William Shakespeare and Robert Greene: the evidence

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WILLIAM SHAKSPERE
and ROBERT GREENE

THE EVIDENCE

WILLIAM HCHAPMAN

o.

SIrtbuwe f ufaUaljing (Ha.

OAKLAND. C A L.

COPYRIGHTED BY

WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN

SANTA MONICA, CAL.
FEBRUARY 26, 1912

Sin ty* JHrmnrg of
ilotljrr

PREFACE.

HE design of this tvork is to
give some account of the con
spicuous events and of some of
the personages connected with
the literary history of England in that
wonderful Renaissance which took place
in the Elizabethan age. All that the writer
has attempted is a concise narrative of
some of the facts, grouping them together
in a compact form, with such reflections
as seemed to him to be just and appropri
ate. To secure this end he has labored to
strip from Shakspere's biography the
manufactured traditions which date from
a considerable period after Shakspere's
death. Where all is conjecture let the
reader do his own guessing and strive
for the abatement of that new Freak
called Esthetic Criticism with, which some
of our critics and commentators desig
nate their own absurdities.

The writer has given unusual promi
nence to several distinguished personages
•amongst Shakspere's contemporaries, no
tably Robert Greene, William Kemp and

Ben Jonson. The work is sketchy in
execution because the materials do not
exist for more than an outline figure.

The readers familiar with the old Eng
lish dramatic poets do not believe in an
exclusive authorship, or uniform work
manship, of the greatest of the Eliza
bethan English works. While they set up
no claimant for the writings so commonly
credited to William Shakspere of Strat-
ford-on-Avon, they believe, nevertheless,
that the Stratfordian canon is open to
demurrer.

Conspicuous among modern and recent
writers on the subject of Robert Greene,
who show the courage of their convictions
by their valiant strokes in defense of that
poet's reputation, are Professor J. M.
Brown of New Ttcaland, Dr. A. B. Gross-
art, and Professor Storojenko. The cita
tions borroived from their works attest
the writer's obligation to them, and are
sufficiently indicated in the text.

WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN

Santa Monica, California.

THE EVIDENCE

This book was written primarily for
private satisfaction, the author having no
desire for approbation, and to disclose
merely the true William Shakspere of
Stratf ord-on-Avon ; to find him as a man ;
to feel his personal presence ; to know him
as he was known by his neighbors as land
owner, money lender, captain of amuse
ments, actor, play-broker and litigant.
From dusty records that do not awaken
a deific impulse may be read the true
story of his life, but, before directing the
readers' attention to the documentary evi
dence, which can be entirely depended
upon in regard to himself, his family,
neighbors, fellow-actors and associates,

2 WILLIAM SHAKSPE&E

we desire to cut out the worthless conjec
tures which are contained in most, if not
all, of the recent works on the subject of
Shakespeare. Circumstances, however
slight, may give rise to idle conjectures,
but their worthlessness may be best dis
cerned by setting up against them reason
able ones. To repeat apocryphal anec
dotes and manufactured traditions that
are not reasonable inferences from con
current events is to dissipate mental en
ergy; antiquity per se adds nothing to
confirmation or probability. In that di
gest of biography, so often quoted, George
Stevens tells his readers in less than fifty
words all he knew with any degree of cer
tainty concerning Shakspere, with the
exception of his conjectures as to the au
thorship of the poems and plays. This
great Sliaksperean commentator indulges
in no aesthetic dreams or whimsical con
jectures which taint the credibility of his
successors by their statement of them as
proven facts.

Of all kinds of literature, biography

AND ROBERT GREENE 3

extends the most generous hospitality.
Its subjects live an after life in affiliation
with the readers without regard to condi
tion. In seeking to renew the enthusiasm
of our youth for this species of writing
we visit the public library and find many
changes in biographical history, such as
the elimination of spurious tradition and
fanciful conjecture. For instance, instead
of the traditional life of Washington,
there is a life of the true Washington;
and, instead of a caricatured life of
Cromwell, there is a record of the duly
attested facts of the many-sided and won
drous Cromwell. With what astonish
ment we survey the huge issue of books
on Shakspere which stand conspicuous on
the shelves! There are more than ten
thousand books and pamphlets— many of
them of the memoir order— almost every
one of which has a biographical preface;
but we find that most, if not all, the bio
graphers of Shakspere still lead the
reader into the shadow of chaotic conjec
ture and might-have-been, and that

4 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

Sliaksperean literature still lacks a book
on the personal life of William Shaks-
pere that shall be to most, if not all oth
ers, a pruning hook cutting out the rever
ies and guess work which unfortunately
have seduced the historian and misled the
reader. We hold in our hand one of the
more recent of these books of fictitious
biography, transmissive "fraud of the
imagination" which authenticates noth
ing!

As co-readers, we will now focus our
attention and thoughts intently upon the
celebrated letter written by the dying-
hand of Robert Greene, and addressed to
three brother poets to whom he adminis
ters a gentle reproof on account of their
by-gone and present faults, of which,
play-writing was most to be shunned. This
remarkable letter reveals Robert Greene
as the most tragical figure of his time— a
sad witness of his ultimate penitence and
absolute confession, a character of pa
thetic sincerity, weirdness and charnel-
like gloom that chills the soul. This let-

AND ROBERT GREENE 5

ter, so often referred to, and seemingly so
little understood, is one of the most extra
ordinary pieces of writing in our literary
annals. It lias all the credibility that a
dying statement can give, but it also evi
dences the fact that Robert Greene had
previously drawn the fire of the improvis
ing actors "who wrought the disfigure
ment of the poet's, work." There is one
in particular at whom he hurls a dart and
hits the mark.

"Yes, trust them not; for there is an
"upstart crow, beautified with our (po-
"et's) feathers, that, with his Tyger's
"heart wrapt in a Player's hide, supposes
"he is as well able to bombast out a
"blanke verse as the best of you; and be-
"ing an absolute 'Johannes Factotum,' is
"in his own conceit, the onely Shake-
" scene in a countrie."

This sorrow-stricken man wrote these
\vords of censure with the utmost sincer
ity. Earlier biographers made no attempt
to read Shakspere into these lines of re
proof, but those only of later times regard

6 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

the allusion invaluable as being the first
literary notice of Shakspere, and find
pleasure in reading into Shakspere 's life
the fact of his having been satirized in
1592 under the name "Shake-scene," used
by Greene contumeliously.

The letter is contained in a little work
entitled "Greene's Groats Worth of
Wit," "Bought with a Million of Repent
ance, originally published in 1592, having
been entered at Stationers Hall on the
20th of September in that year." "To
those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaint
ance, that spend their wits in making
Plaies."

"With thee (Marlowe) will I first be-
"gin, thou famous gracer of tragedians,
"that Greene, who hath said with thee,
"like the foole in his heart, there is no
"God, should now give glorie unto His
"greatnesse; for penetrating is His
"power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He
"hath spoken unto me with a voice of
"thunder and I have felt He is a God that
"can punish enemies. Why should thy

AND ROBERT GREENE 7

"excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded that
"thou shouldst give no glory to the
"giver?" ....

"With thee I joyne young Juvenall,
" (Nash) that by ting satyrist that lastlie
"with mee together writ a comedie.
"Sweete boy, might I advise thee, be ad-
" vised, and get not many enimies by bit-
"ter words .... Blame not schol-
"lers vexed with sharp lines, if they re-
" prove thy too much libertie of reproof e."

"And thou (Peele) no less deserving
"than the other two, in some things rarer,
"in nothing inferiour; driven (as my-
"selfe) to extreame shifts; a little have
" I to say to thee ; and were it not an idol-
"atrous oath, I would swear by sweet S.
"George thou are unworthie better hap,
"sith thou depenclest on so meane a stay,
"(theatre) Base minded men all three of
"you, if by my miserie ye be not warned;
"for unto none of you, like me, sought
"those burrs to cleave; those puppits, I
-"meane, that speake from our mouths,
"those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is

8 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"it not strange that I, to whom they all
"have been beholding, is it not like that
"you to whom they all have beene behold-
"ing, shall, were ye in that case that I am
"now, be both at once of them forsaken?
"Yes, trust them not; for there is an up-
" start crow, beautified with our feathers,
"that, with his Tyger's heart wrapt in a
"Player's hide, supposes he is as well able
"to bombast out a blanke verse as the best
"of you; and being an absolute 'Johannes
"Factotum,' is in his own conceit the
* ' onely Shake-scene in a countrie. "...

"But now returne I againe to you
"three, knowing my miserie is to you no
"news ; and let me heartily entreate you to
"be warned by my harmes .... For
"it is a pittie men of such rare wits
"should be subject to the pleasures of
such rude groomes."

Those biographers and critics who have
written concerning Shakspere and Greene
misapprehensively compound an inte
grate letter and pamphlet. It should be
made clear that Greene's letter to his fel-

AND ROBERT GREENE 9

low poets is not an integral part of
"Groats Worth of Wit," though ap
pended towards the end of this pamphlet.
The letter is strikingly personal and im
pressive, not a continuance of a pamphlet
describing the folly of youth, but a mere
appendage not properly constituting a
portion of it. It was the classical com
mentator, Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-85),
we believe, who first made current the
groundless opinion that purports to iden
tify Shakspere as the one pointed at, but
most, if not all, recent biographers and
commentators state as a "proven fact"
that Robert Greene was the first to bail
Shakspere out of obscurity by the "rep-
rehensive reference" to an "upstart

crow. '

The effect of conjectural reading is to
raise a tempest of depreciation by which
Shakspere 's biographers and commenta
tors have succeeded in handing down to
posterity Greene's reputation as a pre
posterous combination of infamy and
envy, harping with fiendish delight on the

10 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

irregularities and defects of Robert
Greene's private life, which were not
even shadowed in his writings. The writ
ings of Greene "whose pen was pure" arc
exceptionally clean. Why then this un
merited abuse so malignant in disposition
and passion? We answer that it is be
cause the biographers of Shakspere .have
been seduced from truth by a vagrant
conjecture into the belief that William
Shakspere was the object and recipient
of Greene's censure. It is apparent that
the statement which affirms this is false,
and we shall endeavor to show that Rob
ert Greene's detractors are on the wrong
trail.

There now arises the crucial enquiry
concerning the charge that William
Shakspere was thus lampooned in 1592
by Eobert Greene in his celebrated ad
dress "To those Gentlemen of his own
"fellowship that spend their wits making
"plaies" -inferentially, Marlowe, Nash
and Peele. The exigency of the case de
mands, in the opinion of Shakspere 's
modern biographers, the appropriation
of Greene's reproachful reference to
Shakspere, (though no name is men
tioned) yet the actor referred to by
Greene the children in London streets
well knew and acclaimed; and every stu
dent of Elizabethan literature, history
and bibliography, should know that the
reference is identifiable with William
Kemp, the celebrated comic actor, jig-
dancer, and jester, who was, in his own
conceit, the "only Shake-scene (dance-
" scene) in a country," "Shake-scene"

12 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

and (dance-scene) being interchangeable
compounds in the old meaning; but the
votaries of Shakspere, posing as his biog
raphers, in the urgency of their desire to
remove doubts which had existed respect
ing the beginning of Shakspere 's early
literary productivity as play-maker, or as
an elaborator of the works of other men,
prior to the year 1592, crave some nota
tion of literary activity in the young man
who went up from Stratford to London
in 1587 (probably).

As the immortal plays were coming out
anonymously and surreptitiously, there is
a very strong desire to appropriate or em
bezzle "the only Shake-scene" reference,
for, in the similarity and sound of the
compound word "Shake-scene" in one of
its elements there is that which fits it to
receive a Shakespearean connotation, thus
catching the popular fancy of Shakes-
pere's biographers and academic com
mentators. The compound word "Shake-
scene" is made by the joining of two
words generic in both its elements, and, in

AND ROBERT GREENE 13

combination having generic characteris
tics pertaining to a large or comprehen
sive class— that is to say, the words
"shake" and "scene" bear a sense in
which they are descriptive of all the vari
ous things to which they are applied, and
of all other things that share their com
mon properties. The fanciful biographers
of William Sliakspere rely on these words
of reproof and censure as being the initial
notice of his worth and work which was
to lift him from his place of obscurity in
the year 1592. The meaning of Greene's
words in the idiom of the times, as in
their contextural and natural sense, yield
nothing which is confirmatory of such
contention; for "dance" is connoted un
der the term "shake," answering to the
first element in "Shake-scene," which in
the old meaning meant "dance," generic
for quick action; and "scene" meant
"stage" instead of "scenery" as in the
modern meaning, for the theatres were
-then in a state of absolute nudity— in
other words, "Shake-scene" meant a

14 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

dancing performance upon the stage. In
the plain unobtrusive language of our
day, as well as in Elizabethan English,
the word " shake "—the first element in
" Shake-scene " is interchangeable with
" dance," and, when given a specialized
meaning with a view to theatrical matters
in the year 1592, with Kemp and Shaks-
pere claimants for Greene's reproof, who
could doubt that the name which was so
loudly acclaimed is identifiable with the
spectacular luminary of the times, Wil
liam Kemp? In setting up the comic ac
tor and jig-dancer as claimant for
Greene's objurgation, we promise the
reader attestative satisfaction by estab
lishing the truth of our contention by
particular passages in "the address"
when explained by the context as tran-
scriptive of Kemp's actual history.

We now direct the attention of the
reader specifically to the arrogant and
boastful comedian, William Kemp. This
man, according to Robert Greene's view,
was the personification of everything

AND ROBERT GREENE 15

detestable in the actor— whose profession
he despised. We think the biographers
and commentators have mistaken the
spectacularity of William Kemp for the
rising sun of William Shakspere. In the
closing years of the sixteenth, and the
early years of the seventeenth, century
there lived in London the most spectacu
lar comic actor and clown of his day, the
greatest " Shake-scene" or (dance-scene)
of his generation, William Kemp, the
worthy successor of Dick Tarlton. He
had a continental reputation in 1589.
This year also Nash dedicated to Kemp
one of his attacks upon Martin Marpre-
late entitled "An Almond for a Parrot."
"There is ample contemporary evidence
"that Kemp was the greatest comic actor
"of his time in England, and his noto-
"riety as a morris-dancer was so great
"that his journe}dngs were called dances.
"He was the court favorite famous for
"his improvisions, and loved by the pub-
"Jic," but hated by academic play-writers
and ridiculed by ballad-makers. Kemp,

16 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

in giving his first pamphlet "The Nine
"Days Wonder" to the press in 1599,
turned upon his enemies and in retalia
tion called them "Shake-rags," which he
used derisively and as contumeliously as
Greene had used "Shake-scene." The
use of the word "Shake-rags" by Kemp
in his first and only published work is
prima-facie evidence, that he also made
use of the same term, orally and in his
usual acrimonious manner, either against
Greene, or those of his fellowship. The
first element in the compound words
"Shake-scene" and "Shake-rags" is gov
erned by the same general law of move
ment or rhythmic action exemplified in
dancing and rhymery. In 1640 Richard
Brown in his "Antipodes" refers to the
practice of jesters, in the days of Tarlton
and Kemp, of introducing their own wit
into poet's plays, Kemp, wrriting in 1600,
asserts that he spent his life in mad jigs
and merry jests, although he was en
trusted with many leading parts in farce
or broad comedy. His dancing of jigs at

AND ROBERT GREENE 17

the close of a play gave him his chief pop
ularity ("Camden Society Papers").
"The jigs were performed to musical ac-
"companiment and included the singing
"of comic words. One or two actors at
"times supported Kemp in his entertain-
"ment, dancing and singing with him.
"Some examples of the music to which
"Kemp danced are preserved in a manu-
" script collection of John Dowland now
"in the library of Cambridge University.
' ' The words were, doubtless, often impro-
" vised at the moment, but, on occasions,
"they were written out and published.
"The Stationers Register contains licen-
"ses for the publication of at least four
"sets of words for the jigs in which
"Kemp was the chief performer."

According to Henslowe's Diary, Wil
liam Kemp was on June 15, 1592, a mem
ber of the company of the Lord Strange
players under Henslowe and Alleyn,
playing a principal comic part in the
''Knack to Know a Knave," and intro
ducing into it what is called on the title

18 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

page his " Applauded Merriments," a
technical term for a piece of theatrical
buffoonery. In 1593 Nash warned Gabriel
Harvey "lest William Kemp should make
merriment of him." "As early as 1586,
"Kemp was a member of a company of
"great importance which had arrived at
"Elsinore where the king held court. He
"remained two months in Denmark, and
"received a larger amount of board
"money than his fellow actors. In a let-
"ter of Sir Phillip Sidney, dated Utrecht
"March 24, 1586, he says, 'I sent you a
"letter by Will (Kemp), my Lord Leices
ter's jesting player.' It was after his
"return from these foreign expeditions
"that we find Kemp uniting his exertions
"with those of Alleyn at the Rose and
"Fortune theatres, as Prince Henry's
"servants. During this whole period
"from his return in 1586 from Denmark,
"to the year 1598, he did not stay unin-
"terruptedly at the theatres of the Bur-
"bages. From February 19, to June 22,
"1592, a part of Lord Leicester's com-

AND ROBERT GREENE 19

"pany played under Henslowe and Al-
"leyn. In 1602 Kemp was again in Lon-
"don, acting under Henslowe and Alleyn
"as one of the Earl of Worcester's men.
"We gather from Henslowe 's Diary that
"on March 10th, he borrowed in ready
"money twenty shillings.

"Kemp was a very popular performer
"as early as 1589. We shall see hereafter
"that he, following the example of Tarl-
"ton, was in the habit of extemporizing
"and introducing matter of his own that
"has not come down to us. 'Let those
"that play your clowns speak no more
"than is set down for them' (Hamlet,
"Act. Ill, Scene II.). These words were
"aimed at Kemp, or one of his school,
"and it was about this date, according to
" Henslowe 's Diary, that Kemp went over
"from the Lord Chamberlain to the Lord
"Nottingham players. The most import-
"ant duty of the clown wras not to appear
"in the play itself, but to sing and dance
"his jig at the end of it, even after a trag-
"edy, in order to soften the painful im-

20 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"pression— (Caniden Society Papers) -
" Kemp's jig of 'The Kitchen Stuff
"Woman' was a screaming farce of rude
"verses, some spoken, others sung; of
"good and bad witticism; of extravagant
' ' acting and dancing. In the art of comic
"dancing Kemp was immoderately loved
"and admired. He paid professional vis-
"its to all the German and Italian courts,
"and was even summoned to dance his
"morris-dance before the Emperor Ru-
"dolph himself at Augsburg.

"Kemp combined shrewdness with his
"rough humor. With a view to extend-
."ing his reputation and his profits, he an-
"nounced in 1599, his intention of danc-
"ing a morris-dance from London to
"Norwich; but to his annoyance, every
"inaccurate report of his gambols was
"hawked about in publication at the time
"by book-sellers or ballad-makers, like
"Kemp's farewell to the tune of 'Kerry
"Merry Buff.' In order to check the cir-
"culation of falsehood, Kemp offered, he
"tells us, his first pamphlet to the press

AND ROBERT GREENE 21

" (though at the time he was thought to
"have had a hand in writing the Anti-
"Martnist plays and pamphlets -- five
" pieces erroneously attributed to his
"pen). The only copy known is in the
"Bodelean Library. The title ran
" 'Kemp's Nine Days Wonder,' the won-
"der referred to being performed in a
"dance from London to Norwich then
"written by himself to satisfy his friends.
"A woodcut on the title page shows Kemp
"in elaborate costume with bells about
"his knees playing to the accompaniment
"of a drum and tabor, which a man at his
"side is playing. This pamphlet was en
tered in the Stationers Book April 22,
"1600. The dedicatory salutation to
"Anna Fritton," one of her Majesty's
maids of honor, shows us how arrogant
and conceited he must have been.

"Kemp started at seven o'clock in the
"morning on the first Monday in Lent,
"the starting point being in front of the
'.'Lord Mayor's house, and half London
"was astir to see the beginning of the

22 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"great exploit. His suite consisted of his
"taborer, Thomas Sly; his servant, Wil-
"liam Bee; and his overseer or umpire,
"George Sprat, who was to see that every-
" thing was performed according to prom
ise. According to custom, he put out a
"sum of money before his departure on
" condition of receiving thrice the amount
"on his safe return. His own fatigues
"caused him many delays and he did not
"arrive in Norwich until twenty- three
"days after his departure. He spent only
"nine days in actual dancing on the road.
"Kemp himself on this occasion contrib-
"uted nothing to the music except the
"sound of the bells, which were attached
"to his gaiters. In Norwich thousands
"waited -to receive him in the open mar
ket-place with an official concert.
"Kemp, as guest of the town, was enter-
"tained at its expense and received hand-
"some presents from the Mayor who
"arranged a triumphal entry for him.
"The freedom of the Merchant Adven-
"tures Company was also conferred upon

23

"him, thereby assuring him a share in
"the yearly income to the amount of forty
"shillings— a pension for life. The very
"buskins in which he had performed his
1 ' dance were nailed to the wall in the Nor-
"wich Guild Hall and preserved in per
petual memory of the exploit, which was
"long remembered in popular literature.
"In an epilogue Kemp announced that he
"was shortly to set forward as merrily as
"I may; whither, I myself know not,"
and begged ballad makers to abstain from
disseminating lying statements about
him. Kemp's humble request to the im
pudent generation of ballad-makers, as
he terms them, reads in part, "My nota-
"ble Shake-rags, the effect of my suit is
"discovered in the title of my supplica-
"tion, but for your better understanding
"for that I know you to be a sort of wit-
"less bettle-heads that can understand
"nothing but that is knocked into your
"scalp; so farewrell and crosse me no
"more with thy rabble of bold rhymes
"lest at mv return I set a crosse on thv

24 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"forehead tliat all men may know that
1 1 for a fool. ' ' It seems certain that Kemp
kept his word in exhibiting his dancing
powers on the continent. In Week's
" Avers" (1688) mention is made of
Kemp's skipping into France. A hallad
entitled "An Excellent New Medley"
(dated about 1600) refers to his return
from Rome. In the Elizabethan play
"Jack Drum's Entertainment" (1616),
however, there is introduced a song to
which Kemp 's morris dance is performed.
Hey wood, writing at this period, in his
"Apology for Actors" (1612), says Wil
liam Kemp was a comic actor of high rep
utation, as well in the favor of Her Maj
esty as in the opinion of the general audi
ence. There is also a tribute from the
pen of Richard Rathway (1618). Ben
Jonson, William Rowly and John Mar-
ston also make mention of him.

Pretty much all that relates to the gam
bols of sportive Kemp in the foregoing
pages is a mere transcription from the
"Camden Society Papers."

AND ROBERT GREENE 25

Our prime object is to establish Kemp's
eligibility as claimant for Greene's cen
sure, before alluded to. We are content
to advance the claim of another if found
more decisive. We would elect to name
Robert Wilson, senior, an old enemy,
doubtless, of Robert Greene, if we did not
think that Kemp has the better claim to
that distinction. According to Collier,
Wilson was not only an excellent per
former, but also a talented dramatist,
especially renowned for his ready re
partee. Some writers affirm that the au
thors of the dramas "Faire Emm" and
"Martin Marsixtus" were one and the
same person, and that this person was
Robert Wilson, senior, author of "Three
" Ladies of London" and "Three Lords
"and Ladies of London," the first pub
lished in 1584, and the other in 1590.
"Faire Emm" and "Martin Marsixtus"
having been posthumously printed,
Greene was severe on the author of the
former for his blamphemous introduction
of quotations from the Bible into his love

26 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

passages. ''We know that the author at-
" tacked Greene's own works in return
"and called them lascivious." He had
not read the works, but, then, an anony
mous writer may not very scrupulously
confine himself to the truth. "Loth I was
"to display myself to the world but for
"that I hope to dance under a mask and
"bluster out like the wind, which, though
"every man heareth yet none can in sight
"descrie." "I must answer in print what
"they have offered on the stage" are the
words of Greene.

Robert Wilson may be advanced as
claimant for Greene's reproof by some
persons who are of the opinion that "up
start crow" was both actor and play
wright. Supposition says Kemp also
wrote pamphlets and plays, although at
this time he had not given his first and
only work to the press. It matters little
at whom he aimed, Kemp or Wilson, so
long as Shakespere was not the object of
the aimer. In the -Parish Register of St.
Giles, Cripplegate, we read, "Buried,

AND ROBERT GREENE 27

"Robert Wilson, yeoman, a player, 20
"Nov., 1600."

These facts and concurring events in
the life of William Kemp convince us that
Shakspere was not, and Kemp very prob
ably was, the person at whom Greene lev
eled his satire by bearing witness to his
(Kemp's) extemporizing power and his
haughty and insolent demeanor in intro
ducing improvisions and interpolations
of his "own wit into poet's plays."

From the foregoing, it is evident that,
at the time the letter was written, Wil
liam Kemp enjoyed an unequaled and
wide spread notoriety and transient fame,
extending not only throughout England,
but into foreign countries as well.

And further, by reason of his great
prominence, in a calling which Greene
loathed, and despised, he was brought
easily within the range of the latter 's con
temptuous designation, of "upstart

crow. '

Ill

We have now reached the crucial mat
ter of the address which, according to the
speculative opinion of many of Shaks-
pere's biographers, contains all the words
and sentences which they hope, when
racked, may be made to yield support to
their tramp conjecture that Robert
Greene was the first to discover Shaks-
pere as a writer of plays, or the amen dor
of the works of other poets. The identifi
able words, so called, are contained in the
following sentences: "Yes, trust them
"not; for there is an upstart crow, beau-
"tified with our feathers, that, with his
"Tyger's heart wrapt in a Player's hide."

"Upstart Crow" in Elizabethan Eng
lish meant in general, one who assumed a
lofty or arrogant tone, a bragging, boast
ful, swaggerer suddenly raised to promi
nence and power, as was Kemp after the
death of Richard Tarlton (1589). In an
epistle prefixed to Greene's "Arcadia"

AND ROBERT GREENE 29

(1587), Thomas Nash speaks of actors
" As a company of taffaty fools with their
"feathers;" and "The players decked
"with poets' feathers like Aesop's
"Crow" (R. B.) ; and again, "That with
"his Tyger's heart wrapt in a Player's
"hide." Tiger in the plain language of
the day stood for bully, a noisy, insolent
man, who habitually sought to overbear
by clamors, or by threats. These charac
teristics are identifiable with Kemp; but
the biographers of Shakspere are content
to conjecture that Robert Greene's par
ody on the line "Oh Tyger's heart wrapt
"in a woman's hide" is not only a con
tumelious reference to actor, William
Shakspere, but also a declaration of his
authorial integrity by their assignment of
"Henry VI. Part III," which was in ac
tion at the "Rose," when Greene's cele
brated address was written.

There is prima-facie evidence that
Greene authored the line, which he
semi-parodied in the address, which is
found in two places. It appears in its

30 WILLIAM SHAKSIPERE

initial form "Oh Tyger's heart wrapt in
"a serpent's hide" in the play called,
"The Tragedy of Richard, Duke of
"York," and "The Death of Good King
"Henry the Sixth," and later with
"woman" substituted for "serpent,"
again, it is found in the third part of
"Henry VI.", founded on the true trag
edy, which was acted by Lord Pembroke 's
company, of which, as Nash tells us,
Greene was chief agent, and for which he
wrote more than four other plays.
"Henry VI. Part III" is generally ad
mitted to be the work of Greene, Mar
lowe and perhaps Peele. Furthermore,
the catchwords in the lines parodied be
tray their author, which is a confirmatory
fact. To borrow a citation from the
pages of Dr. A. Grosart, "Every one who
"knows his Greene knows that over and
"over again he returns on anything of
"his that caught on, sometimes abridging
"and sometimes expanding;" and in
semi-parodying his own lines, wrapt "Ty-
"ger's heart" in several kinds of hides.

AND ROBERT GREENE 31

It was William Kemp, the comic actor
and dancer, not Shakspere, whom Greene
wanted to hit. He did not consider as an
author at all the "upstart crow" with his
"Tyger's heart wrapt in a player's hide,"
who bombasted orally his own improvis-
ions and interpolations out in blank
verse.

In their great desire to discover Shaks
pere as the author, the words " bombast
"out in blank verse" are seized upon by
Shakspere 's commentators with evident
greediness. But these words yield noth
ing in support of author-craft, for bom
bast or bombastry, in the idiom of the
time, stood for high sounding words
which might have proceeded from the
mouth of a buffoon, clown, jester, monte-
bank or actor, whose profession was to
amuse spectators by low antics and tricks,
and whose improvisions and extemporiz-
ings were destitute of rhyme, but pos
sessed of a musical rhythm called "blank
"verse." The words "blank verse" were
doubtless intended for the ear of Mar-

32 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

lowe, the great innovator, who was thus
reminded that the notorious jig-dancer
and clown, William Kemp, declaimed his
own improvisions and interpolations in
the "swelling bombast of a bragging
"blank-verse," as Nash called it, and was
an absolute "Johannes Factotum in his
"own conceit" —that is, a person em
ployed to do many things. Who could do
more "in his own conceit" than Kemp,
who spent his life in mad jigs, as he says?
Who but Kemp, the chief actor in the low
comedy scenes, who angered the academic
play-writers by introducing "his own wit
into their plays and make- a merriment of
"them?"

Greene's address to his fellow crafts
men does not convey plagiary, or a fur-
bishable, imputation, nor give color to,
nor the slightest circumstance for, the
conjecture that Shakspere's authorial
career had been begun as the amender of
other poet 's plays anterior to the putative
authorship of "Venus and Adonis." Hal-
liwell-Phillips, the most indefatigable

AND ROBERT GREENE 33

and reliable member of the Congress of
Speculative Biographers, says that not
one such play has been found revised, or
amended, by Shakspere in his early ca
reer. Still in their extremity, Shaks
pere 's commentators give hospitality to
stupid conjectures that are not reason
able inferences from concurrent facts,
and construe Greene's censure of
Kemp, (inferentially) as the first lit
erary notice of Shakspere. It shows
an irrepressible desire without proof to
confer authorship upon Shakspere one
hundred and fifty years after his death.
The Shakspere votaries cannot point to a
single \vord, or sentence, in this celebrated
address of Robert Greene which connects
the contumelious name "Shake-scene"
(dance-scene) with the characteristics of
either the true, or the traditional, Shaks
pere.

The biographers of Shakspere never
grow weary of charging Robert Greene
with professional jealousy and envy. The
charge has no argumentative value, even

34 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

if granting Shakspere's early productiv
ity as a play-maker, or the amender of
the works of other men, for Greene's ac
tivities ran in other lines; play-making
was of minor importance, a sort of by-
production of his resourceful and versa
tile pen. The biographers of Shakspere
are unfortunate in having taken on this
impression, because there is prima-facie
evidence that Greene had forsworn writ
ing for the stage a considerable time be
fore the letter was written; thus he fol
lowed his friend Lodge, who in 1589
"vows to write no more of that wrhence
"shame doth grow."

The biographers and commentators,
agreeing in their asperities, charge Rob
ert Greene with that worst of passions,
envy, basing it conjecturally on the as
sumption of Shakspere's proficiency as
a drama-maker, notwithstanding the sin
cere and earnest words contained in his
most pathetic letter, addressed to three
friends, in which he counsels them to give
up play writing, which he regarded as de-

AND ROBERT GREENE 35

grading, placing their very necessities in
the power of grasping shareholding ac
tors, and rendering it no longer a fit
occupation for gentlemen. They fail to
see the dying should be granted immu
nity from this ignoble and base passion.
Our own rule of law admits as good evi
dence the testimony of a man who be
lieves himself to be dying, and so the
letter states, " desirous that you should
"live though himself be dying."

Robert Greene's charge against "up-
" start crow" stands unshaken. Henry
Chettle, the hack writer, and self admit
ted transcriber of the letter, does not re
tract Greene's statement. He denies
nothing on behalf of an " upstart crow"
(Kemp) ; for the author of "Kind Hearts
Dreams" does not identify "Shake-
" scene" (dance-scene) with Shakspere,
or Shakespeare, who was not one of those
who took offense. It is expressly stated
that there were two of the three fellow
.dramatists, addressed by Greene (Mar
lowe, Nash and Peele). Still we are told

36 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

by Shakespearean writers that the dying
genius was pained at witnessing the pro
ficiency of another in the very activity
(play-making), which he had come to re
gard as congruous with strolling vaga
bondism. He enjoined his friends to seek
better masters "for it is a pittie men of
"such rare wit should be subject to the
" pleasure of such rude groomes,"
"painted monsters, apes, burrs, peasants,
"puppets," not play-makers, but actors,
who had been beholden to him and his fel
low craftsmen whom he addressed.

There is another aspect in which the
charge of professional jealousy presents
itself to the mind of the reader; those
who covet that which another possesses,
or envies success, popularity or fortune.
To charge Greene with envy is most un
charitable by reason of his versatility.
Now what was there in the possession of
William Shakspere in 1592 that could
have awakened in the mind of Robert
Greene so base a passion as envy. The
name Shakspere had no commercial value

AND ROBERT GREENE 37

in 1592, for Shakspere of the stage is de
scribed many years after this date as
merely a "man player" and "a deserving
"man." Note this admission by Dr. In-
gleby: "Assuredly no one during the
"century had any suspicion that the gen-
"ius of Shakespeare was unique." "His
"immediate contemporaries expressed no
"great admiration for either him, or his
"works." There is not a particle of evi
dence to show that Robert Greene was
envious of any writer of his time ; nor had
he cause to be; but the way his contem
poraries and successors robbed and plun
dered him proves the reverse to be true.

"Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his

fame,
"Purloynde his plumes; can they deny

the same?"

The fact is, Shakspere passed through
and out of life without having attained
the distinction, or celebrity, won by
Greene in his brief literary career of but
nine short j^ears. The more truthful of
" Shakspere 's biographers concede that the

38 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

subject of their memoirs was not, in his
day. highly regarded, and that his obscur
ity in 1592 is obvious. There was not the
least danger of the author of "Hamlet"
"driving to penury" the dean of English
novelists, Eobert Greene, who was su
preme in prose romance, a species of lit
erature, which appealed to the better
class of the reading public. Rival-hating
envy! Robert Greene cannot be brought
within the scope of such a charge, for in
1592, he was not striving to obtain the
same object which play writers were pur
suing.

The fame of Robert Greene during his
lifetime eclipsed that of his contempor
aries. "He was in fact the popular au-
"thor of the day. His contemporaries
"applauded the facility with which he
"turned his talents to account." "In a
"night and a day," says Nash, "would he
"have yearked up a pamphlet as well as
"in seven years, and glad was that prin
ter that might be so blest to pay him
"dear for the very dregs of his wit."

AND ROBERT GREENE 39

Even Ben Jonson, "the greatest man of
"the last age," according to Dry den, had
no such assurance in his day, if we may
judge from his own account of his liter
ary life, which shows that he had to strug
gle for a subsistence, as no printer was
found glad, or felt himself blest, to pay
him dear for the cream, much less the
very "dregs of his wit." He told Drum-
mond that the half of his comedies were
not in print, and that he had cleared but
200 pounds by all his labor for the public
theatre. It has been said by one : "In the
"breadth of his dramatic quality, his
"range over every kind of poetic excel
lence, Jonson was excelled by Shakes-
"peare alone." (p. 437, "A Short His-
"tory of the English People.") When
not subsidized by the court he was driven
by want to write for the London theatres ;
he Kved in a hovel in an alley, where he
took service with the notorious play
broker. To such as he, reference is made
by Henslow, who in his diary records
"the grinding toil and the starvation

40 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"wages of his hungry and drudging
"bondsmen," who were struggling for
the meanest necessities of life. This Ti
tan of a giant brood of playwrights, in
the days of his declension wrote mendi
cant epistles for bread, and, doubtless, in
his extremity recalled Robert Greene, the
admonisher of three brother poets "that
"spend their wits in making plaies."
"Base minded men, all three of you! if by
"my miseries ye be not warned, for unto
"none of you, like me, sought those burrs
"to cleave, those puppits, I mean that
"speak from our mouths those antics
' i garnisht in our colors. Is it not strange
"that I, to whom they all have been be-
" holding, shall, were ye in that case that
"I am now, be both at once of them for-
"saken? . O that I might in-

"treate your rare wits to be employed in
"more profitable courses, and let those
"apes imitate j^our past excellence, and
"never more acquaint them with your ad-
" mired inventions."

It was one of this breed of puppets, we

AND ROBERT GREENE 41

are told, who awakened incarnate envy in
the breast of Robert Greene, and engen
dered rivalship against William Shaks-
pere, whose votaries, in their dreams of
fancy, see him revising the dramatic
writings of Robert Greene, the most re
sourceful, versatile, tireless and prolific
of literary men. He was a writer of
greatest discernment from the viewpoint
of the people of his time, "for he pos-
"sessed the ability to write in any vein
"that would sell." He only, of all the
writers of his time, gave promise of being
able to gain a competence by the pen
alone, a thing which no writer did, or
could do, in that day, by writing for the
stage alone. Hon. Cushman K. Davis in
"The Law in Shakespeare" says, "He
" (Shakspere) is the first English author
"who made a fortune with his pen." In
the absence of credible evidence, Mr. Da
vis assumes that the young man who
came up from Stratford was the author
of the plays. The senator does not seem
aware of the fact that Shakspere of

42 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

Stratford was a shareholding actor, re
ceiving a share in the theatre, or its pro
fits, in 1599 ; a partner in one or more of
the chief companies; a play broker who
purchased and mounted the plays of
other men; and that he, like Burbage,
Henslowe and Alleyn, speculated in real
estate. He was shrewd in money matters
and became very wealthy, but not by
writing plays. Suppose that William
Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon had au
thored all the plays associated with his
name, that alone would not have made
him wealthy. The price of a play varied
from four to ten pounds, and all Shaks
pere 's labors for the public theatre would
have brought no more than five hundred
pounds. The diary of Philip Henslowe
makes it clear that up to the year 1600
the highest price he ever paid was six
pounds. The Shakespeare plays were not
exceptionally popular in that day, not be
ing then as now, "the talk of the town."
Not one of them equalled in popularity

AND ROBERT GREENE 43

Kid's "The Spanish Tragedy," or Mar
lowe's "Dr. Faustus."

Shakespeare was soon superseded by
Fletcher in popular regard. Only one of
the Shakespeare tragedies, one historical
play, and eight comedies were presented
at the Court of James First, who reigned
twenty-two years. Plays, written by such
hack writers as Dearborn, or Chettle,
were quite as acceptable to princes.

Kobert Greene's romances were "a
bower of delight," a kind of writing held
in high favor by all classes. Sir Thomas
Overbury describes his chambermaid as
reading Greene's works over and over
again. It is a pleasure to see in the elder
time Greene's writings in hands so full
of household cares, since he labored to
make young lives happy. Robert Greene's
works express every variation in the
changing conditions of life. The poetry
of his pastoral landscapes are vivid word
pictures of English sylvan scenes. The
western sky on amorous autumn days is
mantled with sheets of burnished gold.

44 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

The soft and gentle zephyr blows over
castled crag and fairy glen fragrant with
the breath of flowers.

In the manuals of our literature great
prominence is given to the fact that
Greene led a dissolute, or irregular, life,
as if the debauchment of the author was
transmitted by his writings. There are
no indecencies in his works to attest the
passage of a debauchee. Like many per
sons born to, and nurtured bv, religious

«/ / o

parents, Greene doubtless exaggerated
his OAvn vices. He was bad, but not alto
gether bad. It may truly be said of him
that, in regard to all that pertains to pen
itence and self abasement, he spares not
himself, but like John Bunyan, he was
given to self upbraiding. He (Bunyan)
declares that it is true that he let loose
the reins on the neck of his lust; that he
delighted in all transgressions against the
divine law; and that he was the ring
leader of the youth of Elstow in all vice.
But, when those who wished him ill, ac
cused him of licentious amours, he called

AND ROBERT GREENE 45

God and the angels to attest his purity.
No woman, he said, in heaven, earth, or
hell, could charge him with having ever
made any improper advances to her.
Blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking seem
to have been Bunyan's only transgression
after all. In Robert Greene's writings,
we have the reverse of ' ' Herrick 's shame
ful pleading that if his verse was im-
"pure, his life was chaste." Unlike Her
rick, Greene did not minister to the un
chaste appetite of readers for tainted lit
erature, either in his day, or in the after
time. Powerless to condemn Greene's
writings, Shakspere's votaries would des
ecrate his ashes.

Deplore as we must his dissolute liv
ing, it was of short duration, for he went
from earth at the age of two and thirty,
and the evil effects have been lost in
Time's abatements. His associates,
doubtless were as dissolute as he himself.
Nash wrote: "With any notorious crime
' ' I never knew him tainted, and he inher-
""ited more virtues than vices." The

46 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

reader, at any rate, will give but little
credence to the accusations of such a
hyena-dog as Gabriel Harvey. Robert
Greene was not "lip-holy," nor heart-
hollow, for, in regard to his wife and
their separation, "he took to himself all
"blame, breathed never a word against
"her, and did not squander all of his
"earnings in dissipation, but sent part of
"his income to the good woman, the wife
"of his youth, and addressed to her in
"loving trust the last letter he wrote."
Gabriel Harvey, drenched in hate, could
not rob the "Sweet- wife letter of its
"pathos."

In all the galleries of noble women,
Greene 's heroines deserve a foremost
place, for all the gracious types of wom
anhood belonged to Greene, before they
became Shakespeare's. "Robert Greene
"is the first of our play- writers to repre-
"sent upon the public stage the purity
"and sweetness of wife and maiden."
Unselfish love and maternity are sketched
with feminine delicacy and minuteness of

AND ROBERT GREENE 47

touch in all the tenderness of its purity.
His writings have assauged the sorrow of
the self-sacrificing mother, who is always
a queen uncrowned, long suffering and
faithful. Robert Green "is always on the
"side of the angels." When loud mouthed
detraction calls him badhearted, we
should not forget that this confessedly
dissolute man could, and did, keep invio
late the purity of his imagination; few
have left a wealthier legacy in feminine
models of moral and physical beauty.
What is most characteristic in the pages
of Greene is the absence of the indecen
cies which attest the passage of the au
thor of "Lear," "the damnable scenes
"which raised the anger of Swinburn and
"which Coleridge attempted in vain to
"palliate."

Little is known of Greene's life; and
into the little we do know, his malignant
enemy, Gabriel Harvey, has attempted to
inject a deadly virus. The inaccurate
figurative expressions in his reputed
posthumously printed works (an alleged

48 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

description of his manner of life) cannot
be interpreted literally, "but may be
"resolved in a large measure into morbid
" self-upbraidings like the confession
"made by the revival convert who sees
"and paints his past in its very darkest
"colors." But why should the modern
reader linger over the irregularities of
dissolute-living authors like Greene and
Poe, whose writings are exceptionally
clean. Remember Robert Burns' noble
words, "What done we partly may com-
"pute but know not what resisted." The
commentators and pharisaic critics, who
have written concerning Greene, are
mere computists of the poet's vices; min
isters of hate, who burlesque the poet's
soul stiffening with despair, and display
their ghoulish instincts "in travestying
"so pathetic and tragical a deathbed as
"Greene's." Students of Elizabethan
literature know that Robert Greene re
sisted the temptation to write in the best
paying vein of the age, that of minister
ing to the unchaste appetites of readers

49

for ribaldries. "To his undying honor
" Robert Greene, equally with James
" Thompson, left scarcely a line, that, dy-
"ing, he need have wished to blot out."

There is no record extant of his living
likeness. Chettle gives this pleasant de
scription of his personal appearance,
"With him was the fifth, a man of indif
ferent years; of face, amiable; of body,
' l well proportioned ; his attire after the
"habit of scholar-like gentleman, only his
"hair was somewhat long, whom I sup-
" posed to be Robert Greene, Master of
"Arts." Nash notices his tawny beard,
"a jolly long red peake like the spire of
"a steeple which he cherished continually
"without cutting, whereat a man might
"hang a jewel, it was sosharp and pend-
"ant." Harvey, who had never seen
Greene, says that he wore such long hair
as was only worn by thieves and cut
throats, and taunts Nash with wearing
the same "unseemly superfluity." The
habit of wearing the hair long is not un
usual with poets. John Milton "cher-

50 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.

"ished the same superfluity" as does also
Joaquin Miller.

Robert Greene expired on the third of
September, 1592. When the dead genius
was in his grave, Harvey gloated and
leered with hellish glee, and wrote of
Greene's "most woeful and rascal estate,
"how the wretched fellow or, shall I say,
"the prince of beggars, laid all to gage
"fore some few shillings and was at-
' * tended by lice. ' ' This is one of Harvey 's
malignant, vitriolic, discharges in his at
tempt to spatter the memory and deface
the monument of the dead. "Achilles
"tortured the dead body of Hector, and,
"as Antonious and his wTife, Fulva, tor-
"mented the lifeless corpse of Cicero, so
"Gabriel Harvey hath showed the same
"inhumanities to Greene that lies low in
"his grave." The testimony of Gabriel
Harvey, whose malignant attacks on the
memory of Greene by monstrously exag
gerated statement, is vitiated by his own
statement that " he was cheated out of an

AND ROBERT GREENE 51

" action for libel against Greene by his
" death."

Harvey was vulgarly ostentatious,
courting notoriety by the gorgeousness of
his apparel; currying favor with the
great, and aping Venetian gentility after
his return from Italy. He was a dabbler
in astrology, a prognosticator of earth
quakes, and constructor of prophetic al
manacs. The failure of his predictions
subjected him to much bitter ridicule.
His inordinate vanity is best shown by
his publication of everything spoken or
written in commendation of himself, by
his obsequious friends and flatterers, who
snickered with the public generally, as he
was an object of ridicule, the butt on
which to crack their jokes.

In one of those fanciful studies in
Elizabethan literature, which we now hold
in our hand, we may read, in a work
called "A Snip for an Upstart Courtier
"or A Quaint Dispute Between Velvet-
" -breeches and Cloth-breeches," that
Greene has very vulgarly libeled Har-

52 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

vey's ancestry; but, when we turn to
Greene's book we learn that the vulgarity
consists in calling Gabriel Harvey's
father a ropemaker. Only a snob would
regard any honest employment as a deg
radation, and furthermore, the passage
does not point contumeliously and spite
fully at Gabriel Harvey's father, for the
reference is very slight. "How is he
" (Gabriel's father) abused?" writes
Nash, " Instead of his name he is called
"by the craft he gets his living with."
Still the lines which so mortally offended
Gabriel were suppressed by Greene. Not
withstanding this, those biographers and
critics whose sole object is to blacken the
poet's memory, conceal from the reader
the fact of the detachment of all refer
ence to a rope-maker. Harvey was ex
tremely anxious to push himself among
the aristocracy in order to conceal his
humble antecedents.

With all his faults, there was nothing
of this weakness or snobbishness in Robert
Greene, who had himself sprung from the

AND ROBERT GREENE 53

common people, though born to good con
dition. Robert Burton, a contemporary,
writing in "The Spacious Time of the
" Great Elizabeth" says that idleness was
the mark of the nobility, and to earn
money in any kind of trade was despic
able. Gabriel Harvey flung in Greene's
face the fact that he made a living by his
pen. Had young Greene lived a longer
life, with all its wealth of bud and bloom,
we should now have in fruition a luxur
iance of imagination and versatility of
diction possessed by few. With longer
life he would doubtless "have gained
11 mastery of himself, when he would have
"gone forward on the path of moral re
generation;" for there was in the po
et's strivings, during the last few years
of his life, the promise and prophecy of
a glorious future. His soul enlarged, he
battled for the commonweal; his heart
was with the lowly and his voice was for
the right when freedom's friends were
few.
- In his play "The Pinner of Wake-

54 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"field," first printed in 1599, Robert
Greene makes a hero, and a very strenu
ous one, of a mere pound-keeper who
proudly refuses knighthood at the hands
of the king. In the sketch given by Pro
fessor J. M. Brown we read, "In the first
' i scene of the play when Sir Nicolas Man-
Bering appears in Wakefield with his
"commission from the rebel, Earl of Ken-
"dal, and demands victuals for the rebel
"army, the stalwart pound-keeper steps
"forward, makes the knight eat his words
"and then his seal! 'What! are you in
'"choler? I will give you pills to cool
'"your stomach. Seest thou these seals?
"'Now by my father's soul, which was a
"'yeoman's when he was alive, eat them
'"or eat my dagger's point, proud
'"squire !' The Earl of Kendal and other
"noblemen next appear in disguise and
"send their horses into the Pinner's corn
"to brave him. The pound-keeper ap
proaches and after altercation strikes
"the Earl. Lord Bondfield says, 'Villain,
"'what hast thou done? Thou hast struck

AND ROBERT GREENE 55

'"an Earl.' Pinner answers, 'Why, what
' l i care I ? A poor man that is true is bet-
'"ter than an earl if he be false'." A
yeoman boxing or cuffing the ear of an
earl! This has all the breezy freshness
of American democracy.

"How different from this is Shakes -
"peare's conception of the place of the
"working-man in society. In King Lear,
"a good servant protests against the cru-
"elty of Regan and Cornwall toward
"Gloucester, and is killed for his cour-
"age." "Give me my sword," cries Re
gan, "a peasant stand up thus!" The
voice of the yeoman is often heard in
Greene's drama, not as buffoon and
lackey, as in Shakespeare, but as freeman
whose voice is echoed at Naseby and
Marston's gory fields of glory, where the
sturdy yeomanry of England strove to do
and to dare for the eternal right— sol
diers wrho never cowered from "sheen of
"spear," nor blanched at flashing steel.
With Greene rank is never the measure
of merit as with Shakespeare. To peer

56 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

and yeoman alike, he gave equal hospital
ity ; for Robin Greene, as his friends
called him, was as friendly to the poor
man's rags as to the purple Robe of
King. Greene in his popular sympathies
is thoroughly with the working classes,
the common people, of whom Lincoln
says, "God loves most, otherwise he
" would not have made so many of them."
His heroes and heroines are taken, many
of them, from humble life. In his Pin
ner of Wakefield there is a very clear
discernment of democratic principle in
the struggle against prerogative. Half
of those plays of Greene's which we still
possess, are devoted to the representation
of the life of the common people which
gave lineage to Abraham Lincoln, Ben
jamin Franklin and John Bunyan. If
these are any guide to his character, his is
one distinguished both by his amicable
and by his amiable qualities.

We have in the "Coney-catching se-
"ries" Greene's exposure of the practice
of sharpers and knaves, who were fleec-

AND ROBERT GREENE 57

ing the country people who came to Lon
don. The author of these tracts shows
great courage in his effort to abate fool-
catching. Greene's life was threatened,
and it required the utmost exertion of his
friends to prevent his assassination. The
Coney-catching knaves, who felt the hal
ter being drawn about their necks, threat
ened to cut off his hand if he would not
desist. Greene, notwithstanding these
threats, would not be swerved from his
noble aim, but met them like a true Ro
man, single-handed and alone, while his
literary enemies took advantage of this
opportunity to blacken his good name.
" Greene made these revelations for the
"good of the commonwealth, and dis-
" played great courage in facing all risks
"in so doing. No books are more out
-and-out sincere."

Greene's account of the repentance and
reformation of a fallen woman, told in a
way that discloses the poet's kindness of
heart and fullness of humanitarian
spirit, reveals his better self. "He as-

58 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"sured Ms readers, in the words of the
"woman herself, that her first false step
"gradually led her on to complete ruin,
"so heavy-burdened with grief and
"shame that death seemed to her a bene-
' ' faction, and the grave the only place for
"perfect rest." Not a few there may
have been, who, on reading Greene's ac
count of the reformation and redemption
of this unfortunate woman, were started
on the path of regeneration, while the
dim-eyed critic can see nothing but the
blurred reputation of the poet. But who
shall estimate Robert Greene's influence
on individual happiness? Who shall say
how many thousands have been made
wiser, happier, and better by a writer
who held out a kind and friendly hand,
and had a heart as true behind it? His
statue would crown Trafalgar's towering
shaft more worthily than the statue of
England's greatest naval hero does; for
there is more true honor and merit in the
man who wrote purely to bring back
from evil courses to a state of moral rec-

AND ROBERT GREENE 59

titude, than in a monument for the vic
tory over many enemies.

Greene's non-dramatic works are the
largest contribution left by any Eliza
bethan writer to the novel literature of
the day. "He was at once the most ver-
"satile and the most laborious of literary
"men." Famous, witty, and brilliant, he
was one of the founders of English fic
tion, and is conceded to be the author of
half a dozen plays for the theatre. In
them we have the mere "flotsam and jet-
"sam" of his prolific pen. What would
we not give for all the plays of Robert
Greene from whom his contemporaries
and successors purloyned plumes! Ac
cording to Ben Jonson, it was as safe to
pillage from Greene in his day, 'as it is to
persecute his reputation in ours. He was
a graduate of both universities, was a
man of genius, but did not live to do his
talents full justice. A born story teller,
like Sir Walter Scott, he could do good
work easily and quickly.

We glean the following from the pages

60 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

of "The English Novel in the Time of
"Shakespeare," by J. J. Jusserand,
"Greene's prose tale, 'Pandosto, the Tri-
"'umph of Time/ had an extraordinary
"success, while Shakspere's drama 'Win-
'"ter's Tale7 founded on Greene's Pan-
"dosto was not printed, either in authen-
"tic or pirated shape, before the appear-
"ance of the 1623 folio, while Greene's
"prose story was published in 1588 and
"was renamed half a century later, 'The
"'History of Dorostus and Fawnia.' So
"popular was it that it was printed again
"and again. We know of at least seven-
"teen editions, and in all likelihood there
"were more throughout the seventeenth
"century, and even under one shape or
"another- throughout the eighteenth. It
"was printed as a chap-book during this
"last period and in this costume began a
"new life. It was turned into verse in
"1672, but the highest and most extraor
dinary compliment of Greene's per
formance was its translation into
"French, not only once but twice. The

AND ROBERT GREENE 61

"first time was at a moment when the
"English language and literature were
" practically unknown and as good as
"non-existent to French readers. In fact
"every thing from Greene's pen sold. All
"of his writings enjoyed great popular
ity in their day, and, after the lapse of
"three centuries, have been deemed wor
thy of publication, insuring the reha-
"bilitation of Greene's splendid genius."
We are content to believe that almost
all of the so-called posthumous writings
of Robert Greene are spurious, and that
but few genuine chips were found in the
literary work-shop of the poet after his
death. We accept the very striking and
impressive address to his brother play
wrights, the after-words to a "Groats
Worth of Wit." We also may shyly ac
cept the sweet wife letter as the authentic
product of the poet's mind, heart and
hand. Of this letter, there are two ver
sions, neither of which are very trust
worthy, as both are from posthumed pam
phlets. One, which we believe to be a

62 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

forgery, is found in "The Repentance."
The other is found in a pamphlet written
by his malignant enemy, Harvey, which
contains an account of the poet's last ill
ness and death. Nash writes ahout Har
vey, "From the lousy circumstance of his
"poverty before his death and sending
"that miserable writt to his wife, it can-
"not be but thou lyest, learned Gabriel."
We would not set down as auto-biograph
ical the posthumous pamphlets, even
though of unquestioned authenticity, for
in the repentance Greene is made to sav,
"I need not make long discourse of my
"parents who for their gravitie and hon-
"est life are well known and esteemed
"among their neighbors, namely in the
"citie of Norwich where I was bred and
"borne;" and then he is made to contra
dict all this in "Groats Worth of Wit,"
where the father is called Gorinius, a de
spicable miser. "Greene is not known to
"have had a brother to be the victim of
"his cozenage."

As "there is a soul of truth in things

AND ROBERT GREENE 63

' ' erroneous, ' ' there may be a soul of truth
in the following letter contained in "The
"Repentance":

"Sweet wife, if ever there was any
"good will or friendship between thee
"and me, see this bearer (my host)
"satisfied of his debt. I owe him tenne
"pounds and but for him I had per-
"ished in the streetes. Forget and for-
"give my wrongs done unto thee and
"Almighty God have mercie on my
"soule. Farewell till we meet in hea-
"ven for on earth thou shalt never see
"me more.
"This 2nd day of Sept., 1592.

"Written by thy dying husband,
"ROBERT GREENE."

The reader will notice the statement in
the posthumed letter that the poet had
contracted a debt to the sum of ten
pounds, equal to $400 present money, but
there is nothing whatever about leaving
many papers in sundry bookseller's
hands which Chettle averred in the ad
dress "To the Gentlemen Readers Kind
"Hearts Dreame." If this were a fact,

64 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

the bookseller doubtless would have been
called upon; "see this bearer (my host)
"satisfied of his debt," and sweet wife
would not have bourne the burden while
booksellers felt themselves blest to pay
dear for the very dregs of her husband's
wit.

Those writers who express no doubt of
the authenticity of the posthumed pam
phlets, leave their readers to set down as
auto-biographical whatever portions of
those pieces he may think proper. At the
same time the trend of impulse is given
the reader by the critics that he may not
fail to read the story of the poet's life out
of characters devoid of all faith in hon
esty and in virtue, while the author
(Greene) is anxious evidently to point a
moral by them and reprove vice. ... These
forged pamphlets and so-called auto
biographical pamphlets make Greene ac
cuse himself of crimes which he surely
did not commit, such as the crime of theft
and murder. He says, "I exceeded all
"others in these kinds of sinnes," and he

AND ROBERT GREENE 65

is represented as the most atrocious vil
lain that ever walked the earth. There is
not an atom of evidence adduced to show
Francisco in " Never Too Late" was in
tended by the author for a picture of him
self, and we do not believe that Greene
wrote the pamphlet in which Roberto, in
" Groats Worth of Wit" is one of the de
spicable characters.

Very little is known with any degree of
certainty concerning the personal life of
Robert Greene, and very little, if any
thing, in regard to his family or ancestry,
although much prominence is given by
imaginary writers to the history of his
person in the manuals of our literature.
These writers attach an auto-biograph
ical reality to their dreams of fancy.
They take advantage of Greene's un
bounded sincerity and his own too candid
confession in the address to the pla}7-
writers, and of his irrepressible desire to
sermonize, whether in plays or pamphlets,
with all the fervor of a devout Methodist
having a license to exhort. The closest

66 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

analogy to Greene's position, in fact, is
that of the revival preacher— as Prof.
Storojenko puts it— "who, to make the
"picture of the present as telling as pos-
' ' sible, sees and paints his past in its very
"blackest colors. This self-flagellation is
"strongly connected with a really attrac-
"tive feature of Greene's character; we
"mean his sincerity, a boundless sincerity
"which never allowed him to spare him-
"self. Robert Greene was incapable of
"posing and pretending to be what he
* l wras not. This is whv we may fearlessly
"believe him when he speaks of the an-
"guish of his soul and the sincerity of
"his repentance. A man whose deflection
"from the path of virtue cost him so
"much moral suffering cannot, of course,
"be measured by the same standard as
"the man who acts basely, remains at
"peace with himself and defends his
"faults'by all kinds of sophistry. Speak
ing further of his literary labors, he
"never dealt in personalities in exposing
"s»me tf the crying nuisances of London

AND ROBERT GREENE 67

"and is perfectly silent as to the moral
"change in his own character, which was
"the fruit of his dealing with them. In
* ' a wTord, he conceals all that might, in his
"opinion, modify the sentence that he
"pronounces on his own life for the edi-
"fication of others."

IV

There is a commendative piece of writ
ing which should be read in connection
with Greene's letter to "divers play-
" makers." We refer to the preface to
"Kind Hearts Dreams," written by
Henry Chettle, which was registered De
cember 8, 1592. Chettle says, "About
''three months since died M. Robert
"Greene, leaving many papers in sundry
"book-seller's hands, among others, his
'"Groats Worth of Wit' in which a letter
"written to diverse play-makers is offen-
"sively by one or two of them taken."
Chettle 's statement about many papers in
sundry book-sellers hands may be dis
credited because of the poet's urgent ne
cessities, and the strong desire on the
part of book-sellers to publish Greene's
Avritings. Of this we may be sure, that
the letter was not placed in book-sellers
hands by Greene or for him. He would
not have called his friends to repentance

AND ROBERT GREENE 69

in that way, for it would have given pub
licity to the defects in the lives of his
friends as well as his own.

The letter evidences the fact of its hav
ing been written as a private letter to
three of the poet's friends (Marlowe,
Nash and Peele) . If sent, it did not reach
them, but was surreptitiously procured,
doubtless, by some hack-writer, (inferen-
lially, Henry Chettle, who transcribed
it.) Gabriel Harvey may have been ac
cessory to its procurement, as his ghoul
ish instinct led him to visit the poor shoe
maker's house where Greene died, on the
da}^ following the poet's funeral in search
of matter foul and defamatory, and with
ink of slander to blacken the poet's mem
ory. This snobbish ape of gentility, Ga
briel Harvey, hated Greene because he
called his father by "the craft he gets his
"lixdng with." However, when Greene
learned that Harvey was ashamed of his
father's humble employment, that of
ropemaker, he straightway canceled the
offensive allusion, but Harvey still con-

70 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

tinued to manifest the same hateful ma
lignity and venomous spite. The letter is
a fine character study of the three poets
addressed. Greene drew out the true
feature of every distinguishing mark or
trait, both mental and moral, of these, his
fellow-craftsmen, who, though he did not
name them, are asserted to he Marlowe,
Nash and Peele. Greene characterized
them individually, and twice he collec
tively admonished them thus, "Base
"minded men all three of you, if by my
"miseries ye be not warned," and, in the
concluding part of the letter, "But now
"return I again to you three, knowing my
"miseries is to you no news and let me
"heartily entreat you to be warned by
"my harmes."

All of Shakspere's biographers and
commentators aver that Shakspere was
not one of the three persons addressed.
How then could Chettle's words bear wit
ness to his (Shakspere's) civil demeanor
or factitious grace in writing. Mr. Fleay
stated many years ago (1886) that there

AND ROBERT GREENE 71

was an entire misconception of Chettle's
language that Shakspere was not one of
those who took offense. They are ex
pressly stated to have been two of the
three authors addressed by Greene. The
recent Shakespearean writers have evi
dently mistaken Chettle's placation of
Nash or Peele, or either of the three play-
makers addressed by Greene, it does not
matter which, for an apology to Shaks
pere, wrho was not the object of Greene's
satire or Chettle's placation for were not
Nash, Mario we and Peele each " excellent
"in the quality he professes'?" Had they
not lived in an age of compliment they
would have merited these complimental
phrases of Henry Chettle? For their
names were in the trump of fame.

Christopher Marlowe, the first great
English poet, was the father of English
tragedy and the creator of English blank
verse. He is, by general consent, identi
fied with the first person addressed by
Greene, "With thee will I first begin,
"thou famous gracer of tragedians, who

72 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"hath said in his heart there is no God.
"Why should thy excellent wit, His gift,
"be so blinded that thou should give no
"glory to the giver?" The second per
son referred to is identifiable with
Thomas Nash, "With thee I join, young
"juvenall, that by ting satyrist," though
not with equal accord, as the first with
Marlowe, as some few persons prefer to
name Thomas Lodge. This prediliction
for Lodge is based on their having been
co-authors in the making of a play
("That lastlie with me together writ a
"comedie"). This fact, however, signi
fies very little, for it is generally conceded
that Marlowe, Nash, Peele, Lodge and
Greene mobilized their literary activities
in the production of not a few of the ear
lier plays called Shakspere's.

We are convinced that Lodge was not

o

the person addressed by Greene as young
juvenall. He was absent from England
at the date of Greene's letter, having left
in 1591 and did not return till 1593,
Moreover, he had declared his intention

AND ROBERT GREENE T3

long before to write no more for the the
atre. In 1589 he vowed "to write no more
"of that whence shame doth grow." At
Christmas time in 1592 he was in the
Straits of Magellan. Born in 1550, Lodge
led a virtuous and quiet life. He was
seventeen years older than Nash, and
four years older than Greene, who would
not, in addressing one four years his sen
ior, have used these words, "Sweet boy
"might I advise thee." The youthful-
ness of Nash fits well. He was boyish in
appearance. Born in Nov., 1567, he was
seven years younger than Greene, and
was the youngest member of their fellow
ship. The mild reproof "for his too
"much liberty of speech" contained in
the letter, justifies the belief that Thomas
Nash was referred to as "young juvenall,
"that by ting satyrist, who had vexed
"scholars with bitter lines."

The equal unanimity and general con
sent which identifies the first with Mar
lowe, identifies the third and last person,
who had been co-worker in drama making

74 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

of the same fellowship, with George
Peele, "and thou no less deserving than
"the other two, in some things rarer, in
"nothing inferior" driven (as myself) to
"extreame shifts, a little have I to say to
"thee." Chettle could, however, have
bourne witness to Peele "his civil de-
"meanor and factitious grace in writ-
"ing. " Peele held the situation of city
poet and conductor of pageants for the
court. His first pageant bears the date
of 1585, his earliest known play, "The
"Arraignment of Paris" was acted be
fore 1584. "Peele was the object of pat-
"ronage of noblemen for addressing lit-
"erary tributes for payment. The Earl
"of Northumberland seems to have pre-
" sen ted him with a fee of three pounds,
"In May, 1591, when Queen Elizabeth
"visited Lord Burleigh's seat of Thea-
"bald, Peele was employed to compose
"certain speeches addressed to the queen,
"which deftly excused the absence of the
"master of the house, by describing in
"blank verse in his 'Polyphymnic,' the

AND ROBERT GREENE 75

"honorable triumph at tilt. Her majesty
"was received by the Right Honorable
"the Earl of Cumberland." In January,
1595, George Peele, Master of Arts, pre
sented his "Tale of Troy" to the great
Lord Treasurer through a simple messen
ger, his eldest daughter, "necessities
"servant." Peele was a practised rhet
orician, who embellished his writings
with elegantly adorned sentences and
choice fancies. He was a man of pol
ished intellect and social gifts, and pos
sessed of a very winsome personality.
"His soft, caressing woman voice" low,
sweet and soothing, may have had a con
siderable effect upon Chettle, and could
not have been unduly honored by Chet
tle 's apology in witnessing "his civil de-
"meanor and factitious grace in writ
ing."

As Henry Chettle had been brought
into some discredit by the publication of
Greene's celebrated letter, and his admis
sion that he re-wrote it, we know that the
letter must have been surreptitiously pro-

76

cured as evidenced by its contents. The
letter is as authentic, doubtless, as any
garbled or mutilated document may be;
but Chettle's foolish statement contained
in his preface to "Kind Hearts Dreams"
has awakened the suspicion, in regard to
the authorship of "Groats Worth of
"Wit," that, while the letter (or as much
as Chettle chose to have published) is
genuine, ' ' I put something out, ' ' the pam
phlet "Groats Worth of Wit" is spuri
ous, and evidently not the work of Robert
Greene. Who can be content to believe
Chettle's statement that Greene placed
this criminating letter in the hands of
printers, or that it was left in their hands
by others at his request? A private let
ter, written to three friends, who have
been co-workers in drama-making, call
ing them to repentance, charging one
(Marlowe) with diabolical atheism! This
was a very serious charge in those times,
when persons were burnt at the stake for
professing their unbelief in the doctrine
of the Trinity.

77

Chettle was the first to make current
the charge of atheism against Marlowe,
the one of them that took offense, and
whose acquaintance he (Chettle) did not
seek. Chettle reverenced Marlowe's
learning, and would have his readers be
lieve that he did greatly mitigate Greene's
charge, but the contents of the letter as
transcribed by Chettle and printed by the
bookmakers, discredit Chettle 's state
ment, as the charge of diabolical atheism
was not struck out, and was, if proven,
punishable by death.

There is no evidence adduced to show
that Marlowe was indignant because of
Greene's admonition, contained in a pri
vate letter written to three play-makers
of his own fellowship, but resented the
public charge of atheism, for which he,
Chettle, as accessory and transcriber,
was chiefly responsible in making public.
We know that Marlowe was in retreat at
the time of his death at Deptford, for in
May, 1593, following the publication of
Greene's letter printed at the end of the

78 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

pamphlet, "Groats Worth of Wit," the
Privy Council issued a warrant for Mar
lowe's arrest. A copy of Marlowe's blas
phemies, so called, was sent to Her High
ness, and endorsed by one Richard Bame,
who was soon after hanged at Tyburn for
some loathsome crime. But a few days
later, before Marlowe's apprehension,
they wrote in the parish-book at Dept-
ford on June 1st "Christopher Marlowe
"slain by Francis Archer." At the age
of thirty, he, "the first and greatest in
heritor of unfulfilled renown," went
where "Orpheus and where Homer are."
The loss to English letters in Mar
lowe's untimely death cannot be mea
sured, nevertheless, England of that day
was spared the infamy of his execution.
However, the zealots of those days found
a subject, in Francis Kett, a fellow of
Marlowe 's college, who was burnt in Nor
wich in 1589 for heresy. Unlike Mar
lowe, he was a pious, God-fearing man
Avho fell a victim to the strenuousity with
which he maintained his religious convic-

AND ROBERT GREENE 79

tions. Another subject was found in the
person of Bartholomew Leggett, who was
burnt at the stake for stating his confes
sion of faith, which was identical with the
religious belief of Thomas Jefferson and
President William H. Taft. The times
were thirsty for the blood of daring spir
its. The shores of the British Isles were
strewn with the wreckage of the great
Armada. In Germany, Kepler (he of the
three laws) was struggling to save his
poor old mother from being burnt at the
stake for a witch. In Italy, they burnt
Bruno at the stake while Galileo played
recanter.

That Marlowe was one of the play-
makers who felt incensed at the publica
tion of Greene's letter admits of no doubt.
He most likely would have resented the
public charge of atheism. "With neither
"of them that take offense was I ae-
"quainted (writes Chettle) and with one
"of them (Marlowe) I care not if I never
"be." In such blood bespattered times,
Chettle could and did write "for the first

80 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"(Marlowe) whose learning I reverence,
"and at the perusing of Greene's book
"(letter) struck out what in conscience I
"thought he in some displeasure writ, or
"had it been true yet to publish it was
"intolerable." Chettle's conscience must
have been a little seared, for he omitted
to strike out the only statement of fact
contained in the letter, which could have
imperiled the life of Marlowe ! The letter
evidences the fact that all of that portion
referring to Marlowe was not garbled,
and that there was not any intolerable
something struck out, but instead, as
transcriber for the pirate publisher, he
retained the fulminating passage, "had
"said in his heart there is no God." Not
withstanding Chettle's statement, we are
of the opinion that the passage about
Marlowe was printed in its integrity.

Chettle's having failed to omit the
charge of diabolical atheism, reveals the
strong personal antipathy he had for
Marlowe. Few there are who set up Mar
lowe as claimant for Chettle's apology,

AND ROBERT GREENE 81

and fewer still, who would not regard him
worthy of the compliment, "factitious
"grace in writing," and whose acquaint
ance Chettle did not seek, but whose fas
cinating personality and exquisite feeling
for poetry was the admiration of Dray-
ton and Chapman, who were among the
noblest, as well as the best loved, of their
time. George Chapman was among the
few men whom Ben Jonson said he loved.
Anthony Wood described him as " a per-
"son of most reverend aspect, religious
"and temperate qualities." Chapman
sought conference with the soul of Mar
lowe :

"Of his free soul whose living subject

stood
"Up to the chin in the Pierian flood."

Henry Chettle 's act of placation is of
fered to one of two of the three play-
makers addressed, and not to the actor
referred to, who was not one of those ad
dressed; therefore, "upstart crow" could
not have been the recipient of Chettle 's

82 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

apology, or placation, in whose behalf
("upstart crow") Chettle retracts noth
ing. The following reference is to one of
the offended playmakers pointed at in
Greene's address, whom Chettle wishes to
placate, "The other whome at that time
"I did not so much spare as since I wish
"I had— that I did not I ain as sorry as
"if the original fault had been my fault

O v

"because myself have seen his demeanor
"no less civil excellent in the qualities he
"professes; besides, divers of worship
"have reported his uprightness of deal-
"ing, which argues his honesty and his
"factitious grace in writing that ap
proves his art." With the votaries of
Shakspere, however, these words of Chet
tle chime with their dreams of fancy ; for
there is a pre-inclination and a predeter
mination to read Shakspere into them, as
if the words of Greene and Chettle were
not accessible to all inquirers — words
that can be made to comprehend only one
of the two playmakers that take offense,
who must be one of the three (Marlowe,

AND ROBERT GREENE 83

Nash and Peele) admonished by Greene,
and who were of his fellowship. The
reader, after studying Elizabethan liter
ature and history, is content to believe
that the least celebrated of the three
playmakers pointed at in Greene's ad
dress (Marlowe, Nash and Peele), stood
high enough in the scale of literary merit
in 1592 to be the recipient of (/nettle's
praise.

The word ''quality," in " excellent in
"the quality he professes," is by the fan
tastically inclined, made to yield a con
venient connotation, but in the ordinary
and contextural meaning of the word,
may embrace all that makes or helps to
make any person such as he is. Are these
words of Chettle written in 1592 when the
theatre was lying under a social ban, and
the actor was still a social outcast, identi
fiable with a vagabond at law, or with
Thomas Nash, who took his bachelor's
degree at Cambridge in 1585? "In the
"autumn of 1592, Nash was the guest of
"-Archbishop Whitgift at Crogdon,

84 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

''whither the household had retired for
"fear of the plague, and, as the official
"antagonist of -Martin Marprelate was
"constrained to keep up such a character
"as would enable divers of worship to re-
"port his uprightness of dealing," he cer
tainly was entitled to commendation for
his "factitious grace in writing." The
appropriation of the complimentary re
marks of Chettle on Nash, or any one of
the three playmakers addressed, to
Shakspere, who was not one of those ad
dressed, and therefore, could not have
been the recipient of Chettle 's apology,
so called, is one of the fancies in which
critics of the highest reputation have in
dulged. There is nothing equal to this
in all the annals of literature, unless it be
"Cicero's famous letter to Lucretius, in
"which he asks the historian to lie a little
"in his favor in recording the events of
"his consulship, for the sake of making
"him a greater man."

Chettle lost no time in transcribing the
posthumous letter. Doubts as to "Groats

AND ROBERT GREENE 85

" Worth of Wit" were entertained at the
time of publication. Some suspected
Nash to have had a hand in the author
ship, others accused Chettle. Nash did
take offense at the report that it was his.
Its publication caused much excitement
and the rumor went abroad that the pam
phlet was a forgery. "Other news I am
"advised of," writes Nash, in an epistle
prefixed to the second edition of "Pierce-
" penniless," "that a scald, trivial, lyinoj
"pamphlet called 'Greene's Groats Worth
'"of Wit' is given out to be of my doing.
"God never have care of my soul, but ut-
"terly renounce me, if the least wrord or
"syllable in it proceeded from my f pen, or
"if I were any way privy to the writing
"or printing of it." We regard these
words confirmatory of the fact that
"Groats Worth of Wit" is not a work of
unquestioned authenticity, and, further
more, that Nash did not believe it the
work of Robert Greene. Prima facie, it
is spurious, for Nash spoke in high praise
of Greene's writings. He neither would,

86 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

nor could, have used tlie words "scald, tri-
"vial, lying" of a genuine work of Robert
Greene, whose writings were held in high
favor by all classes. Nash could not have
taken offense at the allusion of Greene,
which was rather complimental, though
personal, and not intended for publica
tion; but it did, however, contain some
slight mixture of censure, — "Sweet boy,
"miffht I advise thee, get not manv eni-

<^J 7 C3' «/

"mies by bitter words. Blame not schol-
"ars vexed with sharp lines if they re-
" prove thy too much liberty of reproof."
Nash was very angry, but only because
Greene's letter was given to the public by
Chettle, who felt constrained to placate
"that byting satyrist," whose raillery he
had reason to fear, by bearing witness to
"his civil demeanor and factitious grace
"in writing."

Votaries of Shakspere may take their
choice of one of the three addressed.
Which one shall be named? What. mat
ter it to them, with Shakspere barred,
whether Nash, Peele or Marlowe be

AND ROBERT GREENE 87

named, the least of whom was worthy of
Chettle 's commendation ?

There is not a crumb of evidence ad
duced for Shakspere as a putative author
of plays until 1598, and then only in the
variable and shadowy Elizabethan title
page. Chettle terms Greene "the only
"comedian of a vulgar writer," meaning
he was a writer in the vernacular tongue
or common language, a fact which proves
Shakspere 's nihility as playmaker in
1592. Now the fact of the matter is that
this ''lying pamphlet," so called by Nash,
was not authored by Greene. It should
be called, " Chettle 's Groats Worth of
"Wit," for the pamphlet proper is from
his pen or some other hack writer's. The
letter alone was authored by Greene, ad
dressed as a private letter to three fellow
poets, and surreptitiously procured for
Chettle and transcribed by him. Chettle
writes, "I had only in the copy this
"share— it was ill written— licensed it
"must be, ere it could be printed, which
"could never be if it might not be read.

88 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"To be brief I writ it over and as nearly
" as I could follow the copy. Only, in that
"letter I put something out, but in the
" whole book, not a word in, for I protest
"it was all Greene's, not mine, nor Mas
ter Nash's, as some unjustly have af-
" firmed."

The letter and pamphlet both in
Greene's handwriting would have been
the best possible evidence of the genuine
ness of its contents and legibility. Chet-
tle's not offering in evidence the original
letter is strong presumptive proof of the
commission of a forgery. He, if not the
chief actor in the offense, was an acces
sory after the fact, and should, in his ap
peal to the public in defense of his repu
tation, have brought forward the pam
phlet itself, embracing the whole matter,
for examination and comparison; for we
feel satisfied that such an examination
would prove that the celebrated letter
was authored and in the handwriting of
Robert Greene, and not so ill written that
it could not be read by the printers, who

AND ROBERT GREENE 89

must have been familiar with the hand
writing of the largest contributor of the
prose literature of his day. For our
selves, what we have adduced convinces
us that the tract, "Groats Worth of
Wit," was authored and written by one
•f Philip Hensltwe's hacks, presumedly,
Henry Chettle, a literary dead beat, and
an indigent of many imprisonments, who
was always importuning the old play-
broker for money. Since the tract,
"Groats Worth of Wit," was in Chettle 's
own handwriting, he strove to fool the
printers by transcribing Greene's letter
and binding both together, through that
"disguised hood" to fool the public.
Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said,
"You may fool all the people some of the
"time, and some of the people all the
"time, but you cannot fool all the people
"all of the time." It is possible that
Chettle may have fooled some of the peo
ple of his own generation some of the
time, but in later times, through the mis
apprehension of his quoted words, he has

90 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

fooled the Shaksperolators all of the
time. Chettle, however, would not permit
the letter to come forward in its integrity
and speak for itself, disclosing the nature
of the intolerable something "stroke
"out," which piques our curiosity, but
not in anticipation of any of those inde
cencies that taint the writings of Ben
Jonson and the work of many writers of
that age, not excepting Shakespeare, who
is also amenable in no slight degree to the
charge of the same coarseness of taste
which excites repulsion in the feelings of
Leo Tolstoy.

The fact of the whole matter appears
to be that Henry Chettle, wishing to
profit financially by the great commercial
value of Robert Greene's name, was ac
cessory to the embezzlement and the com
mission of a forgery, and was the silent
beneficiary of the fraud. The mutual
connection of hack writer and pirate pub
lisher is so obvious that a juiy of discern
ing students, with the exhibits, presented
together with the presumptive proofs and

AND ROBERT GREENE 91

inferential evidence contextured in both
letter and preface, should easily confirm
our opinion of the incredibleness of Chet-
tle's statements contained in the preface
to "Kind Hearts Dreams." The evidence
of their falsity is, primarf.ade, destitute
of credible attestations.

We are made to see, in our survey of
the age of Elizabeth, much that is in
striking contrast with the spirit and ac
tivities of our time. There is a notable
contrast between the public play house of
those days, where no respectable woman
ever appeared, and with the theatre of
our day— the rival of the church as a
moral force. In the elder time "the per-
"manent and persistent dishonor at
tached to the stage," and the stigma
attached to the poets who wrote for the
public playhouse, attached in like man
ner to the regular frequenters of public
theatres, the majority of whom could
neither read nor write, but belonged
chiefly to the vicious and idle class of the
population. At all the theatres, accord-

92 VyiLLIAM SHAKSPERE

ing to Malone, it appears that noise and
show were what chiefly attracted an au
dience in spite of the reputed author.
There was clamor for a stage reeking
with blood and anything ministering to
their unchaste appetites. The spectacu
lar actor and clown was relatively ad
vantaged, as he could say much more
than was set down for him. Kemp's ex
temporizing powers of histrionic buffoon
ery, gagging, and grimacing, paid the
running expenses of the playhouse.

"It must be borne in mind that actors
"then occupied an inferior position in
"society, and that in many quarters even
"the vocation of a dramatic writer was
"considered scarcely respectable." Ben
Jonson's letter to the Earl of Salisbury,
lets us see very clearly that he regarded
playwriting as a degradation. We tran
scribe it in part as follows :

"I am here, my honored Lord, unex-
"amined and unheard, committed to a
"vile prison and with me a gentleman
"(whose name may perhaps have come

AND ROBERT GREENE 93

"to your Lordship), one Mr. George
"Chapman, a learned and honest man.
"The cause (would I could name some
"worthier though I wish we had known
"none worthy our imprisonment) (is
"the words irk-me that our fortune
"hath necessitated us to so despise a
"course) a play, my Lord—."

We see how keenly Jonson felt the dis
grace, not on account of the charge of re
flecting on some one in a play in which
they had federated, for he protested his
own and Chapman's innocence, but he
felt that their degradation lay chiefly in
writing stage poetry, for drama-making
was regarded as a degrading kind of em
ployment, which poets accepted who were
struggling for the meanest necessities of
life, and were driven by poverty to their
production, and to the slave-driving play-
brokers, many of whom became very rich
by making the flesh and blood of poor
play-writers their maw.

In looking into Philip Henslowe's old
note-book, we see how the grasping play-

94 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

brokers of the olden time speculated on
the poor play-writers necessities, when
plays were not regarded as literature;
when the most strenuous and laborious
of dramatic writers for the theatre could
not hope to gain a competence by the pen
alone, but wrote only for bread; when
play-writers were in tne employ of the
shareholding actors, as hired men; and
when their employers, the actors, were
social outcasts who, in order to escape the
penalty for the infraction of the law
against vagabondage, were nominally re
tained by some nobleman. In further
proof of the degradation which was at
tached to the production of dramatic
composition, "when Sir Thomas Bodley,
"about the year 1600, extended and re-
" modeled the old university library and
"gave it his name, he declared that no
"such riff-raff as play-books should ever
"find admittance to it." "When Ben
"Jonson treated his plays as literature
"by publishing them in 1616 as his works,
"he was ridiculed for his pretentious.

AND ROBERT GREENE 95

'while Webster's care in the printing of
:his plays laid himself open to the charge
'of pedantry."

V

What Lord Kosebery says of Napoleon
is equally true of the author of "Ham-
"let" and "King Lear," "Mankind will
"always delight to scrutinize something
"that indefinitely raises its conception of
"its own powers and possibilities, and
"will seek, though eternally in vain, to
"penetrate the secrets of this prodigious
"intellect," and it is to Stratford-on-
Avon that many turn for the final glimpse
of what Swinburne calls "the most tran-
"scendent intelligence that ever illumi-
"nated humanity." William Shakspere,
the third child and eldest son (probably),
of John Shakspere, is supposed to have
been born at a place on the chief highway
or road leading from London to Ireland,
where the road crosses the river Avon.
This crossing was called Street-ford or
Stratford. This, at any rate, was the
place of his baptism in 1564, as is evi
denced by the parish register. The next

AND ROBERT GREENE 97

proven fact is that of his marriage in
1582, when he was little more than eigh
teen years old. Before this event nothing
is known in regard to him.

John Shakspere, the father apparently
of William Shakspere, is first discovered
and described as a resident of Henley
Street, where our first glimpse is had of
him in April, 1552. In that year he was
fined the sum of twelve pence for a breach
of the municipal sanitary regulations.

«/ o

Nothing is known in regard to the place
of his birth and nurture, nor in regard to
his ancestry. The evidence is, prima-
facie, that the Shaksperes were of the
parvenu class. John Shakspere seems to
have been a chapman, trading in farmer's
produce. In 1557 he married Mary Ar-
den, the seventh and youngest daughter
of Robert Arden, wrho had left to her
fifty-three acres and a house, called
"Ashbies" at Wilmecote. He had also
left to her other land at Wilmecote, and
an interest in two houses at Smitterfield.

98 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

This step gave John Shakspere a repu
tation among his neighbors of having
married an heiress, and he was not slow
to take advantage of it. His official
career commenced at once by his election
in 1557, as one of the ale-tasters, to see to
the quality of bread and ale ; and again in
1568 he was made high bailiff of Strat
ford. John Shakspere was the only mem
ber of the Shakspere family who was
honored with civic preferment and confi
dence, serving the corporation for the
ninth time in several functions. How
ever, the time of his declination was at
hand, for in the autumn of 1578 the
wife's property at Ashbies wras mort
gaged for forty pounds. The money sub
sequently tendered in repayment of the
loan was refused until other sums due to
the same creditor were repaid. John
Shakspere was deprived of his alderman-
ship September 6, 1580, because he did
not come to the hall when notified. On
March 29, he produced a writ of habeas
corpus, which shows he had been in

AND ROBERT GREENE 99

prison for debt. Notwithstanding his in
ability to read and write, he had more or
less capacity for official business, but so
managed his private affairs as to wreck
his own and his wife's fortune.

At the time of the habeas corpus mat
ter William Shakspere was thirteen
years old. "In all probability/' says his
biographer, "the lad was removed from
"school, his father requiring his assist-
"ance." There was a grammar school in
Stratford which was reconstructed on a
medieval foundation by Edward VI,
though the first English grammar was
not published until 1586. This was after
Shakespere had finished his education.
"No Stratford record nor Stratford tra-
"dition says that Shakspere attended the
"Stratford grammar school." But, had
the waning fortune of his father made it
possible, he might have been a student
there from his seventh year— the prob
able age of admission— until his improvi
dent marriage when little more than eigh
teen and a half years old. However, a

100 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

provincial grammar school is a conven
ient place for the lad about whose activi
ties we know nothing, and whose educa
tion is made to impinge on conjecture and
fanciful might-have-been.

We are told that Shakspere must have
been sent to the free school at Stratford,
as his parents and all the relatives were
unlearned persons, and there was no
other public education available; never
theless, it was the practice of that age to
teach the boy no more than his father
knew. One thing is certain, that the
scholastic awakening in the Shakspere
family was of short duration, for it began
and ended with William Sliakspere. His
3~oungest daughter, Judith, was as illiter
ate as were her grandparents. She could
not even write her name, although her
father at the time of her school age had
become wealthy, and his eldest daughter
"the little premature Susanna," as De
Quincy calls her, could barely scrawl her
name, being unable to identify her hus
band's (Dr. Hall) handwriting, which no

AND ROBERT GREENE 101

one but an illiterate could mistake. Her
contention with the army surgeon, Dr.
James Cook, respecting her husband's
manuscripts, is proof that William
Shakspere was true to his antecedents by
conferring illiteracy upon his daughters.
The Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was
not exceptionally liberal and broad
minded in the matter of education in con
trast with many of his contemporaries,
notably Richard Mulcaster, (1531-1611),
who says that "the girl should be as well
"educated as her brother," while the real
author of the immortal plays had also
written, "Ign'orance is the curse of God,"
and, "There is no darkness but ignor-

"ance.'

It was not the least of John Shaks
pere 's misfortunes that in November,
1582, his eldest son, William, added to his
embarrassments, by premature and
forced marriage. It is the practice of
Shakespere's biographers to pass hur
riedly over this event in the young man's
life, for there is nothing commendable in

102 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

his marital relations. There is expressed
in it irregularity of conduct and probable
desertion on his part; pressure was
brought to bear on the young man by his
wife's relations, and he was forced to
marry the woman whom he had wronged.
Who can believe that their marriage was
a happy one, when the only written words
contained in his will are not words ex
pressive of connubial endearment, such
as "dear wife" or "sweet wife," but "my
"wife?" He had forgotten her, but by
an interlineation in the final draft, she
received his second best bed with its fur
niture. This was the sole bequest made
to her.

We are by no means sure of the iden
tity of his wife. We do not know that
she and Shakespere ever wrent through
the actual ceremony of marriage, unless
her identity is traceable through Anne
Wateley, as a regular license was issued
for the marriage of William Shaxpere
and Anne Wateley of Temple Grafton,
November 27, 1583. Richard Hathaway,

AND ROBERT GREENE 103

the reputed father of Shakspere's wife,
Anne, in his will dated September 1,
1581, bequeathed his property to seven
children, his daughters being Catherin,
Margaret and Agnes. No Anne was men
tioned. The first published notice of the
name of William Shakspere's (supposed)
wife appears in Eowe's "Life of Shakes-
"pere" (1709), wherein it is stated that
she "was the daughter of one Hathaway
"said to have been a substantial yeoman
"in the neighborhood of Stratford."
This was all that Betterton, the actor
Howe's informant, could learn at the
time of his visit to Stratford-on-Avon.
The exact time of this visit is unknown,
but it was probably about the year 1690.
This lack of knowledge in regard to the
Hathaways shows that the locality of
Anne Hathaway 's residence, or that of
her parents, was not known at Stratford.
The house at Shottery, now known as
Anne Hathaway 's cottage, and reached
from Stratford by fieldpaths, may have
been the home of Anne Hathaway, wife

104 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

of William Shakspere, before his mar
riage, but of this there is no proof.

Shakspere was married under the
name "Shagspere," but the place of mar
riage is unknown, as his place of resi
dence is not mentioned in the bond. In
the registry of the bishop of the diocese
(Worcester) is contained a deed wherein
Sandells and Richardson, husbandmen of
Stratford, bound themselves in the bish
op's consistory court on November 28,
1582, as a surety for forty pounds, to free
the bishop of all liability should any law
ful impediment, by reason of any precon
tract, or consanguinity, be subsequently
disclosed to imperil the validity of the
contemplated marriage of William
Shakspere with Anne Hathaway. Pro
vided, that Anne obtained the consent of
her friends, the marriage might proceed
with at once proclaiming the bans of mat
rimony. The wording of the bond shows
that, despite the fact that the bridegroom
was a minor by nearly three years, the
consent of his parents was neither called

AND ROBERT GREENE 105

for, nor obtained, though necessary "for
"strictly regular procedure." Sandells
and Eichardson, representing the lady's
family, ignored the bridegroom's family
completely. In having secured the deed,
they forced Shakspere to marry their
friend's daughter in order to save her
reputation. Soon afterwards— within
six months — a daughter was born. More
over, the whole circumstances of the case
render it highly probable that Shakspere
had no thought of marriage, for the wan
ing fortune of his father had made him
acquainted with the "cares of bread."
He was a penniless youth, not yet of age,
having neither trade, nor means of liveli
hood, and was forced by her friends into
marrying her— a wroman eight years
older than himself. In 1585 she pre
sented him with twins.

When he left Stratford for London we
do not know positively, but the advent of
the twins is the approximate date of the
youth's Hegira. He lived apart from his
wife for more than twenty-five years.

106 WILLIAM SHAKSfPERE

The breath of slander never touched the
good name of Anne (or Agnes) , the neg
lected wife of William Shakspere. There
is prima-facie evidence that the play-
broker's wife fared in his absence no bet
ter than his father and mother, who, dy
ing intestate in 1601 and 1608, respec
tively, were buried somewhere by the
Stratford church, but there is no trace of
any sepulchral monument, or memorial.
If anything of the kind had been set up
by their wealthy son, William Shakspere,
it would certainly have been found by
someone. The only contemporary men
tion made of the wife of Shakspere, be
tween her marriage in 1582 and her hus
band's death in 1616, was as the borrower,
at an unascertained date, of forty shil
lings from Thomas Whittington, who had
formerly been her father's shepherd. The
money was unpaid when Whittington
died in 1601, and his executor was di
rected to recover the sum from Shakspere
and distribute it among the poor of Strat
ford. There is disclosed in this pecuniary

107

transaction, coupled with the slight men
tion of her in the will and the barring of
her dower, prima facie evidence of Wil
liam Shakspere's indifference to, and
neglect of ? if not dislike for, his wife. All
this is in striking contrast with the con
duct of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom the biog
raphers of Shakespere have attempted to
disparage, and whose endearment for his
wife is so feelingly expressed in his will.
And, in contrast also, is the conduct of
Edward Alleyn, famous as an actor, and
as the founder of Dulwich College, who
lived with his wife in London, and called
her " sweet mouse."

The tangibility of this Shakspere of
Stratford-on-Avon is very much in evi
dence along pecuniary lines, especially as
money lender, land-owner, speculator and
litigant. In 1597 he bought New Place
in Stratford for sixty pounds; also men
tioned as a holder of grain at Stratford
X quarters. The following entry is in
Chamberlain's accounts at Stratford in
1598: "Paid to Mr. Shaxpere for one

108 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"lode of stone xd;" in the same year
Richard Quiney wrote to William
Shakspere for a loan of thirty or forty
pounds; in 1599 William Shakspere was
taken into the new Globe Theatre Com
pany as partner; in 1602 Shakspere
bought one hundred seven acres of arable
land at Stratford for three hundred two
pounds (in his absence the conveyance
was given over to his brother, Gilbert) ;
in the same year he bought a house with
barns, orchards, and gardens, from Her
cules Underhill for sixty pounds; also a
cottage close to his house, New Place; in
1605 Shakspere bought the thirty-two-
year lease of half Stratford tithes for
four hundred forty pounds; in 1613
Shakspere bought a house near Black-
friars' Theatre for one hundred and forty
pounds, and mortgaged it next day for
sixty pounds ; in 1612 Shakspere is men
tioned in a law suit brought before Lord
Ellsimore about Stratford tithes ; in 1611
Hamnet, his only son, died at Stratford
at the age of eleven and half years. The

AND ROBERT GREENE 109

father, however, set up no stone to tell
where the boy lay.

In the autumn of the year 1614 Shaks-
pere became implicated with the land
owners, William Combe and Arthur Man-
nering, in the conspiracy to enclose the
common field in the vicinity of Stratford.
The success of this rapacious scheme
would have advantaged Shakspere in his
freehold interest, but might have affected
adversely his interest in the tithes, so he
secured himself against all possible loss
by obtaining from Riplingham, Combe's
agent, in October, 1614, a deed of indem
nification ; then, in the spirit of his agree
ment, he acted in unison with the two
greedy land-sharks to rob the poor people
of their ancient rights of pasturage. The
unholy coalition caused great excitement.
The humble citizens of Stratford were
thoroughly aroused, and the town corpor
ation put up a sharp and vigorous oppo
sition to the scheme, for enclosure would
have caused decay of tillage, idleness,
penury, depopulation, and the subversion

110 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

of homes. Happily, the three greedy cor
morants Combe, Mannering and Shaks-
pere failed in their efforts and the com
mon field was unenclosed.

Shakspere is thought to have been
penurious for his litigious strivings point
in that direction, but this feature of his
character was not disclosed in 1596 and
1599, when he sought to have his family
enrolled among the gentry, as shown by
his extravagance in bribing the officers
of the Herald College to issue a grant of
arms to his father, "a transaction which
" involved," says Dr. Farmer, "the false
hood and venality of the father, the son
"and two kin^s-at-arms, and did not es-
"cape protest, for if ever a coat was cut
"from whole cloth we may be sure that
"this coat-of-arms was the one." Shaks
pere himself was not in a position to
apply for a coat-of-arms— "a player stood
"far too low in the social scale for the
"cognizance of heraldry." Nevertheless,
recent writers on the subject of Shake
speare stamp this bogus coat-of-arms on

AND ROBERT GREENE 111

the covers of their books. We know that
the Shaksperes did not belong to the
Armigerous part of the population, and
that they stood somewhat lower in the
social scale than either the Halls or
Quineys, who bore marital relations with
them.

Shakspere's son-in-laAv, John Hall, was
a master of arts and an eminent phy
sician. He was summoned more than
once to attend the Earl and Countess of
Northampton at Ludlow Castle. He was
of the French Court School, and was
opposed to the indiscriminate process of
bleeding. On June 5, 1607, Dr. Hall was
married at Stratford-on-Avon to Shak
spere's eldest daughter, Susanna. Strat
ford then contained about fifteen hun
dred inhabitants. One hundred sixty-two
years later, Garrick gave his unsavory
description of Stratford-on-Avon as "the
"most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved, wretch-
"ed-looking town in all Britain." Cot
tages of that day in Stratford consisted
of mud walls and thatched roofs. "At

112 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"this period and for many generations
"afterwards the sanitary conditions of
"the thoroughfares of Stratford-on-Avon
"were simply terrible."

On February 10, 1616, Thomas Quiney,
a vintner, and also an accomplished
scholar and penman, was married at
Stratford church to Judith, Shakspere's
younger daughter, who could neither read
nor write. The marriage ceremony took
place without a license or proclaiming the
bans. For this breach of ecclesiastical
procedure both the parties were sum
moned to the court at Worcester and
threatened with excommunication. When
the fortune hunter goes forth to wot, and
is determined to win, he is content to
wade through reeking refuse and muck-
heaps to marry a rich heiress and does
not much care if her histrionic father by
XXXIX Elizabeth were a vagabond.

If "there is a soul of truth in things
"erroneous," so there may be a soul of
truth in the creditableness of the Shak-
spere traditions, for in them are revealed

AND ROBERT GREENE 113

the environment in which they had their
genesis, and the character of the inventor
or fabricator. All of the traditions are
comparatively recent or modern, and
were made current by people who were,
with few exceptions, coarse and densely
ignorant. These apocryphal accounts
serve to show also how little educated
people knew, or cared, about writing with
literary or historical accuracy when
Shakspere was the subject. Unfortu
nately all of the traditions about Shak
spere are of a degrading character.

The poaching escapade of his having
robbed a park is one of the invented
stories of fancy-mongers. There is very
little likelihood that the young husband,
with a wife and three babies to support,
would voluntarily place himself in a posi
tion where he would have to flee from
Sir Thomas Lucy's prosecution; thereby
degrading the lowermost rank of life by
bringing disgrace upon himself, his wife
and children, while his parents in strait
ened circumstances were struggling to

114 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

keep the wolf from the door. The records
show that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park
either at Charlecote or Fulbroke, still the
Lucys of a later day were not anxious to
lose the honor of having spanked Sliak-
spere for poaching on the ancestral pre
serves.

England was called in those days "The
"toper's paradise," and tradition informs
us that Shakspere was one of the Bedford
topers. However, we should not infer
from this that William Shakspere, a firm
man of business, was at any time a
drunken sot. The only story recorded
during Shakspere 's life is contained in
John Manningham's note-book. It savors
strongly of the tavern, the diarist crimi
nating Shakspere 's morals. This entry
was made on March 13, 1601, the refer
ence being to player Shakspere.

No wonder that such eminent votaries
of Shakspere as Stevens, Hallam, Dyce
and Emerson are disappointed and per
plexed, for, while the record concerning
the life of the player, money-lender, land-

AND ROBERT GREENE 115

owner, play-broker, speculator and liti
gant are ample, they disclose nothing of
a literary character; but the pecuniary
litigation evidence, growing out of Shak-
spere's devotion to money-getting in Lon
don and Stratford, does unfold his true
life and character. The records do not
furnish a single instance of friendship,
kindness or generosity, but upon the de
linquent borrower of money he rigidly
evoked the law, which gave a generous
advantage to the creditor, and its vile
prison to the debtor.

In 1600 Shakspere brought action
against John Clayton for seven pounds
and got judgment in his favor. He sued
Philip Rogers, a neighbor in Stratford
Court, for one pound, fifteen shillings
and six pence due for malt sold, and two
shillings loaned. In August, 1608, Shak
spere prosecuted John Addenbroke to re
cover a debt of six pounds. He prose
cuted this last suit for a couple of years
until he got the defendant into prison.
-The prisoner was bailed out by Horneby.

116 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

Addenbroke, running away, escaped from
the clutches of his tormentor, who then
bore down on his security, Horneby.

"The pursuit of an impoverished man
"for the sake of imprisoning him, and
"depriving him both of the power of pay-
"ing his debts and supporting his family,
"grate upon our feelings," says Richard
Grant White, "and," adds this eminent
Shakspearean, "we hunger and we receive
"these husks, we open our mouths for
"food and we break our teeth against
"these stones." We may be sure that
there was left in the impoverished home
of John Addenbroke little more palatable
than husks and stones, when the father
fled to escape from the clutches of his in
sistent creditor, William Shakspere of
Stratford.

The paltry suits he brought to recover
debts do not tend to disclose this Shak
spere 's "radiant temperament," or fit
him to receive the adjective, "gentle,"
except in contumely for his claim to
gentility. It is not known that Shakspere

AND ROBERT GREENE 117

ever gave hospitality to the necessities of
the poor of his native shire, for whom, it
appears, there beat no pulse of tender
ness. A man of scanty sensibilities he
must have been. The poor working peo
ple of Stratford, we may be sure, shed
no tear at this Shakspere's departure
from the world.

We do not envy the man, who can re
gard these harsh pecuniary practices in
this Shakspere, as commendable traits of
his worldly wisdom, for he was shrewd
in money matters, and could have in
vested his money in London and Strat
ford so as not to have brought sorrow
and distress upon his poor neighbors.
These matters are small in themselves,
but they suggest a good deal, for they
bear witness to sorrow-stricken mothers,
hungry children and fathers in loathsome
prisons, powerless to provide food,
warmth and light for the home. The
diary, or note-book, of Philip Henslowe,
the theatrical manager and play-broker,
shows that Henslowe was himself a very

118 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

penurious and grasping man, who, taking-
advantage of starving play-makers' neces
sities, became very wealthy. William
Shakspere. of Stratford-on-Avon, as a
theatrical manager, became rich also, but
his note-book has not been preserved, so
nothing is known of his business methods
in dealing with the poor play-makers ; but
the literary antiquarians, by ramsacking
corporations' records and other public
archives, have proven that Shakspere
was very much such a man as the old
pawnbroker and play-broker, Philip
Henslowe, of a rival house.

The biographers should record these
facts, and not strive to shun them, for the
literary antiquaries have unearthed and
brought them forward, and they tell the
true story of Shakspere 's life, though we
do not linger lovingly over them, for, like
Hallam, "we as little feel the power of
" identifying the young man who came up
"from Stratford, was afterward an in-
" different pla)^er in a London theatre,
"and retired to his native place in middle

AND ROBERT GREENE 119

''life, with the author of 'Macbeth' and
" 'Lear,' ' for the Stratford records are
as barren of literary matter as the lodg
ings in Silver street, London. Not a
crumb for the literary biographer in
either place!

Professor Wallace has added another
non-literary document in the matter of
Shakspere's deposition in the case of Bel-
lot vs. Mount joy, which he discovered in
the public record office, but it in no way
contributes to a literary biography. The
truth is that, with all their industry, the
antiquarians have in this regard not
brought to light a single proven fact to
sustain the claim that this Sliakespere
was either the author of poems or plays.
This bit of new knowledge gives us a
glimpse of this William Shakspere as an
evasive witness, having a conveniently
short memory. These depositions dis
close his intermediation in the matter of
making two hearts happy, but not the
faintest glimpse of the author of poems
or plays. When the claim of authorship

120 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

is challenged, new particulars of the life
of Shakspere, such as this and others that
have been unearthed by antiquarians,
whether in the public record office or cor
poration archives, are alike worthless so
far as establishing the poet Shakspere 's
identity. They fail to confirm the iden
tity of the actor Shakspere with the
author of the plays and poems that are
associated with his name. There are no
family traditions, no books, manuscripts,
or letters, addressed to him, or by him,
to poet, peer or peasant. The credible
evidence supplied by contemporaneous, or
antiquarian, research do not identify tEe
player and landowner with the author of
" Hamlet," "Lear" and " Othello."

Our belief in the pseudonymity of the
author of the poems and plays, called
Shakespeare, is strengthened by the ab
sence of verse commemorative of concur
rent events, such as the strivings of his
boldest countrymen in the great Eliza
bethan age. There is, from his pen,
neither word of cheer, nor sympathy, with

AND ROBERT GREENE 121

the daring and suffering warriors and ad
venturers of that time, although his con
temporaries versified eulogies to the
heroes of those days for their stirring
deeds. There is, in the poems and plays,
no elegiac lay in memory of Elizabeth,
"the glorious daughter of the illustrious
" Henry," as Robert Greene calls her, nor
is there one line of mourning verse at the
death of Prince Henry, the noblest among
the children of the kiner, by a writer who
was always a strenuous and consistent
supporter of prerogative against the con
ception of freedom. This is another evi
dence of the secrecy maintained as to the
authorship of the poems and plays. We
cannot discover a single laudatory poem
or commendatory verse, or a line of praise
of any publication, or writer of his time.
All this is in contrast with his contem
poraries, whose personalities are identifi
able with their literary work, and, so
liberal of commendation wrere they, that
they literally showered commendatory
verses on literary works of merit, or those

122 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

thought to have merit. Of these, thirty-
five were bestowed on Fletcher, a score
or more on Beaumont, Chapman and
Ford, while Massinger received nineteen.
Ben Jonson 's published works contain
thirty-seven pieces of commendation. His
Roman tragedy, "Sejanus," was acclaim
ed by ten contemporary poets. In praise
of his comedy, "Volpone," There are
seven poems. The versified compliments
bestowred on him by his fellow craftsmen
embrace many of the most celebrated
names antecedent to his death, which oc
curred in 1637. Early in 1638 a collection
of some thirty elegies were published un
der the title of " Jonsonus Virbius," or
"The Memory of Ben Jonson," in which
nearly all the leading poets of the day,
except Milton, took part.

It must appear strange to the votaries
of Shakspere that Jonson should have re
ceived so many crowns of mourning
verse, while for Shakspere of Stratford-
on-Avon, the reputed author of "Ham
let," "Lear" and "Macbeth," there

AND ROBERT GREENE 123

Availed no dirge. Not a single commen
datory verse was bestowed by a contem
porary poet antecedent to his death, nor
was a single elegaic poem written of him
in the year of his death, 1616. Already
in that fatal year there had been mourn
ing for Francis Beaumont, who received
immediate posthumous honors by many
poets, in memorial odes, sighing forth the
requiem to his name in mournful elegy.

Eight and forty days after the death of
Francis Beaumont, all that was mortal of
William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon
was buried in the chancel of his parish
church, in which, as part owner of the
tithes and consequently one of the lay
rectors, he had the right of interment.
Over the spot where his body was laid,
there was placed a slab with the inscrip
tion imprecating a curse on the man who
should disturb his bones,

"Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare
"To digg the dust enclosed here
"Bless be ye man yt spares this stown
• "And curst be he yt moves my bones."

124 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

This rude, absurd and ignorant epitaph
has given much trouble to writers on the
subject of Shakespeare. The usual ex
planation of the threat is given that the
Puritans thought that the church had
been profaned by the ashes of an actor.
These ignorant words could not have
been written as a deterrent to the Puri
tans, for they did not belong to the
ignorant section of the population, but to
the middle class, nor would they have
been deterred from invading Shakspere's
tomb by the superstitious fear of a threat
contained in doggerel verse cut on the
tomb. There was not the least danger
that the actor's grave would be violated
by the Puritans, for Dr. John Hall, Shak-
spere's son-in-law, was a Puritan. If he
had had this warning epitaph cut on the
tomb it would have been written in
scholarly English. The doggerel lines,
rude as they are, satisfied, doubtless, the
widow and daughters, themselves ignor
ant. The most pleasing epitaph, it seems
to us, would have been one expressing a

125

known wish of their "dear departed" in
words, when read by others, that would
best suit their understandings, for the
Shakspere family were uncultured. They
could not read the stupid epitaph on his
tomb, and so their hearts were not sad
dened as they gazed upon an inscription
of barbaric rudeness.

Some slight circumstance may have
given rise to William Hall's conjecture,
during his visit to Stratford, in 1694, that
Shakspere authored his own epitaph, and
that these lines were written to suit the
capacity of clerks and sextons, who, ac
cording to Hall, in course of time would
have removed Shakspere 's dust to the
bone house. This is not improbable from
the point of view taken by those who be
lieve that Shakspere of Stratford wrote
the doggerel epigram on John Combe,
money lender, and the vituperative ballad
abusing the gentleman whose park he
(Shakspere) robbed, for the three com
positions are of the same grade of
ignorant nonsense. But we do know that

126 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

had the author of "Hamlet" written his
own epitaph, it would have been as death
less as the one over the Countess of Pem
broke :

"Underneath this sable hearst
"Lies the subject of all verse
"Sidney's sister — Pembroke's mother
"Death, ere thou hast slain another
"Learned and fair and good as she
"Time shall throw a dart at thee."

It should be borne in mind that clerks
and sextons were not the only ignorant
people in and about Stratford. There
were some that had a grievance, or
thought they had, which parish clerks
and sextons had not. We have reference
to the poor debtors, who regarded Shak-
spere of Stratford as a grasping usurer,
hard upon poor people in his power, so
the curse inscribed slab was placed over
Shakspere's grave as a shield to protect
his ashes from those who would not hesi
tate to invade the tomb of one whose
memory had become hateful to them. If
in pressing his claim the money lender

AND ROBERT GREENE 127

elects to be a tormentor, his name will be
execrated while living and a hateful
memory when dead.

One thing is evidenced by the maledic
tory epitaph; that the one who wrote it
was afraid the tomb might be violated By
the removal of the bones to the charnal
house. Who were they that would most
likely invade Shakspere 's tomb? Ob
viously those, we repeat, who regarded
him as a hard-hearted man, who pressed
poor debtors with all the rigor of the law
to enforce the payment of petty sums;
the man who had shown himself supremely
selfish in an attempt to enclose the Strat
ford common field; the man who would
be made "a gentleman" by misrepresen
tation, fraud and falsehood. The fore
going facts, and the Ie2;al and municipal
evidence bound up in dusty records, a
bogus coat-of-arms, and a rude epitaph,
tell the true story of the life of William
Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon.

There is no record of any pretended
living likeness of Shakspere better rep-

128 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

resenting him than the Stratford bust.
This bust is erected on the north side of
the chancel of Holy Trinity Church at
Stratford-on-Avon. On the floor of the
chancel in front of the monument are the
graves of Shakspere and his family. We
have no means of ascertaining when the
monument and bust were erected. The
first folio edition of his reputed works
was published in 1623. It contained
words from Leonard Diggs prefatory
lines "and time dissolves thy Stratford
moniment, " monument being used inter
changeably with tomb; but these words
do not prove that the bust was set up be
fore 1623. His image was rudely cut,
sensual and clownish in appearance.

There is not a tittle of evidence adduced
to show that a knowledge of Shakspere 's
putative authorship of poems and plays
was current at Stratford when the first
folio edition of his reputed works was
published in 1623. The records attest
that Shakspere 's fame reputatively as
writer is posterior to this event. How

AND ROBERT GREENE 129

strange it must seem to those who claim
for Shakspere an established reputation
as poet and dramatist of repute anterior
to the first folio edition in 1623, that Dr.
Hall, himself an author and most ad
vantaged of all the heirs by Shakspere 's
death, should fail to mention his father-
in-law in his " cure-book" or observa
tions ! The earliest dated cure is 1617, the
year following Shakspere 's death, but
there are undated ones. In "Obs. XIX."
Hall mentions without date an illness of
his wife, Mrs. Hall; and we find him
making a note long afterwards in refer
ence to his only daughter, Elizabeth, who
was saved by her father's skill and
patience. ' l Thus was she delivered from
"death and deadly diseases and was well
"for many years." The illness of Dray-
ton is recorded without date in "Obs.
XXII.," with its wee bit of a literary
biography, and he is referred to as "Mr.
Drayton, an excellent poet." Had Shak
spere received a like mention as a poet or
writer bv one who knew him so intimately,

130 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

what a delicious morsel it would have
been to all those who have followed the
literary antiquarian through the dreary
barren waste of Shakespearean research.
We have found nothing but husks, and
these, eulogists of Shakespeare— Hallam,
Stevens and Emerson— refused to crunch!
For nearly three centuries the Stratford
archives have contained all matters con
cerning Shakspere's life and character,
and have given us full knowledge of the
man; nothing has been lost; but of his
alleged literary life, there is not a crumb,
no family traditions, no books, no manu
scripts, no letters, no commendatory
verses, plays, masques or anthology.

The biographers of Shakespeare have
none of the material out of which poets
and dramatists are made, but only those
facts which are congruous with money
lenders, land speculators, play-brokers
and actors; also, a good assortment of
apocryphal stores and gossipy yarns
which have become traditional currency.
According to Mark Twain there is some-

AND ROBERT GREENE 131

thing more. He says, "When we find a
"vague file of chipmunk tracks stringing
"through the dus^ of Stratford village
"we know that Hercules has been
"along." Again he proceeds, "The bust,
"too, there in the Stratford church, the
"precious bust, the calm bust with a dandy
"mustache, and the putty face unseamed
"with care— that face which has looked
"passionlessly down upon the awed pil-
"grim for a hundred and fifty years, and
"will look down upon the awed pilgrim
"three hundred more with the deep, deep,
"deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of
"a bladder."

Not having found the slightest trace of
Shakespeare in 1592 as writer of plaj^s,
or as adapter or elaborator of other men's
work, his advent into literature must
have been at a later date, if at all. In
1593 "Venus and Adonis" appeared in
print with a dedication to Lord South
ampton, and signed "William Shake
speare." In 1594 appeared another poem,
"Lucrece," also with a dedication to Lord

132 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

Southampton. The poems bore no name
of an author on the title page. Here is
literary tangibility, but does it establish
the identity of their author, or attest the
responsibility of the young Stratford man
for the poems which were published un
der the name of Shakespeare? This was
the first mention of the now famous
name? Was it a pseudonym, or was it
the true name of the author of the poem?
The enthusiastic reception of the poems
awakens a suspicion when we learn that
their popularity wras due to a belief in
their lasciviency; and that the dedicatee
was the rakish Henry, Worthesley, third
Earle of Southampton ; and, furthermore,
that the name of the dedicator, "Shake
speare," was one of a class of nicknames
which in 1593 still retained in some meas
ure that which was derisive in them. In
1487 a student at Oxford changed his
own name of "Shakespeare" into "Saun-
ders, ' ' because he considered it too expres
sive and distinctive of rough manners,
and significant of degradation, and as

AND ROBERT GREENE 133

such was unwilling to aid in its heredi
tary transmission, when all that is de
risive in the name Shakspere remained
fixed and fossilized in the old meaning.
In those unlettered times, lascivious per
sons were sometimes branded, so to speak,
with the nickname "Shakspere." Pri
marily, the name has no militant signifi
cation. There is no such personal name
in any known list of British surnames.
They are of the parvenu class without
ancestry.

Mr. Sidney Lee admits that the Earle
of Southampton is the only patron of
Shakspere that is known to biographical
research (p. 126). By what fact, or
facts, may we ask, is the authenticity of
the Earl's friendship or patronage at
tested? Southampton was the standing
patron of all the poets, the stock-dedi
catee of those days. It was the fashion
of the times to pester him with dedica
tions by poets grave and gay. They were
after those five or six pounds, which cus
tom constrained his Lordship to yield for

134 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

having his name enshrined in poet's lines.
All the poets of that age were dependents,
and there is, with few exceptions, the
same display of pharisaic sycophancy,
greediness, and on the part of dedicatee
an inordinate desire for adulation. Every
student of Elizabethan literature and
history should know that the Southamp-
ton-Shakspere friendship cannot be
traced biographically. The Earl of
Southampton was a voluminous corre
spondent, but did not bear witness to his
friendship for Shakspere. A scrutinous
inspection of Southampton's papers con
tained in the archives of his family, de
scendants and contemporaries, yields
nothing in support of the contention that
Southampton's friendship, or patronage,
is known to biographical research, and it
is as attestative as that other apocryphal
story preserved by Rowe "which is fast
disappearing from Shakespearean bio
graphy. ' '

"There is one instance so singular in
"its munificence that if we had not been

AND ROBERT GREENE 135

" assured that the story was handed down
"by Sir William Davenant, who was
" probably very well acquainted with his
"affairs, we should not venture to have
"inserted that my Lord Southampton at
"one time gave him (Shakspere) a thous-
"and pounds, to enable him to go through
"with a purchase which he heard he had
"a mind to." (Davenant was the man
who gave out that he was the natural son
of Shakspere). A present of a thousand
pounds which equals at least twenty-five
thousand dollars to-day ! The magnitude
of the gift discredits the story neverthe
less, the startled Eowe, is the first to
make it current, but does not give his
readers the ground for his assurance. Be
it what it may, he could hardly satisfy
the modern reader that this man, a son,
who insinuatingly defiles the name and
fair fame of his own mother, is a credi
ble witness, or that such a man is "fit for
wolf bait." What purchase did Shaks
pere "go through with?" Not New Place
in 1597, for the purchase money was only

136 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

sixty pounds. Neither could it have been
the Stratford estate in 1602, for at that
time Southampton was a prisoner in the
Tower. In fact, the whole sum expended
by Shakspere did not amount to a thous
and pounds in all. The truth is, the so
cial Rules of Tudor and Jacobin times
did not permit peer and peasant to live
on terms of mutual good feeling. Almost
all the poets in hope of gain, penned
adulatory sonnets in praise of Lord
Southampton. In those times they had a
summary way of dealing with humble
citizens. Jonson, Chapman and Marston,
were imprisoned for having displeased
the king by a jest in "Eastward Ho,"

"A nobleman to vindicate rank brought
"an action in the star-chamber against a
"person, who had orally addressed him
"as 'Goodman Morley." The literati
of those days ' found in scholastic
learning, neither potency, nor prom
ise, to abrogate class distinctions by
giving1 a passport to high attainment
in literature, poetry and philosophy.

AND ROBERT GREENE 137

Ben Jonson says, "The time was when
"men were had in price for learn
ing, now letters only make men vile. He
"is upbraidingly called a poet as if it
"were a contemptible nickname."

Mr. Lee tells us, that the state papers
and business correspondence of South
ampton were enlivened by references to
his literary interest and his sympathy
with the birth of English Drama. (P.
316.). "However, Mr. Lee has extracted
"no reference to Shakspere from the
"paper." Southampton's zest for the
theatre is based on the statement
contained in the "Sidney Papers"
that he and his friend Lord Rut
land "come not to court but pass
"away the time merely in going to plays
"every day." When a new library for
his old college, St. Johns, was in course
of construction, Southampton collected
books to the value of three hundred and
sixty pounds wherewith to furnish it.
Southampton's literary tastes and sym
pathy with the drama cannot be drawn

138 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

from his gift to the library, for it con
sisted largely of legends of the saints and
mediaeval chronicles. When and where
did William Shakspere acknowledge his
obligations to the only patron of the
player? According to Mr. Lee, who is
known to biographical research, not one
of the Shakespearean plays was dedi
cated to Southampton. The name
"Shakspere" is conspicuously absent
from among the distinguished writers of
his day, who in panegyrical speech and
song acclaimed Southampton's release
from prison in 1602.

Francis Meres, a pedantic schoolmas
ter and Divinity student, had his "Pal-
"ladin Tamia" registered September 7,
1598, and published shortly after. Meres
in his "Tamia" writes of the mellifluous
and honey-tongued Shakespeare, and his
" Venus and Adonis," and his "Lucrece,"
and his sugared sonnets to his friends,
and enumerates twelve plays — though at
the time three only had been published
with his name. Like others of his con-

AND ROBERT GREENE 139

temporaries, Meres writes tritely of the
honey-tongued, the honey sweet and the
sugared. With him, everything written
is mellifluent, but he says nothing of the
man. In fact, no contemporary left on
record any definite impression of Shakes
peare's personal character. Meres as
serted that Ben Jonson was one of our
best poets for tragedy, when at that time
(1598) Jonson had not written a single
tragedy, and but one comedy.

Before, we transcribe, in part, "Wits
"Treasury" by Francis Meres, we ask
the readers' pardon for this abuse of their
patience, for Meres merely repeats names
of Greek, Latin and modern play-makers.
"As these tragic poets flourished in
" Greece— Aeschylus, Euripides" (in all
seventeen are named and these among the
Latin, Accius, M. Attilus, Seneca and
several others). "So these are our best
"for tragedy; the Lord Buckhurst, Dr.
"Leg of Cambridge, Dr. Eds of Oxford,
"Master Edward Ferris— the author of
"the 'Merriour for Magistrates,'— Mar-

140 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"lowe, Peele, Watson, Kyd, Shakespeare,
"Dray ton, Chapman, Decker and Benja-
"min Jonson. The best poets for com-
"edy" -(Meres proceeds with his enum
eration, naming sixteen Greeks and ten
Latins, twenty-six in all.) "So the best
"for comedy amongst us be Edward, Earl
"of Oxford; Dr. Lager of Oxford; Mas-
"ter Eowley; Master Edwards: eloquent
"and wittie John Lilly; Lodge; Gas-
"coyne; Greene; Shakespeare; Thomas
"Nash; Thomas Hey wood; Anthony
"Munday. Our best plotters: Chapman,
"Porter, Wilson, Hathaway and Henry
"Chettle."

Meres does not seem to have considered
it necessary to read before reviewing.
Had he done so he would not have placed
the name of Lord Buckhurst first in his
list, giving primacy to this mediocrist, and
the author of "Romeo and Juliet," who
ever he was, ninth in his list of dramatic
poets which he considered best among the
English for tragedy; nor, would he have
named for second place on the list Dr.

AND ROBERT GREENE 141

Leg of Cambridge, instead of the author
of "The Jew of Malta" (Marlowe).
What has Dr. Eds of Oxford, whose name
stands third in the Meres list, written
that he should have been mentioned in the
same connection with the author of "The
"White Devil" (Webster) or the author
of that classic "The Conspiracy," and
"The Tragedy of Charles Duke of By-
"ron" (Chapman)? Why this com
mingling of such insignificant writers as
Edward, Earl of Oxford, Lord Buck-
hurst, Drs. Lager and Leg, with the giant
brotherhood? The fact is, so far as at
testing the responsibility of anybody or
anything, the Meres averments are as
worthless as "a musty nut." What was
said of John Aubury is also true of Fran
cis Meres, "His brain was like a hasty
"pudding whose memory and judgment
"and fancy were all stirred together."
Yet this is the writer that many Shakes
pearean commentators confidently appeal
to, in part, and whose testimony, in part,
they, with equal unanimity impeach.

142 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

The slight mention of Shakespeare by
the "judicious Webster," as Hazlet calls
him, comprehends no more than that
Shakspere was one of the hack writers of
the day: "detraction is the sworn friend
"to ignorance." For mine own part I
have ever truly cherished "my good opin-
"ion of other men's worthy labours,
"especially of that full and heightened
"style of Master Chapman, the laboured
"and understanding works of Master
"Jonson, the no less worthy composures
"of the both worthily excellent Master
"Beaumont and Fletcher, and lastly
"(without wrong last to be named) the
"right happy and copious industry of
"Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker
"and Master Heywood."

These words written by the third great
est of English tragic poets are very sig
nificant, for Webster wrote for the thea
tre to which Shakspere, the player and
play-broker, belonged ; yet industry is the
only distinguishing mark in Shakspere
which he must share with Dekker, and

AND ROBERT GREENE 143

Heywood, hack writers for the stage.
Dekker's many plays attest his copious
industry, when we remember that this
writer spent three years in prison, and
Hey wood's industry cannot be doubted
for he claimed to have had a hand and
main finger in two hundred twenty plays.
Copious industry signifies to the reader
the existence of an author not utterly
unknown, it is true, but it fails to identify
him as the author of the immortal plays.
What shall we say then ? Were the works
called Shakespeare's but little known?
Shakspere's biographers say that they
were the talk of the town. If that is true,
then the writer who was commended for
industry was not regarded by Webster as
the author of " Hamlet," "Lear," and
t i Macbeth, ' ' for Shakespeare 's distinctive
characteristics are not individualized
from those of Dekker and Heywood,
while those of Chapman, Jonson, Beau
mont and Fletcher are. In the last four
named is perfect interlacement of per-

144 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

sonality with authorship, but not so in
Shakespeare.

John Webster's judgment of his fellow
craftsman was just, "I have ever truly
"cherished my good opinion of other
"men's worthy labours." Webster never
conceals or misrepresents the truth by
giving evasive, or equivocating, evidence.
He reveals the judicial trait of his char
acter in placing Chapman first among
the poets then living, assuming that the
name Shakespeare was used by printers
and publishers, if not by writers, as an
impersonal name, masking the name of a
true poet. Sidney, Marlowe and Spencer
had then descended to the tomb.

George Chapman's name has not re
ceived due prominence in the modern
hand-books of English literature, but he
was a bright torch and numbered by his
own generation, among the greatest of its
poets. He, whom Webster calls the
"Prince's Sweet Homer" and "My
"Friend," was not unduly honored by the
"full and heightened style" which Web-

AND ROBERT GREENE 145

ster makes characteristic of him. "Our
"Homer-Lucan," as he was gracefully
termed by Daniel, is a poet much admired
by great men. Edmund Waller never
could read Chapman's Homer without a
degree of transport. Barry is reputed to
have said that when he went into the
street after reading it, men seemed ten
feet high; Coleridge declares Chapman's
version of the Odyssey to be as truly an
original poem as the " Faerie Queene."
He also declares that Chapman in his
moral heroic verse stands above Ben Jon-
son. 1 1 There is more dignity, more lustre,
"and equal strength."

Translation was in those times a new
force in literature. By the indomitable
force and fire of genius Chapman has
made Homer himself speak English by
translating the genius, and by having
chosen that which prefers the spirit to
the letter. It is in his translation that
the "Iliad" is best read as an English
book. Out of it there comes a whiff of
-the breath of Homer. It is as massive

146 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

and majestic as Homer himself would
have written in the land of the virgin
queen. "He has added," says Swinburne,
"a monument to the temple which con-
" tains the glories of his native language,
"the godlike images, and the costly relics
"of the past." "The earnestness and
"passion," says Charles Lamb, "which
"he has put into every part of these po-
"ems would be incredible to a reader of
"mere modern translations. His almost
"Greek zeal for the honor of his heroes
i i is only paralleled by that fierce spirit of
"Hebrew bigotry with which Milton, as
"if personating one of the zealots of the
"old law, clothed himself when he sat
"down to paint the acts of Samson
"against the uncircumcised. " It was the
reflected Hellenic radiance of the grand
old Chapman version to the lifted eyes of
Keats flooded with the "light which
"never was on sea or shore." This
younger poet sang :

AND ROBERT GREENE 147

"Much have I traveled in the realms of

"

gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms

seen,
"Round many western islands have I

been,

"Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold;
"Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
"That deep-browed Homer ruled as his

demesne

"Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
"Till I heard Chapman speak out loud

and bold."

The preface to Webster's tragedy,
"The White Devil," which contains a
slight mention of Shakespeare, was
printed in 1612, after all the immortal
plays were written and their reputed au
thor had returned to Stratford, probably
in 1611, in his forty-seventh year, where
he lived idly for five years before his
death. John Webster possessed a crit
ical faculty and an independent judg
ment, but the way he makes mention of
Shakespeare shows that he knew nothing

148 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

about the individual man, or the work,
called Shakespeare.

The generous reference to "The la
boured and understanding works of
" Master Jonson" gives a clear idea of the
main characteristics of the work of Jon-
son, who, not having reached the fruition
of his renown in 1611, but in the after
time, came into Dryden's view as "The
"greatest man of the last age, the most
"learned and judicious writer any thea-
"tre ever had." John Webster writes of
"the no less worthy composures of Beau-
"mont and Fletcher" then in the morn
ing of life. They present an admirable
model for purity of vocabulary and sim
plicity of expression and were of "loud-
"est fame." "Two of Beaumont's and
"Fletcher's plays were acted to one of
"Shakespeare's, or Ben Jonson 's," in
Dryden's time.

There is strong presumptive proof that
printers and publishers in Elizabethan
and Jacobin times were in the habit of se
lecting names or titles that would best

AND ROBERT GREEN.E 149

sell their books. The most popular books
or best sellers they printed were books of
songs, love-tales, comedies and sonnets of
the amorous, scented kind, and it mat
tered not to publishers if the name
printed on the title-page was a personal
name, or one impersonal. Title-pages
were not even presumptive proof of au
thorship in the time of Queen Elizabeth
and King James. The printers chose to
market their publications under the most
favorable conditions, and some writers
chose the incognizable name "Shakes-
"peare" which had been attached to the
voluptuous poem "Venus and Adonis."
This was published by Richard Field, in
whose name it had been entered in the
Stationer's Register in 1593. There was
no name of an author on the title-page,
but the dedication was to the Earl of
Southampton and was signed "William
"Shakespeare." This was the first ap
pearance of the name "Shakespeare" in
literature, being the non-de-plume, doubt-
Jess, of the writer who gave this erotic

150 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

poem to the world— "The first heir of my
" invention."

Not finding "Shakespeare" in the an
thology of his day, the most natural in
ference would be that all those who wrote
under the name " Shakespeare" wrote in
cognito. We know that Marlowe, Beau
mont, Greene, Drayton and many writers
of that age wrote anonymously for the
Elizabethan stage. Many of the anony
mous writings have been retrieved ; much,
doubtless, remains still to be reclaimed
from the siftings of what are named
Early Comedy, Early History, and Pre-
Shakespearean Group of plays. Mr.
Spedding had the good fortune to be the
first to demonstrate the theory of a di
vided authorship of "Henry VIII.," to
reclaim for Fletcher "Wolsey's Farewell
"to all his Greatness." Thirteen out of
the seventeen scenes of "Henry the
"Eighth" are attributed by Mr. Lee (P.
212) to Fletcher. A majority of the best
critics now agree with Miss Jane Lee, in
the assignment of the second and third

AND ROBERT GREENE 151

part of Henry VI. to Marlowe, Greene
and Peele.

The difficulty of identifying Shakes
peare, the author poet, with the young
man who came up from Stratford, has
induced Shakespearean scholars to ques
tion the unity of authorship. Mr. Swin
burne tells us that no scholar believes in
the single authorship of "Andronicus."
Mr. Lee admits that Shakespeare drew
largely on the "Hamlet," which he has
attributed to Kyd (P. 182). "It is
"scarcely possible," says Mr. Marshall in
the "Irving Shakespeare," "to maintain
"that the play '(Hamlet) ' referred to as
"well knrvvn in 1589, could have been by
"Shakspere— that is— by the young actor
"from Stratford. Surety not. We see
"the question of the unity of the author
"and authorship involves the question of
"his identity." It is evident that the au
thor poet, whoever he was, had, in his
time of initiation, "purloyned plumes"
from Marlowe, Kyd and Greene, and,
when nearing the close of his literary

152 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

career, according to Prof. A. H. Thorn-
dike, he was a close imitator of John
Fletcher— not so much an innovator as an
adapter.

What do we know of Shakespeare, the
author poet, "The Man in a Mask1?" We
know nothing, absolutely nothing. No
reputed play by Shakespeare was pub
lished before 1597, and none bore the
name Shakespeare on the title page till
1598. Lodge, in his prose satire "Wits
"Misery," dated 1596, enumerates the
wits of the time. Shakspere is not men
tioned. Dr. Peter Heylys was born in
1600, and died in 1662, thus being sixteen
years old when Shakspere, the player
died. In reckoning up the famous dra
matic poets of England he omits Shaks
pere. Ben Jonson, in the catalogue of
writers, also omits Shakspere, and at a
later date, writing on the instruction of
youth and the best authors, he forgets all
about Shakspere. Philip Henslow, the
old play-broker, also in writing his note
book during the twelve years beginning

AND ROBERT GREENE 153

in February, 1591, does not even mention
Shakspere. Milton's poem on Shakes
peare (1630) was not published in his
works in 1645. This epitaph was prefixed
to the folio edition of Shakespeare
(1632), but without Milton's name. It is
the first of his reputed poems that was
published. Its pedigree was not at all
satisfactory. Milton, having been misled
by Ben Jonson's lines on Shakespeare,
"And though thou hadst small Latin and
"less Greek," writes of

"Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warbles his native woodnotes wild."

Milton's acquaintance with Shakes
peare verse must have been very meager,
for had he read "Venus and Adonis," so
classic and formal, he would agree with
Walter Savage Lander that "No poet was
"ever less a warbler of woodnotes wild."
It was never said in the original authori
ties that a Shakespeare play, or one by
Shakspere, was played between 1594 and
.1614. There were published in quarto

154 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

twenty- three plays in Shakespeare's
name— twelve of which are not now ac
cepted—and nine without his name. The
folio (1623) is the sole original authority
for seventeen plays, but five writers—
four of them very inferior men— refer to
Shakespeare, antecedent to the folio of
1623.

Search as we may, we fail to find the
play-actor in affiliation with poets or
scholars. How unlike the literary men
of that age; for instance, George Chap
man, who had been called the "blank of
"his age," and not without reason for, in
all that pertains to the poet's personal
history, absolutely nothing is known in
regard to his family, and very little of his
own private life. Much, however, is
known concerning Chapman's personal
authorship of poems and plays for the
list of passages extracted from his poems
in "England's Parnassus" or the "Choic-
"est Flowers of Our Modern Poets" con
tains no less than eighty-one. At the time
of this publication (1600), he had pub-

AND ROBERT GREENE 155

lished but two plays and three poems.
"The proud full sail of his great verse"
(Chapman's Homer) had not at this time
been unfurled.

At the time, this first English anthol
ogy was compiled and published, thirteen
of the Shakespeare plays and two poems
had been issued. Nevertheless Shakes
peare does not figure in the anthology of
his day. Why? The play-actor, Wil
liam Shakspere, in his life time was not
publicly credited with the personal au
thorship of the plays and poems called
Shakespeare's, except possibly by three
or four poeticules, Bomfield, Freeman,
Meres, and Weaver, who followed each
other in the iteration and reiteration of
the same insipid and affected compli
ments, not one of them implying a per
sonal acquaintance with the author. Some
few persons may have believed that the
player and play-wright were one and the
same person, and were deceived into so
believing. This much we do know, that
ihe player Shakspere never openly sane-

156 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

tioned the identification, although he may
have been accessory to the deception. It
should be borne in mind also that no poet
was remembered in Shakspere's will, as
were the actors.

Many writers of that age were com
munistic in the use of the name * * Shakes-
"peare" as a descriptive title, very much
like the Italians' pantomime called "Sil-
"verspear," standing for the collocuted
works of not one, but several ' play-
makers. Sir Thomas Brown complained
that his name was being used to float
books that he never wrote. In the list be
fore us there are forty-nine plays which
were published with Shakespeare's name.
Doubtless there were many others; not
one in fifty of the dramas of this period,
according to Hallowell-Philips, having
descended to modern times. Many writ
ers of that age wrote anonymously and
pseudonymously. Edmund Spencer, au
thor of "The Shepherd's Calendar" re
mained incognito for seven years. Eight
3Tears after this work appeared George

AND ROBERT GREENE 157

Whitstone ascribed it to Philip Sidney
and a cotemporary writer, mistaking
Spencer's masking name for the author
of the works. Spencer committed "The
Faerie Queen" to the press after nine
years. Only four of Beaumont and
Fletcher's plays were published in
Fletcher's lifetime and none of them bore
Beaumont's name. Fletcher survived
his partner nine years. Robert Burton,
author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy,"
maintained his incognito for a time, he
avers, because it gave him greater free
dom. Jean Baptiste Popuelin preferred
to be known as Moliere. Francais-Marie
Aronet won enduring fame as Voltaire.
Sir Walter Scott maintained his incog
nito as the great unknown for years like
" Junius," "whose secret was intrusted to
"no one and was never to be revealed."
Sir Walter Scott preserved his secret un
til driven to the brink of financial de
struction. Dray ton also had written
under the pseudonym of Rowland. Who
"can doubt that the author of "Hamlet,"

158 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"Lear" and "Macbeth," chose to sheath
his private life and personality as a man
of letters in an impenetrable incognito—
"the nothingness of a name."

Of the thirty-seven plays assigned by
the folio of 1623, not one had received the
acknowledgment of their reputed au
thor (Shakespeare). Not a single line in
verse or prose assented to for comparison
and identification, and in the absence of
credible evidence of his authorship of
certain poems, there can be no authorita
tive sanction of the assignment.

No person writing on the subject of
Shakespeare can wrrite a literary life of
the individual man, for player Shakspere
of Stratf ord-on-Avon does not offer a
single point of correspondence to the ac
tivities of a literary man or scholar. The
fantastical critics profess to read the
story of the author's life in his works.
This is an absurdity, for dramatic art is
mainly character creation and cannot be
made to disclose a knowledge of his pri
vate life. The artist is an observer and

AND ROBERT GREENE 159

paints the thing seen. He, himself, is not
the thing which he depicts but he gives
the character as it is. In the opinion of
the present writer it is a waste of time to
attempt to identify Shakspere, the play
actor, with any one of the dramatic per
sonages contained in the plays called
Shakespeare's.

Forty-six years after the death of Wil
liam Shakspere of Stratford, Thomas
Fuller in his "Worthies," published
posthumously in 1662, wrote:

"Many wrere the wit-combats between
"him and Ben Jonson, which two I be-
"hold like a Spanish great galleon and an
' ' English m an-of -war . ' '

Fuller being born in 1608, was only
eight years old when player- Shakspere
died, and but two when he quitted Lon
don. If this precocious youngster beheld
the "wit-combats" of the two, he could
only have beheld them as he lay "mewl-
"ing and puking in his nurse's arms."

VI.

We have in conclusion decided to fo
cus the interest of the reader chiefly in
the attestation of Ben Jonson for the
works which were associated with the
name of William Shakspere of Stratford.
Ben Jonson presents a contrast to Wil
liam Shakspere, in almost every respect,
so striking as to awaken an irrepressible
desire to compare the mass of proven
facts adduced from authentic records.
Being born in the city of London in the
early part of 1574, he was ten }^ears
younger than Shakspere. He was the son
of a clergyman. In spite of poverty he
was educated at Westminster School,
William Camden being his tutor, to whom
Jonson refers as " Camden, most reverend
"head, to whom I owe all that I am— in
arts all that I owe." A recent writer on
the subject of Jonson says, "No other of
" Shakspere 's contemporaries has left so
"splendid and so enthusiastic an eulogy

AND ROBERT GREENE 161

"of the master." In this statement all
must concur, for Jonson is the only
writer of eminence among Shakspere 's
cotemporaries, who has left words of
praise or censure, or have taken any no
tice, either of Shakspere, or of the works
which bear his name ; notwithstanding, it
was the custom among literary men of
the day to belaud their friends in verse or
prose, Shakspere in his lifetime was hon
ored with no mark of Ben Jonson 's ad
miration. Not a single line of commend
atory verse was addressed to Shakspere
by Jonson, although this promiscuous
panegyrist was, with characteristic ex
travagance, so indiscriminate in sympa
thy or patronage. What shrimp was
there among hack writers who could not
gain a panegyric from his generous
tongue ?

For five and twenty years Shakspere
and Jonson jostled in London streets, yet
there was no sign or word of recognition
as they passed each other by. Writers on
the subject of Jonson and Shakspere say

162 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

that we have abundant tradition of their
close friendship. There are no credible
traditions. The manufactured traditions,
so conspicuous in books called, "A Life
of William Shakspere," are the dreams
of fancy, fraud and fiction, used to fill
the lacuna, or gap, in the life of the Strat
ford man.

The proven facts of William Shaks-
pere's life are facts unassociated with au
thor craft— facts that prove the isolation
and divorcement of player and poet. The
proven facts of Ben Jonson's life are
facts interlacing man and poet. Almost
every incident in his life reveals his per
sonal affection, or bitter dislike, for his
fellow craftsmen, always ready for a
quarrel, arrogant, vain, boastful and vul
gar. There is much truth in Dekker's
charge, ' i 'Tis thy fashion to flirt ink in
"every man's face and then crawl into
"his bosom." He had many quarrels
with Marston, beat him, and wrote his
•'Poetaster on him." He was federated
in a comedy "(Eastward Ho)" with

AND ROBERT GREENE 163

Chapman, and was sent to prison for li
beling the Scottish nobility. Ben 'Jon-
son's personality and literary work are
inseparable. Drunk or sober, few have
served learning with so much pertinacity,
and fewer still, have so successfully chal
lenged admiration even from literary ri
vals, with whom at times he was most bit
terly hostile, and at other times, indis
putably open-handed and jovial.

Ben Jonson had a literary environ
ment always for there is perfect inter
lacement of man and craft. He became
one of the most prolific writers of his age
occupying among the men of his day a
position of literary supremacy. "In the
forty years of his literary career he col
lected a library so extensive that Gif-
"ford doubted whether any library in
"England was so rich in scarce and valu-
"able books." From the pages of Isaac
De Israeli we read, "No poet has left be-
"hind him so many testimonials of per-
"sonal fondness by inscriptions and
"addresses in the copies of his works

164 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"which he presented to his friends." But
of all these, as strange as it must seem to
the votaries of Shakspere, not a single
copy of Jonson's works is brought for
ward to bear witness of his personal re
gard and admiration for Shakspere, and
we may add that there is no testimonial
by Shakspere of his regard and personal
fondness for Ben Jonson, although many
of the literary antiquaries have un
earthed in their researches facts or new
discoveries, which they have brought for
ward as new particulars of the life of
William Shakspere. These, if not incom
patible with authorship, are surely di
vorcing Shakspere, the actor, from
Shakespeare, the author poet. They but
deepen the mystery that surrounds the
personality t)f the author of the immortal
plays — "The shadow of a mighty name."
At the same time they disclose the true
character of Shakspere the actor, money
lender, land-owner and litigant, which is
affirmative of John Bright 's opinion
that * l any man who believes that William

AND ROBERT GREENE 165

"Shakspere of Stratford wrote 'Hamlet'
"or 'Lear' is a fool."

The student reader will perceive that
Jonson's verse does not agree with his
prose, and that his "Ode to Sliakes-
"peare," which Dry den called "an inso
lent, sparing, and invidious, panegyric,"
Avas not the final word of comment which
is contained in Ben Jonson's "Discover
ies"— a prose reference in disparage
ment of Shakespeare, the writer, while
laudatory of the man whom he may have
believed was identifiable with the play
wright. We believe he was mistaken in
so believing. Ben Jonson was vulnerable
most in his character as a witness. The
reader must therefore be indulgent if we
make some remarks upon the credibility
and competency of this witness. The
elder writers on the subject of Jonson
and Shakespeare before Gifford's time
(1757-1826) were always harping on Ben
Jonson's jealousy and envy of Shakes
peare. Since Gifford's day the antiquary
has been abroad in the land without hav-

166 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

ing discovered anything of a literary life
of Shakespeare. As if by general consent,
all recent writers on the subject regard
Jonson's attestation, or his metrical trib
ute, to the "memory of my beloved au
thor, Mr. William Shakespeare, "an es~
"sential element in Shakespeare's biog-
"raphy as the title deed of authorship."
Having made him their star witness, we
shall hear no more of Jonson's jealousy
and envy of Shakespeare.

A final consideration will show how lit
tle Ben Jonson is to be relied on "as at-
" testing the responsibility of the Strat-
"ford plaj^er for the works which are
"associated with his name." There is not
a word or sentence in all Jonson's writ
ings which bear witness to £>hakspere as
a writer of plays or poems anterior to the
Stratford player's death, as all reference
to Shakespeare in Jonson's verse and
prose are posterior to this event. They
refute each other and discredit the
writer. "Conversations of Ben Jonson
"with William Drummond" are of great

AND ROBERT GREENE 167

literary and historical value and are im
portant too, as bearing on Ben Jonson's
competency and credibleness as a wit
ness. The Drummond notes were first
printed by Mr. David Lang, who dis
covered them among the manuscripts of
Sir Robert Sibbald, a well known anti
quarian. " Conversations, " as we have
it on the evidence of Drummond, is in
accord with almost every contemporary
reference to Jonson and internally they
agree with Ben Jonson's own "Discover-
"ies." There should be no controversy
in regard to the justice of the Scottish
poet's criticism. From the notes re
corded by Drummond we learn, "He
"(Ben Jonson) is a great lover and
"praiser of himself, a contemner and
"scorner of others, especially after drink
"which is one of the elements in which he
"liveth." The conversations recorded by
Drummond took place when Jonson vis
ited him at Hawthornden in 1618-19 and
disclose the fact that "Rare Ben" was a
vulgar, boastful, tipsy backbiter, who

168 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

black-guarded many of his fellow crafts
men. The last circumstance recorded of
Ben Jonson is where reference is made to
his display of self-worship at the expense
of others. In a letter dated from West
minster April 5, 1636, James Howell de
scribes a Solem supper given by Jonson
at which he and Thomas Carew were
present, when Ben seems to have
drenched himself with his favorite can
ary wine. Howell writes,

"I was invited yesternight to a Solem
" supper by B. J. whom you deeply re-
" member. There was good company, ex-
"cellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial
" welcome. One thing intervened which
"almost spoiled the relish of the rest.
"Ben began to engross all the discourse
"to vapour extremely of himself and by
"vilifying others to magnify his own
"muse. Thomas Carew buzzed me in the
"ear that Ben had barreled up a great
"deal of knowledge, yet seems he had not
"read the 'Ethiques' which, among other
"precepts of morality, forbid self com-

AND ROBERT GREENE. 169

"mendation. But for my part I am con-
"tent to dispense with this Roman infirm-
"ity of B's now that time has snowed
"upon his pricranium."

The reader is not unmindful that the
language of Ben Jonson is sometimes
grossly opprobrious, sometimes basely
adulatory, while his laudatory verses
on Shakespeare, Silvester, Beaumont
and other cotemporary writers, are in
striking contrast by the discrepancy of
testimony disclosed by his prose works
and conversations. In the memorial
verses Jonson tells us Shakespeare stood
alone— "Alone for the comparison of all
"that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
"sent forth or since did from their ashes
"come." The strictest scrutiny, how
ever, into the life and works of Ben Jon
son fails to denote his actual acquaint
ance with the works of the greatest gen
ius of our world. What became of his
enthusiastic eulogy of Shakespeare, when
"from my house in the Black-Friars this
""llth day of February, 1607" Ben Jon-

170 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

son writes his dedication— "Volpone" to
"The Two Famous Universities," which
should have disclosed his close friendship
with, and admiration for, William
Shakespeare, for the great dramatist was
then in the zenith of his power. The dedi
cation of "Volpone" was written nine
years before the death of William Shak-
spere, the player, when Jonson declared
"I shall raise the despised head of poetry
"again and stripping her out of those
"rotten and base rags wherewith the
"times have adulterated her form."

It should be remembered, that at the
time of this sweeping condemnation of
what he terms dramatic or stage-poetry,
thirty-one of the thirty-six of the immor
tal Shakespearean plays were then writ
ten. All of the very greatest— "Ham
let," "Lear," "Macbeth" -were, in Ben
Jonson 's estimation in 1607, "rotten and
"base rags." While in 1623 in the
"Memorial Verses" he tells us that their
reputed author was the "soul of the
age." "It is a legal maxim that a witness

AND ROBERT GREENE 171

"who swears for both sides swears for
"neither, and a rule of common law no
"less than common sense that his evi-
"dence must be ruled out." Ben Jonson's
egotism would, of course, preclude a just
judgment of the work of his fellow
craftsman. He felt that his own writings
were immeasurably superior. Did he
ever read the so-called Shakspere plays
before he wrote the "Ode to the Memory
"of my Beloved The Author, Mr. Wii-
"liam Shakespeare, and What He Hath
"Left Us" for the syndicate of printers'?
For the affirmative of the proposition
there is not the faintest presumption of
probable evidence. Jonson often became
the generous panegyrist of poets whose
writings in all probability he never had
read. He took pleasure in commending
in verse the works of men not worthy of
his notice, and in lauding and patronizing
juvenile mediocrity and poeticules of the
gutter-snipe order. In his prefatory
remarks to the reader in "Sejanus"
"there is the same display of excess

172 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

of commendation. Ben Jonson writes,
"Lastly I would inform you that this
"book in all numbers is not the same
"with that which was acted on the public
"stage wherein a second pen had good
"share, in place of which I have rather
"chosen to put weaker and no doubt less
"pleasing of my own than to defraud so
"happy a genius of his right by my loath-
1 i ed usurpations. ' '

According to Dryden, Ben Jonson 's
compliments were left-handed. Neverthe
less, the words "so happy a genius" have
directed the thoughts of commentators to
Shakespeare. Mr. Nicholson, however,
has shown that the person alluded to is
not Shakespeare, but a very inferior poet,
Samuel Sheppard, who more than forty
years later claimed for himself the honor
of having collaborated in "Sejanus" with
Ben Jonson. Compliments bestowed on
inferior men of the elder time are in
later times the reprisal of Shakespearean
buccaneers; while many of Jonson 's ver
sified panegyrics on cotemporary poets

AND ROBERT GREENE 173

were retrieved by his withering con
tempt for many of them, orally expressed,
or contained in his prose works, Shakes
peare being included among these. Still,
at the Apollo room of the Devil Tavern
were numbered the most distinguished
men of the day outside of literary cir
cles, as well as within, who sought his fel
lowship and would gladly have sealed
themselves of the tribe of Ben. Claren
don tells us that " his conversations were
"very good and with men of most note."

The following is, in part, from the
notes recorded by William Drummond,
Laird of Hawthornden.

" Conversations of Ben Jonson. His
" censure of the English poets was this:
"That Sidney did not keep a decorum in
"making every one speak as well as him-
"self. Spencer's stanzas pleased him not
"nor his matter.

"Samuel Daniel was a good honest
"man, had no children, but no poet, and
"was jealous of him; that Michael Dray-
•" ton's long verses pleased him not—

174 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"Drayton feared him and he esteemed not
"of him; that Donne's 'Anniversary' was

"profane and full of blasphemies

"that Donne, for not keeping of accent
"deserved hanging; that Shakespeare
"wanted art; that Day, Dekker and Min-
"shew were all rogues; that Abram Fran-
"cis, in his English hexameters, was a
1 ' fool ; that next to himself only Fletcher
"and Chapman could make a masque.

"He esteemeth John Donne the first
"poet in the world in some things; that
"Donne, himself, for not being under-
" stood would perish.

"Sir Henry Wotton's verses of a
" 'Happy Life' he hath by heart, and a
"piece of Chapman's translation of the
"thirteen of the 'Iliads,' which he think-
"eth well done. That Francis Beaumont
"loved too much himself and his own
' ' verse.

' ' He had many quarrels with Marston ;
"that Markham was not of the number of
"the faithful, and but a base fellow; that
"such were Day and Middleton; that

AND ROBERT GREENE * 175

" Chapman and Fletcher were loved of
"him ; that Spencer died for lack of bread
"in King street; that the King said Sir
"P. Sidney was no poet. Neither did he
"see any verses in England to the Scul
lers, meaning that John Taylor \vas the
"best poet in England; that Shakespeare
"in a play brought in a number of men
"saying they had suffered shipwreck in
"Bohemia where there is no sea near by
"some 100 miles.

"Sundry times he (Jonson) hath de-
"voured his books, sold them all for neces-
"sity; that he hath consumed a whole
"night in lying looking at his great toe,
"about which he hath seen Carthagenians
"and the Eomans fighting; that the half
"of his comedies were not in print; he
"said to Prince Charles, of Inigo Jones,
"that when he wanted words to express
"the greatest villain in the world, he
"would call him an 'Inigo,' Jones having
"accused him for naming him, behind his
"back, a fool, he denied it; but, says he, I
"said he was an arrant knave, and I

176 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

"avouch it; of all his plays he never
"gained 200 pounds; he dissuaded me
"from poetry for that she had beggared
"him when he might have been a rich
"lawyer, physician, or merchant; that
"piece of the 'Pucelle of the Court' was
"stolen out of his pocket by a gentleman
"who drank him drowsy."

These occasional infractions of sobriety
by Ben Jonson when he conversed with
Drummond at Hawthornden in 1618-19
became habitual with him long before
James Howell's invitation to a Solem
supper by B. J. 1636.

Day, Middleton, Dekker and Sir
Walter Raleigh could have instituted a
civil suit against Ben Jonson for defama
tion of character, because of the defama
tory words in conversation with William
Drummond of HawTthornden, had the
notes recorded by Drummond been pub
lished in the lifetime of the defamed.
However, they had come to regard him,
doubtless, as a notorious slanderer who
would as soon falsify as verify, and was

AND ROBERT GREENE 177

not to be believed in unsworn testimony
about his fellowmen or as a credible wit
ness as to any matter— one whose testi
mony wras none too good under every
sanction possible to give it. This is the
writer who gave genesis to the Stratford
myth. The matter-of-fact to be accen
tuated is that the contemporaries of the
writer of the immortal plays did not know
positively who wrote them; we do not
know7 positively who wrote them ; and our
latest posterity, when Holy Trinity's
monuments, turrets, and towers shall have
crumbled and commingled with the
shrined dust of William Shakspere of
Stratford-on-Avon, may not know posi
tively who wrote them.

In conclusion, it has not been our de
sign to point out, or suggest, who, in fact,
wrote the poems and plays, but rather to
show that the man of Stratford was by
education, temperament, character, repu
tation, opportunity and calling, wholly
unequal to so transcendent a task, and
that the authorship assumed in favor of

178 WILLIAM SHAKS'PERE

this man, rests upon no tangible proof,
but to the contrary upon strained and far
fetched conjecture, merely,

INDEX.

Pages

Alleyn Edward 17, 18-, 19, 42, 107

Addenbroke John 115, 116

Aubury John 141

Blank Verse 31

Bame Richard 78

Burbages 18, 42

Beaumont Francis. .122, 123, 142, 148, 150, 157, 169, 174

Burns Robert 48

Burton Robert 53, 157

Bruno 79

Bodley Sir Thomas 94

Betterton 103

Bright John 164

Brown Sir Thomas 156

Brown Richard 16

Bunyan John 44, 45

Brown J. M 54

Camden William 160

Chapman George 81, 93, 122, 136, 140, 141,

142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 154, 155, 163, 174, 175
Chettle Henry 35, 43, 49, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74,

75, 76, 77, "79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91

Collier J. P 25

Cook Dr. James 101

Coleridge S. T 47, 144, 145

Cicero 50, 84

Combe William 109, 110, 125

Cromwell Oliver 3

Dryden John 39, 148, 165, 172

Drummond Sir William 39, 166, 167, 173, 176

Dearborn 43

Daniel Samuel 145,173

Davis Cushman K 41

Dowland John 17

Diggs Leonard 128

Dance-Scene 100, 111, 124, 129

Dyce A 114

Davenant Sir William 135

Donne •• 174

Dekker 143, 162, 174

ii INDEX

Pages

Drayton , 150, 153, 174

Elizabeth Queen 53, 157

Emerson R. W '. '..114, 130

Fletcher John 43, 122, 142, 148, 150, 152, 157

Fleay .' 70

Ford John : 122

Farmer Dr 110

Fuller Thomas 159

Garrick David Ill

Grosart A 30

Robert Greene

4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28,

29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45,
46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61,
62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79,
80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 121, 140, 150, 151

Gifford William 165

Groats Worth of Wit.. 6, 9, 61, 62, 65, 68, 76, 85, 87, 89

Galileo 79

Hathaway Richard 102, 103

Howell James 168, 176

Hall Dr. John 100, 111, 124, 129

Hathaway Agnes or Anne 103, 104, 106

Herrick 45

Henry VI 30

Henslowe Diary 17, 19

Henslowe Philip. ..17, 19, 32, 42, 89, 93, 117, 118, 152, 156

Hallam Henry 114, 118, 130

Heywood 24, 143

Halliwell-Phillips 32, 156

Harvey Gabriel 18, 40, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 62, 69

Ingleby Dr 37

Jonson Ben 24, 39,

59, 81, 90, 92, 93, 94, 122, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142,
143 145, 148, 152, 153, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164,
165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176

James First 43, 147

Jusserand J. J 60

Jefferson Thomas 79

Kemp William 11, 14, 15,. Ifi 17, 18, 19,

20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 92

Kyd 43, 151

Keats John 146

Kind Hearts Dreams 35, 63, 68, 76, 91

Lucy Sir Thomas 107, 113, 114

Lincoln Abraham 89

Lodge Thomas 34, 72, 73, 140, 152

Lee Sidney 133, 137, 151

INDEX iii

Pages

London ,...15, 20, 21, 105

Lee Miss Jane 150

Lucrece '. 131, 138

Lamb Charles 146

Lander Walter Savage 153

Marlowe Christopher 6, 11, 30, 31, 35, 69, 70, 71,

72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 144, 150, 151

Milton John 49, 122, 146, 153

Mulcaster Richard 101

Miller Joaquin 50

Malone 94

Mannering Arthur 109, 110

Middleton 174

Massinger Phillip 122

Mansion John 24, 136, 162, 174

Meres Francis 138, 139, 140, 141, 155

Nash Thomas. . . . 7, 11. 15, 18, 29, 30, 32, 35, 38, 45, 49,
52, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 140

Napoleon 96

Nicholson Dr 172

Norwich 20, 22, 62

Overbury Sir Thomas : 43

Peele George

7, 11, 30, 35, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 83, 86, 151

Poe Edgar Allen 48

Quiney Richard 108, 111, 112

Rathway Richard 24

Rosebery Lord . . . • • 96

Rowe N 103, 134, 135

William Shakspere the Stratfordian

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 28

29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 45, 70, 71, 82,
86, 87, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106,
107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,
118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129,
130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 151, 152, 155, 156,
158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 177

Shakespeare the Author Poet 2, 31, 33, 37,

39, 43, 55, 60, 70, 72, 90, 124, 130, 131, 132, 138, 140,
142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155,
158, 159, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175

Shakspere John 96, 97, 98, 101

Shakspere Susana 100, 111

Shakspere Judith 100, 112

Shakspere Hamnet • • 108

Shake-scene 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Shake-rags 16, 23

Spencer Edmund 144, 156, 157, 173

iv INDEX

Pages

Stratford-on-Avon

1, 12, 41, 90, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108

Sidney Sir Phillip 18, 144, 157

Stevens George 2, 114, 130

Swinburn A 47, 96, 146, 151

Scott Sir Walter 59, 157

Strojenko Prof • • 66

Stratford Bust 128, 131

Spedding James 150

Saunders 132

Southampton Earl of... 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 149

Tarlton Richard 15, 114, 130

Tyrwhitt Thomas 9

"The Nine Days Wonder" 16, 21

Twain Mark 130

Thompson James 49

Taft William H. 79

Taylor John 175

Thorndike A. H 152

Tolstoy Leo 90

Upstart Crow 5, 9, 28, 82

Venus and Adonis 32, 131, 138, "* 49

Voltair • •

Washington George I

Wilson Robert, Senior 25, :'6, 2"

White Richard Grant 1 16

Wallace Professor 119

Waller Edmund 145

Wately Anna 102

PR Chapman, William Hall
2947 William Shakespeare and
G7C5 Robert Greene

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