
draft of a play by Shakespeare. The story of Theobald's
piece is the story of Cardenio, although the characters are
renamed. There is nothing in the play as published by
Theobald to suggest Shakespeare's hand. Dyce thought he
detected in it traces of Shirley's workmanship, but it was
possibly Theobald's unaided invention. Theobald doubtless
took advantage of a tradition that Shakespeare and Fletcher
had combined to dramatise the Cervantic theme.

Two other pieces, 'The Two Noble Kinsmen ' and
'Henry VIII,' which are attributed to a similar partnership,
survive. 'The Two Noble Kinsmen ' was first printed in
1634, and was written, according to the title-page, 'by the
memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and
Mr. William Shakespeare, gentlemen.' It was included in
the folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works of 1679.
On grounds alike of aesthetic criticism and metrical tests, a
substantial portion of the play was assigned to Shakespeare
by Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Dyce. The last included
it in his edition of Shakespeare. Coleridge detected Shake
speare's hand in act i., act n., sc. i. , and act m. sc. i. and ii.
In addition to those scenes, actrv. sc. iii. and actv. (except
sc. ii.) were subsequently placed to his credit. Some recent
critics assign much of the alleged Shakespearean work to

THE LATEST PLAYS 137

Massinger, and they narrow Shakespeare's contribution to
the first scene (with the opening song, 'Roses their sharp
spines being gone ') and act v. sc. i. and iv. An exact
partition is impossible, but frequent signs of Shakespeare's
workmanship are unmistakable. All the passages for which
Shakespeare can on any showing be held responsible
develope the main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer's
'Knight's Tale ' of Palamon and Arcite, and seems to have
been twice dramatised previously. A lost play, 'Palaemon
and Arcyte,' by Richard Edwardes, was acted at court in
1566, and a second piece, called 'Palamon and Arsett'
(also lost), was purchased by Henslowe in 1594. The non-
Shakespearean residue of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is
disfigured by indecency and triviality, and is of no literary
value.

A like problem is presented by 'Henry VIII. ' The play • Henry
was nearly associated with the final scene in the history VI II.'
of that theatre which was identified with the triumphs of
Shakespeare's career. 'Henry VIII ' was in course of per
formance at the Globe Theatre on June 29, 1613, when the Burning c
firing of some cannon incidental to the performance set fire ^ea^re*
to the playhouse, which was burned down. The theatre was june 29,'
rebuilt next year, but the new fabric never acquired the I6l3-
fame of the old. Sir Henry Wotton, describing the disaster
on July 2, entitled the piece that was in process of repre
sentation at the time as 'All is True representing some
principal pieces in the Reign of Henry VIII.' Wotton
adds 'that the piece was set forth with many extraordinary
circumstances of Pomp and Majesty, even to the matting
of the Stage; the Knights of the Order, with their Georges
and Garters, the Guards with their embroidered Coats, and
the like : sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness
very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making
a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsefs House, and certain
Can[n]ons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or
other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on
the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak,
and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled in
wardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less
than an hour the whole House to the very grounds. This
was the fatal period of that vertuous fabrique; wherein
yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw and a few
forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire,

138 SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND WORK

that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the
benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle[d] ale.'

The play of 'Henry VIII ' which is commonly allotted
to Shakespeare is loosely constructed, and the last act ill
coheres with its predecessors. The whole resembles an
'historical masque.' It was first printed in the First Folio
of Shakespeare's works, in 1623, but shows traces of more
hands than one. The three chief characters — the king,
Queen Katharine of Arragon, and Cardinal Wolsey — bear
clear marks of Shakespeare's best workmanship; but only
act i. sc. i., act n. sc. iii. andiv. (Katharine's trial), act m.
sc. ii. (except 11. 204-460), act v. sc. i., can on either
aesthetic or metrical grounds be confidently assigned to him.
These portions may, according to their metrical charac
teristics, be dated, like the 'Winter's Tale,' about 1611.
There are good grounds for assigning nearly all the remain
ing thirteen scenes to the pen of Fletcher, with occasional
aid from Massinger. Wolsey's familiar farewell to Cromwell
(in. ii. 204-460) is the only passage the authorship of which
excites really grave embarrassment. It recalls at every point
the style of Fletcher, and nowhere that of Shakespeare. But
the Fletcherian style, as it is here displayed, is invested with
a greatness that is not matched elsewhere in Fletcher's
work. That Fletcher should have exhibited such faculty
once and once only is barely credible, and we are driven to
the alternative conclusion that the noble valediction was by
Shakespeare, who in it gave proof of his versatility by echo
ing in a glorified key the habitual strain of Fletcher, his
colleague and virtual successor. James Spedding's theory
that Fletcher hastily completed Shakespeare's unfinished
draft for the special purpose of enabling the company to
celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector
Palatine, which took place on February 14, 1612-13, seems
fanciful. During May 1613, according to an extant list,
nineteen plays were produced at court in honour of
the event, but 'Henry VIII ' is not among them. The
conjecture that Massinger and Fletcher alone collaborated
in 'Henry VIII ' (to the exclusion of Shakespeare altogether)
does not deserve serious consideration.

THE CLOSE OF LIFE 139

XIV
THE CLOSE OF LIFE

THE concluding years of Shakespeare's life (1611-1616)
were mainly passed at Stratford. It is probable that in
1611 he disposed of his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars
theatres. He owned none at the date of his death. But until
1614 he paid frequent visits to London, where friends in
sympathy with his work were alone to be found. His plays piays at
continued to form the staple of court performances. In court in
May 1613, during the Princess Elizabeth's marriage l613'
festivities, Heming, Shakespeare's former colleague, pro
duced at Whitehall no fewer than seven of his plays, viz.
'Much Ado,' 'Tempest,' 'Winter's Tale,' 'Sir John Falstaff '
(i.e. 'Merry Wives'), 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' and 'Hot
spur ' (doubtless 'i Henry IV '). Of his actor-friends, one Actor-
of the chief, Augustine Phillips, had died in 1605, leaving friends,
by will 'to my fellowe, William Shakespeare, a thirty-
shillings piece of gold.' With Burbage, Heming, and
Condell his relations remained close to the end. Burbage,
according to a poetic elegy, made his reputation by creat
ing the leading parts in Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.
Hamlet, Othello, and Lear were rdles in which he gained
especial renown. But Burbage and Shakespeare were
popularly credited with co-operation in less solemn enter
prises. They were reputed to be companions in many
sportive adventures. The sole anecdote of Shakespeare that
is positively known to have been recorded in his lifetime
relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with
a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance;
Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the
actor's visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip
that 'William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third. '
Such gossip possibly deserves little more acceptance
than the later story, in the same key, which credits Shake-

140

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Final set
tlement at
Stratford.

Domestic
affairs.

speare with the paternity of Sir William D'Avenant. The
latter was baptised at Oxford on March 3, 1605, as the son
of John D'Avenant, the landlord of the Crown Inn, where
Shakespeare lodged in his journeys to and from Stratford.
The story of Shakespeare's parental relation to D'Avenant
was long current in Oxford, and was at times complacently
accepted by the reputed son. Shakespeare is known to
have been a welcome guest at John D'Avenant's house, and
another son, Robert, boasted of the kindly notice which the
poet took of him as a child. It is safer to adopt the less
compromising version which makes Shakespeare the god
father of the boy William instead of his father. But the
antiquity and persistence of the scandal belie the assumption
that Shakespeare was known to his contemporaries as a man
of scrupulous virtue. Ben Jonson and Drayton — the latter
a Warwickshire man — seem to have been Shakespeare's
closest literary friends in his latest years.

At Stratford, in the words of Nicholas Rowe, 'the latter
part of Shakespeare's life was spent, as all men of good
sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the
conversation of his friends.' As a resident in the town, he
took a full share of social and civic responsibilities. On
October 16, 1608, he stood chief godfather to William, son
of Henry Walker, a mercer and alderman. On Septem
ber ii, 1611, when he had finally settled in New Place, his
name appeared in the margin of a folio page of donors
(including all the principal inhabitants of Stratford) to a
fund that was raised 'towards the charge of prosecuting
the bill in Parliament for the better repair of the highways. '

Meanwhile his own domestic affairs engaged some of his
attention. Of his two surviving children — both daughters
— the eldest, Susanna, had married, on June 5, 1607, John
Hall (1575-1635), arising physician of puritan leanings,
and in the following February there was born the poet's only
granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall. On September 9, 1608,
the poet's mother was buried in the parish church, and on
February 4, 1613, his third brother, Richard. On July 15,
1613, Mrs. Hall preferred, with her father's assistance, a
charge of slander against one Lane in the ecclesiastical
court at Worcester; the defendant, who had apparently
charged the lady with illicit relations with one Ralph Smith,
did not appear, and was excommunicated.

In the same year (1613), when on a short visit tjr

THE CLOSE OF LIFE 141

London, Shakespeare invested a small sum of money in a Purchase
new property. This was his last investment in real estate. ?[ g^kf6
He then purchased a house, the ground-floor of which was friars.
a haberdasher's shop, with a yard attached. It was situated
within six hundred feet of the Blackfriars Theatre — on the
west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly termed Puddle Hill
or Puddle Dock Hill, in the near neighbourhood of what
is now known as Ireland Yard. The former owner, Henry
Walker, a musician, had bought the propery for ioo/. in
1604. Shakespeare in 1613 agreed to pay him i4O/. The
deeds of conveyance bear the date of March 10 in that year.
Next day, on March n, Shakespeare executed another deed
(now in the British Museum) which stipulated that 6o/. of
the purchase-money was to remain on mortgage until the
following Michaelmas. The money was unpaid at Shake-
peare's death. In both purchase-deed and mortgage-deed
Shakespeare's signature was witnessed by (among others)
Henry Lawrence, 'servant' or clerk to Robert Andrewes,
the scrivener who drew the deeds, and Lawrence's seal,
bearing his initials 'H. L.,' was stamped in each case on
the parchment-tag, across the head of which Shakespeare
wrote his name. In all three documents — the two indentures
and the mortgage-deed — Shakespeare is described as 'of
Stratford-on-Avon, in the Countie of Warwick, Gentleman.'
There is no reason to suppose that he acquired the house
for his own residence. He at once leased the property to
John Robinson, already a resident in the neighbourhood.
With puritans and puritanism Shakespeare was not in
sympathy. His references to puritans in the plays of his
middle and late life are so uniformly discourteous that they
must be judged to reflect his personal feeling. The discus
sion between Maria and Sir Andrew Aguecheek regarding
Malvolio's character in 'Twelfth Night ' (n. iii. 153 et seq.)
runs:

MARIA. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.

SIR ANDREW. O ! if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog.

SIR TOBY. What, for being a puritan ? thy exquisite reason, dear
knight.

SIR ANDREW. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason
good enough.

In 'Winter's Tale ' (rv. iii. 46) the Clown, after making
contemptuous references to the character of the shearers,
remarks that there is 'but one puritan amongst them, and

142 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

he sings psalms to hornpipes.' Shakespeare could hardly
therefore have viewed with unvarying composure the steady
progress that puritanism was making among his fellow-
townsmen. The town council of Stratford-on-Avon, whose
meeting-chamber almost overlooked Shakespeare's resi
dence of New Place, gave curious proof of their puritanic
suspicion of the drama on February 7, 1612, when they
passed a resolution that plays were unlawful and 'the
sufferance of them against the orders heretofore made and
against the example of other well-governed cities and
boroughs,' and the council was therefore 'content,' the
resolution ran, that 'the penalty of xs. imposed [on players
heretofore] be x//. henceforward. ' Nevertheless a preacher,
doubtless of puritan proclivities, was entertained at Shake
speare's residence, New Place, after delivering a sermon in
the spring of 1614. The incident might serve to illustrate
Shakespeare's characteristic placability, but his son-in-law
Hall, who avowed sympathy with puritanism, was probably
in the main responsible for the civility.

In July John Combe, a rich inhabitant of Stratford,
died and left 5/. to Shakespeare. The legend that Shake
speare alienated him by composing some doggerel on his
practice of lending money at ten or twelve per cent, seems
apocryphal, although it is quoted by Aubrey and accepted
by Rowe. The lines as quoted by Aubrey ('Lives,' ed.
Clark, ii. 226) run:

Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows,

But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes;

If any man ask, who lies in this tomb?

Oh ! ho ! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe. i

Rowe's version opens somewhat differently:

Ten-in-the-hundred lies here ingrav'd.
'Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav'd.

Shakespeare's responsibility for the jingle is confuted by
the fact that in one form or another it was widely familiar
in Shakespeare's lifetime, but was never ascribed to him.
The first couplet in Rowe's version was printed in the
epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot] in 1608, and again in
Camden's 'Remaines ' in 1614. The whole first appeared
in Richard Brathwaite's 'Remains' in 1618 under the
heading: 'Upon one John Combe of Stratford upon

THE CLOSE OF LIFE

143

the Strat
ford com
mon fields.

Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon a Tombe that he
had Caused to be built in his Life Time.'

Combe's death involved Shakespeare more conspicuously
than before in civic affairs. Combe's heir William no sooner
succeeded to his father's lands than he, with a neighbouring
owner, Arthur Mannering, steward of Lord-chancellor Elles-
mere (who was ex-officio lord of the manor), attempted to Attempt
enclose the common fields, which belonged to the corpora- to enclose
tion of Stratford, about his estate at Welcombe. The cor
poration resolved to offer the scheme a stout resistance.
Shakespeare had a twofold interest in the matter by virtue
of his owning the freehold of 106 acres at Welcombe and Old
Stratford, and as joint owner — now with Thomas Greene,
the town clerk — of the tithes of Old Stratford, Welcombe,
and Bishopton. His interest in his freeholds could not have
been prejudicially affected, but his interest in the tithes
might be depreciated by the proposed enclosure. Shake
speare consequently joined with his fellow-owner Greene in
obtaining from Combe's agent Replingham in October 1614
a deed indemnifying both against any injury they might
suffer from the enclosure. But having thus secured himself
against all possible loss, Shakespeare threw his influence
into Combe's scale. In November 1614 he was on a last
visit to London, and Greene, whose official position as town
clerk compelled him to support the corporation in defiance
of his private interests, visited him there to discuss the posi
tion of affairs. On December 23, 1614, the corporation in
formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare imploring
him to aid them. Greene himself sent to the dramatist 'a
note of inconveniences [to the corporation that] would hap
pen by the enclosure.' But although an ambiguous entry of
a later date (September 1615) in the few extant pages of
Greene's ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tor
tured into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part
at Combe's conduct, it is plain that, in the spirit of his
agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to lend Combe
his countenance. Happily Combe's efforts failed, and the
common lands remain unenclosed.

At the beginning of 1616 Shakespeare's health was fail
ing. He directed Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warwick,
to draft his will, but though it was prepared for signature on
January 25, it was for the time laid aside. On February 10,
1616, Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, married,

144 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

at Stratford parish church, Thomas Quiney, four years her
junior, a son of an old friend of the poet. The ce'remony
took place apparently without public asking of the banns
and before a license was procured. The irregularity led to
the summons of the bride and bridegroom to the ecclesiasti
cal court at Worcester and the imposition of a fine. Accord-
Death, ing to the testimony of John Ward, the vicar, Shakespeare
entertained at New Place his two friends, Michael Drayton
and Ben Jonson, in this same spring of 1616, and 'had a
merry meeting,' but 'itt seems drank too hard, for Shake
speare died of a feavour there contracted.' A popular
local legend, which was not recorded till 1762, credited
Shakespeare with engaging at an earlier date in a prolonged
and violent drinking bout at Bidford, a neighbouring
village, but his achievements as a hard drinker may be
dismissed as unproven. The cause of his death is un
determined, but probably his illness seemed likely to take
a fatal turn in March, when he revised and signed the will
that had been drafted in the previous January. On Tues
day, April 23, he died at the age of fifty-two. (The
date is in the old style, ami. is equivalent to May 3 in the
new; the great Spanish author Cervantes, whose death is
often described as simultaneous, died at Madrid ten days
earlier — on April 13 in the old style, or April 23, 1616, in
Burial. the new.) On Thursday, April 25 (O.S.), the poet was
buried inside Stratford Church, near the northern wall of
the chancel, in which, as part-owner of the tithes, and
consequently one of the lay-rectors, he had a right of
interment. Hard by was the charnel-house, where bones
dug up from the churchyard were deposited. Over the
poet's grave were inscribed the lines:

GOOD FREND FOR JESVS SAKE FORBEARE,
TO DIGG HE DVST ENCLOASED ffiARE :

BLEST: BE Y MAN Y SPARES TIES STONES,
AND CVRST BE HE Y MOVES MY BONES.

According to one William Hall, who described a visit to
Stratford in 1694, these verses were penned by Shakespeare
' to suit the capacity of clerks and sextons, for the most
part a very ignorant set of people.' Had this curse not
threatened them, Hall proceeds, the sexton would not have
hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to

THE CLOSE OF LIFE

145

'the bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seven
teen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive his
wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried with her
husband.

Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was drawn up The will,
before January 25, 1616, received many interlineations
and erasures before it was signed in the ensuing March.
Francis Collins, the solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas
Russell, 'esquier, ' of Stratford, were the overseers; it was
proved by John Hall, the poet's son-in-law and joint-
executor with Mrs. Hall, in London on June 22 following.
The religious exordium is in conventional phraseology, and
gives no clue to Shakespeare's personal religious opinions.
What those opinions were, we have neither the means nor
the warrant for discussing. But while it is possible to quote
from the plays many contemptuous references to the puri
tans and their doctrines, we may dismiss as idle gossip
Davies's irresponsible report that 'he dyed a papist.' The Bequeat
name of Shakespeare's wife was omitted from the original to his
draft of the will, but by an interlineation in the final draft
she received his second best bed with its furniture. No
other bequest was made her. Several wills of the period
have been discovered in which a bedstead or other article
of household furniture formed part of a wife's inheritance,
but none except Shakespeare's is forthcoming in which a
bed forms the sole bequest. At the same time the precision
with which Shakespeare's will accounts for and assigns to
other legatees every known item of his property refutes the
conjecture that he had set aside any portion of it under a
previous settlement or jointure with a view to making in
dependent provision for his wife. Her right to a widow's
dower — i.e. to a third share for life in freehold estate —
was not subject to testamentary disposition, but Shakespeare
had taken steps to prevent her from benefiting — at any rate
to the full extent — by that legal arrangement. He had
barred her dower in the case of his latest purchase of free
hold estate, viz. the house at Blackfriars. Such procedure
is pretty conclusive proof that he had the intention of ex
cluding her from the enjoyment of his possessions after his
death. But, however plausible the theory that his relations
with her were from first to last wanting in sympathy, it is im
probable that either the slender mention of her in the will
or the barring of her dower was designed by Shakespeare

146 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

to make public his indifference or dislike. Local tradition
subsequently credited her with a wish to be buried in
his grave; arid her epitaph proves that she inspired her
daughters with genuine affection. Probably her ignorance
of affairs and the infirmities of age (she was past sixty)
combined to unfit her in the poet's eyes for the control of
property, and, as an act of ordinary prudence, he committed
her to the care of his elder daughter, who inherited, ac
cording to such information as is accessible, some of his
own shrewdness, and had a capable adviser in her hus
band.

His This elder daughter, Susanna Hall, was, according to the

heiress. \ri\\, to become mistress of New Place, and practically of
all the poet's estate. She received (with remainder to her
issue in strict entail) New Place, all the land, barns, and
gardens at and near Stratford (except the tenement in
Chapel Lane), and the house in Blackfriars, London, while
she and her husband were appointed executors and re
siduary legatees, with full rights over nearly all the poet's
household furniture and personal belongings. To their
only child and the testator's granddaughter, or 'niece,'
Elizabeth Hall, was bequeathed the poet's plate, with the
exception of his broad silver and gilt bowl, which was
reserved for his younger daughter, Judith. To his younger
daughter he also left, with the tenement in Chapel Lane
(in remainder to the elder daughter), i5o/. in money, of
which ioo/., her marriage portion, was to be paid within
a year, and another 1507. to be paid to her if alive three years
after the date of the will. To the poet's sister, Joan Hart,
whose husband, William Hart, predeceased the testator by
only six days, he left, besides a contingent reversionary
interest in Judith's pecuniary legacy, his wearing apparel,
2O/. in money, a life interest in the Henley Street property,
with 5/. for each of her three sons, William, Thomas, and
Michael. To the poor of Stratford he gave io/., and to Mr.
Thomas Combe (apparently a brother of William, of the
enclosure controversy) his sword. To each of his Strat-

Legacies ford friends, Hamlett Sadler, William Reynoldes, Anthony
to friends. Nash> and john Nash? and to each of his 'fenows' (/.,,.

theatrical colleagues in London), John Heming, Richard
Burbage, and Henry Condell, he left xxvjj. v\\]d., with
which to buy memorial rings. His godson, William Walker,
received *xx ' shillings in gold.

THE CLOSE OF LIFE

147

Before 1623 an elaborate monument, by a London The
sculptor of Dutch birth, Gerard Johnson, was erected to tomb-
Shakespeare's memory in the chancel of the parish church.
As early as 1623, Leonard Digges, in commendatory verses
before the First Folio, wrote that Shakespeare's works would
be alive

[When] Time dissolves thy Stratford monument.

The tomb includes a half-length bust, depicting the dra
matist on the point of writing. The fingers of the right
hand are disposed as if holding a pen, and under the left
hand lies a quarto sheet of paper. The inscription, which
was apparently by a London friend, runs:

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast
Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome
Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe
Far more than cost; sith all yt he hath writt
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt.
Obiit ano. doi 1616 ^Etatis 53 Die 23 Ap.

At the opening of Shakespeare's career Chettle wrote of Personal
his 'civil demeanour' and of the reports of 'his uprightness character,
of dealing which argues his honesty.' In 1601 — when near
the zenith of his fame — he was apostrophised as 'sweet
Master Shakespeare ' in the play of 'The Return from
Parnassus, ' and that adjective was long after associated with
his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem
called 'Daiphantus' bestowed on him the epithet 'friendly.'
After the close of his career Jonson wrote of him: 'I
loved the man and do honour his memory, on this side
idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest and of an
open and free nature. ' John Webster, the dramatist, made
vague reference in the address before his 'White Divel ' in
1612 to 'the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake
speare, M. Decker, and M. Heywood.' No other contempo
rary left on record any definite impression of Shakespeare's
personal character, and the 'Sonnets,' which alone of his
literary work can be held to throw any illumination on a
personal trait, mainly reveal him in the light of one who
was willing to conform to all the conventional methods in
vogue for strengthening the bonds between a poet and a

148 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

great patron. His literary practices and aims were those
of contemporary men of letters, and the difference in the
quality of his work and theirs was due not to conscious
endeavour on his part to act otherwise than they, but to the
magic and involuntary working of his genius. He seemed
unconscious of his marvellous superiority to his professional
comrades. The references in his will to his fellow-actors,
and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First Folio)
they approached the task of collecting his works after his
death, corroborate the description of him as a sympathetic
friend of gentle, unassuming mien. The later traditions
brought together by Aubrey depict him as 'very good com
pany, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,' and
there is much in other early posthumous references to sug
gest a genial, if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a
quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals
and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare.
His extant work attests his 'copious ' and continuous
industry, and with his literary power and sociability there
clearly went the shrewd capacity of a man of business.
Pope had just warrant for the surmise that he

• For gain not glory winged his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.

His literary attainments and successes were chiefly valued as
serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for him
self and his daughters. His highest ambition was to restore
among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which his
father's misfortunes had imperilled. Ideals so homely are
reckoned rare among poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter
Scott, among writers of exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare
in the sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of
their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents.

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 149

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS

SHAKESPEARE'S widow died on August 6, 1623, at the age Thesur.
of sixty-seven, and was buried near her husband inside the vivors.
chancel two days later. Some affectionately phrased Latin
elegiacs — doubtless from Dr. Hall's pen — were inscribed
on a brass plate fastened to the stone above her grave. The
words run: 'Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife
of Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th
day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 yeares.

Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti,

Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo!
Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel [us] ore,

Exeat ut Christ! Corpus, imago tua.
Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget,

Clausa licet tumulo, mater, et astra petet.'

The younger daughter, Judith, resided with her husband, Mistress
Thomas Quiney, at The Cage, a house at the Bridge Street
corner of High Street, which he leased of the Corporation
from 1616 till 1652. There he carried on the trade of a
vintner, and took part in municipal affairs, acting as a
councillor from 1617 and as chamberlain in 1621-2 and
1622-3; but after 1630 his affairs grew embarrassed, and
he left Stratford late in 1652 for London, where he seems
to have died a few months later. Of his three sons by
Judith, the eldest, Shakespeare (baptised on November 23,.
1616), was buried in Stratford Churchyard on May 8, 1617;
the second son, Richard (baptised on February 9, 1617-18),
was buried on January 28, 1638-9; and the third son,
Thomas (baptised on January 23, 1619-20), was buried on
February 26, 1638-9. Judith survived her husband, sons,
and sister, dying at Stratford on February 9, 1661-2, in her
seventy-seventh year.

The poet's elder daughter, Mrs. Susanna Hall, resided at

1 50 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Mistress New Place till her death. Her sister Judith alienated to hei
t^ie chaPel Place tenement before 1633, but that, with the
interest in the Stratford tithes, she soon disposed of. Her
husband, Dr. John Hall, died on November 25, 1635. In
1642 James Cooke, a surgeon in attendance on some
royalist troops stationed at Stratford, visited Mrs. Hall and
examined manuscripts in her possession, but they were
apparently of her husband's, not of her father's, composition.
From July n to 13, 1643, Queen Henrietta Maria, while
journeying from Newark to Oxford, was billeted on Mrs.
Hall at New Place for three days, and was visited there by
Prince Rupert. Mrs. Hall was buried beside her husband
in Stratford Churchyard on July n, 1649, and a rhyming
inscription, describing her as 'witty above her sex,' was
engraved on her tombstone. The whole inscription ran :
'Heere lyeth ye body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall, Gent.,
ye davghter of William Shakespeare, Gent. She deceased
ye nth of Jvly, A.D. 1649, aged 66.

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all,
Wise to Salvation was good Mistress Hall !
Something of Shakespere was in that, but this
Wholy of him with whom she's now in blisse.
Then, passenger, ha'st ne're a teare,

To weepe with her that wept with all?
That wept, yet set herselfe to chere

Them up with comforts cordiall.
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread,
When thou hast ne're a teare to shed.'

The last Mrs. Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last surviving

descendant of the poet. In April 1626 she married her first
husband, Thomas Nash of Stratford (b. 1593), who studied
at Lincoln's Inn, was a man of property, and, dying childless
at New Place on April 4, 1647, was buried in Stratford
Church next day. At Billesley, a village four miles from
Stratford, on June 5, 1649, Mrs. Nash married, as a second
husband, a widower, John Bernard or Barnard of Abington,
Northamptonshire, who was knighted by Charles II in 1661.
About the same date she seems to have abandoned New
Place for her husband's residence at Abington. Dying
without issue, she was buried there on February 17, 1669-70.
Her husband survived her four years, and was buried beside
her. On her mother's death in 1649 Lady Barnard inherited
under the poet's will the land near Stratford, New Place, the

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 151

house at Blackfriars, and (on the death of the poet's sister,
Joan Hart, in 1646) the houses in Henley Street, while her
father, Dr. Hall, left her in 1635 a house at Acton with a
meadow. She sold the Blackfriars house, and apparently
the Stratford land, before 1667. By her will, dated January
1669-70, and proved in the following March, she left small
bequests to the daughters of Thomas Hathaway, of the
family of her grandmother, the poet's wife. The houses
in Henley Street passed to her cousin, Thomas Hart, the
grandson of the poet's sister Joan, and they remained in
the possession of Thomas's direct descendants till 1806 (the
male line expired on the death of John Hart in 1800). By
her will Lady Barnard also ordered New Place to be sold,
and it was purchased on May 18, 1675, by Sir Edward
Walker, Garter King-of-arms, through whose daughter
Barbara, wife of Sir John Clopton, it reverted to the
Clopton family. Sir John restored it in 1702. On the
death of his son Hugh in 1752, it was bought by the Rev.
Francis Gastrell (d. 1768), who demolished the renovated
building in 1759. The site was left vacant and, with the
garden attached, was annexed to the garden of the adjoin
ing house. In 1864 the ground was purchased by public
subscription and was converted into a public recreation
ground.

Of Shakespeare's three brothers, only one, Gilbert, seems Shake-
to have survived him. Edmund, the youngest brother, 'a brothers,
player,' was buried at St. Saviour's Church, Southwark,
'withaforenoone knell of the great bell,' on December 31,
1607; he was in his twenty-eighth year. Richard, John
Shakespeare's third son, died at Stratford in February 1613,
aged 39. 'Gilbert Shakespeare adolescens,' who was buried
at Stratford on February 3, 1611-12, was doubtless son of
the poet's next brother, Gilbert; the latter, having nearly
completed his forty-sixth year, could scarcely be described
as 'adolescens; ' his death is not recorded, but according to
Oldys he survived to a patriarchal age.

SHAKES FEARERS LIFE AND WORK

Extant
specimens
of ShakeT
speare's
hand
writing.

His mode
of writing.

XVI

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS

THE only extant specimens of Shakespeare's handwriting
that are of undisputed authenticity consist of the five
autograph signatures which are reproduced in this volume.
As in the case of Edmund Spenser and of almost all the
great authors who were contemporary with Shakespeare, no
fragment of Shakespeare's handwriting outside his signa
tures — no letter nor any scrap of his literary work — is
known to be in existence.

These five signatures were appended by the poet to the
following documents : —

The Purchase-deed (on parchment), dated March 10,
1612-13, of a house in Blackfriars, which the poet
then acquired (since 1841 in the Guildhall Library,
London).

A Mortgage-deed (on parchment), dated March n, 1613,
relating to the house in Blackfriars, purchased by the
poet the day before (since 1858 in the British Museum).
The Poet's Will, finally executed in March 1616, within
a month of his death. This document, which is now
at Somerset House, London, consists of three sheets of
paper, at the foot of each of which Shakespeare signed
his name.

In all the signatures Shakespeare used the old
'English ' mode of writing, which resembles that still in
vogue in Germany. During the seventeenth century the
old 'English ' character was finally displaced in England by
the 'Italian' character, which is now universal in England
and in all English-speaking countries. In Shakespeare's
day highly educated men, who were graduates of the Uni
versities and had travelled abroad in youth, were capa
ble of writing both the old 'English' and the 'Italian'
character with equal facility. As a rule they employed the

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO
THE PURCHASE-DEED OF A HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS
ON MARCH 10, 1612-13.

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 153

'English' character in their ordinary correspondence, but
signed their names in the 'Italian' hand. Shakespeare's
use of the ' English ' script exclusively was doubtless a
result of his provincial education. He learnt only the
' English ' character at school at Stratford-on-Avon, and he
never troubled to exchange it for the more fashionable
' Italian ' character in later life.

Men did not always spell their surnames in the same Spelling
way in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The poet's ° f tlle
surname has been proved capable of as many as four name,
thousand variations. The name of the poet's father is
entered sixty-six times in the Council books of Stratford-
on-Avon, and is spelt in sixteen ways. There the com
monest form is ' Shaxpeare.' The poet cannot be proved
to have acknowledged any finality as to the spelling of
his surname, It is certain that he v;rote it indifferently
Shakesper<? or Shakspra?r, while he and his friends at times
adopted the third form — Shakespeare. In these circum
stances it is impossible to acknowledge in any one form of
spelling a supreme claim to correctness. The signature to
the purchase-deed of March 10, 1612-13, is commonly
read as ' William Shakspere,' though in all other portions of
the deed the surname is spelt ' Shakespeare.' The signa- Auto-
ture to the mortgage-deed of the following day, March n, f^g3
1612-13, has been interpreted both as 'Shaksper<?' and Black-
* Shakspetfre.' In neither of these signatures are the letters f*i&T*
following the first ' e ' in the second syllable fully written
out. They are indicated by a flourish above the ' e.'
Shakespeare apparently deemed it needful to confine his
signature to the narrow strip of parchment that was inserted
in the fabric of the deed to bear the seal, and he conse
quently lacked adequate space wherein to complete his
autograph. The flourish above the ' e ' has been held to
represent the cursive mark of abbreviation for ' re ' which
was in use among mediaeval scribes. It is doubtful, how
ever, whether mediaeval methods of handwriting were
familiar to Shakespeare or his contemporaries. In the
second of the two signatures, the flourish has also been
read as ' a.' But in both cases the flourish has possibly a
less determinate significance than any which has hitherto
been assigned to it. It may be in both autographs no more
than a hasty dash of the pen — a rough and ready indication
that the writer was hindered from completing the word that

154 SHAKESPEARE' >S LIFE' AND WORK

Auto
graphs in
the will.

' Shake
speare '
the ac
cepted
form.

Shake
speare's
portraits.

he had begun by the narrowness of the strip of parchment
to which he was seeking to restrict his handwriting.
Whether, therefore, the surname in the two documents
should be interpreted as ' Shaksper<? ' or ' Shakspeare ' can
not be stated positively.

The ink of the first signature which Shakespeare
appended to his will has now faded almost beyond recogni
tion, but that it was * Shakspe/r ' may be inferred from the
facsimile made by George Steevens in 1776. The second
and third signatures to the will, which are easier to
decipher, have been variously read as 'Shakspe/r,' 'Shak-
speare,' and ' Shakespeare ; ' but a close examination
suggests that, whatever the second signature may be, the
third, which is preceded by the two words ' By me ' (also
in the poet's handwriting) , is ' Shakspe#;r.' ' Shaksper<? ' is
the spelling of the alleged autograph in the British Museum
copy of Florio's ' Montaigne,' but the genuineness of that
signature is disputable.

But it is to be borne in mind that ' Shakespeare ' was
the form of the poet's surname that was adopted in the
text of all the legal documents relating to the poet's
property, and in the royal license to him in the capacity
of a player in 1603. That form is to be seen in the
inscription on his wife's tomb in the church of Strat-
ford-on-Avon, although in the rudely cut inscription on his
own monument his name appears as ' Shakjp^r*.' ' Shak^-
speare ' figures in the poet's printed signatures affixed by his
authority to the dedicatory epistles in the original editions
of his two narrative poems 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and
'Lucrece' (1594); it is prominent on the title-pages of
almost all contemporary editions of his plays, and was
employed in almost all the published references to him
in the seventeenth century. Consequently, of the form
' Shakespeare ' alone can it be definitely said that it has
the sanction of legal and literary usage.

Aubrey reported that Shakespeare was 'a handsome
well-shap't man,' but no portrait exists which can be said
with absolute certainty to have been executed during his
lifetime, although one has recently been discovered with a
good claim to that distinction. Only two of the extant
portraits are positively known to have been produced within
a short period after his death. These are the bust in
Stratford Church and the frontispiece to the folio of 1623.

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO
A DEED MORTGAGING HIS HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS
ON MARCH n, 1612-13.

Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the British
Museum.

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AtfD MEMORIALS 155

Each is an inartistic attempt at a posthumous likeness. TheStrat-
There is considerable discrepancy between the two ; their ford bust-
main points of resemblance are the baldness on the top of
the head and the fulness of the hair about the ears. The
bust was by Gerard Johnson or Janssen, who was a Dutch
stonemason or tomb-maker settled in Southwark. It was
set up in the church before 1623, and is a rudely carved
specimen of mortuary sculpture. There are marks about
the forehead and ears which suggest that the face was
fashioned from a death mask, but the workmanship is at
all points clumsy. The round face and eyes present a
heavy, unintellectual expression. The bust was originally
coloured, but in 1 793 Malone caused it to be whitewashed.
In 1 86 1 the whitewash was removed, and the colours, as
far as traceable, restored. The eyes are light hazel, the
hair and beard auburn. There have been numberless
reproductions, both engraved and photographic. It was
first engraved — very imperfectly — for Rowe's edition in
1709 ; then by Vertue for Pope's edition of 1725 ; and by
Gravelot for Hanmer's edition in 1744. A good engraving
by William Ward appeared in 1816. A phototype and a
chromo-phototype, issued by the New Shakspere Society,
are the best reproductions for the purposes of study. The The
pretentious painting known as the 'Stratford' portrait, and f51!*4"
presented in 1867 by W. O. Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, portrait
to the Birthplace Museum, where it is very prominently
displayed, was probably painted from the bust late in the
eighteenth century; it lacks either historic or artistic
interest.

The engraved portrait — nearly a half-length — which was Droes-
printed on the title-page of the Folio of 1623, was by Martin hout.'s en-
Droeshout. On the opposite page lines by Ben Jonson gn"
congratulate ' the graver ' on having satisfactorily ' hit ' the
poet's ' face.' Jonson's testimony does no credit to his
artistic discernment ; the expression of countenance, which
is very crudely rendered, is neither distinctive nor lifelike.
The face is long and the forehead high ; the top of the head
is bald, but the hair falls in abundance over the ears. There .
is a scanty moustache, and a thin tuft is under the lower lip.
A stiff and wide collar, projecting horizontally, conceals
the neck. The coat is closely buttoned and elaborately
bordered, especially at the shoulders. The dimensions of
the head and face are disproportionately large as compared

156 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

with those of the body. In the unique proof copy which
belonged to Halliwell-Phillipps (now with his collection in
America) the tone is clearer than in the ordinary copies,
and the shadows are less darkened by cross-hatching and
coarse dotting. The engraver, Martin Droeshout, belonged
to a Flemish family of painters and engravers long settled in
London, where he was born in 1601. He was thus fifteen
years old at the time of Shakespeare's death in 1616, and it
is consequently improbable that he had any personal know
ledge of the dramatist. The engraving was doubtless pro
duced by Droeshout very shortly before the publication of
the First Folio in 1623, when he had completed his twenty-
second year. It thus belongs to the outset of the engraver's
professional career, in which he never achieved extended
practice or reputation. A copy of the Droeshout engraving,
by William Marshall, was prefixed to Shakespeare's ' Poems '
in 1640, and William Faithorne made another copy for the
frontispiece of the edition of ' The Rape of Lucrece ' pub
lished in 1655.

There is little doubt that young Droeshout in fashioning
his engraving worked from a painting, and there is a like
lihood that the original picture from which the youthful
engraver worked has lately come to light. As recently as
1892 Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, discovered
in the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements, a private gentle
man with artistic tastes residing at Peckham Rye, a portrait
alleged to represent Shakespeare. The picture, which was
faded and somewhat worm-eaten, dated beyond all doubt
from the early years of the seventeenth century. It was
painted on a panel formed of two planks of old elm, and in
the upper left-hand corner was the inscription ' Will™ Shake
speare, 1609.' Mr. Clements purchased the portrait of an
obscure dealer about 1840, and knew nothing of its history,
beyond what he set down on a slip of paper when he
acquired it. The note that he then wrote and pasted on
the box in which he preserved the picture, ran as follows :
'The original portrait of Shakespeare, from which the now
famous Droeshout engraving was taken and inserted in the
first collected edition of his works, published in 1623, being
seven years after his death. The picture was painted nine
\vere seven] years before his death, and consequently sixteen
\v ere fourteen] years before it was published. . . . The pic
ture was publicly exhibited in London seventy years ago, and

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AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 157

many thousands went to. see it.' In all its details and in
its comparative dimensions, especially in the disproportion
between the size of the head and that of the body, this pic
ture is identical with the Droeshout engraving. Though
coarsely and stiffly drawn, the face is far more skilfully pre
sented than in the engraving, and the expression of counte
nance betrays some artistic sentiment which is absent from
the print. Connoisseurs, including Mr. Sidney Colvin of
the British Museum, and Mr. Lionel Cust, have almost un
reservedly pronounced the picture to be anterior in date to
the engraving, and they have reached the conclusion that
in all probability Martin Droeshout directly based his work
upon the painting. Influences of an early seventeenth-cen
tury Flemish school are plainly discernible in the picture,
and it is just possibje that it is the production of an uncle
of the young engraver Martin Droeshout, who bore the same
name as his nephew, and was naturalised in this country on
January 25, 1608, when he was described as a 'painter of
Brabant.' Although the history of the portrait rests on criti
cal conjecture and on no external contemporary evidence,
there seems good ground for regarding it as a portrait of
Shakespeare painted in his lifetime — in the forty-fifth year
of his age. No other pictorial representation of the poet
has equally serious claims to be treated as contemporary
with himself, and it therefore presents features of unique
interest. On the death of its owner, Mr. Clements, in 1895,
the painting was purchased by Mrs. Charles Flower, and
was presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery at Stratford,
where it now hangs. No attempt at restoration has been
made. It is sometimes referred to as the ' Flower portrait.'

Of the same type as the Droeshout engraving, although
less closely resembling it than the picture just described,
is the ' Ely House ' portrait (now the property of the Birth- 'Ely
place Trustees at Stratford), which formerly belonged to ^0°£.s
Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely, and it is inscribed ' JE. 39
x. 1603.' This painting is of high artistic value. The
features are of a far more attractive and intellectual cast
than in either the Droeshout painting or engraving, and the
many differences in detail raise doubts as to whether the
person represented can have been intended for Shakespeare.
Experts are of opinion that the picture was painted early in
the seventeenth century.

Early in Charles II's reign Lord-chancellor Clarendon

iS8

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Later
portraits.

The

' Chandos '

portrait.

added a portrait of Shakespeare to his great gallery in his
house in St. James's. Mention is made of it in a letter
from the diarist John Evelyn to his friend Samuel Pepys in
1689, but Clarendon's collection was dispersed at the end
of the seventeenth century, and the picture has not been
traced.

Of the numerous extant paintings which have been de
scribed as portraits of Shakespeare, only the ' Droeshout '
portrait and the Ely House portrait, both of which are at
Stratford, bear any definable resemblance to the Folio
engraving or the bust in the church. In spite of their
admitted imperfections, the engraving and the bust can
alone be held indisputably to have been honestly designed
to depict the poet's features. They must be treated as the
standards of authenticity in judging of the genuineness of
other portraits claiming to be of an early date.

Of other alleged portraits which are extant, the most
famous and interesting is the ' Chandos ' portrait, now in the
National Portrait Gallery. Its pedigree suggests that it was
intended to represent the poet, but numerous and conspicu
ous divergences from the authenticated likenesses show
that it was painted from fanciful descriptions of him some
years after his death. The face is bearded, and rings adorn
the ears. Oldys reported that it was from the brush of
Burbage, Shakespeare's fellow-actor, who had some reputa
tion as a limner, and that it had belonged to Joseph Taylor,
an actor contemporary with Shakespeare. These rumours
are not corroborated ; but there is no doubt that it was at
one time the property of D'Avenant, and that it subsequently
belonged successively to the actor Betterton and to Mrs.
Barry the actress. In 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller made a
copy as a gift for Dryden. After Mrs. Barry's death in
1713 it was purchased for forty guineas by Robert Keck, a
barrister of the Inner Temple. At length it reached the
hands of one John Nichols, whose daughter married James
Brydges, third Duke of Chandos. In due time the Duke
became the owner of the picture, and it subsequently passed,
through Chandos's daughter, to her husband, the first Duke
of Buckingham and Chandos, whose son, the second Duke
of Buckingham and Chandos, sold it with the rest of his
effects at Stowe in 1848, when it was purchased by the Earl
of Ellesmere. The latter presented it to the nation.
Edward Capell many years before presented a copy by

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 159

Ranelagh Barret to Trinity College, Cambridge, and other
copies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias
Humphrey (1783). It was engraved by George Vertue in
1719 for Pope's edition (1725), and often later, one of the
best engravings being by Vandergucht. A good lithograph
from a tracing by Sir George Scharf was published by the
trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1864. The
Baroness Burdett-Coutts purchased in 1875 a portrait of
similar type, which is said, somewhat doubtfully, to have
belonged to John, lord Lumley, who died in 1609, and to
have formed part of a collection of portraits of the great men
of his day at his house, Lumley Castle, Durham. Its early
history is not positively authenticated, and it may well be an
early copy of the Chandos portrait. The ' Lumley ' painting
was finely chromolithographed in 1863 by Vincent Brooks.

The so-called ' Jansen ' or Janssens portrait, which be- The
longs to Lady Guendolen Ramsden, daughter of the Duke ' Jansen '
of Somerset, and is now at her residence at Bulstrode, was P°rtrait<
first doubtfully identified about 1770, when in the possession
of Charles Jennens. Janssens did not come to England
before Shakespeare's death. It is a fine portrait, but is
unlike any other that has been associated with the dramatist.
An admirable mezzotint by Richard Earlom was issued
in 1811.

The ' Felton ' portrait, a small head on a panel, with a The
high and very bald forehead (belonging since 1873 to the 'Felton*
Baroness Burdett-Coutts), was purchased by S. Felton of por
Dray ton, Shropshire, in 1792 of J. Wilson, the owner of the
Shakespeare Museum in Pall Mall ; it bears a late inscrip
tion, 'Gal. Shakespear 1597, R. B.' [i.e. Richard Burbage].
It was engraved by Josiah Boydell for George Steevens in
1797, and by James Neagle for Isaac Reed's edition in 1803.
Fuseli declared it to be the work of a Dutch artist, but the
painters Romney and Lawrence regarded it as of 'English
workmanship of the sixteenth century. Steevens held that
it was the original picture whence both Droeshout and
Marshall made their engravings, but there are practically
no points of resemblance between it and the prints.

The ' Soest ' or ' Zoust ' portrait — in the possession of The
Sir John Lister- Kaye of the Grange, Wakefield — was in the ' Soest '
collection of Thomas Wright, painter, of Covent Garden, F
in 1725,, when John Simon engraved it. Soest was born
twenty-one years after Shakespeare's death, and the portrait

160 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

is only on fanciful grounds identified with the poet. A
chalk drawing by John Michael Wright, obviously inspired
by the Soest portrait, is the property of Sir Arthur Hodgson
of Clopton House, and is on loan at the Memorial Gallery,
Stratford.

Minia- A well-executed miniature by Hilliard, at one time in

tures. tne possession of William Somerville the poet, and now the

property of Lord Northcote, was engraved by Agar for
vol. ii. of the 'Variorum Shakespeare' of 1821, and in
Wivell's 'Inquiry,' 1827. It has little claim to attention
as a portrait of the dramatist. Another miniature (called
the 'Auriol ' portrait), of doubtful authenticity, formerly be
longed to Mr. Lumsden Propert, and a third is at Warwick
Castle.

A bust, said to be of Shakespeare, was discovered in
1845 bricked up in a wall in Spode & Copeland's china
warehouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The warehouse had
The . been erected on the site of the Duke's Theatre, which was

Club built by D'Avenant in 1660. The bust, which is of black

bust. terra cotta, and bears traces of Italian workmanship, is

believed to have adorned the proscenium of the Duke's
Theatre. It was acquired by the surgeon William Clift,
from whom it passed to Clift's son-in-law, Richard (after
wards Sir Richard) Owen the naturalist. The latter sold it
to the Duke of Devonshire, who presented it in 1851 to the
Garrick Club, after having two copies made in plaster. One
of these copies is now in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery
• at Stratford.

Alleged Tne Kesselstadt death mask was discovered by Dr.

mask. Ludwig Becker, librarian at the ducal palace at Darmstadt,

in a rag-shop at Mayence in 1849. The features resemble
those of an alleged portrait of Shakespeare (dated 1637)
which Dr. Becker purchased in 1847. This picture had
long been in the possession of the family of Count Francis
von Kesselstadt of Mayence, who died in 1843. Dr. Becker
brought the mask and the picture to England in 1849, and
Richard Owen supported the theory that the mask was
taken from Shakespeare's face after death, and was the
foundation of the bust in Stratford Church. The mask was
for a long time in Dr. Becker's private apartments at the
ducal palace, Darmstadt. It is now the property of Frau
Oberst Becker, the discoverer's daughter-in-law, and is in
her residence at Darmstadt (Heidelbergerstrasse in).

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 161

The features are singularly attractive ; but the chain of
evidence which would identify them with Shakespeare is
incomplete.

A monument, the expenses of which were defrayed by Memo-
public subscription, was set up in the Poets' Corner rials in
in Westminster Abbey in 1741. Pope and the Earl of :
Burlington were among the promoters. The design was by
William Kent, and the statue of Shakespeare was executed
by Peter Scheemakers. Another statue was executed by
Roubiliac for Garrick, who bequeathed it to the British
Museum in 1779. A third statue, freely adapted from the
works of Scheemakers and Roubiliac, was executed for Baron
Albert Grant, and was set up by him as a gift to the me
tropolis in Leicester Square, London, in 1879. A fourth
statue (by Mr. J. Q. A. Ward) was placed in 1882 in the
Central Park, New York. A fifth in bronze, by M. Paul
Fournier, which was erected in Paris in 1888 at the expense
of an English resident, Mr. W. Knighton, stands at the
point where the Avenue de Messine meets the Boulevard
Haussmann. A sixth memorial in sculpture, by Lord
Ronald Gower, the most elaborate and ambitious of all,
stands in the garden of the Shakespeare Memorial buildings
at Stratford-on-Avon, and was unveiled in 1888: Shake
speare is seated on a high pedestal ; below, at each side of
the pedestal, stand figures of four of Shakespeare's principal
characters : Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Prince Hal, and Sir
John Falstaff.

At Stratford, the Birthplace, which was acquired by the
public in 1846 and converted into a museum, is, with Anne
Hathaway's cottage (which was acquired by the Birthplace
Trustees in 1892), a place of pilgrimage for visitors from all
parts of the globe. The 26,510 persons who visited it in
1897 and the 25,444 persons who visited it in 1898 repre
sented nearly forty nationalities. The site of the demolished
New Place, with the garden, was also purchased by public
subscription in 1861, and now forms a public garden. Of
a new memorial building on the river-bank at Stratford,
consisting of a theatre, picture-gallery, and library, the
foundation-stone was laid on April 23, 1877. The theatre
was opened exactly two years later, when ' Much Ado about
Nothing' was performed, with Helen Faucit (Lady Martin)
as Beatrice and Barry Sullivan as Benedick. Performances
of Shakespeare's plays have since been given annually during

162 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

April. The library and picture-gallery were opened in 1881.
A memorial Shakespeare library was opened at Birmingham
on April 23, 1868, to commemorate the tercentenary of
1864, and, although destroyed by fire in 1879, was restored
in 1882 ; it now possesses nearly ten thousand volumes
relating to Shakespeare.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

163

XVII

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ONLY two of Shakespeare's works — his narrative poems
' Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece ' — were published with
his sanction and co-operation. These poems were the
first specimens of his work to appear in print, and they
passed in his lifetime through a greater number of editions
than any of his plays. At the time of his death in 1616
there had been printed seven editions of his 'Venus and
Adonis' (1593 and 1594 in quarto, 1596, 1599, 1600, and
two in 1602, all in small octavo), and five editions of his
'Lucrece' (1594 in quarto, 1598, 1600, 1607, 1616, all in
small octavo) . There was only one lifetime edition of the
' Sonnets,' Thorpe's surreptitious venture of 1609 in quarto ;
but three editions were issued of the piratical ' Passionate
Pilgrim,' which was fraudulently assigned to Shakespeare
by the publisher, William Jaggard, although it contained
only a few occasional poems by him (1599, 1600 no copy
known, and 1612).

Of posthumous editions of the two narrative poems in the
seventeenth century, there were two of ' Lucrece ' (both in
octavo) — viz. in 1624 ('the sixth edition') and in 1655,
the seventh edition (with John Quarles's 'Banishment of
Tarquin') — and there were as many as six editions of
'Venus' (1617, 1620, 1627, two in 1630, and 1636, all in
octavo) , making thirteen editions of this poem in all in forty-
three years. No later edition of either poem was issued in
the seventeenth century. They were next reprinted together
with 'The Passionate Pilgrim' in 1707, and thenceforth
they usually figured, with the addition of the ' Sonnets,' in
collected editions of Shakespeare's works.

A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's
'Poems' in 1640 (London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) was
mainly a reissue of the ' Sonnets,' but it omitted six (Nos.
xviii., xix., xliii., Ivi., Ixxv., and Ixxvi.), and it included the

Editions
of the
poems in
the poet's
lifetime.

Posthu
mous
editions
of the
poems.

The

' Poems '
of 1640.

164

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Quartos
of the
plays in
the poet's
lifetime.

twenty poems of ' The Passionate Pilgrim,' with some other
pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy of the Droeshout
engraving of 1623 formed the frontispiece. There were
prefatory poems by Leonard Diggs and John Warren, as
well as an address ' to the reader ' signed with the initials
of the publisher. There Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' were de
scribed as ' serene, clear, and elegantly plain ; such gentle
strains as shall recreate and not perplex your brain. No
intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will
raise your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of
interest in the volume of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact that
the ' Sonnets ' were printed there in a different order from
that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus the
poem numbered Ixvii. in the original edition opens the
reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial poem,
beginning

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

which was in 1609 numbered cxliv., takes the thirty-second
place in 1640. In most cases a more or less fanciful
general title is placed in the second edition at the head of
each sonnet, but in a few instances a single title serves for
short sequences of two or three sonnets which are printed
as independent poems continuously without spacing. All
the poems in ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' are intermingled
with the 'Sonnets,' together with extracts from Thomas
Heywood's ' General History of Women,' although no hint
is given that they are not Shakespeare's work. The edi
tion concludes with three epitaphs on Shakespeare and
a short section entitled 'an addition of some excellent
poems to those precedent by other Gentlemen.' The
volume is of great rarity. An exact reprint was published
in 1885.

Of Shakespeare's plays there were in print in 1616 only
sixteen (all in quarto), or eighteen if we include the ' Con
tention,' the first draft of '2 Henry VI' (1594 and 1600),
and ' The True Tragedy,' the first draft of ' 3 Henry VI '
(1595 and 1600). These sixteen quartos were publishers'
ventures, and were undertaken without the co-operation of
the author.

Two of the plays, published thus, reached five editions
before 1616, viz. 'Richard III' (1597, 1598, 1602, 1605,
1612) and ' i Henry IV (1598, 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 165

Three reached four editions, viz. 'Richard II' (1597,
1598, 1608, supplying the deposition scene for the first
time, 1615), 'Hamlet' (1603 imperfect, 1604, 1605, 1611),
and 'Romeo and Juliet' (1597 imperfect, 1599, two in
1609).

Two reached three editions, viz. ' Henry V ' ( 1 600 imper
fect, 1602, and 1608) and 'Pericles' (two in 1609, 1611).

Four reached two editions, viz. ' Midsummer Night's
Dream' (both in 1600), 'Merchant of Venice ' (both in
1600), 'Lear' (both in 1608), and 'Troilus and Cressida'
(both in 1609).

Five achieved only one edition, viz. ' Love's Labour's
Lost' (1598), '2 Henry IV (1600), 'Much Ado' (1600),
'Titus' (1600), 'Merry Wives' (1602 imperfect).

Three years after Shakespeare's death — in 1619 — there Posthu-
appeared a second edition of 'Merry Wives' (again im- mous
perfect) and a fourth of ' Pericles.' ' Othello ' was first ^hefplay
printed posthumously in 1622 (410), and in the same year
sixth editions of 'Richard III ' and ' i Henry IV appeared.
The largest collections of the original quartos — each of
which survives in only four, five, or six copies — are in the
libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the British Museum,
and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the Bodleian Library.

Lithographed facsimiles of most of these volumes, with
some of the quarto editions of the poems (forty-eight
volumes in all), were prepared by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, and
issued to subscribers by Halliwell-Phillipps between 1862
and 1871. A cheaper set of quarto facsimiles, undertaken
by Mr. W. Griggs, under the supervision of Dr. F. J.
Furnivall, appeared in forty-three volumes between 1880
and 1889.

All the quartos were issued in Shakespeare's day at six
pence each. Perfect copies now range in price, according to
their rarity, from 2OO/. to 3oo/. In 1 864, at the sale of George
Daniel's library, quarto copies of ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and
of ' Merry Wives ' (first edition) each fetched 3467. \QS. On
May 14, 1897, a copy of the quarto of 'The Merchant of
Venice' (printed by James Roberts in 1600) was sold at
Sotheby's for 3i5/. On April 25, 1899, a copy of the
quarto of the ' Troublesome raigne of John King of England,'
1591, a play in vogue before Shakespeare attempted the
same theme, was sold at Sotheby's for SIQ/. — the highest
price that a quarto play of the period has yet reached.

1 66

SHAKESPEARKS LIFE AND WORK

The First
Folio.

The pub
lishing
syndicate.

In 1623 the first attempt was made to give the world
a complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. Two of the
dramatist's intimate friends and fellow-actors, John Heming
and Henry Condell, were nominally responsible for the
venture, but it seems to have been suggested by a small
syndicate of printers and publishers, who undertook all
pecuniary responsibility. Chief of the syndicate was William
Jaggard, printer since 1611 to the City of London,- who was
established in business in Fleet Street at the east end of
St. Dunstan's Church. As the piratical publisher of 'The
Passionate Pilgrim ' he had long known the commercial
value of Shakespeare's work. In 1613 he had extended his
business by purchasing the stock and rights of a rival
pirate, James Roberts, who had printed the quarto editions
of ' The Merchant of Venice ' and ' Midsummer Night's
Dream' in 1600, and the complete quarto of 'Hamlet' in
1604. Roberts had enjoyed for nearly twenty years the
right to print ' the flayers' bills,' or programmes, and he
made over that privilege to Jaggard with his other literary
property. It is to the close personal relations with the
playhouse managers into which the acquisition of the right
of printing 'the players' bills' brought Jaggard after 1613
that the inception of the scheme of the ' First Folio ' may
safely be attributed. Jaggard associated his son Isaac with
the enterprise. They alone of the members of the syndicate
were printers. Their three partners were publishers or
booksellers only. Two of these, William Aspley and John
Smethwick, had already speculated in plays of Shakespeare.
Aspley had published with another in 1600 the 'Second
Part of Henry IV ' and ' Much Ado about Nothing,' and in
1609 half of Thorpe's impression of Shakespeare's ' Sonnets.'
Smethwick, whose shop was in St. Dunstan's Churchyard,
Fleet Street, near Jaggard's, had published in 1611 two late
editions of ' Romeo and Juliet ' and one of ' Hamlet. '
Edward Blount, the fifth partner, was an interesting figure
in the trade, and, unlike his companions, had a true taste in
literature. He had been a friend and admirer of Christopher
Marlowe, and had actively engaged in the posthumous
publication of two of Marlowe's poems. He had published
that curious collection of mystical verse entitled ' Love's
Martyr,' one poem in which, 'a poetical essay of the Phoenix
and the Turtle,' was signed ' William Shakespeare.'

The First Folio was doubtless printed in Jaggard's

BIBLIOGRAPHY 167

printing office near St. Dunstan's Church. Upon Blount
probably fell the chief labour of seeing the work through the
press. It was in progress throughout 1623, and had so far
advanced by November 8, 1623, that on that day Edward
Blount and Isaac (son of William) Jaggard obtained formal
license from the Stationers' Company to publish sixteen of
the twenty hitherto unprinted plays that it was intended to
include. The pieces, whose approaching publication for
the first time was thus announced, were of supreme lit
erary interest. The titles ran : * The Tempest,' ' The Two
Gentlemen,' ' Measure for Measure,' ' Comedy of Errors,'
'As You Like It,' 'All's Well,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Winter's
Tale,' ' 3 Henry VI,' ' Henry VIII,' ' Coriolanus,' ' Timon,'
'Julius Caesar/ 'Macbeth,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and
'Cymbeline.' Four other hitherto unprinted dramas for
which no license was sought figured in the volume, viz.
' King John/ ' i and 2 Henry VI,' and ' The Taming of The
Shrew ' ; but each of these plays was based by Shakespeare
on a play of like title which had been published at an earlier
date, and the absence of a license was doubtless due to an
ignorant misconception on the part either of the Stationers'
Company's officers or of the editors of the volume as to the
true relations subsisting between the old pieces and the
new. The only play by Shakespeare that had been pre
viously published and was not included in the First Folio
was ' Pericles.'

Thirty-six pieces in all were thus brought together. The
volume consisted of nearly one thousand double-column
pages and was sold at a pound a copy. From the number
of copie? that survive it may be estimated that the edition
numbered 500. The book was described on the title-page
as published by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, and in
the colophon as printed at the charges of 'W. Jaggard,
I. Smithweeke, and W. Aspley/ as well as of Blount. On
the title-page was engraved the Droeshout portrait. Com
mendatory verses were supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh
Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M., perhaps Jasper Maine.
The dedication was addressed to the brothers William Her
bert, Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain, and Philip
Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, and was signed by Shake
speare's friends and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell.
The choice of such patrons was in strict accordance with
custom. To the two earls in partnership nearly every work of

1 68 SHAKESPEARE-'S LIFE AND WORK

any literary pretension was dedicated at the period. More
over, the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in
1623, and exercised supreme authority in theatrical affairs.
That his patronage should be sought for a collective edition
of the works of the acknowledged master of the contempo
rary stage was a matter of course. The editors yielded to a
passing vogue in soliciting the patronage of the Lord Cham
berlain's brother in conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain.
'But since (the dedicators write) your lordships have
beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles something, heretofore ;
and have prosequuted both them, and their Authour living,
with so much favour : we hope that (they outliving him,
and he not having the fate, common with some, to be exe-
quutor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence
toward them you have done unto their parent. There is a
great difference, whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or
find them : This hath done both. For, so much were your
lordships' likings of the severall parts, when they were acted,
as, before they were published, the Volume ask'd to be
yours.' The dedicators imply that the brother earls fully
shared the enthusiastic esteem which James I and all the
noblemen of his Court extended to Shakespeare and his
plays in the dramatist's lifetime. At the conclusion of their
address to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, the dedicators,
in describing the dramatist's works as 'these remaines of
your Servant Shakespeare,' remind their noble patrons anew
that the dramatist had been a conspicuous object of their
favour in his capacity of ' King's servant ' or player.

The signatures of Hemingand Condell were also appended
to a succeeding address 'to the great variety of readers.'
In both addresses the two actors probably made pretension
to a larger responsibility for the enterprise than they really
incurred, but their motives in identifying themselves with
the venture were doubtless irreproachable. They disclaimed
(they wrote in their second address) ' ambition either of
selfe-profit or fame in undertaking the design,' being solely
moved by anxiety to ' keepe the memory of so worthy a
friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.' 'It had
bene a thing we confesse worthie to haue bene wished,' they
inform the reader, 'that the author himselfe had liued to
haue set forth and ouerseen his owne writings. ..." A list
of contents follows the address to the readers.

The title-page states that all the plays were printed

MR. WILLIAM

SHAKESPEARES

COMEDIES,
HISTORIES, &
TRAGEDIES.

PublifHed according to the True Origi nail Copies.

L 0 Wi T> 0
Pnntedby Ifaac Iaggard,and Ed. Blount. 16 1 }•

FAC-SIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST FOLIO EDI
TION OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS.
From the copy in the Granville Library at the British Museum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 169

' according to the true originall copies.' The dedicators
wrote to the sanu; effect. 'As where (before) we were abus'd
with diuerse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and
deformed by the frauds and stealthes of incurious impostors
that expos'd them : even those are now offer'd to your view
cur'd and perfect in their limbes, and all the rest absolute
in their numbers as he conceived them.' There is no doubt
that the whole volume was printed from the acting versions
in the possession of the manager of the company with which
Shakespeare had been associated. But it is doubtful if
any play were printed exactly as it came from his pen. The
player-editors' boastful advertisement that they had access
to his papers in which there was 'scarce a blot' admits of no
literal interpretation. The First Folio text is often markedly The
inferior to that of the sixteen pre-existent quartos, which,
although surreptitiously and imperfectly printed, followed
playhouse copies of far earlier date. From the text of the
quartos the text of the First Folio differs invariably, although
in varying degrees. The quarto texts of 'Love's Labour's
Lost,' ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' and ' Richard II,' for
example, differ very largely, and always for the better, from
the folio texts. On the other hand, the folio repairs the
glaring defects of the quarto versions of ' The Merry Wives
of Windsor ' and of ' Henry V.' In the case of twenty of
the plays in the First Folio no quartos exist for comparison,
and of these twenty plays, 'Coriolanus,' 'All's Well,' and
' Macbeth ' present a text abounding in corrupt passages.

The plays are arranged under three headings — The order
'Comedies,' 'Histories,' and 'Tragedies' — and each division °f the
is separately paged. The arrangement of the plays in each
division follows no principle. The comedy section begins
with the 'Tempest' and ends with the 'Winter's Tale.'
The histories more justifiably begin with ' King John ' and
end with ' Henry VIII.' The tragedies begin with ' Troilus
and Cressida' and end with 'Cymbeline.' This order has
been usually followed in subsequent collective editions.

As a specimen of typography the First Folio is not to be The typo-
commended. There are a great many contemporary folios siaPhy-
of larger bulk far more neatly and correctly printed. It
looks as though Jaggard's printing office were undermanned.
The misprints are numerous and are especially conspicuous
in the pagination. The sheets seem to have been worked
off very slowly, and corrections were made while the press

i;o SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

was working, so that the copies struck off later differ occa
sionally from the earlier copies. One mark of carelessness
on the part of the compositor or corrector of the press,
which is common to-all copies, is that 'Troilus and Cressida,'
though in the body of the book it opens the section of
tragedies, is not mentioned at all in the table of contents,
and the play is unpaged except on its second and third pages,
which bear the numbers 79 and 80.

Unique Three copies are known which are distinguished by more

interesting irregularities, in each case unique. The copy in
the Lenox Library in New York includes a cancel duplicate
of a leaf of 'As You Like It ' (sheet R of the comedies), and
the title-page bears the date 1622 instead of 1623 ; but there
is little doubt that the last figure has been tampered with
by a modern owner. Samuel Butler, successively head
master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry,
possessed a copy of the First Folio in which a proof leaf of
' Hamlet ' was bound up with the corrected leaf.

The The most interesting irregularity yet noticed appears

copyd°n ^ one °f tne two c°pies °f tne book belonging to the
Baroness Burdett-Coutts. This copy is known as the
Sheldon Folio, having formed in the seventeenth century
part of the library of Ralph Sheldon of Weston Manor in
the parish of Long Compton, Warwickshire. In the
Sheldon Folio, the opening page of ' Troilus and Cressida,'
of which the recto or front is occupied by the prologue and
the verso or back by the opening lines of the text of the
play, is followed by a superfluous leaf. On the recto or
front of the unnecessary leaf are printed the concluding lines
of ' Romeo and Juliet ' in place of the prologue to ' Troilus
and Cressida.' At the back or verso are the opening lines
of 'Troilus and Cressida' repeated from the preceding page.
The presence of a different ornamental headpiece on each
page proves that the two are not taken from the same set
ting of the type. At a later page in the Sheldon copy the
concluding lines of 'Romeo and Juliet' are duly re
printed at the close of the play, and on the verso or back
of the leaf, which supplies them in their right place, is the
opening passage, as in other copies, of 'Timon of Athens.'
These curious confusions attest that while the work was in
course of composition the printers or editors of the volume
at one time intended to place 'Troilus and Cressida,'
with the prologue omitted, after ' Romeo and Juliet.' The

BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

last page of ' Romeo and Juliet ' is in all copies numbered
79, an obvious misprint for 77 ; the first leaf of 'Troilus ' is
paged 78; the second and third pages of 'Troilus' are
numbered 79 and 80. It was doubtless suddenly deter
mined while the volume was in the press to transfer
' Troilus and Cressida ' to the head of the tragedies from a
place near the end, but the numbers on the opening pages
which indicated its first position were clumsily retained, and
to avoid the extensive typographical corrections that were
required by the play's change of position, its remaining
pages were allowed to go forth unnumbered.

A fourth copy of the First Folio presents unique features Jaggard's
of a different kind of interest. Mr. Coningsby Sibthorp Presenta-
of Sudbrooke Holme, Lincoln, possesses a copy which has of the°First
been in the library of his family for more than a century, Folio.
and is beyond doubt one of the very earliest that came from
the press of the printer William Jaggard. The title-page,
which bears Shakespeare's portrait, is in a condition of
unparalleled freshness, and the engraving is printed with
unusual firmness and clearness. Although the copy is not
at all points perfect and several leaves have been supplied
in facsimile, it is a taller copy than any other, being thirteen
and a half inches high, and at least a quarter of an inch
superior in stature to that of any other known copy. The
binding, rough calf, is partly original ; and on the title-page
is a manuscript inscription, in contemporary handwriting of
indisputable authenticity, attesting that the copy was a gift
to an intimate friend by the printer Jaggard. The inscrip
tion reads thus :

The fragment of the original binding is stamped with an
heraldic device, in which a muzzled bear holds a banner in
its left paw and in its right a squire's helmet. There is , a
crest of a bear's head above, and beneath is a scroll with
the motto ' Augusta Vincenti ' (i.e. proud things to the con
queror). This motto proves to be a pun on the name of
the owner of the heraldic badge — Augustine Vincent, a
highly respected official of the College of Arms, who is
known from independent sources to have been, at the date

172 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

of the publication, in intimate relations with the printer of
the First Folio. It is therefore clear that it was to Augus
tine Vincent that Jaggard presented as a free gift what was
almost certainly the first copy of this great volume which
came from his press. The inscription on the title-page I
have ascertained, by comparison of it with Vincent's hand
writing, to be in his autograph. Jaggard at the time
appears to have lost the power of writing owing to failing
sight. Mr. Sibthorp's copy of the First Folio is the most
interesting memorial that has hitherto come to light of
Jaggard's connection with the great publication.
Estimated It is difficult to estimate how many copies survive of the

exta^ °f First F°uo> which is intrinsically the most valuable volume
copies. in the whole range of English literature, and extrinsically is
only exceeded in value by some half-dozen volumes of far
earlier date and of exceptional typographical interest. It
seems that about two hundred copies have been traced
within the past century. Of these fewer than twenty are in
a perfect state, that is, with the portrait printed {not inlaid)
on the title-page, and the flyleaf facing it, with all the
pages succeeding it, intact and uninjured. (The flyleaf
contains Ben Jonson's verses attesting the truthfulness of
the portrait.) Excellent copies in this enviable state are
in the Grenville Library at the British Museum, and in the
libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Crawford,
the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Mr. A. H. Huth, and of
several American collectors. Of these the finest is the
perfect ' Daniel ' copy belonging to the Baroness Burdett-
Coutts. It measures 13 inches by 8^, and was purchased
by the Baroness for 716?. 2s. at the sale of George Daniel's
library in 1864. This sum was long the highest price paid
for the book, but the amount has on three recent occa
sions been exceeded. A perfect copy, measuring 12^-
inches by yy-f, fetched 8407. (4,200 dollars) at the sale oif
Mr. Brayton Ives's library in New York in March 1891. A
second perfect copy in fine preservation, measuring 13!
inches by 8|, formerly the property of Sir Robert Sidney,
first Earl of Leicester (Sir Philip Sidney's brother), whose
arms are stamped on the original calf binding, was
privately purchased for more than i,ooo/. by Mr. J. Pier-
pont Morgan of New York in June 1899 of Mr. C. J.
Toovey, bookseller, of Piccadilly, London. A third copy,
measuring 1-2^ inches by 8|, which had been for a century

BIBLIOGRAPHY 173

and more in Belgium, and is quite perfect save for slight
injuries to the margins of the title-page and a few other
leaves, was purchased by Mr. Bernard Buchanan Mac-
george of Glasgow for i,7oo/. at a sale by Messrs.
Christie, Manson & Woods on July n, 1899; this is the
largest figure yet reached. The Sibthorp copy is far taller
than any of these, and in many other respects is equally
admirable, but a few of its leaves are missing. Some
twenty more copies lack, like the Sibthorp copy, a few
pages, although they are in other regards unimpaired.
There remain about 160 copies which have sustained
serious damage at various points.

A reprint of the First Folio unwarrantably purporting to
be exact was published in 1807-8. The best reprint was
issued in three parts by Lionel Booth in 1861, 1863, and
1864. The valuable photo-zincographic reproduction under
taken by Sir Henry James, under the direction of Howard
Staunton, was issued in sixteen folio parts between February
1864 and October 1865. A reduced photographic facsimile,
too small to be legible, appeared in 1876, with a preface by..
Halliwell-Phillipps.

The Second Folio edition was printed in 1632 by The
Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot and William Aspley, each second

c. 1.1 • L j-cr .. • Folio.

of whose names figures as publisher on different copies.
To Allot Blount had transferred, on November 16, 1630,
his rights in the sixteen plays which were first licensed for
publication in 1623. The Second Folio was reprinted
from the First ; a few corrections were made in the text,
but most of the changes were arbitrary and needless.
Charles I's copy is at Windsor, and Charles IPs at the
British Museum. The ' Perkins Folio,' now in the Duke
of Devonshire's possession, in which John Payne Collier
introduced forged emendations, was a copy of that of 1632.
By far the highest price paid for a copy is 54O/., for which
sum Mr. B. B. Macgeorge of Glasgow acquired at the
Earl of Orford's sale in 1895 the fine copy formerly in the The
library of George Daniel. The Third Folio — for the most ™rd
part a faithful reprint of the Second — was first published
in 1663 by Peter Chetwynde, who reissued it next year with
the addition of seven plays, six of which have no claim
to admission among Shakespeare's works. 'Unto this
impression,' runs the title-page of 1664, 'is added seven
Playes never before printed in folio, viz. ; Pericles, Prince

174

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

The

Fourth

Folio.

Eight
eenth-
century
editors.

Nicholas

Rowe,

1674-1718.

of Tyre. The London Prodigall. The History of Thomas
Ld. Cromwell. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The
Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Tragedy of
Locrine.' The six spurious pieces which open the volume
were attributed by unprincipled publishers to Shakespeare
in his lifetime. Fewer copies of the Third Folio are reputed
to be extant than of the Second or Fourth, owing to the
alleged destruction of many unsold impressions in the Fire of
London in 1666. The Fourth Folio, printed in 1685 'for
H. Herringman, E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bentley,'
reprints the folio of 1664 without change except in the way
of modernising the spelling ; it repeats the spurious pieces.

Since 1685 some two hundred independent editions of
the collected works have been published in Great Britain
and Ireland, and many thousand editions of separate plays.
The eighteenth-century editors of the collected works
endeavoured with varying degrees of success to purge the
text of the numerous incoherences of the folios, and to
restore, where good taste or good sense required it, the lost
text of the contemporary quartos. It is largely owing to
a due co-ordination of the results of the efforts of the
eighteenth-century editors by their successors in the present
century that Shakespeare's work has become intelligible to
general readers unversed in textual criticism, and has won
from them the veneration that it merits.

Nicholas Rowe, a popular dramatist of Queen Anne's
reign, and poet laureate to George I, was the first critical
editor of Shakespeare. He produced an edition of his
plays in six octavo volumes in 1709. A new edition in
eight volumes followed in 1714, and another hand added
a ninth volume which included the poems. Rowe prefixed
a valuable life of the poet embodying traditions which were
in danger of perishing without a record. His text followed
that of the Fourth Folio. The plays were printed in the
same order, except that he transferred the spurious pieces
from the beginning to the end. Rowe did not compare his
text with that of the First Folio or of the quartos, but in
the case of ' Romeo and Juliet ' he met with an early quarto
while his edition was passing through the press, and inserted
at the end of the play the prologue which is met with only
in the quartos. He made a few happy emendations, some
of which coincide accidentally with the readings of the First
Folio; but his text is defaced by many palpable errors.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

'75

His practical experience as a playwright induced him, how
ever, to prefix for the first time a list of dramatis persona to
each play, to divide and number acts and scenes on rational
principles, and to mark the entrances and exits of the char
acters. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar he corrected
and modernised.

The poet Pope was Shakespeare's second editor. His
edition in six spacious quarto volumes was completed in
1725. The poems, edited by Dr. George Sewell, with an
essay on the rise and progress of the stage, and a glossary,
appeared in a seventh volume. Pope had few qualifications
for the task, and the venture was a commercial failure. In
his preface Pope, while he fully recognised Shakespeare's
native genius, deemed his achievement deficient in artistic
quality. Pope claimed to have collated the text of the
Fourth Folio with that of all preceding editions, and
although his work indicates that he had access to the First
Folio and some of the quartos, it is clear that his text was
based on that of Rowe. His innovations are numerous,
and are derived from ' his private sense and conjecture,' but
they are often plausible and ingenious. He was the first to
indicate the place of each new scene, and he improved on
Rowe's subdivision of the scenes. A second edition of
Pope's version in ten duodecimo volumes appeared in 1728
with Sewell's name on the title-page as well as Pope's.
There were few alterations in the text, though a preliminary
table supplied a list of twenty-eight quartos. Other editions
followed in 1 735 and 1 768. The last was printed at Garrick's
suggestion at Birmingham from Baskerville's types.

Pope found a rigorous critic in Lewis Theobald, who,
although contemptible as a writer of original verse and
prose, proved himself the most inspired of all the textual
critics of Shakespeare. Pope savagely avenged himself on
his censor by holding him up to ridicule as the hero of the
'Dunciad.' Theobald first displayed his critical skill in
1726 in a volume which deserves to rank as a classic in
English literature. The title runs ' Shakespeare Restored,
or a specimen of the many errors as well committed as
unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this poet,
designed not only to correct the said edition but to restore
the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet
publish'd.' There at page 137 appears Theobald's great
emendation in Shakespeare's account of Falstaffs death

Alexander

Pope,

1688-1744.

Lewis

176 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

(Henry V, n. iii. 17):' His nose was as' sharp as a pen and
a' babbled of green fields,' in place of the reading in the old
copies, ' His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of
green fields.' In 1 733 Theobald brought out his edition of
Shakespeare in seven volumes. In 1 740 it reached a second
issue. A third edition was published in 1752. Others are
dated 1772 and 1773. I* is stated that 12,860 copies in all
were sold. Theobald made the First Folio the basis of his
text, although he failed to adopt all the correct readings of
that version. Over 300 original corrections or emendations
which he made in his edition have become part and parcel
of the authorised canon. Theobald's principles of textual
criticism were as enlightened as his practice was triumphant.
' I ever labour,' he wrote to Warburton, ' to make the
smallest deviation that I possibly can from the text ; never
to alter at all where I can by any means explain a passage
with sense ; nor ever by any emendation to make the
author better when it is probable the text came from his
own hands.' Theobald has every right to the title of the
Person of Shakespearean criticism. The following are
favourable specimens of his insight. In ' Macbeth ' (i. vii. 6)
for ' this bank and school of time,' he substituted the familiar
' bank and shoal of time.' In ' Antony and Cleopatra ' the
old copies (v. ii. 87) made Cleopatra say of Antony :

For his bounty,

There was no winter in't; an Anthony it was
That grew the more by reaping.

For the gibberish ' an Anthony it was,' Theobald read ' an
autumn 'twas,' and thus gave the lines true point and poetry.
A third notable instance, somewhat more recondite, is found
in 'Coriolanus' (n. i. 59-60) where Menenius asks the
tribunes in the First Folio version 'what harm can your
besom conspectuities \i.e. vision or eyes] glean out of this
character?' Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet
' besom ' by ' bisson ' \i.e. purblind] , a recognized Eliza
bethan word which Shakespeare had already employed in
'Hamlet' (n. ii. 529).

Sir The fourth editor was Sir Thomas Hanmer, a country

Hanmer gentleman without much literary culture, but possessing a

1677-1746. large measure of mother wit. He was speaker in the

House of Commons for a few months in 1714, and retiring

soon afterwards from public life devoted his leisure to a

BIBLIOGRAPHY 177

thoroughgoing scrutiny of Shakespeare's plays. His edition,
which was the earliest to pretend to typographical beauty,
was printed at the Oxford University Press in 1744 in six
quarto volumes. It contained a number of good engravings
by Gravelot after designs by Francis Hayman, and was long
highly valued by book collectors. No editor's name was
given. In forming his text, Hanmer depended exclusively
on his own ingenuity. He made no recourse to the old
copies. The result was a mass of common-sense emenda
tions, some of which have been permanently accepted. A
happy example of his shrewdness may be quoted from ' King
Lear,' in. vi. 72, where in all previous editions Edgar's
enumeration of various kinds of dogs included the line
'Hound or spaniel, brach or hym [or him].' For the last
word Hanmer substituted ' lym,' which was the Elizabethan
synonym for bloodhound. Hanmer's edition was reprinted
in 1770—1.

In 1747 Bishop Warburton produced a revised version of Bishop
Pope's edition in eight volumes. Warburton was hardly ton^i^s-
better qualified for the task than Pope, and such improve- 1779.
ments as he introduced are mainly borrowed from Theobald
and Hanmer. On both these critics he arrogantly and
unjustly heaped abuse in his preface. The Bishop was
consequently criticised with appropriate severity for his
pretentious incompetence by many writers; among them,
by Thomas Edwards, whose 'Supplement to Warburton's
Edition of Shakespeare ' first appeared in 1747, and, having
been renamed ' The Canons of Criticism ' next year in the
third edition, passed through as many as seven editions by

1765-

Dr. Johnson, the sixth editor, completed his edition in Dr. John-
eight volumes in 1 765, and a second issue followed three years j°g' I709~
later. Although he made some independent collation of
the quartos, his textual labours were slight, and his verbal
notes show little close knowledge of sixteenth and seven
teenth century literature. But in his preface and elsewhere
he displays a genuine, if occasionally sluggish, sense of
Shakespeare's greatness, and his massive sagacity enabled
him to indicate convincingly Shakespeare's triumphs of
characterisation.

The seventh editor, Edward Capell, advanced on his
predecessors in many respects. He was a clumsy writer,
and Johnson declared, with some justice, that he ' gabbled

1 78 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

monstrously,' but his collation of the quartos and the First
and Second Folios was conducted on more thorough and
scholarly methods than those of any of his predecessors,
not excepting Theobald. His industry was untiring, and
he is said to have transcribed the whole of Shakespeare
ten times. Capell's edition appeared in ten small octavo
volumes in 1768. He showed himself well versed in
Elizabethan literature in a volume of notes which appeared
in 1774, and in three further volumes, entitled 'Notes,
Various Readings, and the School of Shakespeare,' which
were not published till 1783, two years after his death.
The last volume, ' The School of Shakespeare,' consisted of
' authentic extracts from divers English books that were in
print in that author's time,' to which was appended ' Notitia
Dramatica ; or, Tables of Ancient Plays (from their begin
ning to the Restoration of Charles II).'

George Steevens, whose saturnine humour involved
him in a lifelong series of literary quarrels with rival students
of Shakespeare, made invaluable contributions to Shake
spearean study. In 1766 he reprinted twenty of the plays
from the quartos. Soon afterwards he revised Johnson's
edition without much assistance from the Doctor, and his
revision, which embodied numerous improvements, appeared
in ten volumes in 1773. It was long regarded as the
standard version. Steevens's antiquarian knowledge alike of
Elizabethan history and literature was greater than that of
any previous editor ; his citations of parallel passages from
the writings of Shakespeare's contemporaries, in elucidation
of obscure words and phrases, have not been exceeded in
number or excelled in aptness by any of his successors.
All commentators of recent times are more deeply indebted
in this department of their labours to Steevens than to any
other critic. But he lacked taste as well as temper, and
excluded from his edition Shakespeare's sonnets and poems,
because, he wrote, 'the strongest Act of Parliament that
could be framed would fail to compel readers into their
service.' The second edition of Johnson and Steevens's
version appeared in ten volumes in 1778. The third edition,
published in ten volumes in 1785, was revised by Steevens's
friend, Isaac Reed (1742-1807), a scholar of his own type.
The fourth and last edition, published in Steevens's lifetime,
was prepared by himself in fifteen volumes in 1793. As
he grew older he made some reckless changes in the text,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

179

-1812.

chiefly with the unhallowed object of mystifying those
engaged in the same field. With a malignity that was not
without humour, he supplied, too, many obscene notes to
coarse expressions, and he pretended that he owed his
indecencies to one or other of two highly respectable
clergymen, Richard Amner and John Collins, whose sur
names were in each instance appended. He had known
and quarrelled with both. Such proofs of his perversity
justified the title which Gifford applied to him of ' the Puck
of Commentators.'

Edmund Malone, who lacked Steevens's quick wit and Edmund
incisive style, was a laborious and amiable archaeologist,
without much ear for poetry or delicate literary taste. He
threw abundance of new light on Shakespeare's biography
and on the chronology and sources of his works, while his
researches into the beginnings of the English stage added
a new chapter of first-rate importance to English literary
history. To Malone is due the first rational 'attempt to
ascertain the order in which the plays attributed to Shake
speare were written.' His earliest results on the topic were
contributed to Steevens's edition of 1778. Two years later
he published, as a supplement to Steevens's work, two
volumes containing a history of the Elizabethan stage, with
reprints of Arthur Brooke's ' Romeus and Juliet,' Shake
speare's Poems, and the plays falsely ascribed to him in the
Third and Fourth Folios. A quarrel with Steevens followed,
and was never closed. In 1787 Malone issued 'A Disserta
tion on the Three Parts of King Henry VI,' tending to
show that those plays were not originally written by Shake
speare. In 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare in
ten volumes, the first in two parts.

What is known among booksellers as the ' First
Variorum' edition of Shakespeare was prepared by
Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed, after Steevens's death. It
was based on a copy of Steevens's work of 1793, which had
been enriched with numerous manuscript additions, and it
embodied the published notes and prefaces of preceding
editors. It was published in twenty-one volumes in 1803.
The ' Second Variorum ' edition, which was mainly a reprint
of the first, was published in twenty-one volumes in 1813.
The ' Third Variorum ' was prepared for the press by James
Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson's biographer.
It was based on Malone's edition of 1790, but included

Variorum
editions.

:8o

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

massive accumulations of notes left in manuscript by
Malone at his death. Malone had been long engaged on
a revision of his edition, but died in 1812, before it was
completed. BoswelPs ' Malone,' as the new work is often
called, appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1821. It is the
most valuable of all collective editions of Shakespeare's
works, but the three volumes of preliminary essays on
Shakespeare's biography and writings, and the illustrative
notes brought together in the final volume, are confusedly
arranged and are unindexed ; many of the essays and
notes break off abruptly at the point at which they were left
at Malone's death. A new ' Variorum ' edition, on an ex
haustive scale, was undertaken by Mr. H. Howard Furness
of Philadelphia, and eleven volumes have appeared since
1871 ('Romeo and Juliet,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet,' 2 vols.,
' King Lear,' * Othello,' ' Merchant of Venice,' ' As You
Like It,' ' Tempest,' ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' and
'Winter's Tale').

Of nineteenth-century editors who have prepared collec
tive editions of Shakespeare's works with original annota
tions those who have most successfully pursued the great
traditions of the eighteenth century are Alexander Dyce,
Howard Staunton, Nikolaus Delius, the Cambridge editors
William George Clark (1821-1878) and Dr. Aldis Wright,
and the editors of the ' Bankside ' edition of New York.

Alexander Dyce was almost as well read as Steevens in
Elizabethan literature, and especially in the drama of the
period, and his edition of Shakespeare in nine volumes,
which was first published in 1857, has many new and
valuable illustrative notes and a few good textual emenda
tions, as well as a useful glossary ; but Dyce's annotations
are not always adequate, and often tantalise the reader by
their brevity. Howard Staunton's edition first appeared
in three volumes between 1868 and 1870. He also was
well read in contemporary literature and was an acute
textual critic. His introductions bring together much
interesting stage history. Nikolaus Delius's edition was
issued at Elberfeld in seven volumes between 1854 and
1 86 1. Delius's text is formed on sound critical principles
and is to be trusted thoroughly. A fifth edition in two
volumes appeared in 1882. The Cambridge edition, which
first appeared in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866,
exhaustively notes the textual variations of all preceding

BIBLIOGRAPHY

181

editions, and supplies the best and fullest apparattis criticus.
(Of new editions, one dated 1887 is also in nine volumes,
and another, dated 1893, in forty volumes.) In America
the most valuable of recent contributions to the textual
study of Shakespeare is the ' Bankside ' edition of twenty-
one of the plays, the first volume of which was published
by the Shakespeare Society of New York in 1888. Twenty
plays have already appeared, each in a separate volume,
under the general editorship of Mr. Appleton Morgan,
prefaced by a critical essay from the pen of a Shakespearean
scholar of repute ; the twenty-first volume, which is to
supply 'Othello,' is announced for early issue. Of the
twenty-one selected plays, sixteen were printed in quarto
before the publication of the First Folio, and five were
based on older plays by other hands, which were also pub
lished in quarto before the First Folio. In the ' Bankside '
edition the First Folio versions and the earlier quarto ver
sions are printed in full, face to face, on parallel pages.
A 'Sequel' to the 'Bankside' edition, published in 1894,
treats in similar fashion the First Folio text of the ' Comedy
of Errors ' and the text of the Globe edition.

Other editors of the complete works of Shakespeare of
the nineteenth century whose labours, although of some
value, present fewer distinctive characteristics, are : William
Harness (1825, 8 vols.) ; Samuel Weller Singer (1826, 10
vols., printed at the Chiswick Press for William Pickering,
illustrated by Stothard and others; reissued in 1856 with
essays by William Watkiss Lloyd) ; Charles Knight, with
discursive notes and pictorial illustrations by William
Harvey, F. W. Fairholt, and others (' Pictorial edition,'
8 vols., including biography and the doubtful plays, 1838-43,
often reissued under different designations) ; Bryan Waller
Procter, i.e. Barry Cornwall (1839-43, 3 vols.), illustrated by
Kenny Meadows; John Payne Collier (1841-4, 8 vols.;
another edition, 8 vols., privately printed, 1878, 4to) ;
Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (1786-1870), Vice-Chancellor
of the University of New York (New York, in serial parts,
1844-6, and in 3 vols., 8vo, 1847, with woodcuts after
previously published designs of Kenny Meadows, William
Harvey, and others) ; Samuel Phelps, the actor (1852-4,
2 vols.; another edition, 1882-4) ; J. O. Halliwell (1853-61,
15 vols. folio, with an encyclopaedic collection of annota
tions of earlier editors and pictorial illustrations) ; Richard

The

Cambridge
edition,
1863-6.

The

Bankside

edition.

Other
nineteenth-
century
editions.

1 82 SHAKESPEARE ^S LIFE AND WORK

Grant White (Boston, U.S.A., 1857-65, 12 vols.) ; W. J.
Rolfe (New York, 1871-96, 40 vols.) ; the Rev. H. N.
Hudson (the Harvard edition, Boston, 1881, 20 vols.).
The latest complete annotated editions are 'The Henry
Irving Shakespeare,' edited by F. A. Marshall and others —
especially useful for notes on stage history (8 vols. 1888-
1890); 'The Temple Shakespeare,' concisely edited by
Mr. Israel Gollancz (40 vols. i2mo, 1894-6) ; and 'The
Eversley Shakespeare,' edited by Professor C. H. Herford
(10 vols. 8vo, 1899).

Of one -volume editions of the unannotated text, the best
are the Globe, edited by W. G. Clark and Dr. Aldis Wright
(1864, and constantly reprinted — since 1891 with a new
and useful glossary); the Leopold (1876), from the text of
Delius, with preface by Dr. Furnivall; and the Oxford,
edited by Mr. W. J. Craig (1894).

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 183

XVIII

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION

SHAKESPEARE defied at every stage in his career the laws of
the classical drama. He rode roughshod over the unities
of time, place, and action. There were critics in his day
who zealously championed the ancient rules, and viewed
with distrust any infringement of them. But the force of
Shakespeare's genius — its revelation of new methods of
"dramatic art — was not lost on the lovers of the ancient
ways ; and even those who, to assuage their consciences,
entered a formal protest against his innovations, soon swelled
the chorus of praise with which his work was welcomed
by contemporary playgoers, cultured and uncultured alike.
The unauthorised publishers of 'Troilus and Cressida' in
1608 faithfully echoed public opinion when they prefaced
the work with the note : ' This author's comedies are so
framed to the life that they serve for the most common
commentaries of all actions of our lives, showing such a
dexterity and power of wit that the most displeased with
plays are pleased with his comedies. ... So much and
such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies that they seem for
their height of pleasure to be born in the sea that brought
forth Venus.'

Anticipating the final verdict, the editors of the First
Folio wrote, seven years after Shakespeare's death : ' These
plays have had their trial already and stood out all appeals.'
Ben Jonson, the staunchest champion of classical canons, Ben
noted that Shakespeare ' wanted art,' but he allowed him in Jonson'
verses, prefixed to the First Folio, the first place among all
dramatists, including those of Greece and Rome, and
claimed that all Europe owed him homage :

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,

To whom all scenes [i.e. stages] of Europe homage owe.

He was not of an age, but for all time.

184 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 'the
great heir of fame ' :

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a lifelong monument.

A writer of fine insight who veiled himself under the
initials I. M. S. contributed to the Second Folio of 1632 a
splendid eulogy. The opening lines declare ' Shakespeare's
freehold ' to have been

A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours' just extent.

It was his faculty

To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality.

Milton and I. M. S. were followed within ten years by critics
of tastes so varied as the dramatist of domesticity Thomas
Heywood, the gallant lyrist Sir John Suckling, the philo
sophic and ' ever-memorable ' John Hales of Eton, and the
untiring versifier of the stage and court, Sir William
D'Avenant. Before 1640 Hales is said to have triumphantly
established, in a public dispute held with men of learning
in his rooms at Eton, the proposition that l there was no
subject of which any poet ever writ but he could produce it
much better done in Shakespeare.' Leonard Digges (in the
1640 edition of the 'Poems') asserted that every revival
of Shakespeare's plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and
galleries alike. At a little later date, Shakespeare's plays
were the ' closet companions ' of Charles I's ' solitudes.'

After the Restoration public taste in England veered
towards the French and classical dramatic models. Shake
speare's work was subjected to some unfavourable criticism
as the product of nature to the exclusion of art, but the
eclipse proved more partial and temporary than is commonly

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 185

admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the
score of Shakespeare's indifference to the classical canons
attracted attention, but awoke in England no substantial
echo. In his 'Short View of Tragedy' (1692) Rymer
mainly concentrated his attention on ' Othello,' and reached
the eccentric conclusion that it was ' a bloody farce without
salt or savour.' In Pepys's eyes ' The Tempest ' had ' no
great wit,' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' was ' the most
insipid and ridiculous play ' ; yet this exacting critic wit
nessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare's
plays between October u, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9,
seeing ' Hamlet ' four times, and ' Macbeth,' which he
admitted to be 'a most excellent play for variety,' nine
times. Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, repeatedly Dryden's
complained of Shakespeare's inequalities — 'he is the very view*
Janus of poets.' But in almost the same breath Dryden
declared that Shakespeare was held in as much veneration
among Englishmen as ^Eschylus among the Athenians, and
that ' he was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient
poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . .
When he describes anything, you more than see it — you
feel it too.' In 1693, when Sir Godfrey Kneller presented
Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare,
the poet acknowledged the gift thus :

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.

Shakspear, thy Gift, I place before my sight;
With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write;
With Reverence look on his Majestick Face;
Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race.
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write,
And I, like Teucer, under Ajax fight.

Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite tempera
ments as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, and
Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued for Shakespeare's
supremacy. As a girl the sober duchess declares she fell in
love with Shakespeare. In her ' Sociable Letters,' which
were published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely,
described how Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had
been ' transformed into every one of those persons he hath
described,' and suffered all their emotions. When she
witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded that
she was witnessing an episode ifi real life. 'Indeed,' she
concludes, ' Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit,

1 86 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most
eloquent elocution.' The profligate Sedley, in a prologue
to the ' Wary Widdow,' a comedy by one Higden, produced
in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus :

Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit
Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit
The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools,
Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules.

Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays were contrived
to meet current sentiment of a less admirable type. But
they failed efficiently to supersede the originals. Dryden
and D'Avenant converted ' The Tempest ' into an opera
(1670). D'Avenant single-handed adapted 'The Two
Noble Kinsmen' (1668) and 'Macbeth' (1674). Dryden
dealt similarly with 'Troilus' (1679); Thomas Duffett with
'The Tempest' (1675) ; Shadwell with 'Timon' (1678) ;
Nahum Tate with 'Richard II' (1681), 'Lear' (i68i),and
'Coriolanus' (1682); John Crowne with 'Henry VI'
(1681); D'Urfey with 'Cymbeline' (1682); Ravenscroft
with 'Titus Andronicus' (1687) ; Otway with 'Romeo and
Juliet' (1692); and John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham,
with 'Julius Caesar' (1692). But during the same period
the chief actor of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs
as the interpreter of Shakespeare's leading parts, often in
unrevised versions. Hamlet was accounted that actor's
masterpiece. ' No succeeding tragedy for several years,'
wrote Downes, the prompter at Betterton's theatre, 'got
more reputation or money to the company than this.'

From the accession of Queen Anne to the present day
the tide of Shakespeare's reputation, both on the stage and
among critics, has flowed onward almost uninterruptedly.
The censorious critic, John Dennis, in his ' Letters ' on
Shakespeare's 'genius,' gave his work in 1711 whole-hearted
commendation, and two of the greatest men of letters of the
eighteenth century, Pope and Johnson, although they did
not withhold all censure, paid him, as we have seen, the
homage of becoming his editors. The school of textual
criticism which Theobald and Capell founded in the middle
years of the century has never ceased its activity since
their day. Edmund Malone's devotion at the end of the
eighteenth century to the biography of the poet and the
contemporary history of the stage secured for him a vast

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION" 187

band of disciples, of whom Joseph Hunter and John Payne
Collier well deserve mention. But of all Malone's suc
cessors, James Orchard Halliwell, afterwards Halliwell-
Phillipps (1820-1889), has made the most important
additions to our knowledge of Shakespeare's biography.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
there arose a third school to expound exclusively the
aesthetic excellence of the plays. In its inception the
aesthetic school owed much to the methods of Schlegel and
other admiring critics of Shakespeare in Germany. But
Coleridge in his ' Notes and Lectures ' and Hazlitt in his
'Characters of Shakespeare's plays' (1817) are the best
representatives of the aesthetic school in this or any other
country. Although Professor Dowden, in his ' Shakespeare,
his Mind and Art ' (1874), and Mr. Swinburne, in his ' Study
of Shakespeare' (1880), are worthy followers, Coleridge
and Hazlitt remain as aesthetic critics unsurpassed. In the
effort to supply a fuller interpretation of Shakespeare's works
— textual, historical, and aesthetic — two publishing societies
have done much valuable work. ' The Shakespeare Society '
was founded in 1841 by Collier, Halliwell, and their friends,
and published some forty-eight volumes before its dissolu
tion in 1853. The New Shakspere Society, which was
founded by Dr. Furnivall in 1874, issued during the ensuing
twenty years twenty-seven publications, illustrative mainly of
the text and of contemporary life and literature.

In 1769 Shakespeare's 'jubilee ' was celebrated for three Stratford
days (September 6-8) at Stratford, under the direction of festlvals-
Garrick, Dr. Arne, and Boswell. The festivities were re
peated on a small scale in April 1827 and April 1830.
'The Shakespeare tercentenary festival,' which was held at
Stratford from April 23 to May 4, 1864, claimed to be a
national celebration.

On the English stage the name of every eminent actor On the
since Betterton, the great actor of the period of the Resto-
ration, has been identified with Shakespearean parts. Steele,
writing in the 'Tatler' (No. 167) in reference to Better-
ton's funeral in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey on May
2, 1710, instanced his rendering of Othello as proof of an
unsurpassable talent in realising Shakespeare's subtlest con
ceptions on the stage. One great and welcome innova
tion in Shakespearean acting is closely associated with
Betterton's name. He encouraged the substitution, which

1 88

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

The first
appear
ance of
actresses
in Shake
spearean
parts.

David

Garrick,

1717-1779.

Killigrew inaugurated, of women for boys in female parts.
The first role that was professionally rendered by a woman
in a public theatre was that of Desdemona in ' Othello,'
apparently on December 8, 1660. Thomas Jordan, a very
humble poet, wrote a prologue to notify the new procedure,
and referred to the absurdity of the old custom :

For to speak truth, men act, that are between
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen,
With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant,
When you call DESDEMONA, enter GIANT.

The actress on the occasion is said to have been Mrs.
Margaret Hughes, Prince Rupert's mistress ; but Betterton's
wife, who was at first known on the stage as Mrs. Saunderson,
was the first actress to present a series of Shakespeare's
great female characters. Mrs. Betterton gave her husband
powerful support, from 1663 onwards, in such roles as
Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Katharine, and Lady Macbeth.
Betterton formed a school of actors who carried on his
traditions for many years after his death. Robert Wilks
(1670-1732) as Hamlet, and Barton Booth (1681-1733) as
Henry VIII and Hotspur, were popularly accounted no
unworthy successors. Colley Gibber (1671-1 75 7), as actor,
theatrical manager, and dramatic critic, was both a loyal
disciple of Betterton and a lover of Shakespeare, though his
vanity and his faith in the ideals of the Restoration incited
him to perpetrate many outrages on Shakespeare's text
when preparing it for theatrical representation. His no
torious adaptation of ' Richard III,' which was first pro
duced in 1700, long held the stage to the exclusion of the
original version.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century all earlier
efforts to interpret Shakespeare in the playhouse were
eclipsed in public esteem by the concentrated energy
and intelligence of David Garrick. Garrick's enthusiasm
for the poet and his histrionic genius riveted Shakespeare's
hold on public taste. His claim to have restored to the
stage the text of Shakespeare — purified of Restoration
defilements — cannot be allowed without serious qualifica
tions. Garrick had no scruple in presenting plays of
Shakespeare in versions that he or his friends had recklessly
garbled. He supplied ' Romeo and Juliet ' with a happy
ending ; he converted the ' Taming of The Shrew ' into the

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 189

farce of 'Katharine and Petruchio,' 1754; he introduced
radical changes in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' 'Two Gentlemen
of Verona,' ' Cymbeline,' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream.'
Nevertheless, no actor has won an equally exalted reputation
in so vast and varied a repertory of Shakespearean rdles.
His triumphant debut as Richard III in 1741 was followed
by equally successful performances of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth,
King John, Romeo, Henry IV, lago, Leontes, Benedick,
and Antony, in ' Antony and Cleopatra.' Garrick was not
quite undeservedly buried in Westminster Abbey on Febru
ary i, 1779, at the foot of Shakespeare's statue.

Garrick was ably seconded by Mrs. Clive (1711-1785),
Mrs. Gibber (1714-1766), and Mrs. Pritchard (1711-1768).
Mrs. Gibber as Constance in ' King John,' and Mrs. Pritchard
in Lady Macbeth, excited something of the same enthusi
asm as Garrick in Richard III and Lear. There were, too,
contemporary critics who judged rival actors to show in
certain parts powers equal, if not superior, to those of
Garrick. Charles Macklin (1697?-! 797) for nearly half a
century, from 1 735 to 1 785, gave many hirhdred performances
of a masterly rendering of Shylock. The character had, for
many years previous to Macklin's assumption of it, been
allotted to comic actors, but Macklin effectively concentrated
his energy on the tragic significance of the part with an
effect that Garrick could not surpass. Macklin was also
reckoned successful in Polonius and lago. John Henderson,
the Bath Roscius (1747-1785), who, like Garrick, was
buried in Westminster Abbey, derived immense popularity
from his representation of Falstaff; while in subordinate
characters like Mercutio, Slender, Jaques, Touchstone, and
Sir Toby Belch, John Palmer (1742?-! 798) was held to
approach perfection. But Garrick was the accredited chief
of the theatrical profession until his death. He was then
succeeded in his place of predominance by John Philip
Kemble, who derived invaluable support from his association
with one abler than himself, his sister, Mrs. Siddons.

Somewhat stilted and declamatory in speech, Kemble John
enacted a wide range of characters of Shakespearean tragedy ^^le
with a dignity that won the admiration of Pitt, Sir Walter 175^-1823.
Scott, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. Coriolanus was
regarded as his masterpiece, but his renderings of Hamlet,
King John, Wolsey, the Duke in 'Measure for Measure,'
Leontes, and Brutus satisfied the most exacting canons of

1 90

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Mrs. Sarah
Siddons,

Edmund

Kean,

1787-1833.

William
Charles
Macready,
1793-1873.

contemporary theatrical criticism. Kemble's sister, Mrs.
Siddons, was the greatest actress that Shakespeare's country
men have known. Her noble and awe-inspiring presentation
of Lady Macbeth, her Constance, her Queen Katharine,
have, according to the best testimony, not been equalled
even by the achievements of the eminent actresses of France.

During the present century the most conspicuous his
trionic successes in Shakespearean drama have been won
by Edmund Kean, whose triumphant rendering of Shylock
on his first appearance at Drury Lane Theatre on January 26,
1814, is one of the most stirring incidents in the history
of the English stage. Kean defied the rigid convention of
the ' Kemble School,' and gave free rein to his impetuous
passions. Besides Shylock, he excelled in Richard III,
Othello, Hamlet, and Lear. No less a critic than Coleridge
declared that to see him act was like ' reading Shakespeare
by flashes of lightning.' Among other Shakespearean
actors of Kean's period a high place was allotted by public
esteem to George Frederick Cooke (1756-1811), whose
Richard III, first* given in London at Covent Garden
Theatre, October 31, 1801, was accounted his masterpiece.
Charles Lamb, writing in 1822, declared that of all the
actors who flourished in his time, Robert Bensley 'had
most of the swell of soul,' and Lamb gave with a fine
enthusiasm in his ' Essays of Elia ' an analysis (which has
become classical) of Bensley's performance of Malvolio.
But Bensley's powers were rated more moderately by more
experienced playgoers. Lamb's praises of Mrs. Jordan (1762-
1816) in Ophelia, Helena, and Viola in 'Twelfth Night,'
are corroborated by the eulogies of Hazlitt and Leigh
Hunt. In the part of Rosalind Mrs. Jordan is reported on
all sides to have beaten Mrs. Siddons out of the field.

The torch thus lit by Garrick, by the Kembles, by Kean
and his contemporaries was worthily kept alive by William
Charles Macready, a cultivated and conscientious actor,
who, during a professional career of more than forty years
(1810-1851), assumed every great part in Shakespearean
tragedy. Although Macready lacked the classical bearing
of Kemble or the intense passion of Kean, he won as the
interpreter of Shakespeare the whole-hearted suffrages of
the educated public. Macready's chief associate in women
characters was Helen Faucit (1820-1898, afterwards Lady
Martin), whose refined impersonations of Imogen, Beatrice,

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 191

Juliet, and Rosalind form an attractive chapter in the
history of the stage.

The most notable tribute paid to Shakespeare by any Recent
actor-manager of recent times was paid by Samuel Phelps revivals-
(1804-1878), who gave during his tenure of Sadler's Wells
Theatre between 1844 and 1862 competent representations
of all the plays save six; only 'Richard II,' the three parts
of 'Henry VI,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Titus
Andronicus ' were omitted. The ablest actress who
appeared with Phelps at Sadler's Wells was Mrs. Warner
(1804-1854), who had previously supported Macready in
many Shakespearean dramas, and was a partner in Phelps's
Shakespearean speculation in the early days of the venture.
Sir Henry Irving, who since 1878 has been ably seconded
by Miss Ellen Terry, has revived at the Lyceum Theatre
between 1874 and the present time eleven plays ('Hamlet,'
'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' 'Richard III,' 'The Merchant of
Venice,' 'Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Twelfth Night,'
' Romeo and Juliet,' ' King Lear,' ' Henry VIII,' and
'Cymbeline'), aftd has given all of them every advantage
that they can derive from thoughtful acting as well as
from lavish scenic elaboration. 'Hamlet' in 1874-5 and
'Macbeth' in 1888-9 were each performed by Sir Henry
Irving for 200 nights in uninterrupted succession ; these
are the longest continuous runs that any of Shakespeare's
plays are known to have enjoyed. But theatrical revivals
of plays of Shakespeare are in England intermittent, and
no theatrical manager since Phelps's retirement has sought
systematically to illustrate on the stage the full range of
Shakespearean drama. Far more in this direction has been
attempted in Germany. In one respect the history of
recent Shakespearean representations can be viewed by the
literary student with unqualified satisfaction. Although
some changes of text or some rearrangement of the scenes
are found imperative in all theatrical representations of
Shakespeare, a growing public sentiment in England and
elsewhere has for many years favoured as loyal an adherence
to the authorised version of the plays as is practicable on the
part of theatrical managers ; and the evil traditions of the
stage which sanctioned the perversions of the eighteenth
century are happily wellnigh extinct.

Music and art in England owe much to Shakespeare's in music
influence. From Thomas Morley, Purcell, Matthew Locke, and art-

192 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

and Arne to William Linley, Sir Henry Bishop, and Sir
Arthur Sullivan, every distinguished musician has sought to
improve on his predecessor's setting of one or more of
Shakespeare's songs, or has composed concerted music in
illustration of some of his dramatic themes. In art, the
publisher John Boydell organised in 1787 a scheme for
illustrating scenes in Shakespeare's work by the greatest
living English artists. Some fine pictures were the result.
A hundred and sixty-eight were painted in all, and the
artists, whom Boydell employed, included Sir Joshua
Reynolds, George Romney, Thomas Stothard, John Opie,
Benjamin West, James Barry, and Henry Fuseli. All the pic
tures were exhibited from time to time between 1789 and
1804 at a gallery specially built for the purpose in Pall Mall,
and in 1802 Boydell published a collection of engravings of
the chief pictures. The great series of paintings was dis
persed by auction in 1805. Few eminent artists of later
date, from Daniel Maclise to Sir John Millais, have lacked
the ambition to interpret some scene or character of Shake
spearean drama.

In America no less enthusiasm for Shakespeare has
been manifested than in England. Editors and critics are
hardly less numerous there, and some criticism from
American pens, like that of James Russell Lowell, has
reached the highest literary level. Nowhere, perhaps, has
more labour been devoted to the study of his works than
that given by Mr. H. H. Furness of Philadelphia to the
preparation of his 'New Variorum' edition. The Barton
collection of Shakespeareana in the Boston Public Library
is one of the most valuable extant, and the elaborate cata
logue (1878-80) contains some 2,500 entries. First of
Shakespeare's plays to be represented in America, ' Richard
III,' was performed in New York in March 1750. More
recently Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), Edwin Forrest
(1806-1892), John Edward McCullough, Forrest's disciple
(1837-1885), Edwin Booth, Junius Brutus Booth's son
(1833-1893), Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876), and Miss
Ada Rehan (b, 1859) have maintained on the American
stage the great traditions of Shakespearean acting; while
Mr. E. A. Abbey has devoted high artistic gifts to pictorial
representation of scenes from the plays.

The Bible, alone of literary compositions, has been
translated more frequently or into a greater number of

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 193

languages than the works of Shakespeare. The progress of
his reputation in Germany, France, Italy, and Russia was
somewhat slow at the outset. But in Germany the poet has in
received for nearly a century and a half a recognition scarcely
less pronounced than that accorded him in America and in
his own country. Three of Shakespeare's plays, now in
the Zurich Library, were brought thither by J. R. Hess from
England in 1614. As early as 1626 ' Hamlet,' ' King Lear,'
and ' Romeo and Juliet ' were acted at Dresden, and a
version of ' The Taming of The Shrew ' was played there and
elsewhere at the end of the seventeenth century. But such
mention of Shakespeare as is found in German literature
between 1640 and 1740 only indicates a knowledge on the
part of German readers either of Dryden's criticisms or
of the accounts of him printed in English encyclopaedias.
The earliest sign of a direct acquaintance with the plays is
a poor translation of ' Julius Caesar ' into German by Baron
C. W. von Borck, formerly Prussian minister in London,
which was published at Berlin in 1741. A worse rendering
of 'Romeo and Juliet' followed in 1758. Meanwhile J. C.
Gottsched (1700-66), an influential man of letters, warmly
denounced Shakespeare in a review of von Borck's effort in
' Beitrage zur deutschen Sprache ' and elsewhere. Lessing
came without delay to Shakespeare's rescue, and set his
reputation, in the estimation of the German public, on that
exalted pedestal which it has not ceased to occupy. It was
in 1759, in a journal entitled ' Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing
first claimed for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the
French dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had
dominated European taste, but to all ancient or modern
poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he developed in his
' Hamburgische Dramaturgic ' (Hamburg, 1767, 2 vols. 8vo),
was at once accepted by the poet Johann Gottfried Herder
in the 'Blatter von deutschen Art und Kunst,' 1771. Chris
topher Martin Wieland (1733-1813) in 1762 began a prose
translation which Johann Joachim Eschenburg (1743-1820)
completed (Zurich, 13 vols., 1775-84). Between 1797 German
and 1833 there appeared at intervals the classical German ^^
rendering by August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Ludwig
Tieck, leaders of the romantic school of German litera
ture, whose creed embodied, as one of its first articles,
an unwavering veneration for Shakespeare. Schlegel trans
lated only seventeen plays, and his workmanship excels that

194

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

German
criticism.

Modern
German
writers on
Shake
speare.

of the rest of the translation. Tieck's part in the under
taking was mainly confined to editing translations by various
hands. Many other German translations in verse were
undertaken during the same period — by J. H. Voss and
his sons (Leipzig, 1818-29), by J. W. O. Benda (Leipzig,
1825-6), by J. Korner (Vienna, 1836), by A. Bottger
(Leipzig, 1836-7), by E. Ortlepp (Stuttgart, 1838-9), and
by A. Keller and M. Rapp (Stuttgart, 1843-6). The best
of more recent German translations is that by a band of
poets and eminent men of letters including Friedrich von
Bodenstedt, Ferdinand von Freiligrath, and Paul Heyse
(Leipzig, 1867-71, 38 vols.). Most of these versions have
been many times reissued, but, despite the high merits of
von Bodenstedt and his companions' performance, Schlegel
and Tieck's achievement still holds the field.

Schlegel was a critic as well as a translator. His lectures
on ' Shakespeare and the Drama,' which were delivered at
Vienna in 1808, and were translated into English in 1815,
are worthy of comparison with those of Coleridge, who owed
much to their influence. Wordsworth in 1815 declared
that Schlegel and his disciples first marked out the right
road in aesthetic criticism, and enjoyed at the moment
superiority over all English aesthetic critics of Shakespeare.
Subsequently Goethe poured forth, in his voluminous writ
ings, a mass of criticism even more illuminating and
appreciative than SchlegePs. Although Goethe deemed
Shakespeare's works unsuited to the stage, he adapted
* Romeo and Juliet ' for the Weimar Theatre, while Schiller
prepared 'Macbeth' (Stuttgart, 1801). Heine published in
1838 charming studies of Shakespeare's heroines (English
translation 1895), and acknowledged only one defect in
Shakespeare — that he was an Englishman.

During the last half-century textual, aesthetic, and bio
graphical criticism has been pursued in Germany with un
flagging industry and energy ; and although laboured and
supersubtle theorising characterises much German aesthetic
criticism, its mass and variety testify to the impressiveness
of the appeal that Shakespeare's work has made to the
German intellect. The efforts to stem the current of
Shakespearean worship made by the realistic critic, Gustav
Riimelin, in his ' Shakespearestudien ' (Stuttgart, 1866), and
subsequently by the dramatist, J. R. Benedix, in ' Die
Shakespearomanie ' (Stuttgart, 1873, 8vo), proved of no

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION' 195

effect. In studies of the text and metre Nikolaus Delius
(1813-88) should, among recent German writers, be ac
corded the first place ; and in studies of the biography
and stage history Friedrich Karl Elze (1821-89). Of
recent aesthetic critics in Germany, those best deserving
recognition probably are Friedrich Alexander Theodor
Kreyssig (1818-79), author of 'Vorlesungen tiber Shake
speare' (Berlin, 1858 and 1874), and ' Shake speare-Fragen '
(Leipzig, 1871) ; Otto Ludwig the poet (1813-65), author
of ' Shakespeare-Studien,' and Eduard Wilhelm Sievers
(1820-95), author of many valuable essays as well as of
an uncompleted biography. Ulrici's 'Shakespeare's Dra
matic Art' (first published at Halle in 1839) and Gervinus's
Commentaries (first published at Leipzig in 1848-9), both
of which are familiar in English translations, are suggestive
but unconvincing aesthetic interpretations. The German
Shakespeare Society, which was founded at Weimar in
1865, has published thirty-five year-books (edited suc
cessively by von Bodenstedt, Delius, Elze, F. A. Leo, and
Prof. Brandl with Wolfgang Keller) ; each contains useful
contributions to Shakespearean study.

Shakespeare has been no less effectually nationalised on On the
the German stage. The four great actors — Friedrich Ulrich German
Ludwig Schroeder (1744-1816) of Hamburg, Ludwig Dev-
rient (1784-1832), his nephew Gustav Emil Devrient (1803-
1872), and Ludwig Barnay (b. 1842) — largely derived their
fame from their successful assumptions of Shakespearean
characters. Another of Ludwig Devrient's nephews, Eduard
(1801-77), also an actor, prepared with his son Otto, an
acting German edition (Leipzig, 1873 and following years).
An acting edition by Wilhelm Oechelhaeuser appeared pre
viously at Berlin in 1871. Twenty-eight of the thirty-seven
plays assigned to Shakespeare are now on recognised lists
of German acting plays, including all the histories. In 1896
as many as 910 performances of twenty- three of Shakespeare's
plays were given in German theatres. In 1897 no fewer
than 930 performances were given of twenty-four plays. In
1898 performances of twenty-six plays reached a total of
895 — an average of nearly three Shakespearean representa
tions a day in the German- speaking districts of Europe. It
is not only in capitals like Berlin and Vienna that the
representations are frequent and popular. In towns like
Altona, Breslau, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Hamburg, Magde-

196

SHAKESPEARE-'S LIFE AND WORK

burg, and Rostock, Shakespeare is acted constantly, and
the greater number of his dramas is regularly kept in
rehearsal. ' Othello,' ' Hamlet,' ' Romeo and Juliet,' and
' The Taming of The Shrew ' usually prove most attractive.
Of the many German musical composers who have worked
on Shakespearean themes, Mendelssohn (in 'Midsummer
Night's Dream '), Schumann, and Franz Schubert (in setting
separate songs) have achieved the greatest success.

In France Shakespeare won recognition after a longer
struggle than in Germany. Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-55),
in his tragedy of ' Agrippine,' seemed to echo passages in
' Cymbeline,' ' Hamlet,' and ' The Merchant of Venice,' but
the resemblances proved to be accidental. It was Nicolas
Clement, Louis XIV's librarian, who, first of Frenchmen,
put on record an appreciation of Shakespeare. When,
about 1680, he entered in the catalogue of the royal library
the title of the Second Folio of 1632, he added a note in
which he allowed Shakespeare imagination, natural thoughts,
and ingenious expression, but deplored his obscenity. Half
a century elapsed before public attention in France was
again directed to Shakespeare. The Abb£ PreVost, in his
periodical ' Le Pour et Centre ' (i 733 et seq.), acknowledged
his power. The Abbe" Leblanc, in his ' Lettres d'un Fran
cois' (1745), while crediting him with many grotesque ex
travagances, recognised ungrudgingly the sublimity of his
style. But it is to Voltaire that his countrymen owe, as he
himself boasted, their first effective introduction to Shake
speare. Voltaire studied Shakespeare thoroughly on his
visit to England between 1726 and 1729, and his influence is
visible in his own dramas. In his ' Lettres Philosophiques '
(1731), afterwards reissued as ' Lettres sur les Anglais,' 1734
(Nos. xviii. and xix.), and in his 'Lettre sur la Trag6die '
(1731), he expressed admiration for Shakespeare's genius,
but attacked his want of taste and art. He described him
as ' le Corneille de Londres, grand fou d'ailleurs, mais il a des
morceaux admirables.' Writing to the Abbe" des Fontaines
in November 1735, Voltaire admitted many merits in 'Julius
Caesar,' on which he published 'Observations' in 1764.
Johnson replied to Voltaire's general criticism in the preface
to his edition (1765), and Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769
in a separate volume, which was translated into French in
1777. Diderot made, in his 'Encyclopedic, the first stand
in France against the Voltairean position, and increased

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION' 197

opportunities of studying Shakespeare's works increased the
poet's vogue. Twelve plays were translated in De la Place's
' Theatre Anglais ' (1745-8). Jean-Francois Ducis (1733-
1816) adapted without much insight six plays for the French
stage, beginning in 1 769 with ' Hamlet,' his version of which
was acted with applause. In 1776 Pierre Le Tourneur
began a bad prose translation (completed in 1782) of all
Shakespeare's plays, and declared him to be ' the god of the
theatre.' Voltaire protested against this estimate in a new
remonstrance consisting of two letters, of which the first
was read before the French Academy on August 25, 1776.
Here Shakespeare was described as a barbarian, whose
works — ' a huge dunghill ' — concealed some pearls.

Although Voltaire's censure was rejected by the majority French
of later French critics, it expressed a sentiment born of the j^duai
genius of the nation, and made an impression that was only emanci-
gradually effaced. Marmontel, La Harpe, Marie-Joseph Patio"
Chenier, and Chateaubriand in his ' Essai sur Shakespeare,' tairean
1 80 1, inclined to Voltaire's view; but Madame de Stae'l influence,
wrote effectively on the other side in her ' De la Litt^rature,'
1804 (i. caps. 13, 14, ii. 5). 'At this day,' wrote Words
worth in 1815, 'the French critics have abated nothing of
their aversion to "this darling of our nation." "The
English with their bouffon de Shakespeare " is as familiar
an expression among them as in the time of Voltaire.
Baron Grimm is the only French writer who seems to have
perceived his infinite superiority to the first names of the
French theatre; an advantage which the Parisian critic
owed to his German blood and German education.' The
revision of Le Tourneur's translation by Francois Guizot
and A. Pichot in 1821 gave Shakespeare a fresh advantage.
Paul Duport, in ' Essais Litt£raires sur Shakespeare' (Paris,
1828, 2 vols.), was the last French critic of repute to repeat
Voltaire's censure unreservedly. Guizot, in his discourse
'Sur la Vie et les CEuvres de Shakespeare' (reprinted
separately from the translation of 1821), as well as in his
'Shakespeare et son Temps ' (1852) ; Villemain in a general
essay, and Barante in a study of ' Hamlet,' acknowledge the
mightiness of Shakespeare's genius with comparatively few
qualifications. Other complete translations followed — by
Francisque Michel (1839), by Benjamin Laroche (1851),
and by Emil Montagu t (1867), but the best is that in prose
by Francois Victor Hugo (1859-66), whose father, Victor

198 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Hugo the poet, published a rhapsodical eulogy in 1864.
Alfred Me'zieres's ' Shakespeare, ses CEuvres et ses Critiques '
(Paris, 1860), is a saner appreciation.

Meanwhile 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' and a
few other Shakespearean plays, became stock pieces on the
French stage. A powerful impetus to theatrical representa
tion of Shakespeare in France was given by the performance
in Paris of the chief plays by a strong company of English
actors in the autumn of 1827. 'Hamlet' and 'Othello'
were acted successively by Charles Kemble and Macready ;
Edmund Kean appeared as Richard III, Othello, and
Shylock; Miss Smithson, who became the wife of Hector
Berlioz the musician, filled the roles of Ophelia, Juliet,
Desdemona, Cordelia, and Portia. French critics were
divided as to the merits of the performers, but most of them
were enthusiastic in their commendations of the plays.
Alfred de Vigny prepared a version of ' Othello ' for the
Th6atre-Francais in 1829 with eminent success. An
adaptation of ' Hamlet ' by Alexandre Dumas was first
performed in 1847, and a rendering by the Chevalier de
Chatelain (1864) was often repeated. George Sand trans
lated 'As You Like It' (Paris, 1856) for representation by
the Comedie Francaise on April 12, 1856. Lady Macbeth
has been represented in recent years by Madame Sarah
Bernhardt, and Hamlet by M. Mounet Sully of the
Theatre Francais. Four French musicians — Berlioz in his
symphony of 'Romeo and Juliet,' Gounod in his opera of
'Romeo and Juliet,' Ambroise Thomas in his opera of
' Hamlet,' and Saint-Saens in his opera of ' Henry VIII ' —
have sought with public approval to interpret musically
portions of Shakespeare's work.

In Italy Shakespeare was little known before the pres
ent century. Such references as eighteenth-century Italian
writers made to him were based on remarks by Voltaire.
The French adaptation of ' Hamlet ' by Ducis was issued in
Italian blank verse (Venice, 1774, 8vo). Complete transla
tions of all the plays made direct from the English were
issued by Michele Leoni in verse at Verona in 1819-22, and
by Carlo Rusconi in prose at Padua in 1831 (new edit.
Turin, 1858-9). 'Othello' and 'Romeo and Juliet ' have-
been very often translated into Italian separately. The
Italian actors, Madame Ristori (as Lady Macbeth), Salvini
(as Othello), and Rossi rank among Shakespeare's most

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION

199

In
Russia.

effective interpreters. Verdi's operas on Macbeth, Othello,
and Falstaff (the last two with libretti by Boito), manifest
close and appreciative study of Shakespeare.

Two complete translations have been published in in
Dutch; one in prose by A. S. Kok (Amsterdam, 1873- Holland.
1880), the other in verse by Dr. L. A. J. Burgersdijk
(Leyden, 1884-8, 12 vols.).

In Eastern Europe, Shakespeare first became known
through French and German translations. Into Russian
'Romeo and Juliet' was translated in 1772, 'Richard III'
in 1783, and 'Julius Caesar' in 1786. Sumarakow translated
Ducis' version of ' Hamlet ' in 1 784 for stage purposes,
while the Empress Catherine II adapted the ' Merry Wives '
and ' King John.' Numerous versions of all the chief plays
followed ; and in 1865 there appeared at St. Petersburg the
best translation in verse (direct from the English), by
Nekrasow and Gerbel. A prose translation, by N. Ketzcher,
begun in 1862, was completed in 1879. Gerbel issued a
Russian translation of the 'Sonnets' in 1880, and many
critical essays in the language, original or translated, have
been published. Almost every play has been represented
in Russian on the Russian stage.

A Polish version of ' Hamlet ' was acted at Lemberg in
1797 ; and as many as sixteen plays now hold a recognised
place among Polish acting plays. The standard Polish
translation of Shakespeare's collected works appeared at
Warsaw in 1875 (edited by the Polish poet Kraszewski), and
is reckoned among the most successful renderings in a
foreign tongue.

In Hungary, Shakespeare's greatest works have since the
beginning of the century been highly appreciated by students
and by playgoers. A complete translation into Hungarian
appeared at Kaschau in 1824. At the National Theatre at
Budapest no fewer than twenty-two plays have been of late
years included in the actors' repertory.

Other complete translations have been published in in other
Bohemian (Prague, 1874), in Swedish (Lund, 1847-51), in countries.
Danish (1845-50), and Finnish (Helsingfors, 1892-5).
In Spanish a complete translation is in course of publica
tion (Madrid, 1885 et seq.), and the eminent Spanish critic
Men^ndez y Pelayo has set Shakespeare above Calderon.
In Armenian, although only three plays (' Hamlet,' ' Romeo
and Juliet,' and 'As You Like It') have been issued, the

Poland.

Hungary.

200 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

translation of the whole is ready for the press. Separate
plays have appeared in Welsh, Portuguese, Friesic, Flem
ish, Servian, Roumanian, Maltese, Ukrainian, Wallachian,
Croatian, modern Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Japanese ;
while a few have been rendered into Bengali, Hindustani,
Marathi, Gujarati, Urdu, Kanarese, and other languages of
India, and have been acted in native theatres.

GENERAL ESTIMATE 201

XIX

GENERAL ESTIMATE

No estimate of Shakespeare's genius can be adequate. In General
knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in estimate-
depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of
judgment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no
other writer, that his language and versification adapt them
selves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in
the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged,
but they sink into insignificance when measured by the
magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical
expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles,
and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere of
obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obsolete words
and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. But when the
whole of Shakespeare's vast work is scrutinised with due
attention, the glow of his imagination is seen to leave few
passages wholly unillumined. Some of his plots are hastily
constructed and inconsistently developed, but the intensity
of the interest with which he contrives to invest the per
sonality of his heroes and heroines triumphs over halting or
digressive treatment of the story in which they have their
being. Although he was versed in the technicalities of
stagecraft, he occasionally disregarded its elementary con
ditions. But the success of his presentments of human life
and character depended little on his manipulation of
theatrical machinery. His unassailable supremacy springs
from the versatile working of his insight and intellect, by
virtue of which his pen limned with unerring precision
almost every gradation of thought and emotion that
animates the living stage of the world.

Shakespeare's mind, as Hazlitt suggested, contained
within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling. He knew
intuitively how every faculty and feeling would develop in

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Character
of Shake
speare's
achieve
ment.

Its

universal
recogni
tion.

any conceivable change of fortune. Men and women —
good or bad, old or young, wise or foolish, merry or sad,
rich or poor — yielded their secrets to him, and his genius
enabled him to give being in his pages to all the shapes of
humanity that present themselves on the highway of life.
Each of his characters gives voice to thought or passion
with an individuality and a naturalness that rouse in the
intelligent playgoer and reader the illusion that they are
overhearing men and women speak unpremeditatingly
among themselves, rather than that they are reading written
speeches or hearing written speeches recited. The more
closely the words are studied, the completer the illusion
grows. Creatures of the imagination — fairies, ghosts,
witches — are delineated with a like potency, and the reader
or spectator feels instinctively that these supernatural entities
could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than Shakespeare
represents them. The creative power of poetry was never
manifested to such effect as in the corporeal semblances
in which Shakespeare clad the spirits of the air.

So mighty a faculty sets at nought the common limita
tions of nationality, and in every quarter of the globe to
which civilised life has penetrated Shakespeare's power is
recognised. All the world over, language is applied to his
creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and blood.
Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, Falstaff and Shy-
lock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban, are studied
in almost every civilised tongue as if they were historic
personalities, and the chief of the impressive phrases that
fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilised
humanity. To Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speak
ing in divers accents, applies with one accord his own words :
' How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in appre
hension how like a god ! '

APPENDIX

THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

THE scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career Contem-
has been much exaggerated. An investigation extending over porary
two centuries has brought together a mass of detail which far rf?co r5
exceeds that accessible in the case of any other contemporary
professional writer. Nevertheless, some important links are
missing, and at some critical points appeal to conjecture is
inevitable. But the fully ascertained facts are numerous enough
to define sharply the general direction that Shakespeare's career
followed. Although the clues are in some places faint, the trail
never altogether eludes the patient investigator.

Fuller, in his ' Worthies ' (1662), attempted the first biogra- First
phical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, in his efforts in
gossiping ' Lives of Eminent Men,' based his ampler information bi°graphy.
on reports communicated to him by William Beeston (d. 1682),
an aged actor, whom Dryden called ' the chronicle of the stage,'
and who was doubtless in the main a trustworthy witness. A
few additional details were recorded in the seventeenth century
by the Rev. John Ward (1629-81), vicar of Stratford-on-Avon
from 1662 to 1668, in a diary and memorandum-book written
between 1661 and 1663 (ed. C. A. Severn, 1839) ; by the Rev.
William Fulman, whose manuscripts are at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford (with valuable interpolations made before 1708 by the
Rev. Richard Davies, vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire) ; by John
Dowdall, who recorded his experiences of travel through War
wickshire in 1693 (London, 1838) ; and by William Hall, who
described a visit to Stratford in 1694 (London, 1884, from Hall's
letter among the Bodleian MSS.). Phillips in his 'Theatrum
Poetarum' (1675), and Langbaine in his 'English Dramatick
Poets' (1691), confined themselves to elementary criticism. In
1709 Nicholas Rowe prefixed to his edition of the plays a
more ambitious memoir than had yet been attempted, and

203

204 SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

embodied some hitherto unrecorded Stratford and London
traditions with which the actor Thomas Betterton supplied
him. A little fresh gossip was collected by William Oldys,
and was printed from his manuscript ' Adversaria ' (now in the
British Museum) as an appendix to Yeowell's ' Memoir of Oldys,'
1862. Pope, Johnson, and Steevens, in the biographical pre
faces to their 'editions, mainly repeated the narratives of their
predecessor, Rowe.

In the Prolegomena to the Variorum editions of 1803, 1813,
and especially in that of 1821, there was embodied a mass
of fresh information derived by Edmund Malone from syste
matic researches among the parochial records of Stratford, the
manuscripts accumulated by the actor Alleyn at Dulwich, and
official papers of state preserved in the public offices in London
(now collected in the Public Record Office). The available
knowledge of Elizabethan stage history, as well as of Shake
speare's biography, was thus greatly extended. John Payne
Collier in his 'History of English Dramatic Poetry1 (1831), in
his ' New Facts ' about Shakespeare ( 1 835), his ' New Particulars '
(1836), and his 'Further Particulars' (1839), an<^ in his editions
of Henslowe's ' Diary ' and the ' Alleyn Papers ' for the Shake
speare Society, while occasionally throwing some further light
on obscure places, foisted on Shakespeare's biography a series
of ingeniously forged documents, against which the student
is warned. Joseph Hunter in 'New Illustrations of Shake
speare' (1845) and George Russell French's ' Shakspeareana
Genealogica' (1869) occasionally supplemented Malone's re
searches. James Orchard Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phil-
lipps) printed separately, between 1850 and 1884, in various
privately issued publications, all the Stratford archives and
extant legal documents bearing on Shakespeare's career, many
of them for the first time. In 1881 Halliwell-Phillipps began
the collective publication of materials for a full biography
in his ' Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare ' ; this work was
generously enlarged in successive editions until it acquired
massive proportions; in the seventh edition of 1887, which
embodied the author's final corrections and additions, it
reached near 1000 pages. (There have been three subsequent
editions — the tenth and last being dated 1898 — which reprint
the seventh edition without change.) Mr. Frederick Card
Fleay, in his 'Shakespeare Manual' (1876), in his 'Life of
Shakespeare' (1886), in his 'History of the Stage' (1890), and
his 'Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama' (1891),
adds much useful information respecting stage history and
Shakespeare's relations with his fellow-dramatists, mainly de
rived from a study of the original editions of the plays of
Shakespeare and of his contemporaries ; but unfortunately
many of Mr. Fleay's statements and conjectures are un-

THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE 205

authenticated. For notices of Stratford, R. B. Wheler's 'His- Stratford
tory and Antiquities' (1806), John R. Wise's 'Shakespere, his topogra-
Birthplace and its Neighbourhood' (1861), the present writer's phy-
' Stratford-on-Avon to the Death of Shakespeare' (1890), and
Mrs. C. C. Stopes's ' Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contempora
ries ' (1897), may be consulted. Wise appends to his volume a
tentative 'glossary of words still used in Warwickshire to be
found in Shakspere.' The parish registers of Stratford have
been edited by Mr. Richard Savage for the Parish Registers
Society (1898-9). Nathan Drake's 'Shakespeare and his
Times' (1817) and G. W. Thornbury's 'Shakespeare's Eng
land' (1856) collect much material respecting Shakespeare's
social environment.

The chief monographs on special points in Shakespeare's Special-
biography are Dr. Richard Farmer's ' Essay on the Learning
of Shakespeare' (1767), reprinted in the Variorum editions;
Bishop Wordsworth's ' Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of
the Bible' (4th ed. 1892); Octavius Gilchrist's 'Examination
of the Charges ... of Ben Jonson's Enmity towards Shake
speare ' (1808); W. J. Thoms's 'Was Shakespeare ever a
Soldier?' (1849), a study based on an erroneous identification
of the poet with another William Shakespeare ; Lord Campbell's
'Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements considered' (1859); John
Charles Bucknill's 'Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare ' (1860) ;
C. F. Green's ' Shakespeare's Crab-tree, with its Legend '
(1862); C. H. Bracebridge's 'Shakespeare no Deer-stealer '
(1862); Ellacombe's 'Shakespeare as an Angler' (1883); J.
E. Harting's 'Ornithology of Shakespeare' (1872); William
Blades's 'Shakspere and Typography' (1872); and D. H.
Madden's ' Diary of Master William Silence (Shakespeare and
Sport),' 1897. A full epitome of the biographical information Useful
accessible at the date of publication is supplied in Karl Elze's epitomes.
'Life of Shakespeare' (Halle, 1876; English translation, 1888),
with which Elze's ' Essays ' from the publications of the German
Shakespeare Society (English translation, 1874) are worth study
ing. A less ambitious effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil
(1861) is seriously injured by the writer's acceptance of Collier's
forgeries. Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere Primer' (1877) and
his 'Introduction to Shakspere' (1893), and Dr. FurnivalPs
' Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere,' are all useful summaries
of leading facts.

Francis Douce's 'Illustrations of Shakespeare' (1807, new Aids to
edit. 1839), 'Shakespeare's Library' (ed. J. P. Collier and study of
W. C. Hazlitt, 1875), 'Shakespeare's Plutarch' (ed. Skeat, P'o^and
1875), and 'Shakespeare's Holinshed ' (ed. W. G. Boswell-
Stone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of Shake
speare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's ' Shakespeare Lexicon '
(1874) and Dr. E. A. Abbott's 'Shakespearian Grammar' (1869,

2O6

SHAKESPEARE-'S LIFE AND WORK

Modern
editions
of the
Sonnets,
and the
theories
respecting
them.

new edit. 1893) are valuable aids to a study of the text. W.
Sidney Walker (1795-1846), sometime Fellow of Trinity Col
lege, Cambridge, deserves special mention among textual critics
of the present century. He was author of two valuable works :
' Shakespeare's Versification and its apparent Irregularities ex
plained by Examples from Early and Late English Writers '
(1854), and 'A Critical Examination of the Text of Shake
speare, with Remarks on his Language and that of his Contem
poraries, together with Notes on his Plays and Poems' (1860,
3 vols.). Walker's books were published from his notes after his
death, and are ill arranged and unindexed, but they constitute a
rich quarry, which no succeeding editor has neglected without
injury to his work.

The chief editions of the Sonnets that have appeared of late
years with critical apparatus are those of Professor Dowden
(1875, reissued 1896), Mr. Thomas Tyler (1890), and Mr. George
Wyndham, M.P. (1898). Professor Dowden and Mr. Wyndham
treat the identification of the young patron of the Sonnets with
the Earl of Pembroke as a prima facie possibility. Mr. Thomas
Tyler, in his edition of the ' Sonnets,' not only advocated that
theory with much earnestness, but ingeniously if unconvincingly
advanced a claim to identify the ' dark lady ' of the ' Sonnets '
with Mary Fitton, a lady of the Court and the Earl of Pem
broke's mistress.

The history of the Pembroke theory is curious. It owes its
origin to an erroneous and hasty guess that the Earl of Pem
broke was known in youth as ' Mr. William Herbert,' and might
therefore be the 'Mr. W. H.' of the publisher Thorpe's dedica
tory preface. The Earl of Pembroke was solely known as
' Lord Herbert ' until he succeeded to the title, and there is no
evidence of Shakespeare's intimacy with him (cf. p. 73). James
Boaden, a journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs.
Siddons, was the first to hazard publicly the guess identifying
Thorpe's 'Mr. W. H.' with the Earl of Pembroke in a letter
to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' in 1832. A few months later Mr.
James Heywood Bright wrote to the magazine claiming to have
reached the same conclusion thirteen years earlier, although he
had not published it. Boaden re-stated the theory in a volume
on 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' which he published in 1837. C.
Armitage Brown adopted it in 1838 in his 'Shakespeare's Auto
biographical Poems.' The Rev. Joseph Hunter accepted it
in his 'New Illustrations of Shakespeare,' in 1845, but signifi
cantly pointed out (ii. 346) that it had not occurred to any of
the writers in the great Variorum editions of Shakespeare, who
included critics so acute in matters of literary history as Malone
and George Steevens. The Pembroke theory during the half-
century that followed enjoyed a curiously wide vogue, but
during the past five years it has undergone new, minute, and

THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE 207

impartial examination, and has been generally acknowledged
to rest on foundations of sand.

The opposing theory that most of the Sonnets were ad
dressed to the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's undoubted
patron, was first fully stated by Nathan Drake in 1817 in
' Shakespeare and His Times,' ii. 1-73. It was revived with
somewhat fantastic amplifications in 1866 in Mr. Gerald
Massey's ' Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets,' which ap
peared in a second revised edition in 1888 (the text of the poems
with a diffuse discussion). The Southampton theory strictly
accords with the known facts of Shakespeare's life and work.

Useful concordances to the Plays have been prepared by Con-
Mrs. Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the poems by Mrs. H. H. cordances.
Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one
volume, with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett
(London and New York, 1895). A 'Handbook Index' by
J. O. Halliwell (privately printed 1866) gives lists of obsolete
words and phrases, songs, proverbs, and plants mentioned in
the works of Shakespeare. An unprinted glossary prepared by
Richard Warner between 1750 and 1770 is at the British
Museum (Addit. MSS. 10472-542). Extensive bibliographies Bibliogra-
are given in Lowndes's ' Library Manual ' (ed. Bohn ; in Franz phies.
Thimm's ' Shakespeariana ' (1864 and 1871); in the 'Encyclo
paedia Britannica,' gth edit, (skilfully classified by Mr. H. R.
Tedder) ; and in the ' British Museum Catalogue ' (the Shake
spearean entries in which, comprising 3,680 titles, were sepa
rately published in 1897).

The valuable publications of the Shakespeare Society, the Critical
New Shakspere Society, and of the Deutsche Shakespeare- studies.
Gesellschaft, comprising contributions alike to the aesthetic,
textual, historical, and biographical study of Shakespeare, are
noticed above (see pp. 187, 195). To the critical studies, on
which comment has already been made (see p. 187) — viz.
Coleridge's 'Notes and Lectures' (1883), Hazlitt's 'Characters
of Shakespeare's Plays' (1817), Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere:
his Mind and Art' (1875), and Mr. A. C. Swinburne's 'A Study
of Shakespeare' (1879) — there may be added the essays on
Shakespeare's heroines respectively by Mrs. Jameson in 1833
and Lady Martin in 1885; Dr. Ward's 'English Dramatic
Literature' (1875, new edit- 1898); Richard G. Moulton's
'Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist' (1885); 'Shakespeare
Studies' by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1893); F. S. Boas's
'Shakspere and his Predecessors' (1895), and Georg Brandes's
'William Shakespeare' — an elaborately critical but somewhat
fanciful study — in Danish (Copenhagen, 1895, 8vo), in German
(Leipzig, 1895), and in English (London, 1898, 2 vols. 8vo).

208

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY

THE apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's
Stratford career and the breadth of observation and knowledge
displayed in his literary work has evoked the fantastic theory
that Shakespeare was not the author of the literature that
passes under his name, and perverse attempts have been made
to assign his works to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the great
contemporary prose-writer, philosopher, and lawyer. It is
argued that Shakespeare's plays embody a general omniscience
(especially a knowledge of law) which was possessed by no
contemporary except Bacon ; that there are many close
parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare's and passages
in Bacon's works, and that Bacon makes enigmatic references
in his correspondence to secret ' recreations ' and ' alphabets '
and concealed poems for which his alleged employment as a
concealed dramatist can alone account.

The only point of any genuine interest raised in the argu
ment from parallelisms of expression centres about a quotation
from Aristotle which Bacon and Shakespeare not merely both
make, but make in what looks at a first glance to be the same
erroneous form. Aristotle wrote in his 'Nicomachean Ethics,'
i. 8, that young men were unfitted for the study of political
philosophy. Bacon, in the 'Advancement of Learning' (1605),
wrote : ' Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded
wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral
philosophy?' (bk. ii. p. 255, ed. Kitchin). Shakespeare, about
1603, in 'Troilus and Cressida,' n. ii. 166, wrote of 'young men
whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.' But the
alleged error of substituting moral for political philosophy in
Aristotle's text is more apparent than real ; it was not peculiar
to Shakespeare and Bacon, but was in almost universal vogue
at the time they wrote. By ' political ' philosophy Aristotle, as
his context amply shows, meant the ethics of civil society,
which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called
'morals.' In the summary paraphrase of Aristotle's 'Ethics'
which was translated into English from the Italian, and
published in 1547, the passage to which both Shakespeare and

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 209

Bacon refer is not rendered literally, but its general drift is
given as a warning that moral philosophy is not a fit subject
for study by youths who are naturally passionate and head
strong. Such is the interpretation of Aristotle's language that
was adopted by sixteenth and seventeenth century writers of all
countries. Erasmus, in the epistle at the close of his popular
'Colloquia' (Florence, 1531, sig. Q Q), wrote of his endeavour
to insinuate serious precepts 'into the minds of young men
whom Aristotle rightly described as unfit auditors of moral
philosophy' ('in animos adolescentium, quos recte scripsit
Aristoteles inidoneos auditores ethicae philosophize'). In a
French translation of the 'Ethics' by the Comte de Plessis,
published at Paris in 1553, the section is headed 'parquoy le
ieune enfant n'est suffisant auditeur de la science civile ; '
but an English commentator (in a manuscript note written
about 1605 in a copy of the book in the British Museum)
turned the sentence into English thus: 'Whether a young man
may be a fitte scholler of morall philosophic.' In 1622 an Italian
essayist, Virgilio Malvezzi, in his preface to his 'Discorsi
sopra Cornelio Tacito,' has the remark, ' E non e discordante
da questa mia opinione Aristotele, il qual dice, che i giovani
non sono buoni ascultatori delle morali."1 No genuine theory
of a mysterious literary relationship between Shakespeare and
Bacon can be based on the barren fact that each writer quoted
a trite Aristotelian apophthegm in the precise form in which it
enjoyed in their day a proverbial currency throughout Europe.

The Baconian method of argument may also be judged by
the following example. Toby Matthew, at an uncertain date Toby
after January 1621, wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Albans) Mat-
these words : * The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of |h<!w s
my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's
name, though he be known by another.' This unpretending
sentence is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote
works of commanding excellence under another's name, and
among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the
only sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his 'most pro
digious wit' was some Englishman named Bacon whom he
met abroad, bearing an assumed name. The reference is
clearly to one of the pseudonymous Jesuits who were numerous
among Matthew's friends. There is little doubt, in fact, that
Matthew referred to Father Thomas Southwell, a learned Jesuit
domiciled chiefly in the Low Countries, whose real surname
was Bacon. (He was born in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near
Walsingham, Norfolk, being son of Thomas Bacon of that
place, and he died at Watten in 1637.) It was with reference
to a book published by this man that Sir Henry Wotton wrote
a few years later — on December 5, 1638 — to Sir Edmund Bacon,
half-brother to the great Francis Bacon, in language somewhat

2IO

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Chief ex
ponents.

Its vogue

America.

Extent of
the litera
ture.

resembling Toby Matthew's: 'The Book of Controversies
issued under the name of F, Baconus hath this addition to the
said name, alias Southwell, as those of that Society shift
their names as often as their shirts ' (' Reliquiae Wottonianae,'
1672, p. 475).

Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in
his 'Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of
Shakespeare's authorship of the plays and poems associated
with his name. There followed in a like temper 'Who
wrote Shakespeare ?' in 'Chambers's Journal,' August 7,
1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnam's
Monthly,' January 1856. On the latter was based 'The
Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia
Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne (London
and Boston, 1857). Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first to spread
far abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts
of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 1859.
Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first to
have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in ' Was Lord Bacon
the author of Shakespeare's plays ? — a letter to Lord Ellesmere '
(1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare'
(1857). The most learned exponent of this strange theory was
Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who published at
New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the Plays attributed
to Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th
edit. 1886, 2 vols.). Bacon's 'Promus of Formularies and
Elegancies,' a commonplace book in Bacon's handwriting in
the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited by
Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian
theory ; it contained many words and phrases common to the
works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the
argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremest limits.
The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance in
America. There it achieved its wildest manifestation in the
book called ' The Great Cryptogram : Francis Bacon's Cypher
in the so-called Shakespeare Plays ' (Chicago and London,
1887, 2 vols.), which was the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly
of Hastings, Minnesota. The author pretended to have dis
covered among Bacon's papers a numerical cipher which
enabled him to pick out letters appearing at certain intervals in
the pages of Shakespeare's First Folio, and the selected letters
formed words and sentences categorically stating that Bacon
was author of the plays. Many refutations have been published
of Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless contention.

A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop
and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a
magazine (named since May 1893 ' Baconiana ') . A quarterly
periodical also called ' Baconiana,' and issued in the same

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 211

interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. 'The Biblio
graphy of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy,' by W. H.
Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the titles of two hundred and
fifty-five books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject,
which were published since 1848; the list was continued during
1886 in ' Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published at Phila
delphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its original
number.

The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting
Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his
name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing ;
while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse
as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that,
great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was
incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shake
speare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argu
ment alone render any other conclusion possible.

INDEX

ABBEY, Mr. E. A., 192

Abbott, Dr. E. A., 206

Actor, Shakespeare as an, 26-7

Actors : entertained for the first time
at Stratford-on-Avon, 6; return of
the two chief companies to London
in 1587, 20; the players' licensing
Act of Queen Elizabeth, 21; com
panies of boy-actors, 21, 24, 109-
no; companies of adult actors in
1587, 21 ; the patronage of the
company which was joined by
Shakespeare, 21, 22 ; women's
parts played by men or boys, 23-
24 ; tours in the provinces, 24-5 ;
foreign tours, 25-6 ; Shakespeare's
alleged scorn of their calling, 27 ;
' advice ' to actors in Hamlet, 27 ;
their incomes, 99-102; the strife
between adult actors and boy-
actors, 9-13; patronage of actors
by King James, 118-20; substitu
tion of women for boys in female
parts, 187-8

Adam, in As You Like It, played by
Shakespeare, 26

Adaptations by Shakespeare of old
plays, 32-3

Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays
at the Restoration, 186

Adulation, extravagance of, in the
days of Queen Elizabeth, 66

^Esthetic school of Shakespearean
criticism, 187

Alleyn, Edward, manages the amal
gamated companies of the Admiral
and Lord Strange, 22-3 ; his large
savings, 103

Allot, Robert, 173

All's Well that Ends Well: the

sonnet form of a letter of Helen,
53; date of production, etc., 77-
78. For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

America, enthusiasm for Shakespeare
in, 192; copies of the First Folio
in, 170

Amner, Rev. Richard, 179

' Amoretti,' Spenser's, 57

Amphitruo of Plautus, the, and a
scene in The Comedy of Errors, 32

' Anthia and Abrocomas," by Xeno-
phon Ephesius, and the story of
Romeo and Juliet, 33

Antony and Cleopatra : allusion to
the part of Cleopatra being played
by a boy, 24 ; date of entry in the
'Stationers' Registers,' 128; date
of publication, 128; the story
derived from Plutarch, 128 ; the
' happy valiancy ' of the style, 128.
For editions see Section xvii. (Bib
liography), 163-82

Apollonius and Silla, Historie of, 107

'Apologie for Poetrie,' Sidney's,
allusion to the conceit of the im
mortalising power of verse in, 57 ;
on the adulation of patrons, 66

' Apology for Actors," Heywood's,
90

' Arcadia,' Sidney's, 125

Arden family, of Warwickshire, 4,

94-5

Arden family, of Alvanley, 96

Arden, Alice, 4

Arden, Edward, executed for com
plicity in a Popish plot, 4

Arden, Joan, 7

Arden, Mary. See Shakespeare,
Mary

214

SHAKESPEARE^ LIFE AND WORK

Arden, Robert(i) , sheriff of Warwick
shire and Leicestershire in 1438, 4

Arden, Robert (2), landlord at Snit-
terfield ot Richard Shakespeare, 2,
4 ; marriage of his daughter Mary
to John Shakespeare, 4, 5 ; his
family and second marriage, 4 ; his
property and will, 4-5

Arden, Thomas, grandfather of
Shakespeare's mother, 4

Arden of Feversham, a play of un
certain authorship, 44

Ariel, character of, 135

Ariodante and Ginevra, Historic of,
106

Ariosto, / Suppositi of, 78 ; Orlando
Furioso of, and Muck Ado about
Nothing, 106

Aristotle, quotation from, made by
both Shakespeare and Bacon, 208

Armado, in Love's Labour's Lost,
31, 38

Armenian language, translation of
Shakespeare in the, 199

Arms, coat of, Shakespeare's, 93-7

Arms, College of, applications of the
poet's father to, 2, 93-7

Arne, Dr., 187

Art in England, its indebtedness to
Shakespeare, 191-2

As You Like It: allusion to the
part of Rosalind being played by
a boy, 24; acknowledgments to
Marlowe (III. v. 80), 39; adapted
from Lodge's ' Rosalynde,' 106 ;
hints taken from ' Saviolo's Prac
tise,' 106; its pastoral character,
106. For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

Asbies, the chief property of Robert
Arden at Wilmcote, bequeathed to
Shakespeare's mother, 4; mort
gaged to Edmund Lambert, 7;
proposal to confer on John Lam
bert an absolute title to the prop
erty, 15 ; Shakespeare's endeavour
to recover, 97-8

Ashbee, Mr. E. W., 165

Aspley, William, bookseller, 71, 105,
166, 173

Assimilation, literary, Shakespeare's
power of, 37, 56 seq .

Aston Cantlowe, 4 ; place of the mar
riage of Shakespeare's parents, 5

' Astrophel and Stella,' 52 ; the praise
of ' blackness ' in, 58-9

Aubrey, John, the poet's early bio
grapher, on John Shakespeare's
trade, 3 ; on the poet's knowledge
of Latin, 9 ; on John Shakespeare's

relations with the trade of butcher,
10; on the poet at Grendon, 19;
lines quoted by him on John
Combe, 142; on Shakespeare's
genial disposition, 148 ; value of
his biography of the poet, 203

Autobiographical features of Shake
speare's plays, 78-80, 202 ; of
Shakespeare's sonnets, the ques
tion of, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62

Autographs of the poet, 231-4

' Avisa," heroine of Willobie's poem,
59 seq.

Ayrer, Jacob, his Die schone Sidea,
133

BACON, Miss Delia, 210

Bacon Society, 210

Bacon-Shakespeare controversy (Ap
pendix II.), 208-11

Baddesley Clinton, the Shakespeares
of, 2

Bandello, the story of Romeo and
Juliet by, 33 ; the story of Hero
and Claudio by, 106 ; the story of
Twelfth Night by, 107

'Bankside1 edition of Shakespeare,
181

Barante, recognition of the greatness
of Shakespeare by, 197

Barnard, Sir John, second husband
of the poet's granddaughter Eliza
beth, 150

Barnay, Ludwig, 195

Barnes, Barnabe, the probable rival
of Shakespeare for Southampton's
favour, 65 ; his sonnets, 65

Barnfield, Richard, his adulation of
Queen Elizabeth in ' Cynthia,' 69 ;
chief author of the ' Passionate
Pilgrim,' 90

Bartholomew Fair, 34

Bartlett, John, 207

Barton collection of Shakespeareana
at Boston, Mass., 192

Barton-on-the-Heath, 7 ; identical
with the ' Burton ' in the Taming
of The Shrsw, 78

Baynes, Thomas Spencer, 207

' Bear Garden in Southwark, The,'
the poet's lodgings near, 23

Bearley, 4

Beaumont, Francis, on ' things done
at the Mermaid,' 87

Bedford, Edward Russell, third Earl
of: his marriage to Lucy Harington,
76

Bedford, Lucy, Countess of, 76

Beeston, William (a seventeenth-
century actor), on the report that

INDEX

215

Shakespeare was a schoolmaster,
17 ; on the poet's acting, 26

Belleforest (Franfois de), Shake
speare's indebtedness to the ' His-
toires Tragiques ' of, 8, 33, 106, 114

Benda, J. W. O., German transla
tion of Shakespeare by, 194

Benedix, J. R., opposition to Shake
spearean worship by, 194

Bensley, Robert, actor, 190

Bentley, R., 174

Berlioz, Hector, 198

Bermudas, the, and The Tempest, 132

Berners, Lord, translation of ' Huon
of Bordeaux ' by, 77

Bernhardt, Madame Sarah, 198

Betterton, Mrs., 188

Betterton, Thomas, 20, 186, 188, 204

Bianca and her lovers, story of, partly
drawn from the ' Supposes ' of
George Gascoigne, 78

Bible, the, Shakespeare and, 9

Bibliography of Shakespeare, 163-
182

Bidford, near Stratford, legend of a
drinking bout at, 144

Biography of the poet, sources of
(Appendix I.) , 203-207

Birmingham, memorial Shakespeare
library at, 162

Biron, in Love's Labour's Lost, 30, 31

Birth of Merlin, 90

Birthplace, Shakespeare's, 5

' Bisson," use of the word, 176

Blackfriars, Shakespeare's purchase
of property in, 141

Blackfriars Theatre, built by James
Burbage (1596), 23, 101 ; leased to
'the Queen's Children of the
Chapel,' 23, 101, 109 ; occupied by
Shakespeare's company, 23 ; litiga
tion of Burbage's heirs, 100 ; Shake
speare's interest in, 101, 102;
shareholders in, 102 ; Shakespeare's
disposal of his shares in, 139

' Blackness,' Shakespeare's praise of,

58,59

Blades, William, 205

Blount, Edward, publisher, 72, 91,
128, 166, 167, 173

Boaden, James, 206

Boaistuau de Launay (Pierre) trans
lates Bandello's story of Romeo
and Juliet, 33

Boar's Head Tavern, 82

Boas, Mr. F. S., 207

Boccaccio, Shakespeare's indebted
ness to, 77, 131, 132

Bodenstedt, Friedrich von, German
translator of Shakespeare, 194

Bohemia, allotted a seashore in
Winter's Tale, 132; translations
of Shakespeare in, 199

Boiardo, 126

Bond against impediments respecting
Shakespeare's marriage, 11-12

Bonian, Richard, printer, 116

Booth, Barton, actor, 188

Booth, Edwin, 192

Booth, Junius Brutus, 192

Booth, Lionel, 173

Borck, Baron C. W. von, transla
tion of Julius C<zsar into German

by, 193

Boswell, James, 187
Boswell, James (the younger) , 179
Boswell-Stone, Mr. W. G., 205
Bottger, A., German translation of

Shakespeare by, 194
Boy-actors, 21, 24, 109-10; the strife

between adult actors and, 109-12,

Boydell, John, his scheme for illus
trating the work of the poet,
192

Bracebridge, C. H., 205

Brandes, Mr. Georg, 207

Brathwaite, Richard, 142

Brewster, E., 174

Bright, James Heywood, 206

Brooke or Broke, Arthur, his trans
lation of the story of Romeo and
Juliet, 33, 179

Brooke, Ralph, complains about
Shakespeare's coat of arms, 96

Brown, C. Armitage, 206

Brown, John, obtains a writ of
distraint against Shakespeare's
father, 7

Buc, Sir George, 128

Buckingham, John Sheffield, first
Duke of, 119

Bucknill, Dr. John Charles, on the
poet's medical knowledge, 205

Burbage, Cuthbert, 23, 101

Burbage, James, owner of The
Theatre and keeper of a livery
stable, 20, 22 ; erects the Blackfriars
Theatre, 23

Burbage, Richard, erroneously as
sumed to have been a native of
Stratford, 19; demolishes The
Theatre and builds the Globe
Theatre, 23, 98, 101 ; performs,
with Shakespeare and Kemp, be
fore Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich
Palace, 26; his impersonation of
the King in Richard III, 39; his
income, 101, 112; creates the title-
part in Hamlet, 114, 118 ; his rcpu-

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

tation made by creating the lead
ing parts in the poet's greatest
tragedies, 139; anecdote of, 139;
the poet's bequest to, 146; as a
painter, 158

Burbie, Cuthbert, 31

Burgersdijk, Dr. L. A. J., transla
tion in Dutch by, 199

Busby, John, 84

Butter, Nathaniel, 89, 124

CALIBAN, the character of, 133, 135
Cambridge, Hamlet acted at, 115
Cambridge edition of Shakespeare,

180

Camden, William, 95
Campbell, Lord, on the poet's legal

acquirements, 205
Capell, Edward, reprint of Edward

III in his 'Prolusions,' 44, 115;

his edition of Shakespeare, 177 ; his

works on the poet, 178
Gardenia, the lost play of, 90, 136
Castille, Constable of, entertainments

in his honour at Whitehall, 120
Castle, William, parish clerk of

Stratford, 20
Catherine II of Russia, adaptations

of the Merry Wives and King John

by, 199
' Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets, A,'

Barnes's, 65

Cervantes, his ' Don Quixote,' foun
dation of lost play of Gardenia,

136; death of, 144
Chamberlain, the Lord, his company

of players. See Hunsdon, first

Lord and second Lord
Chamberlain, John, 69
Chapman, George, his alleged rivalry

with Shakespeare for Southamp
ton's favour, 66 ; his translation of

the ' Iliad,' 117
Charlecote Park, probably the scene

of the poaching episode, 16
Charles I and the poet's plays,

184 ; his copy of the Second Folio,

173

Charles II, his copy of the Second
Folio, 173

Chateaubriand, 197

Chatelain, Chevalier de, rendering of
Hamlet by, 198

Chaucer, the story of Lucrece in
his ' Legend of Good Women," 47 ;
hints in his ' Knight's Tale ' for
Midsummer Night's Dream, 77;
the plot of Troilus and Cressida
taken from his ' Troilus and Cres-
seid,' 117; plot of The Two Noble

Kinsmen drawn from his ' Knight's
Tale,' 137

Chenier, Marie-Joseph, sides with
Voltaire in the Shakespearean con
troversy in France, 197

Chester, Robert, his ' Love's Martyr,"

Chettle, Henry, the publisher, his
description of Shakespeare as an
actor, 26 ; his apology for Greene's
attack on Shakespeare, 35, 116;
147; appeals to Shakespeare to
write an elegy on Queen Elizabeth,
118

Chetwynde, Peter, publisher, 173

Chiswell, R., 174

Chronology of Shakespeare's plays,
29-34, 37~44> 76 seg., 105 seq.t 121
seq., 130 seq.

Gibber, Colley, 188

Gibber, Mrs., 189

Gibber, Theophilus, the reputed com
piler of ' Lives of the Poets,' 20

Cinthio, the ' Hecatommithi ' of,
Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 8,
32, 121

Clark, Mr. W. G., 180

Clement, Nicolas, criticism of the
poet by, 196

Cleopatra : the poet's allusion to her
part being played by a boy, 24;
compared with the ' dark lady ' of
the ' Sonnets," 59 ; her character,
128

Clive, Mrs., 189

Clopton, Sir Hugh, 97

Clopton, Sir John, 151

Cobham, Henry Brooke, eighth Lord,
81

Cokain, Sir Aston, lines on Shake
speare and Wincot ale by, 79

Coleridge, S. T., on the style of
Antony and Cleopatra, 128 ; on The
Two Noble Kinsmen, 136; repre
sentative of the aesthetic school,
187; on Edmund Kean, 190; 207

Collier, John Payne, includes Muce-
dorus m his edition of Shakespeare,
45 ; his forgeries in the ' Perkins
Folio,' 173; 187, 204; other for
geries (Appendix i.), 203-7

Collins, Francis, Shakespeare's so
licitor, 143, 145

Collins, Rev. John, 179

Combe, John, bequest left to the
poet by, 142; lines written upon his
money-lending, 142

Combe, Thomas, legacy of the poet
to, 146

Combe, William, his attempt to

INDEX

217

enclose common land at Stratford,

143

Comedy of Errors : 9, 32 ; performed
in the hall of Gray's Inn, 1594, 43.
For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

'Complainte of Rosamond,' Daniel's,
parallelisms in Romeo and Juliet
with, 33; its topic and metre re
flected in ' Lucrece," 47

Concordances to Shakespeare, 207

Condell, Henry, actor, 22, 101, 103,
130; the poet's bequest to him,
146 ; signs dedication of First Folio,
166, 167-8

Confessio Amantis, Gower's, 127

Contention betwixt the two famous
houses ofYorke and Lancaster, first
part of the, 36

Cooke, George Frederick, actor, 190

Coriolanus : 128-9. P°r editions see
Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-
182

Cotes, Thomas, printer, 173

Cotswolds, the, Shakespeare's allu
sion to, 81

Court, the, Shakespeare's relations
with, 50, 52, 118-20, cf. 131-2, 138

Cowden-Clarke, Mrs., 207

Cowley, actor, 106

Craig, Mr. W. J., 182

Creede, Thomas, 36, draft of the
Merry Wives of Windsor 'printed
by, 84; draft of Henry V printed
by, 84; fraudulently assigns plays
to Shakespeare, 88

Cromwell, History of Thomas, Lord,

J74

'Cryptogram, The Great,' 210

Curtain Theatre, Moorfields, 20, 22-3

Cushman, Charlotte, 192

Cymbeline ; 130-1. For editions see
Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-
182

Cynthia s Revels, performed at Black-
friars Theatre, 109

Cyrano de Bergerac, plagiarisms of
Shakespeare by, 196

' DAIPHANTUS,' allusion to the poet
in Scoloker's, 147

Daniel, Samuel, parallelisms in
Romeo and Juliet with his ' Com
plainte of Rosamond,' 33 ; the topic
and metre of the ' Complainte of
Rosamond ' reflected in ' Lucrece,'
47 ; claims immortality for his
sonnets, 57 ; celebrates in verse
Southampton's release from prison
69

Danish, translations of Shakespeare
in, 199

Danter, John, prints surreptitiously
Romeo and Juliet, 34 ; Titus
Andronicus entered at Stationers'
Hall by, 40

D'Avenant, John, keeps the Crown
Inn, Oxford, 140

D'Avenant, Sir William, relates the
story of Shakespeare holding horses
outside playhouses, 20; on the
story of Southampton's gift to
Shakespeare, 63 ; a letter of King
James to the poet once in his
possession, 119; Shakespeare's
alleged paternity of, 139-40 ; 184

Davies, Archdeacon, vicar of Saper-
ton, Shakespeare's poaching, 16;
on 'Justice Clodpate' (Justice
Shallow) , 17 ; 203

Davies, John, of Hereford, his allu
sion to the parts played by Shake
speare, 26; celebrates in verse
Southampton's release from prison,
69 ; his ' Wittes Pilgrimage '

Davies, Sir John, 145

Death-mask, the Kesselstadt, 160

' Decameron,' the, indebtedness of
Shakespeare to, 77, 131, 132

1 Dedicatory ' sonnets of Shake
speare, 62 seq.

Dekker, Thomas, the quarrel with
Ben Jonson, 109-12; 116; on King
James's entry into London, 119

Delius, Nikolaus, edition of Shake
speare by, 180; studies of the text
and metre of the poet by, 195

Dennis, John, on the Merry Wives of
Windsor, 83; his tribute to the
poet, 1 86

Derby, Ferdinando Stanley (Lord
Strange), Earl of, his patronage of
actors, 21-2 ; performances by his
company, 34, 36, 40, 45

Derby, William Stanley, Earl of,
76

Desportes, Philippe, his claim for the
immortality of verse, 57

Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft,
207

Devrient family, the, stage represen
tation of Shakespeare by, 195

Diana, George de Montemayor's,
and Two Gentlemen of Verona, 32 ;
translations of, 32

Diderot, opposition to Voltaire's
strictures by, 196

Digges, Leonard, on the superior
popularity of Julius Ccesar to
Jonson's Catiline, 113; commenda-

218

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

tory verses on the poet, 147, 164,
167 ; on the poet's popularity, 184

' Don Quixote ' and the lost play
Cardenio, 136

Doncaster, the name of Shakespeare
at, i

Donne, Dr. John, his anecdote about
Shakespeare and Jonson, 87

Donnelly, Mr. Ignatius, 210

Double Falsehood, or the Distrest
Lovers, 136

Douce, Francis, 205

Dowdall, John, 203

Dowden, Professor, 187, 205

Drake, Nathan, 205, 207

Drayton, Michael, 37, 353 ; claims im
mortality for his sonnets, 57 ; enter
tained by Shakespeare at New
Place, Stratford, 144

Droeshout, Martin, engraver of the
portrait in the First Folio, 155-7;
his uncle of the same name, a
painter, 157

Droitwich, native place of John
Heming, one of Shakespeare's
actor-friends, 19

Dryden, a criticism of the poet's work
by, 185 ; presented with a copy of
the Chandos portrait of the poet,
158; 203

Ducis, Jean-Franfois, adaptations of
the poet for the French stage by,
197, 198

Dulwich, manor of, purchased by
Edward Alleyn, 103

Dumain, Lord, in Love's Labour's
Lost, 31

Dumas, Alexandre, adaptation of
Hamlet by, 198

Duport, Paul, repeats Voltaire's cen
sure, 197

Dyce, Alexander, on The Two Noble
Kinsmen, 136; his edition of Shake
speare, 180

EDEN, translation of Magellan's
' Voyage to the South Pole ' by,

133
Editions of Shakespeare's works.

See under Quarto and Folio
Editors of Shakespeare, in the

eighteenth century, 173-80; in the

nineteenth century, 180-2; ol

variorum editions, 179-81
Education of Shakespeare, 7-10
Edward II, Marlowe's, Richard II

suggested by, 39
Edward III, a play of uncertain

authorship, 44 ; quotation from one

of Shakespeare's sonnets, 44

Edwardes, Richard, author of the
lost play Palawan and Arcyte,

137

Edwards, Thomas, 'Canons of Criti
cism ' of, 177
Eld, George, printer, 71

Elizabeth, Princess, marriage of,
performance of The Tempest, &c.
at, 133, 136, 138, 139

Elizabeth, Queen : her visit to Kenil-
worth, 10; Shakespeare and other
actors play before her, 26, 44, 50;
shows the poet special favour, 50-1 ;
her enthusiasm for Falstaff, 50-1,
83 ; called ' Cynthia ' by the poets,
69 ; elegies on her, 69 ; compliment
to her in Midsummer Night's
Dream, 76-7; her objections to
Richard II, 87; death, 118

Elze, Friedrich Karl, ' Life of Shake
speare ' by, 205 ; Shakespeare
studies of, 195

Endymion, Lyly's, and Love's La
bour's Lost, 37

Eschenburg, Johann Joachim, com
pletes Wieland's German prose
translation of Shakespeare, 193

Error, Historie of, and Comedy of
Errors, 32

Essex, Robert Devereux, second Earl
of, company of actors under the
patronage of, 20; an enthusiastic
reception predicted for him in
London in Henry V, 86 ; trial and
execution, 87

' Euphues,' Lyly's, Polonius's advice
to Laertes borrowed from, 37

Evans, Sir Hugh, quotes Latin
phrases, 8 ; sings snatches of
Marlowe's ' Come live with me and
be my love," 39

Every Man in his Humour, Shake
speare takes a part in the per
formance of, 26, 86 ; prohibition on
its publication, 105

FA IRE EM, a play of doubtful au
thorship, 45

Falstaff, Queen Elizabeth's enthusi
asm for, 50-1, 83 ; 81-3

Farmer, Dr. Richard, on Shake
speare's education, 8, 205

Fastolf, Sir John, 82

Faucit, Helen. See Martin, Lady

Felix and Philomena, History of, 31

Field, Henry, father of the London
printer, 92

Field, Richard, 19-20 ; publishes
'Venus and Adonis,' 46, and
' Lucrece,' 47

INDEX

219

Finnish, translations of Shakespeare
in, 199

Fisher, Mr. Clement, 79

Fitton, Mary, 206

Fleay, Mr. F. G., on Shakespeare's
and Drayton's sonnets, 204

Fletcher, John, 90, 135 ; collaborates
with Shakespeare in The Two
Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII,
136, 138

Fletcher, Lawrence, actor, takes a
theatrical company to Scotland, 25,
118

Florio, John, the sonnet prefixed to his
'Second Frutes,' 53; his transla
tion of Montaigne's ' Essays,' 133 ;
Shakespeare's signature in the
British Museum copy of Florio's
'Montaigne,' 154; his praise of
Southampton, 64

Folio, the First, 1623: editor's note
as to the ease with which the poet
wrote, 28 ; the syndicate for its pro
duction, 166; its contents, 167;
prefatory matter, 167 ; value of the
text, 169 ; order of the plays, 169 ;
the typography, 169; unique
copies, 170-2; the Sheldon copy,
170 ; Sibthorp copy, 170-3 ; num
ber of extant copies, 172; Jaggard's
presentation copy, 170-3 ; reprints,
173 ; the ' Daniel ' copy, 172

Folio, the Second, 173

Folio, the Third, 173-4

Folio, the Fourth, 174

Forgeries in the ' Perkins Folio,' 173

Forman, Dr. Simon, 124, 131

Forrest, Edwin, American actor, 192

Fortune Theatre, 108

France, versions and criticisms of
Shakespeare in, 196-8 ; stage rep
resentation of the poet in, 198

Freiligrath, Ferdinand von, German
translation of Shakespeare by, 194

French, the poet's acquaintance with,
8

French, George Russell, 204

'Freyndon' (or Frittenden), i

Friendship, sonnets of, Shakespeare's,
66-8

Frittenden, Kent. See Freyndon

Fulbroke Park and the poaching
episode, 17

Fuller, Thomas, allusion in his
'Worthies' to Sir John Fastolf,
82 ; on the ' wit combats ' between
Shakespeare and Jonson, 87; the
first biographer of the poet, 203

Fulman, Rev. W., 203

Furness, Mr. H. H., his ' New

Variorum ' edition of Shakespeare,

180, 192

Furness, Mrs. H. H., 207
Furnivall, Dr. F. J., 165, 182, 187, 205

GARNETT, Henry, the Jesuit, 123

Garrick, David, 175, 187, 188-9

Gascoigne, George, his Supposes, 78

Gastrell, Rev. Francis, 151

Gates, Sir Thomas, 133

Germany, Shakespearean representa
tions in, 191, 195 ; translations of
the poet's works and criticisms in,
193-6; Shakespeare Society in, 195

Gervinus, ' Commentaries ' by, 195

' Gesta Romanorum ' and the Mer
chant of Venice, 41

Ghost in Hamlet, the, played by
Shakespeare, 26

Gilchrist, Octavius, 205

Gildon, Charles, on the rapid pro
duction of the Merry Wives of
Windsor, 83

Giovanni (Florentine), Ser, Shake
speare's indebtedness to his ' II
Pecorone,' 8, 41, 84

' Globe ' edition of Shakespeare, 182

Globe Theatre, 23, 98, 100-1 ; de
scribed by Shakespeare, 23, cf. 84;
revival of Richard II at, 86; per
formance of A Winter's Tale, 131 ;
its destruction by fire, 137 ; Shake
speare's disposal of his shares,

139

Goethe, criticism and adaptation of
Shakespeare by, 194

Golding, Arthur, his English version
of the ' Metamorphoses,' 8, 77, 133

Gollancz, Mr. Israel, 182

Gosson, Stephen, his ' Schoole of
Abuse,' 41

Gottsched, J. C., denunciation of
Shakespeare by, 193

Gounod, opera of Romeo and Juliet
by, 198

Gower, John, represented by the
speaker of the prologues in Pericles,
127 ; his ' Confessio Amantis,' 127

Gower, Lord Ronald, 161

Grave, Shakespeare's, 144

Gray's Inn Hall, performance of The
Comedy of Errors in, 43

Greek, Shakespeare's alleged ac
quaintance with, 8, 9

Green, C. F., 205

Greene, Robert, his attack on Shake
speare, 35 ; his publisher's apology,
35; his share in the original draft
of Henry VI, 36 ; his influence on
Shakespeare, 37 ; describes a meet-

22O

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

ing with a player, 99; A Winter's
Tale founded on his Pandosto, 132

Greene, Thomas, actor at the Red
Bull Theatre, 19

Greene, Thomas (' alias Shake
speare"), a tenant of New Place,
and Shakespeare's legal adviser,
97, 104, 143

Greenwich Palace, Shakespeare and
other actors play before Queen
Elizabeth at, 26, 44, 51

Greet, hamlet in Gloucestershire,
identical with the ' Greece ' in the
Taming of The Shrew, 80

Grendon, near Oxford, Shakespeare's
alleged sojourn there, 19

Griggs, Mr. W., 165

Grimm, Baron, recognition of Shake
speare's greatness by, 197

'Groats-worth of Wit,' Greene's
pamphlet, 35

Guizot, Fran9ois, revision of Le
Tourneur's translation by, 197

' H., MR. W.,' 74-5 ; ' W. H.'s ' true
relations with Thomas Thorpe, 206

Hacket, Marian and Cicely, in the
Taming of The Shrew, 78-9

Hal, Prince, 81, 84

Hales, John (of Eton) , on the superi
ority of Shakespeare to all other
poets, 184

Hall, Elizabeth, the poet's grand
daughter, 96, 140, 146, 150, 151

Hall, Dr. John, the poet's son-in-law,
140, 145, 150

Hall, Mrs. Susanna, the poet's elder
daughter, 96, 140, 146, 149-59

Hall, William (i), on the inscription
over the poet's grave, 144, 203

Hall, William (2). See ' H., Mr. W.'

Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard,
his edition of Shakespeare, 173,181;
his great labours on Shakespeare's
biography, 187, 204, 207

Hamlet : Polonius's advice to Laertes
borrowed from Lyly's ' Euphues,'
37 ; allusion to boy-actors, 109-10 ;
date of production, &c., 113-6. For
editions see Section xvii. (Biblio
graphy), 163-82

Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 115; his edi
tion of Shakespeare, 176

Harington, Sir John, translates
Ariosto, 106

Harington, Lucy, her marriage to the
third Earl of Bedford, 76

Harness, William, 181

Harrison, John, publisher of 'Lu-
crece,' 47

Harsnet, ' Declaration of Popish Im
postures ' by, 125

Hart family, the, and the poet's
reputed birthplace, 5

Hart, Joan, Shakespeare's sister, 5;
his bequest to her, 146 ; her three
sons, 146, 151

Hart, John, 151

Hart, Joseph C., 209

Hathaway, Anne. See Shakespeare,
Anne

Hathaway, Catherine, sister of Anne
Hathaway, n

Hathaway, Joan, mother of Anne
Hathaway, n

Hathaway, Richard, marriage of his
daughter Anne (or Agnes) to the
poet, 10-12

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 210

Hazlitt, William, and Shakespearean
criticism, 187, 205

' Hecatommithi,' Cinthio's, Shake
speare's indebtedness to, 8, 32, 121

Heine, studies of Shakespeare's
heroines by, 194

Helena in All's Well that Ends
Well, 78

Heming, John (actor-friend of Shake
speare) , 19, 22, 102, 103, 139 ; the
poet's bequest to, 146 ; signs dedi
cation of First Folio, 166, 167-8

Henderson, John, actor, 189

Henley-in-Arden, 3

Henrietta Maria, Queen, billeted on
Mrs. Hall (the poet's daughter) at
Stratford, 150

Henry IV (parts i. and ii.) : Justice
Shallow, 26; its publication, 80-1;
its characters, 81-4. For editions
see Section xvii. (Bibliography),
163-82

Henry V, The Famous Victories of,
the groundwork of Henry /Fand
of Henry V, 80, 86

Henry V : French dialogues, 8 ; date
of production, &c., 84-6. For edi
tions see Section xvii. (Bibliogra
phy), 163-82

Henry VI (pt. i.), 34-7

Henry VI (pt. ii.) : publication, &c.,

36-7

Henry VI (pt. iii.), production, 22,
36; publication, &c., 36-7. For
editions see Section xvii. (Biblio
graphy), 163-82

Henry VIII, 85 ; publication, author
ship, &c., 137-8. For editions see
Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-
182

Henryson, Robert, 117

INDEX

221

Henslowe, Philip, erects the Rose
Theatre, 22, 116, 137

'Heptameron of Civil Discources,'
Whetstone's, 122

Herder, Johann Gottfried, 193

Herford, Professor C. H., 182

'Hero and Leander,' Marlowe's, quo
tation in As You Like It from, 39

Herringman, H., 174

Hess, J. R., 193

Heyse, Paul, German translation of
Shakespeare by, 194

Heywood, Thomas, his poems pirated
in the ' Passionate Pilgrim,' 91, 164,
184

Hill, John, marriage of his widow,
Agnes or Anne, to Robert Arden, 4

Holinshed's ' Chronicles,' materials
taken by Shakespeare from, 9, 28,
38, 39, 80, 123, 125, 130

Holland, translations of Shakespeare
in, 199

Holland, Hugh, 167

Holmes, Nathaniel, 210

Holofernes, quotes Latin phrases
from Lily's grammar, 8

Horace, his claim for the immortal
ity of verse, 57

Hotspur, 81

Howard of Effingham, the Lord
Admiral, Charles, Ix>rd, his com
pany of actors, 21 ; its short alli
ance with Shakespeare's company,
22

Hudson, Rev. H. N., 182

Hughes, Mrs. Margaret, plays female
parts in the place of boys, 188

Hugo, Fran?ois Victor, translation
of Shakespeare by, 197

Hugo, Victor, 197-8

Hungary, translations and perform
ances of Shakespeare in, 199

Hunsdon (Lord Chamberlain),
George Carey, second Lord, his
company of players, 22

Hunsdon (Lord Chamberlain),
Henry Carey, first Lord, his com
pany of players, 22

Hunt, Thomas, master of Stratford
Grammar School, 7

Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 187, 204

'Huon of Bordeaux,' hints for the
story of Oberon from, 77

' IGNOTO,' 91

Immortality of verse, claimed by

Shakespeare for his sonnets, 57;

treated by Drayton and Daniel, 57
Imogen, the character of, 131
Incomes of actors, 98-103

India, translations and representa
tions of Shakespeare in, 200

Ingannati (Gl'), its resemblance to
Twelfth Night, 107

Ireland, Samuel, on the poaching
episode, 16-7

Irishman, the only, in Shakespeare's
dramatis personce, 85

Irving, Sir Henry, 191

Italian, the poet's acquaintance with,
8

Italy, Shakespeare's knowledge of,
25-6; translations and perform
ances of Shakespeare in, 198

Itinerary of Shakespeare's company
in the provinces between 1593 and
1614, 24-5

JAGGARD, Isaac, 166, 167

Jaggard, William, piratically inserts
two of Shakespeare's sonnets in
his ' Passionate Pilgrim,' 70, 90,
163; prints the First Folio, 166
167

James VI of Scotland and I of Eng
land, his appreciation of Shake
speare, 51; his accession to the
English throne, 69 ; his patronage
of Shakespeare and his company,
118-20; performances of A Win
ter's Tale and The Tempest before
him, 131-2, 133

James, Sir Henry, 173

Jameson, Mrs., 207

Jansen, Cornelius, alleged portrait of
Shakespeare by, 159

Jew of Malta, Marlowe's, 42

Jew . . . showne at the Bull, a lost
play, 41

John, King, old play on, attributed
to the poet, 89

John, King, Shakespeare's play of,
43. For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

Johnson, Dr., his story of Shake
speare, 20; his edition of Shake
speare, 177, 178, 179; his reply to
Voltaire, 196

Johnson, Gerard, his monument to
the poet in Stratford Church, 146

Johnson, Robert, lyrics set to music
by, 134

Jonson, Ben, on Shakespeare's lack
of exact scholarship, 9 ; Shake
speare takes part in the performance
of Every Man in his Humour and
in Sejanus, 26; on Titus Androni-
cus, 40; on the appreciation of
Shakespeare shown by Elizabeth
and James I, 51; relations with

222

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Shakespeare, 86-7; share in the
appendix to 'Love's Martyr,' 90;
quarrel with Marston and Dekker,
109-13; his ' Poetaster,' HI; allu
sions to him in the Return from
Parnassus, 112; his scornful criti
cism of Julius CcBsar, 113 ; satiric
allusion to A Winter's Tale, 132;
his sneering reference to The
Tempest in Bartholomew Fair, 134 ;
entertained by Shakespeare at New
Place, Stratford, 144; testimony
to Shakespeare's character, 147;
his tribute to Shakespeare in the
First Folio, 167, 172, 183
Jordan, Mrs., 190
Jordan, Thomas, his lines on men

playing female parts, 188
Jourdain, Sylvester, 132
' Jubilee,' Shakespeare's, 187
Julius Ccesar, 107-8 ; Jonson's hostile
criticism, 113. For editions see
Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-
182

XEAN, Edmund, 190, 198

Keller, A., German translation of

Shakespeare by, 194
Kemble, Charles, 198
Kemble, John Philip, 189
Kemp, William, comedian, plays

at Greenwich Palace, 26; 106,

112
Kenilworth, Elizabeth's visit to, 10,

cf. 76
Ketzcher, N., translation into Russian

by, 199

Killigrew, Thomas, and the substitu
tion of women for boys in female

parts, 188
King's players, the company of, 22-

25; 118-20
Kirkland, the name of Shakespeare

at, i

Kirkman, Francis, publisher, 90
Knight, Charles, 181
Kok, A. S., translation into Dutch

by, 199
Korner, J., German translation of

Shakespeare by, 194
Kraszewski, Polish translation edited

by, 199
Kreyssig, Friedrich A. T., studies of

the poet by, 195

Kyd, Thomas, influence of, on Shake
speare, 37, 40, 114

'L., H.,' initials on seal attesting
Shakespeare's autograph. See
Lawrence, Henry

La Harpe and the Shakespearean
controversy in France, 197

Lamb, Charles, 136, 190

Lambarde, William, 87

Lambert, Edmund, mortgagee of the
Asbies property, 7, 15, 129

Lambert, John, proposal to confer
upon him an absolute title to the
Asbies property, 15; John Shake
speare's lawsuit against, 97-8

Lane, Nicholas, a creditor of John
Shakespeare, 92

Langbaine, Gerard, 40, 203

Laroche, Benjamin, translation by,
197

Latin, the poet's acquaintance with,
8-9

' Latten,' use of the word in Shake
speare, 87

Law, the poet's knowledge of, 20

Lawrence, Henry, his seal beneath
Shakespeare's autograph, 141

Lear, King; date of composition, &c.,
124-6. For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

Leblanc, The Abbe, 196

Legge, Dr. Thomas, a Latin piece
on Richard III by, 38

Leicester, Earl of, his entertainment
of Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth,
10, 76 ; his regiment of Warwick
shire youths for service in the Low
Countries, 17 ; his company of
players, 20, 21

Leo, F. A., 195

Leoni, Michele, Italian translation
of the poet issued by, 198

' Leopold ' Shakspere, the, 182

Lessing, defence of Shakespeare by,

193

L'Estrange, Sir Nicholas, 86
Le Tourneur, Pierre, French prose

translation of Shakespeare by, 197
Lintot, Bernard, 119
Locrine, Tragedie of, 88, 174
Lodge, Thomas, 35, 37 ; his ' Scillaes

Metamorphosis,' 47 ; his ' Rosa-

lynde ' the foundation of As You

Like It, 106

London Prodigall, 89, 174
Lopez, Roderigo, Jewish physician,

Love, treatment of, in sonnets, 55

' Lover ' and ' love ' synonymous with
' friend ' and ' friendship ' in Eliza
bethan English, 63, 66

' Lover's Complaint, A,' possibly
written by Shakespeare, 71

Love's Labour's Lost: Latin phrases
in, 8 ; publication, &c., 30 ; influ-

. INDEX

223

ence of Lyly, 37 ; performed at
Whitehall, 50 ; examples of the
poet's first attempts at sonnetteer-
ing, 52 ; scornful allusion to sonnet-
teering, 55. For editions see Sec
tion xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82

Love's Labour's Won, attributed by
Meres to Shakespeare, 77. See
All's Well

' Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Com
plaint,' 91, 166

Lowell, James Russell, 192

Lucian, the Timon of, 126

' Lucrece ' : publication, &c., 47-8 ;
dedicated to the Earl of Southamp
ton, 48, 63 ; quarto editions in the
poet's lifetime, 163 ; posthumous
editions, 163

Lucy, Sir Thomas, his prosecution of
Shakespeare for poaching, 16, 17 ;
caricatured in Justice Shallow, 17,
85

Luddington, n

Ludwig, Otto, 195

Lydgate, 'Troy Book' of, drawn
upon for Troilus and Cressida, 117

Lyly, John, 37 ; his influence on
Midsummer Night's Dream, 77

Lyrics in Shakespeare's plays, 105,

' M. I.,' 167. See also ' S., I. M.'
Macbeth: references to the climate
of Inverness, 25 ; date of composi
tion, &c., 123-4. For editions see
Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82
Macklin, Charles, 189
Macready, William Charles, 190, 198
Madden, Rt. Hon. D. H., on Shake

speare's knowledge of sport, 205
Magellan, ' Voyage to the South Pole '

t>y, 133

Malone, Edmund, on Shakespeare's
first employment in the theatre, 21 ;
on the poet's residence, 23 ; on the
date of The Tempest, 134 ; 186 ; his
writings on the poet, 179, 180, 204

Manningham, John (diarist), a de
scription of Twelfth Night by, 107

Manuscript, circulation of sonnets in,
70

Markham, Gervase, 64

Marlowe, Christopher, 35 ; his share
in the revision of Henry VI, 37 ;
his influence on Shakespeare, 38-

39
Marmontel and the Shakespearean

controversy in France, 197
Marshall, Mr. F. A., 182 '
Marston, John, his share in the

appendix to ' Love's Martyr,' 91 ;
his quarrel with Jonson, 109-13

Martin, one of the English actors
who played in Scotland, 25

Martin, Lady, 161, 190, 207

Masks worn by men playing women's
parts, 23-4

Massey, Mr. Gerald, on the ' Sonnets,'
207

Massinger, Philip, 135-6 ; portions
of The Two Noble Kinsmen and
Henry VIII, assigned to, 137-8

Masuccio, the story of Romeo and
Juliet told in his Novellino, 33

Matthew, Sir Toby, 210

McCullough, John Edward, 192

Measure for Measure : date of com
position, &c., 121-3. For editions
see Section xvii. (Bibliography),
163-82

Memorials in sculpture to the poet,
161

Menachmi of Plautus, 32

Mendelssohn, setting of Shake
spearean songs by, 196

Merchant of Venice : the influence of
Marlowe, 38, 42; sources of the
plot, &c., 41-3. For editions see
Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-
182

Meres, Francis, attributes Love's
Labour's Won to Shakespeare, 77 ;
testimony to the poet's reputation,
88

Mermaid Tavern, 88

Merry Devill of Edmonton, 90

Merry Wives of Windsor : Latin
phrases put into the mouth of Sir
Hugh Evans, 8 ; Sir Thomas Lucy
caricatured in Justice Shallow, 17 ;
lines from Marlowe sung by Sir
Hugh Evans, 39; production, &c.,
84-5. For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

Metre of Shakespeare's plays a rough
guide to the chronology, 29-30 ; of
Shakespeare's poems, 47-8 ; of
Shakespeare's sonnets, 54

Mezieres, Alfred, 198

Michel, Francisque, translation by,
197

Middle Temple Hall, performance of
Twelfth Night at, 107

Middleton, Thomas, his plagiarisms
of Macbeth in The Witch, 124

Midsummer Night's Dream : refer
ences to the pageants at Kenilworth
Park, 10, 76 ; reference to Spenser's
'Teares of the Muses,' 49; pro
duction, &c., 76. For editions see

224

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-
182

Millington, Thomas, 36

Milton, his epitaph on Shakespeare,
184

Miranda, character of, 133

' Mirror of Martyrs,' 108

Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 126

• Monarcho, Fantastical,' 31

Money, its purchasing power in the
sixteenth century, 2, 98

Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 196

Montaigne, ' Essays ' of, 133

Montegut, Emil, translation by, 197

Montemayor, George de, 32

Montgomery, Philip Herbert, Earl
of, 167

Monument to Shakespeare in Strat
ford Church, 147, 154

Moseley, Humphrey, publisher, 90,
136

Moth, in Love's Labour's Lost, 31

Moulton, Dr. Richard G., 207

Mucedorus, a play by an unknown
author, 45

Much Ado about Nothing: date of
composition, &c., 105-6. For edi
tions see Section xvii. (Bibliogra
phy), 163-82

NASH, Anthony, the poet's legacy
to, 146

Nash, John, the poet's legacy to, 146

Nash, Thomas (i), marries Elizabeth
Hall, Shakespeare's granddaugh
ter, 150

Nash, Thomas (2), on the perform
ance of Henry VI, 34 ; on the im
mortalising power of verse, 57 ;
his appeals to Southampton, 64

Navarre, King of, in Love's Labour's
Lost, 31

Neil, Samuel, 205

Nekrasow and Gerbel, translation
into Russian by, 199

New Place, Stratford, Shakespeare's
purchase of, 97; the poet's death
at, 144; sold to Sir Edward
Walker, 151 ; pulled down, 151

Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish,
Duchess of, criticism of the poet
by, 185

Newington Butts Theatre, 23

Nottingham, Earl of, his company of
players, 116

OBERON, vision of, 10, 77 ; in ' Huon

of Bordeaux,' 77
Oechelhaeuser, W., acting edition of

the poet by, 195

Oldcastle, Sir John, 81-2, 174

Oldys, William, 204

Orlando Furioso, 106

Ortlepp, E., German translation oi
Shakespeare by, 194

Othello : date of composition, &c.,
121-3. For editions see Section xvii.
(Bibliography), 163-82

Ovid, influence on Shakespeare of
his 'Metamorphoses,' 8, 47, 128,
133; claims immortality for his
verse, 57 ; the poet's alleged signa
ture on the title-page of a copy
of the ' Metamorphoses ' in the
Bodleian Library, 9

Oxford, the poet's visits to, 19, 140;
Hamlet acted at, 1 14

Oxford, Earl of, his company of
actors, 21

' Oxford ' edition of Shakespeare, the,
182

PAINTER, William, his 'Palace of
Pleasure,' and Romeo and Juliet,
33, All 's Well that Ends Well, 77,
Timon of Athens, 126, and Corio-
lanus, 128

Pal&mon and Arcyte, a lost play,

137

Palamon and Arsett, a lost play,

137

Palmer, John, actor, 189

' Palladis Tamia,' eulogy on the poet
in, 88

Pandosto (afterwards called Dorastus
and Fawnia), Shakespeare's in
debtedness to, 132

' Parthenophrl and Parthenophe,'
Barnes's, 65

' Passionate Pilgrim,' 90, 163 ; printed
with Shakespeare's poems, 163

Patrons of companies of players, 21

Pavier, Thomas, printer, 83

' Pecorone, II,' by Ser Giovanni
Fiorentino, Shakespeare's indebt
edness to, 8, 41, 84

Peele, George, 35 ; his share in the
original draft of Henry VI, 37

Pembroke, Henry, second Earl of,
his company of players, perform
Henry VI (part iii.), 22, 36; and
Titus Andronicus, 40

Pembroke, William, third Earl of, the
question of the identification of ' Mr.
W. H.' with, 74, 206; dedication of
the First Folio to, 167; the iden
tification of the ' dark lady ' with
his mistress, Mary Fitton, 206

Penrith, Shakespeares at, i

Pepys, his criticisms of The Tempest

INDEX

225

and Midsummer Night's Dream,

185

Perez, Antonio, and Antonio in The
Merchant of Venice, 42

Pericles : date of composition, &c.,
126-7; not included in the First
Folio, 127, 167 ; included in Third
Folio, 173-4. For editions see Sec
tion xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82

Perkes (Clement), in Henry IV,
member of a family at Stinchcombe
Hill in the sixteenth century, 81

' Perkins Folio,' forgeries in the, 173

Petrarch, emulated by Elizabethan
sonnetteers, 53, 54; feigns old age
in his sonnets, 53 ; his metre, 54

Phelps, Samuel, 181, 191

Phillips, Augustine, actor, friend of
Shakespeare, 22 ; induced to revive
Richard II at the Globe in 1601,
86 ; his death, 139

Phillips, Edward (Milton's nephew),
criticism of the poet by, 203

' Phoenix and the Turtle, The, '91, 166

Pichot, A., 197

' Pierce Pennilesse.' See Nash,
Thomas (2)

Pindar, his claim for the immortality
of verse, 57

Plague, the, in Stratford-on-Avon,
6; in London, 39-40, 119

Plautus, the plot of the Comedy of
Errors drawn from, 9 ; translation
of, 32

Plays, revision of, 29; prices paid
for, 102

' Plutarch,' North's translation of,
Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 28,
77, 108, 126, 128

Poaching episode, the, 16-7

' Poetaster,' Jonson's, in

Poland, translations and perform
ances of Shakespeare in, 199

Pope, Alexander, 161 ; edition of
Shakespeare by, 175

Portraits of the poet, 154-61 ; the
1 Stratford ' portrait, 155 ; Droes-
hout's engraving, 155, 156, 164,
167 ; the ' Droeshout ' painting,
J56-7; portrait in the Clarendon
gallery, 157 ; ' Ely House ' portrait,
157-8 ; Chandos portrait, 158, 159 ;
' Jansen ' portrait, 159 ; ' Felton '
and ' Soest ' portraits, 159 ; minia
tures, 160

Pott, Mrs. Henry, 210

Prevost, Abbe, 196

Pritchard, Mrs., 189

Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Corn
wall), 181

Promos and Cassandra, 122

Provinces, the, practice of theatrical
touring in, 24-5, 40

Puritaine, or the Widdow of Watling-
streete, The, 89, 174

Puritanism, alleged prevalence in
Stratford-on-Avon of, 6, 142 ; its
hostility to dramatic representa
tions, 108 ; the poet's references
to, 141

QUARLES, John, ' Banishment of
Tarquin ' of, 163

Quarto editions of the plays, 164-5 ;
of the poems, 163-4

' Queen's Children of the Chapel,*
the, 21, 23, 109-13

Queen's Company of Actors, the,
welcomed to Stratford-on-Avon by
John Shakespeare, 6 ; its return to
London, 21

Quiney, Richard, appeals to Shake
speare for money, 98

Quiney, Thomas, marries Judith
Shakespeare, 143 ; his residence
and trade in Stratford, 149; his
children, 149

Quinton, baptism of one of the Hacket
family at, 79

RAPP, M., German translation of

Shakespeare by, 194
Ralegh, Sir Walter, extravagant

apostrophe to Queen Elizabeth by,

69
' Ratseis Ghost," and Ratsey's address

to the players, 92, 100
Ravenscroft, Edward, on Titus An-

dronicus, 40, 186
Reed, Isaac, 178
Rehan, Miss Ada, 192
Return from Parnassus, The, 99-

100, 147
Reynoldes, William, the poet's legacy

to, 146
Rich, Barnabe, story of ' Apollonius

and Silla' by, 32, 107
Richard II, 39 ; its revival on the

eve of the rising of the Earl of

Essex, 86. For editions see Section

xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82
Richard III: the influence of

Marlowe, 38-9; Colley Gibber's

adaptation, 188. For editions see

Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-

182
Richardson, John, one of the sureties

for the bond against impediments

respecting Shakespeare's marriage,

226

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

Richmond Palace, performances at,
51, 118

Ristori, Madame, 198

Roberts, James, printer, 40, 43, 76,
116, 166

Roche, Walter, master of Stratford
Grammar School, 7

Rolfe, Mr. W. J., 182

Romeo and Juliet : date of composi
tion, &c., 33-4; two choruses in
the sonnet form, 53. For editions
see Section xvii. (Bibliography),
163-82

Romeus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke's

33. *79

Ronsard, his claim for the immor
tality of verse, 57

Rosalind, played by a boy, 24

' Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Lega-
cie,' Lodge's, 106

Rose Theatre, Bankside, 22-3; per
formance of Henry VI, 34; pro
duction of the Venesyon Comedy,
42

Rossi, representation of Shakespeare
by, 198

Rowe, Nicholas, on the parentage of
Shakespeare's wife, 10 ; on Shake
speare's poaching escapade, 16 ; on
Shakespeare's performance of the
Ghost in Hamlet, 26 ; on the story
of Southampton's gift to Shake
speare, 63; on Queen Elizabeth's
enthusiasm for the character of
Falstaff, 83; on the poet's last
years at Stratford, 140; on John
Combe's epitaph, 142; his edition
of the poet's plays, 174, 203

Rowington, the Richard and William
Shakespeares of, i

Rowley, William, 90, 126

Riimelin, Gustav, 194

Rupert, Prince, at Stratford-on-Avon,

15°
Rusconi, Carlo, Italian prose version

of Shakespeare issued by, 198
Russia, translations and performances

of Shakespeare in, 199
Rymer, Thomas, 185

S., I. M., tribute to the poet thus

headed, 184
S., W., initials in Willobie's book, 60,

61 ; use of the initials on works

fraudulently attributed to the poet,

88-9
Sadler, Hamlett, the poet's legacy to,

146
Saint-Saens, M., opera of Henry VIII

by, 198

Salvini, representation of Othello by,

198
Sand, George, translation of As You

Like It by, 198
Sandells, Fulk, 11-3
Saperton, 16
Satiro-Mastix , a retort to Jonson's

Cynthia's Revels, no
Savage, Mr. Richard, 205
' Saviolo's Practise,' 106
Saxo Grammaticus, 114
Scenery in Shakespeare's day, 24
Schiller, adaptation of Macbeth for

the stage by, 194
Schlegel, A. W. von, German

translation of Shakespeare by, 193 ;

lectures on Shakespeare by, 194
Schmidt, Alexander, 205
' Schoole of Abuse,' 41
Schroeder, F. U. L., German actor of

Shakespeare, 195

Schubert, Franz, setting of Shake
spearean songs by, 196
Schumann, setting of Shakespearean

songs by, 196
Scoloker, Anthony, in ' Daiphantus,'

147

Scotland, Shakespeare's alleged trav
els in, 25

Scott, Sir Walter, at Charlecote, 17

Sedley, Sir Charles, apostrophe to
the poet, 186

Sejanus, Shakespeare takes part in
the performance of, 26

Selimus, 88

Sewell, Dr. George, 175

Shakespeare, the surname of, i, 2

Shakespeare, Adam, 2

Shakespeare, Ann, a sister of the
poet, 7

Shakespeare, Anne (or Agnes) : her
parentage, n ; her marriage to the
poet, 11-4; assumed identification
of her with Anne Whateley, 13-14 ;
her debt, 93; her husband's bequest
to her, 145-6 ; her death, 149

Shakespeare, Edmund, a brother of
the poet, 7 ; ' a player,' 151 ; death,

I51

Shakespeare, Gilbert, a brother of
the poet, 7 ; witnesses his brother's
performance of Adam in As You
Like It, 26 ; apparently had a son
named Gilbert, 151 ; his death not
recorded, 151

Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of the
poet, 15, 93

Shakespeare, Henry, one of the poet's
uncles, 2, 92

Shakespeare, Joan (i), 5

7NDEX

227

Shakespeare, Joan (2), see Hart, Joan

Shakespeare, John (i), of the thir
teenth century, I

Shakespeare, John (2), the poet's
father, administrator of Richard
Shakespeare's estate, 2 ; claims that
his grandfather received a grant
of land from Henry VII, 2, 149;
leaves Snitterfield for Stratford-on-
Avon, 2 ; his business, 3 ; his pro
perty in Stratford and his municipal
offices, 3 ; marries Mary Arden, 4 ;
his children, 5 ; his house in Hen
ley Street, Stratford, 5 ; appointed
alderman and bailiff, 6 ; welcomes
actors at Stratford, 6; his alleged
sympathies with puritanism, 6 ; his
application for a grant of arms, 2,
93-7; his financial difficulties, 7,
92; his younger children, 7; his
trade of butcher, 10; relieved by
the poet, 92-3 ; his death, 103

Shakespeare, Judith, the poet's second
daughter, 15, 103 ; her marriage to
Thomas Quiney, 142; her father's
bequest to her, 146; her children,
149; her death, 149

Shakespeare, Margaret, 5

Shakespeare, Mary, thepoet's mother,
4 ; her title to bear the arms of the
Arden family, 94 ; her death, 140

Shakespeare, Richard, a brother of
the poet, 7, 140; his death, 151

Shakespeare, Richard.of Rowington , i

Shakespeare, Richard, of Snitterfield,
probably the poet's grandfather, 2 ;
his family, 2 ; letters of administra
tion of his estate, 2

Shakespeare, Richard, of Wroxhall, 2

Shakespeare, Susanna, a daughter of
the poet, 13. See also Hall, Mrs.
Susanna

Shakespeare, Thomas, probably one
of the poet's uncles, 2

Shakespeare or ' Sakspere,' William,
the first recorded holder of this sur
name (thirteenth century), i

SHAKESPEARE.WILLIAM : parentage
and birthplace, 1-5; childhood,
education, and marriage, 6-14 (see
also Education of Shakespeare;
Poaching ; Shakespeare, Anne) ;
departure from Stratford, 15-8 ;
theatrical employment, 20-1 ; joins
the Lord Chamberlain's company,
22 ; his roles, 26 ; his first plays,
28-45 I publication of his ' Poems,'
46 seq.\ his 'Sonnets,' £2-61,70-4;
patronage of the Earl of Southamp
ton, 62-70; plays composed be

tween 1595 and 1598, 76-84; his
popularity and influence, 86-91 ;
returns to Stratford, 93 ; buys New
Place, 97 ; financial position before
1599, 98 seq.\ financial position
after 1599, 100 seq. ; formation of
his estate at Stratford, 103 seq. ;
plays written between 1599 and
1609, 105-29; the latest plays, 130
seq. ; performance of his plays at
Court, 139 (see also Court ; White
hall; Elizabeth, Queen ; James I) ;
final settlement in Stratford (1611)
140 seq. ; death (1616), 144; his
will, 145 seq. ; monument at Strat
ford, 146 ; personal character,
147-8 ; his survivors and descend
ants, 149 seq. ; autographs, por
traits, and memorials, 152-62;
bibliography, 163-82; his posthu
mous reputation in England and
abroad, 183-200; general estimate
of his work, 201-2; biographical
sources, 203-7; alleged relation
between him and the Earl of Pem
broke, 168

Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, 192
' Shakespeare Society,' the, 187, 207
Shallow, Justice, Sir Thomas Lucy
caricatured as, 17 ; his house in
Gloucestershire, 80-1 ; 84
Sheldon copy of the First Folio, the,

170, 171
Shelton, Thomas, translator of ' Don

Quixote," 136
Shottery, Anne Hathaway's cottage

at, ii

Shylock, sources of the portrait of, 42
Sibthorp, Mr. Coningsby, his copy of

the First Folio, 171, 172
Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 189, 190
Sidney, Sir Philip, on the absence of
scenery in a theatre, 24 ; translation
of verses from ' Diana," 32; Shake
speare's indebtedness to him, 37;
addressed as 'Willy' by some of
his eulogists, 49-50 ; his ' Astrophel
and Stella ' brings the sonnet into
vogue, 52 ; warns the public against
the insincerity of sonnetteers, 55 ;
on the conceit of the immortalising
power of verse, 57
Sievers, Eduard Wilhelm, 195
Singer, Samuel Weller, 181
Sly, Christopher, 78-80
Smethwick, John, bookseller, 166
Smith, Mr. W. H., and the Baconian

hypothesis, 210
Smithson, Miss, actress, 198
Si:itteifield, Richard Shakespeare

228

SHAKESPEARE^S LIFE AND WORK

rents land of Robert Arden at, 2,
4 ; departure of John Shakespeare,
the poet's father, from, 2; the
Arden property at, 4-5 ; sale of
Mary Shakespeare's property at, 7

Snodham, Thomas, printer, 89

Somers, Sir George, wrecked off the
Bermudas, 132

Somerset House, Shakespeare and
his company at, 119-20

Sonnets, Shakespeare's: the poet's
first attempts, 52; the majority
probably composed in 1594, 53 ;
few written between 1594 and 1603,
53 ; their literary value, 53 ; circu
lation in manuscript, 70; com
mended by Meres, 70; their
piratical publication in 1609, 70;
their form, 54 ; want of continuity,
54, 55; autobiographical only in
a limited sense, 55, 56, 58, 59,
60; their borrowed conceits,
56-9; indebtedness to Drayton,
Petrarch, Ronsard, Desportes, and
others, 56, 57 ; the poet's claim of
immortality for his sonnets, 57, 96 ;
vituperation, 58 ; ' dedicatory ' son
nets, 62 seq. \ the ' rival poet,'
64-6 ; sonnets of friendship, 66-8 ;
the supposed story of intrigue, 59 ;
summary of conclusions respecting
the ' Sonnets,' 75-6 ; edition of
1640, 163

Sonnets, quoted with explanatory
comments : xxvi., 63 ; lv., 58 ;
Ixxviii., 62, 65 ; Ixxx., 65 ; Ixxxvi.,
65 ; xciv. (line 14) , 44, 70 ; c.,
62; ciii., 62; cvii., 53, 68, 69; ex.,
27 ; cxi., 27 ; cxxxviii., 70 ; cxliv.,
59, 70, 164

— the vogue of the Elizabethan :
52-3 ; conventional device of son-
netteers of feigning old age, 53;
lack of genuine sentiment, 55;
French and Italian models, 55 ;
censure of false sentiment in son
nets, 55; Shakespeare's scornful
allusions to sonnets in his plays,
55 ; vituperative sonnets, 58

Southampton, Henry Wriothesley,
third Earl of, 32; the dedications
to him of ' Venus and Adonis '
and ' Lucrece,' 46, 48 ; his patron
age of Shakespeare, 62-70 ; his gift
to the poet, 63, 100; his youthful
appearance, 67; his identity with
the youth of Shakespeare's sonnets
of ' friendship ' evidenced by his
portraits, 68; imprisonment, 69;
as a literary patron, 168

Southwell, Robert, publication of ' A
Fourefould Meditation ' by, 72

Southwell, Father Thomas, 209

Spanish, translation of Shakespeare's
plays into, 199

Spanish Tragedy, Kyd's, popularity
of, 40. 114

Spelling of the poet's name, 153-4

Spenser, Edmund : and Shakespeare,
49-50 ; on the immortalising power
of verse, 57; his ' Amoretti,' 57

Sport, Shakespeare's knowledge of,

16, 84

Stae'l, Madame de, 197

Stafford, Lord, his company of
actors, 20

Stage, conditions of, in Shakespeare's
day, 24

' Staple of News, The,' Jonson's quo
tations from Julius Ccesar in, 113

Staunton, Howard, 173 ; his edition
of the poet, 180

Steele, Richard, on Betterton's
rendering of Othello, 187

Steevens, George : his edition of
Shakespeare, 178 ; his revision of
Johnson's edition, 178 ; his criti
cisms, 178, 179

Stinchcombe Hill referred to as ' the
Hill 'in Henry IV, 8 1

Stopes, Mrs. C. C., 205

Strange, Lord. See Derby, Earl of

Straparola, ' Notti ' of, and the
Merry Wives of Windsor, 84

Stratford-on-Avon, settlement of
John Shakespeare, the poet's father,
at, 2; property owned by John
Shakespeare in, 3, 5; the poet's
birthplace at, 5 ; the Shakespeare
Museum at, 5, 161 ; the plague in
1564 at, 6; actors for the first
time at, 6 ; the grammar school, 7 ;
Shakespeare's departure from, 16,

17, 19; native place of Richard
Field, 19 ; allusions in the Taming
of The Shrew to, 79; the poet's
return in 1596 to, 93; the poet's
purchase of New Place, 97 ; appeals
from townsmen to the poet for
aid, 98 ; the poet's purchase of
land at, 103, 104; the poet's last
years at, 140-2; attempt to en
close common lands and Shake
speare's interest in it, 143; the
poet's death and burial at, 144;
Shakespeare memorial building
at, 161 ; the ' Jubilee ' and the
tercentenary, 187

Sturley, Abraham, 98
Suckling, Sir John, 184

INDEX

229

Sullivan, Barry, 161

Sully, M. Mounet, 198

Sumarakow, translation into Russian
by, 199

Supposes, the, of George Gascoigne, 78

Surrey, Earl of, sonnets of, 52, 54

Sussex, Earl of, his company of
actors, 21 ; Titus Andronicus per
formed by, 22, 40

Swedish, translations of Shakespeare
in, 199

' Sweet,' epithet applied to Shake
speare, 224

Swinburne, Mr. A.C., 38, 44, 187, 207

Tamburlaine, Marlowe's, 38

Taming of A Shrew, 78

Taming of The Shrew, 78-9. For
editions see Section xvii. (Biblio
graphy), 163-82

Tarleton, Richard, 50 ; his ' Newes
out of Purgatorie ' and the Merry
Wives of Windsor, 84

'Teares of the Muses,' Spenser's,
referred to in Midsummer Night's
Dream, 49

Tempest, The: traces of the influence
of Ovid, 8-9; 15; 26; the ship
wreck akin to a similar scene in
Pericles, 127 ; date of composi
tion, &c., 132-4; Ben Jonson's
scornful allusion to, 134; fanciful
interpretations of, 134-5. For
editions see Section xvii. (Biblio
graphy), 163-82

Temple Grafton, 13

' Temple Shakespeare, The," 182

Tercentenary festival, the Shake
speare, 187

Terry, Miss Ellen, 191

Theatre, The, at Shoreditch, 20,
22 ; Shakespeare at, between
1595 and 1599, 23 ; demolished,
and the Globe Theatre built with
the materials, 23

Theatres in London: Blackfriars
(q.v.) ', Curtain (q.v.) ; Fortune,
108 ; Globe (y.v.) ; Newington
Butts, 23; Red Bull, 19; Rose
(?.v.) ; The Theatre, Shoreditch
(q.v.)

Theobald, Lewis, his emendations
of Hamlet, 115; publishes a play
alleged to be by Shakespeare, 136 ;
his criticism of Pope, 175; his
edition of the poet's works, 175,
176

Thomas, Ambroise, opera of Hamlet
by, 198

Thorns, W. J., 205

Thornbury, G. W., 205

Thorpe, Thomas, the piratical pub
lisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets,
70-4 ; adds ' A Lover's Complaint '
to the collection of Sonnets, 71 ; his
bombastic dedication to 'Mr. W.
H.,' 74-6

Three Ladies of London, The, some
of the scenes in the Merchant of
Venice anticipated in, 41

Tieck, Ludwig, theory respecting The
Tempest of, 133, 193

Timon of Athens : date of composi
tion, &c. , 126. For editions see Sec
tion xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82

Timon, Lucian's, 126

Titus Andronicus: one of the only
two plays of the poet's performed
by a company other than his own,
22; authorship, &c., 40-1. For
editions see Section xvii. (Biblio
graphy) , 163-82

Titus and Vespasian, Titus Androni
cus suggested by, 40

Topics of the day, Shakespeare's
treatment of, 30-1

Tours of English actors: in foreign
countries between 1580 and 1630,
25-6; in provincial towns, 24-5,
40, 109, 119

Translations of the poet's works, 192
seq.

' Troilus and Cresseid," 117

Troilus and Cressida : allusion to the
strife between adult and boy actors,
in ; date of production, &c., 116-8 ;
plot drawn from Chaucer's 'Troilus
and Cresseid,' and Lydgate's ' Troy
Book,' 117. For editions see Sec
tion xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82

' Troy Book,' Lydgate's, 117

True Tragedie of Richard III, The,
an anonymous play, 38, 164

True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of
Yorke, 36

Twelfth Night: description of a
betrothal, 13 ; indebtedness to the
story of ' Apollonius and Silla," 32 ;
date of production, &c., 107. For
editions see Section xvii. (Biblio
graphy), 163-82

Two Gentlemen of Verona : allusion
to Valentine travelling from Verona
to Milan by sea, 26 ; date of pro
duction, &c., 31-2; influence of
Lyly, 38 ; satirical allusion to son-
netteering, 55 ; resemblance of it to
All's Well that Ends Well, 77-8.
For editions see Section xvii. (Bib
liography), 163-82

230

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK

Two Noble Kinsmen, The : attributed
to Fletcher and Shakespeare, 136;
Massinger's alleged share in its
production, 136-7 ; plot drawn from
Chaucer's ' Knight's Tale,' 137

Twyne, Lawrence, the story of Peri
cles in the ' Patterne of Painfull
Adventures ' by, 127

ULRICI, ' Shakespeare's Dramatic
Art ' by, 195

VARIORUM editions of Shakespeare,

178, 179, 204
Vautrollier, Thomas, the London

printer, 20
Venesyon Comedy, The, produced by

Henslowe at the Rose, 42
' Venus and Adonis ; ' published in

1593, 46 ; dedicated to the Earl of

Southampton, 46, 63; its imagery

and general tone, 46-7 ; eulogies

bestowed upon it, 48, 49 ; early

editions, 49, 163
Verdi, operas by, 199
Verplanck, Gulian Crommelin, 181
Versification, Shakespeare's, 29-30
Vigny, Alfred de, version of Othello

by, 198
Villemain, recognition of the poet's

greatness by, 197
Vincent, Augustine, relations with

Jaggard, 171-2
Visor, William, in Henry IV, member

of a family at Woodmancote, 81
Voltaire, strictures on the poet by,

196, 197
Voss, J. H., German translation of

Shakespeare by, 194

WALKER, Sir Edward, 151

Walker, William, the poet's godson,
146

Walker, W. Sidney, on Shakespeare's
versification, 206

W alley, Henry, printer, 116

Warburton, Bishop, revised version
of Pope's edition of Shakespeare
by, 177

Ward, Dr. A. W., 207

Ward, Rev. John, on the poet's
annual expenditure, 102; on the
visits of Drayton and Jonson to
New Place before the poet's death,
144 ; his account of the poet, 203

Warner, Mrs., 191

Warner, Richard, 207

Warner, William, the probable trans
lator of the Metxechmi, 32

Warren, John, 164

Warwickshire : prevalence of the sur
name Shakespeare, i ; position of
the Arden family, 4 ; Queen Eliza
beth's progress on the way to Kenil-
worth, 10

Watchmen in the poet's plays, 19, 38

Watson, Thomas, 37 ; the passage on
Time in his ' Passionate Centurie of
Love ' elaborated in ' Venus and
Adonis,' 48 ; his sonnets, 52

Webbe, Alexander, makes John
Shakespeare overseer of his will, 6

Webbe, Robert, buys the Snitterfield
property from Shakespeare's
mother, 7

Weever, Thomas : allusion in his
' Mirror of Martyrs ' to Antony's
speech at Caesar's funeral, 108

' Westward for Smelts ' and the Merry
Wives of Windsor, 84; story of
Ginevra in, 131

Whateley, Anne, the assumed identifi
cation of her with Anne Hathaway,

13-4

Wheler, R. B., 205

Whetstone, George, his Promos and
Cassandra, 122

White, Mr. Richard Grant, 181-2

Whitehall, performances at, 50-1, 120,
121, 124, 139

Wieland, Christopher Martin : his
translation of Shakespeare, 193

Wilkins, George, his collaboration
with Shakespeare in Timon of
Athens and Pericles, 126 ; his novel
founded on the play of Pericles, 127

Wilks, Robert, actor, 188

Will, Shakespeare's, 102, 143, 145-6

' Willobie his Avisa,' 59-01

Wilmcote, house of Shakespeare's
mother, 4, 5; bequest to Mary
Arden of the Asbies property
at, 4; mortgage of the Asbies
property at, 7, 15 ; and ' Wincot '
in The Taming of The Shrew, 79,
80

Wilnecote. See under Wincot

Wilson, Robert, author of The Three
Ladies of London, 41

Wilson, Thomas, his manuscript
version of ' Diana,' 32

Wilton, Shakespeare and his com
pany at, 119

Wincot (in The Taming of The

Shrew], its identification, 79
Winter's Tale, A, 131-2. For editions
see Section xvii. (Bibliography),
163-82

Wise, Andrew, 39, 105

Wise, J. R., 205

INDEX

231

Women, on Elizabethan stage, 23-4 ;

on the Restoration stage, 188
Woncot in Henry IV identical with

Woodmancote, 81
Woodmancote. See Woncot
Worcester, Earl of, his company of

actors at Stratford, 6, 21
Worcester, registry of the diocese of,

2, II

Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, on
Shakespeare and the Bible, 205

Wordsworth, William, the poet, on
German and French aesthetic criti
cism, 194, 197

Wotton, Sir Henry, on the burning

of the Globe Theatre, 137; letter
to Sir Edmund Bacon, 209
Wright, Dr. Aldis, 180
Wright, John, bookseller, 71
Wroxhall, the Shakespeares of, 2
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, sonnetteeri'ng of,

52.54

Wyman, W. H., 210
Wyndham, Mr. George, on the

' Sonnets,' 206

YONGE, Bartholomew, translation of

' Diana ' by, 32
Yorkshire Tragedy, The, 89-90, 126,

174

A NEW AND COMPLETE

Verbal Index to Words, Phrases, and Passages in the

Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, with

a Supplementary Concordance to the Poems

JOHN BARTLETT, A.n.

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Author of "Familiar Quotations," etc.

i volume. Medium Quarto. 1900 pp. $7.50 net.

" This -monumental concordance of Shakespeare's plays and poems has not far
from two thousand pages in the clearest of typography. . . . No -words of praise
tcre too high for the zeal and discrimination which have produced this superb book
of reference." — The Literary World.

"A work without which no lover of Shakespeare can be content." — The New
York Times.

"Mr. BARTLETT, whose 'Familiar Quotations' is by so much the best compila
tion of its kind ever made that it is not likely to be superseded, except by future
expansion on its own lines, has here completed another monumental work, which
is done once and for all. There have been concordances of Shakespeare before; there
•will never be any need for another." — The Philadelphia Times.

" Like the other works which Professor BARTLETT has produced, the new con
cordance is the best of its kind, the compiler having adopted a plan which makes it
more comprehensive than any other similar treatment of Shakespeare." — The Cleve
land Leader.

" Mr. BARTLETT'S great volume supplies absolute completeness and furnishes a
Concordance to Shakespeare's Works that is invaluable, and that may perhaps
never be improved upon. . . . Its accuracy is indisputable. . . . The finish of such
a stupendous work as this is an event in the world of literature. That it should be so
well done is a tribute to the painstaking patience and the skill and knowledge of Mr.
BARTLETT, to whom all literature is known, and to whom the world is indebted for
its best indexes. . . . The Concordance from a mechanical standpoint is perfect.
The publishers have produced a really great piece of book-making. The Concor
dance should find room on the shelves of every private library in the country,
and no student or reader of Shakespeare, casual or constant, will fail to flank his vol
umes of the master's work with this concordance." — The Cincinnati Commercial
Gazette.

" The work merits large praise. Although the type is fine it is clear. . . . The
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it must practically monopolize the ground. No less complete concordance of
course can compete with it; and, as it covers the whole ground satisfactorily, and as
no additions or alterations are likely to be made in Shakespeare's text, it is one of the
few works which seem likely to remain unrivalled in the very nature of the case. It
is something for which to be grateful that it is the work of a competent scholar like
Mr. BARTLETT." — The Congregationalist.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

PR Lee, (Sir) Sidney

2894 Shakespeare's life and work

L43

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