William Shakspere, a study in Elizabethan literature

Front matter

i

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

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Contents

Chapter Page

I. Introduction 1

II. The Facts of Shakspere's Life 7

II The Facts Of Shakspere's Life

v [All the known documents concerning Shakspere are collected in Mr. Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. In Mr. F. G. Fleay's Life anil Work of Shakespeare is a masterly discussion of them. Dowdeu's Primer, and Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere state the facts more compactly. In none of the authorities is it always easy to separate facts from inferences. If Wilder's Life, Boston, 1893, were a bit more careful in detail, it would be perhaps the most satisfactory, because the least complicated with conjecture.]

Ox April 26th, 1564, William, son of John Shakspere, was baptized at Stratford-on-Avon. John Shakspere, the father, had come from the neighboring country to Stratford, where he was engaged in fairly prosperous trade. In 1557 he had married Mary Arden, a woman of social position somewhat better than his own. In 1568 he was High Bailiff, or Mayor of Stratford. Until 1577, indeed, the extant records indicate that he was constantly looking up in the world. In that year, they begin to indicate that his circumstances were declining; in 1578 they show that he had to put a mortgage for ,£40 on an estate called Asbies. Meanwhile he had become the father of five other children, 1 of whom four survived.

1 Gilbert, b. 1566; Joan, b. 1569; Anne, b. 1571, d. 1579; Richard, b. 1573; Edmund, b. 1580. Two older daughters had died in infancy.

Of William Shakspere's youth, then, we may be sure that it began in a well-to-do family of Stratford, increasing in numbers and prosperity ; and that when he was about thirteen years old the prosperity came to an end.

On November 28th, 1582, when he was half-way between eighteen and nineteen years old, comes the first record which directly concerns him. A bond was given for his marriage to Anne Hathaway, a woman then in her twenty-sixth year, and of social position in no way better than Shakspere's. On May 26th, 1583, their first child, Susanna, was baptized. What inferences may be drawn from these dates have given rise to much discussion. In all probability they indicate a practice still common among respectable country folk, in America sometimes called " keeping company ; " and are interesting chiefly as they throw light on the manners to which Shakspere was born. On February 2nd, 1585, his twin children, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized. In 1587, there is a record of his sanction, at Stratford, to a proposed arrangement concerning the Asbies mortgage which his father, who Avas now in prison for debt, had executed in 1578. This is literally all that is known of his early life at Stratford. Stories of how he Avent to school, how he saw plays, how he was at Kenilworth when Queen Elizabeth came there in 1575, how he was apprenticed to a local butcher, how he poached in Sir Thomas Lucy's park, have no authority. They are not impossible ; there is nothing to prove them.

SETAKSPERE'S LIFE 9

From the actual facts, however, certain inferences may be drawn. At the age of twenty-three, he was the eldest of the five surviving children of a ruined country tradesman ; he was married to a woman already about thirty, who had borne him three children ; and he had no recorded means of support.

Five years later comes the next reference to him. On September 3d, 1592, Robert Greene, the dramatist, died. His last book, Green's Giroatsivorth of Wit ; bought with a Million of Repentaunce, speaks rather scurrilously of the theatres where he had rioted away his life. In the course of it occurs this passage :

" Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned: for unto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleave: those Puppits (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al have beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all have beene beholding, 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 upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, 1 supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his oune conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie. that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions. ... It is pittie

1 Cf. 3 Henry VI. Act I. Scene iv. 137.

men of such rare wits, should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes. . . . For other new commers, I leave them to the mercie of these painted monsters, who (I doubt not) will drive the best minded to despise them; for the rest its skils not though they make a jeast at them." *

From this passage, we may clearly infer that by the middle of 1592, Shakspere was a recognized writer of plays in London, that he was more or less involved in the theatrical squabbles of the time, that The Third Part of King Henry VI. was in existence, and that — at least to the mind of Robert Greene — he had plagiarized.

Within the year, Henry Chettle, the publisher of this posthumous diatribe of Greene's, published an apology for it, in the course of which he writes thus : —

"With neither of them that did take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be : The other, ... at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, . . . because my selfe have seen his demeanor no lesse civill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes : Besides, clivers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooves his Art." 2

It has been generally inferred that the two persons

1 Shakspere's Centurie of Prayse. Second Edition, London. New Shakspere Society, 1879, p. 2.

2 Centurie of Prayse, p. 4.

thus alluded to are the graceless Marlowe and the excellent Shakspere.

On April 18th, 1593, about a week before his twenty-ninth birthday, Venus and Adonis, his first published work, 1 was entered in the Stationers' Register. During the same year it was published in quarto, with Shakspere's name, by one Field, who was Stratford-born. It proved highly popular ; there were eleven quarto editions before 1630, and more than twenty allusions to it during Shakspere's life-time have been discovered.

On February 6th, 1594, A noble Roman history of Ti/tus Andronicus was entered in the Stationers' Register, with no mention of Shakspere's name ; it was published, thus anonymously, in 1600. On May 9th, 1594, the Rape of Lucrece was entered ; and it was published within the year. From the terms of the dedication, compared with those in the dedication of Venus and Adonis? it has been inferred that Shakspere had meanwhile become personally known to his patron, the Earl of Southampton. The poem, though popular, was less so than Venus and Adonis ; there were six quartos before 1624.

At Christmas time, 1594, the " servauntes to the Lord Chamberlayne " acted twice at court ; and Shakspere is mentioned as one of the members to whom payment for these performances was made. Mr. Fleay 3 shows reason to believe that he had belonged

1 And is not this the whole meaning of the much-discussed phrase in the dedication, " the first heir of my invention " '?

to this company, under various patrons, since 1587, in which case he must have acted at court before ; but this is the first distinct mention of his name. At Christmas-tide, 1594, " A comedy of Errors (like unto Plautus his Menoechmi ") was played at Gray's Inn. Clearly, by this time Shakspere was established in his profession. Just how he became so there is no record ; the tales of his holding horses at the theatredoor, and so on, rest on no valid authority.

So far, then, the records show Shakspere first as a probably imprudent and needy youth, saddled with a family at twenty -three ; and secondly, at thirty, as a fairly established theatrical man in London. In view of these facts, the next records l are significant. A conveyance of land at Stratford, dated January 26th, 1596, describes John Shakspere, the father, as " yeoman." In the Heralds' College, a draft grant of arms to this same John Shakspere, dated October 20th, 1596, describes him as a " gentleman." From the fact that this implied return of prosperity to the family has no other apparent source than the growing prosperity of the dramatist, it has been inferred that, like any other normal Englishman, Shakspere wished to inherit arms and to found a family. If so, another record, of the same year, is doubly pathetic ; on August 11th, his only son, Hamnet, was buried at Stratford, in the twelfth year of his age.

The record of Shakspere's material prosperity, however, continues. In Easter Term, 1597, he bought

1 Leopold Shakspere, p. ciii.

New Place, a mansion and grounds in Stratford, for .£60; thereby becoming a landed proprietor. During the same year appeared the first quarto editions of his plays : namely, Romeo and Juliet in a very imperfect state and probably pirated, Richard II., and Richard III. ; his name, however, did not appear on any of the titlepages. Another indication of prosperity is that in November his father filed a bill in Chancery to recover the Asbies estate which he had mortgaged nineteen years before. At Christmas time Love's Labour 's Lost was played before the Queen at Whitehall.

In 1598 this play was published, with Shakspere , s name ; so was the First Part of Henry IV. ; so were fresh quartos of Richard II. and Richard III. ; and the Merchant of Venice was both entered in the Stationers' Register and published.

In this year, too, a fragment of old correspondence gives us a glimpse of Shakspere. On the 2-lth of January one Abraham Sturley, a Stratford man, wrote to his kinsman Richard Quiney, who had gone to London on business, as follows : —

"Our countriman, Mr Shaksper, is willinge to disburse some monie upon some od yarde land or other at Sliotterie . . . (Ur father) thinketh it a veri fitt patterne to move him to deale in the matter of our tithes. Bi the instruccion a can give him thearof, and bi the frends he can make therefore, we thinke it a fair marke for him to shoote att, and not unpossible to hitt."

Eight months later, on the 25th of October, Quiney wrote thus : —

" To my loveinge good ffrend & countreymann Mr. Wrn. Shackspere. ... I am bolde of you as of a ffrende, craveinge yowr helpe with xxx li uppon Mr. Bushells and my securytee, or Mr. Myttons with me. . . . Yow shall ffrende me much in helping me out of all the debettes I owe in London, I than eke God, and much quiet my mynde, which wolde not be indebeted."

Some word of this letter seems to have been sent to Sturley, for on the 4th of November, Sturley wrote to Quiney, acknowledging

"ur letter of the 25 of October . . . which imported that our countriman Mr. Wm, Shak. would procure us monie, which I will like of as I shall heare when and wheare and howe; and I prai let not go that occasion if it mai sort to our indifferent condicions."

Later still, Richard Quiney's father wrote his son on the subject in person, perhaps a shade less confidently : —

" Yff yow bargen with Wm. Sha. ... or receve money | therefor, bring youre money homme that yow may."

Whatever these transactions were, Shakspere seems by this time to have presented himself to his fellowtownsmen at Stratford as a well-to-do man, and possibly a useful friend at court.

In 1598, furthermore, Shakspere acted in Ben Jonson's Every Man in Ms Humour. But the most notable fact of the year for us is the publication of Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia. 1 In this book, which

1 Or Wit's Treasury.

was entered in the Stationers' Register on September 7th. Shakspere is mentioned at least six times 1 as among the best of English authors. The most celebrated and familiar of these passages is the following, so obviously helpful in fixing the chronology of Shakspere's plays : —

"As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c.

"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines ? so Shakespeare among y e Euglish is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Getleme of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice : for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry the If.. King John, Titus Andronicits and his Romeo and Juliet.

"As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin : so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if they would speake English."

At thirty-four, then, Shakspere had pretty clearly established himself as a poet, as a dramatist, and as an actor ; and, in the opinion of Stratford people, as a well-to-do, influential man of business and landholder.

1 Centurie of Prayse, 21-23.

In these characters the records maintain him with little change for above ten years to come. In 1599 two of his Sonnets, and three poems from Love's Labour 's Lost, appeared in a volume called the Passionate Pilgrim, ascribed at the time to him, but otherwise probably spurious. In 1609 appeared the quarto of the So?mets as we have them.

To pass from poems to plays, in 1599 appeared a fairly complete quarto of Romeo and Juliet. In 1600, As You Like It, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, the Second Part of Henry IV., the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Merchant of Venice were entered in the Stationers' Register, and all of these except As You Like It were published in quarto, — Henry V. without his name ; in the same year appeared anonymously the first extant quarto of Titus Andronicus. In 1602, Tivelfth Night was acted ; the Merry Wives of Windsor was entered and published ; and in the same year were entered the First and Second Parts of Henry VI. and the Revenge of Hamlet. This is believed to be the version which appeared in quarto in 1603 ; the full text of Hamlet appeared in 1604. In 1607 King Lear was entered " as yt was played before the Kinges Majestie at Whitehall uppon St Stephens night at Christmas last." In the following year it appeared in two separate quartos, on the titlepages of which Shakspere's name is printed with very marked conspicuousness. In 1608, too, Pericles and Anthony $ Cleopatra were entered. In 1609 Troylus 3? Gressida was entered and twice published ; and

Pericles, too, twice appeared in quarto. This was the year, we may remember, in which the Sonnets appeared. From this time on, although a number of the foregoing plays were reprinted during his lifetime, no new work of his is known to have been either entered orprinted until alter his death; and the only one which appeared before the folio of 1623 was Othello, entered in 1621, and published in 1622. From these facts it would appear that his popularity as a dramatist was at its height in 1600 ; and that at least his activity diminished after 1609.

To pass from his works to his acting, he became, in 1599, a partner in the Globe Theatre, then just erected ; and iiis company performed at court during Christmas-tide, in 1599, 1600, and 1602. It has been inferred by Mr. Fleay 1 that their absence from court in 1601 was connected with Essex's rebellion. It is possible that the play concerning Richard II., performed on the eve of that insurrection, was Shakspere's ; if so, the Queen probably had reason to withhold her favor from him and his associates ; but the matter is all conjectural. Queen Elizabeth died on March 24th, 1603. On May 19th, King James granted a license to Shakspere and others by name, to perform plays and to be called the King's Players. The company in question gave several plays at court each year until 1609 ; and in 1604, on the occasion of the King's entry into London, Shakspere, along with the other players, was granted four yards and a half of red cloth. During the years in question, then, he was professionally at the height of his prosperity.

The records of his private affairs maintain this conclusion. In 1600 he brought an action for £1 against a certain John Clayton, and won it ; in 1602 he bought one hundred and seven acres of land near Stratford, as well as other real property in the town •, in 1604 there came another small action, and some large and small purchases of land. The records, in short, show him constantly and punctiliously thrifty ; and as early as the purchase of 1602 he was legally described as " Win. Shakespere of Stratford-uppon-Avon, gentleman." This description occurs a few months after he became the head of his family ; for on September 8th, 1601, the year of the Essex conspiracy, his father was buried. In 1605, his fellow-player, Augustine Phillips, bequeathed him "a thirty-shilling piece in gold." On June 25th, 1607, Shakspere's elder daughter, Susanna, then twenty-four years old, was married to Dr. John Hall, a physician of Stratford; on February 21st, 1608, Elizabeth Hall, his grandchild, was baptized. Two months before, his youngest brother, Edmund, " a player," had died in London, and had been buried in S. Saviour's, Southwark. On September 9th, 1608, Shakspere's mother was buried at Stratford; on October 16th, he stood godfather there to one William Walker. These dry facts tell us something. Throughout the period of his professional prosperity he was demonstrably strengthening his position as a local personage at Stratford ; and the chances seem to be that he came thither in person more and more.

From this time on, what records touch him personally show him chiefly at Stratford. In 1611, to be sure, the surprisingly detailed note-book of Dr. Simon Forman mentions performances of MachetJi, Cymheline, and the Winter s Tale. In 1613, along with some older plays, the Tempest was performed at court : in the same year, when the Globe Theatre was burned, the fire started from a discharge of cannon in a play about Henry VIIL, which may have been Shakspere's ; and certainly in the same year he bought, and mortgaged, and leased, a house and shop in Blackfriars, London. What attracts one's attention more, however, is his presence in the country. In 1610 he bought more land from the Combes ; in 1611 he subscribed to a fund for prosecuting in Parliament a bill for good roads ; in 1612, described as " William Shackspeare, of Stratford-uppon-Avon, . , gentleman," he joined in a suit of which the object was to diminish his taxes ; in 1614 he received a legacy of £5 from his Stratford neighbor, John Combe ; in 1614, too, he was deep in a local controversy about the fencing of commons. Meanwhile there is said to be no record directly connecting him with theatrical life after 1609, when his publication ceased.

In view of this, the last paragraph of the Dedication of John Webster's White Devil l is in a way significant : —

1 Centime of Pray se, 100.

" Detraction is the sworne friend to ignorance: For mine owne part I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of other mens worthy Labours, especially of that full and haightned stile of maister Chapman : The lahor'd and understanding workes of maister Johnson : The no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister Beaumont & Maister Fletcher: And lastly (without wrong last to he named) the right happy and copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, & M. Heywoocl, wishing what I write may he read by their light: Protesting, that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martiall.

This was written in 1612. The first play of Chapman was published in 1598 ; the first of Heywood, in 1599 ; the first of Jonson and the first of Dekker in 1600; the first of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1607. Webster, probably a greater man than any of these, speaks of them all, in his first words, as traditional models. He groups Shakspere with them ; and Shakspere had certainly begun his work, as a rival of Greene and Peele and Marlowe, years before any of these others except perhaps Dekker. In 1612 he was already, in a way, a tradition.

What little more is recorded of him belongs to the year 1616. On January 25th, his will was prepared. On February 10th, his younger daughter, Judith, married Thomas Quiney. On March 25th lie signed his will. Just one month later, on April 25th,

1616, " Will. Shakspere, gent.," was buried in the church of Stratford.

All the rest of the story — how he died on his fifty-second birthday, how undue merry-making had something, to do with it, how he made a doggerel epitaph for John Combe, and so on — is mere legend. Every known fact we have before us, except perhaps the fact that the editors of the Centurie of Prayse, who are a shade over-eager, have discovered more than a hundred 1 allusions to Shakspere between 1592 and 1616. At first sight, the record seems very meagre.

On reflection, though, it tells more of a story than at first seems the case. The son of a country tradesman who was beginning to improve his condition, Shakspere, in early youth, met with family misfortune, and made at best an imprudent marriage. Until the age of twenty-three, he was still in these circumstances. At twenty-eight he had established himself as an actor, a dramatist, and a poet in London. At thirty-two he had begun to help his father, and incidentally the family name of Shakspere, back into local consideration. At thirty-four he was a landed proprietor, a person who could be useful to country friends visiting London, and — at least in the opinion of Francis Meres — a first-rate literary figure. Till forty-five he maintained his professional position, constantly strengthening himself as a land-

1 Including those published in Fresh Allusions : New Shakspere Society, 1886.

holder meanwhile. From forty-five to fifty-two, he was a country gentleman of Stratford. Prosaic enough this looks at first sight ; but, to whoever will sympathetically appreciate the motives which have made Englishmen what Englishmen have been, it is not without its heroic side. We have had cant enough about snobbishness. A true-hearted Englishman always wants to die a gentleman if he can ; and here, in the facts of Shakspere's life, we have the record of an Englishman, who, from a position which might easily have lapsed into peasantry, worked his way, in the end, to one of lasting local dignity.

Ill

LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE IN ENGLAND UNTLL 1587

[The best popular history of English Literature is still Stopford Brooke's Primer. The best popular work on Elizabethan Literature is Saintsbury's ; the best on the early drama is Addington Symonds's Skakspere's Predecessors. More satisfactory than any of these, as far as it goes, is Frederick Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Literature. For whoever wishes more thorough treatment of the English stage, Mr. A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature is useful ; and Mr. Fleay's Chronicle History of the London Stage, and Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama are very valuable.]

From the facts we have just considered, it is clear that in 1587 Shakspere was still at Stratford; and that by 1592 he was already so established a dramatist as to be grouped by Robert Greene with Peele and Marlowe. In the next year, 1593, the publication of Venus and Adonis brings him finally before us as a man of letters. The fact that, in 1587, the Earl of Leicester's players, the company with which he was later associated, paid a professional visit to Stratford, has led some people to surmise that when they returned to London they took him along. Whatever the facts were, we cannot be far wrong in assuming that the state of English Literature in 1587 fairly represents what Shakspere found, just as the state of things in 1612 fairly represents what Shakspere left.

His literary activity, then, his productive period, we may assume to be limited to twenty-five years, the last sixteen of the reign of Elizabeth and the first nine of the reign of James I. The state of our dramatic literature during this period, and to a great degree that of English poetry, may be adequately studied, for our purposes, in works generally assigned to him. To appreciate these, however, we must first glance at the state of English Literature which immediately precedes them.

Putting aside Chaucer, who was already as solitary a survival of a time long past as he is to-day, we may broadly say that during the first twenty-nine years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, English Literature contained and produced hardly anything permanent; a few lyrics, like Wyatt's Forget not Yet, or Lyly's Cupid and Oampaspe, still to be found in any standard collection, may be said to comprise the whole literature of that period which has survived. In a traditional way, however, certain writers of the time remain familiar ; without knowing quite what their work is like, people in general have a nebulous idea that the work exists, and at least formerly was of some importance. The earliest of these writers do not strictly belong to the time of Elizabeth at all. Both Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who are commonly regarded as the pioneers of our modern literature, died in the reign of Henry VIII. Their

ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL 1537 25

writings, however, remained chiefly in manuscript until 1557, the year before the accession of Elizabeth. In that year, together with a considerable number of lyrics by other and later men, their songs and sonnets were published in Tottel's Miscellany . With that publication, modern English Literature, we may say, first became accessible to the general public.

By that time, as a hasty glance at the Miscellany, will suffice to show, the movement begun fifteen or twenty years before by Wyatt and Surrey had already progressed considerably. Wyatt was a gentleman, an ambassador, a statesman ; Surrey, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, was a man of the highest rank and fashion. Wyatt, the elder by fourteen years, was by far the more serious character. The fact that nowadays they are commonly grouped together is due not so much to any close personal relation, as to the accident that their works were first printed in the same volume. It is justified historically, however, by the relation which their work bears to what precedes and to what follows. These courtiers, these men whose lives were passed in the most distinguished society of their time, found not only the literature, but even the language, of their native England in a state which, compared with the contemporary French or Italian, may fairly be called barbarous. Each alike did his best to imitate or to reproduce in English the civilized literary forms already prevalent on the Continent. Each, for example, translated sonnets of Petrarch ; each made original sonnets after the manner of that master ; and Surrey, among other things, was the first to use English blank verse, in a careful, and by no means ineffective, translation of two books of the JEneid. Each, in short, made a considerable number of linguistic and metrical experiments ; and neither seems to have thought of publication. Manuscript copies of their verses were multiplied among their private friends. A fashion was started, until at last the ability to play gracefully with words became almost as essential to the equipment of an Elizabethan gentleman as the ability to ride or to fence. As a rule, however, these men of fashion followed the example of Wyatt and Surrey to the end. They improved the power and the flexibility of the language surprisingly ; but they did not publish. In 1586, for example, Sir Philip Sidney died ; the Arcadia, the first of his published works, did not appear till 1590. As late as 1598, too, we may remember that, according to Meres, the " sugred sonnets " of Shakespere, who was by no means a man of rank, followed the fashion in being reserved for his private friends. In 1587, then, one may safely say that for above thirty years a certain graceful poetic culture had been the fashion ; that its chief conscious object — so far as it had any — was to civilize a barbarous language ; that it delighted in oddity and novelty, and that it inclined to disdain publication.