The study of Shakespeare

Front matter

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Preface

For some fifteen years I have conducted classes in the study of Shakespeare at the University of Indiana. I early found that great advantage was derived from an intimate knowledge of the social conditions that obtained at the time the plays were written. My attempt to furnish some assistance in this direction by the publication of an account of Shakespeare's London and of the people of Elizabeth's generation has given me confidence in the preparation of a handbook designed differently from many now in use.

Though criticism of the plays forms the larger part of the following pages, I have had no intention of writing a volume of criticism. The book is not intended to be read on its independent merits, but in conjunction with a study of the texts. Though I hope it will be of interest to those already familiar with the plays of Shakespeare, it is primarily addressed to students.

Inasmuch as it is intended to be an assistance, I have not felt it necessary to discuss the obvious. Oftentimes a mere suggestion is sufficient to start the reader aright so that he will discover all that is necessary without further assistance. For instance, I have frequently observed a class which read The Taming of the Shrew without the least comprehension of its meaning. To the members of the class

The Tempest ....

THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE

Chapter I Shakespeare's Biography

The poet's father was John Shakespeare of Snitterfield, who married in 1557 Mary Arden of Wilmcote, near Stratford. Some five or six years before his marriage John Shakespeare moved from Snitterfield to Stratford, where he was living at the time of the poet's birth. Stratford was then a small but flourishing country town on one of the main thoroughfares to London; and John Shakespeare soon became one of its prominent citizens.

In 1552 he was living in a house in Henley Street, either the house now known as the poet's birthplace, or the one adjoining. He set himself up in business as a trader with a miscellaneous assortment of wares, a fact which doubtless accounts for his designation among older historians as a glover by one, a butcher by another. During the next few years he was prosperous in a worldly way, occupying successively several important offices in the gift of the municipality.

The poet was the third child and first son of John Shakespeare. He was baptized in the parish church, April 26, 1564. It was then customary for this ceremony to take place as soon after birth as possible.

There is, however, no authority for the usually accepted date of his birth, April 22 or April 23.

Stratford possessed a good free grammar school, which Shakespeare probably entered about 1571. Instruction was principally carried on in Latin, a language the rudiments of which were known to the poet, though he seems never to have become a proficient scholar. There is no reason to believe that he ever studied Greek. A reading knowledge of Italian was probably picked up after leaving Stratford. The acquirement of his knowledge of French may have begun at Stratford and have been continued by himself in later years. He possessed no claim to be called " one skilled in the tongues " ; on the other hand, he certainly possessed a good foundation in Latin, French, and, perhaps, Italian. Doubtless he read little. The Bible was probably to him the most accessible book in English. Though his plays contain many biblical allusions, they suggest, as Mr. Lee puts it, " youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency of the mind in a stage of early development rather than close and continuous study of the Bible in adult life." * It should be remembered in this connection that the service of the Church of England provides for the continuous reading of both the Old and the New Testament.

Shakespeare was still a schoolboy in 1575 when Queen Elizabeth visited Robert Dudley at Kenilworth. He was, however, probably withdrawn from school in 1577, when but thirteen years of age, to be apprenticed to his father. This move was proba-

* Sidney Lee : A Life of William Shakespeare. Revised edition. Page 17.

SHAKESPEARE'S BIOGRAPHY 3

bly due to the declining family fortunes. For some years John Shakespeare's fortunes and his prominence in civic affairs had been on the wane. Records of his borrowings and of the sale of some of his property show that in a worldly way he was in distress. Never again did he regain his former position of importance.

Shakespeare's marriage in 1582 has given rise to endless speculation. The whole subject has been treated in detail by Mr. Lee. The facts, stripped of all inference, are as follows: Anne Hathaway was the poet's senior by eight years; the marriage was arranged and solemnized in a hasty and irregular manner, mainly at the instigation of the friends of the bride; within six months a daughter was born to the poet. In after life Shakespeare did not scruple to live away from his wife and family for the better part of twenty years, though he visited Stratford occasionally, and at last returned to his home and family to spend the years that followed his retirement from the London stage.

While still a resident of Stratford, Shakespeare acquired a familiar knowledge of outdoor life. In his plays the art and practice of falconry is at his tongue's end. He knew about horses and dogs. Flowers were his familiar friends. He knew every superstition and all the folklore of the countryside. Above all, he knew the country characters and their pranks.

In fact, association with a group of these country characters in one of their ribald escapades was, according to persistent tradition, the cause of his leaving Stratford. The hall and park of Charlecote was the most pretentious estate in the immediate neighborhood of his home town. Shakespeare^ in company with other idle fellows, raided the deer park at Charlecote. For this they were severely prosecuted by the owner of the park, Sir Thomas Lucy. In retaliation Shakespeare is said to have written a ballad which so incensed Sir Thomas that he redoubled his persecutions. In order to escape, Shakespeare fled from Stratford. In later years he vented his spleen by caricaturing Sir Thomas Lucy in the person of Justice Shallow of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Traditions that attempt to fill up the gap of the next few years in the poet's life are wholly without a proved foundation. It is idle to guess where he went; and what he did is not known. He probably left Stratford in 1585. We next hear of him in London about 1590, under circumstances that imply that he had been there for some time and was already firmly footed in the theatrical world.

During Shakespeare's career there were many companies of actors ; not nearly so many, however, as the numerous names applied to them would suggest. There were two companies of men actors of far greater prominence than any others. One was under the associate management of the money lender, Philip Henslowe, and his son-in-law, the great actor, Edward AUeyn. From their patron, the Lord High Admiral, they were known as the Admiral's Men.

The other and more notable company was the one to which Shakespeare belonged. It is known by many names. Leicester's early company, under the patronage of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, became at his death in 1588 Lord Strange's Men. They became known later, in all probability, by the name

SHAKESPEARE'S BIOGRAPHY 5

of his subsequent title. Lord Derby. Under successive patrons this company was known as Lord Hunsden's Men, and as the Chamberlain's Men. After the accession of James in 1603 they were known as the King's Men. Shakespeare is known to have been a member of the company as early as 1594; and there is no reason to doubt the probability that he was connected with it from the beginning of his theatrical career.

What Shakespeare's first duties about the playhouse were we do not know. When he appears again in history after his flight from Stratford he is an actor of minor roles, and a maker-over of old plays, with, perhaps, a play or two of his own to his credit. For many years he continued to act, taking subordinate parts in some of his own plays. For the next twenty years, however, his biography, as known to us, is mainly the record of the succession of his dramas.

It is easy to piece out in broad lines the history of his life during this period of twenty years. He never became a great actor. He soon, however, passed beyond the apprentice stage of play writing. From a maker-over of old plays he soon became a writer of original plays, for some years mainly in imitation of the established writers of the day. Then he broke loose from the trammels of imitation to write the long list of dramas on which his fame rests to-day. A study of his plays shows him a constant student. Books he read, to be sure, and many of them; but it is as a student of the life about him that he stands pre-eminent. A consideration of plays following the Essex Rebellion discloses a temporary morbidness that to many implies some unfortunate connection with that ill-starred attempt to supplant Elizabeth. Another dark page in his history is disclosed vaguely to some by the description of an intrigue set forth in the sonnets. But this is a shadowy inference at the best.

Meantime he was growing rich. He derived a revenue, not only as play writer and play actor, but also as sharer in the company's profits. The latter was probably his chief source of income. About 1610 or 1611 he retired from the theatrical world. He had from time to time purchased properties in Stratford, among them the most prominent private house in town. To New Place he returned to live the remaining years of his life.

Shakespeare died at Stratford, April 23, I6I6. On April 25 he was buried in the parish church. His wife and his two daughters, Judith [Quiney] and Susanna [Hall] survived him. By 1623, the year the Folio Edition of his plays was published, a bust of the poet was placed in Stratford church. This is one of the two likenesses that are known to have been in existence at such an early date. The other is the portrait engraved on the title page of the First Folio.

Besides his worldly goods Shakespeare left a book of sonnets, a few minor poems that are doubtfully attributed to him, two long narrative poems, and the plays. The list of plays shows Shakespeare's versatility. Nine of them are history plays, among which are the very best of their type; there are a couple of farces, one of which is, perhaps, the best produced during the generation. There are numerous comedies and tragi-comedies. But upon the great series of tragedies which began with Julius Ccesar and ended with Coriolanus Shakespeare's position rests supreme.

Chapter II A General View Of London

Roughly speaking, mediaeval London began with the building of the White Tower by William the Conqueror, and ended with the great fire of 1666. Throughout this long period changes were made from year to year; but, after the great religious establishments were once built, the face of London changed so slowly that the picture of one generation is the picture of the next. The most sudden sweeping change was made at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the period of most rapid expansion was the reign of Elizabeth. It is the London of the latter half of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, the most brilliant period in its history between Hastings and the Fire, that the following pages essay to present.

Three hundred years ago the relative importance of London to the rest of England was even greater than it is to-day. All the theaters and all the publishers of note were in London or in the immediate vicinity. The court was held for most of the time at Westminster. There was but one Royal Exchange in the kingdom. All persons of any pretense to wealth or influence possessed their town house or inn. The city set the manners and furnished the news for the whole island; it was, indeed, the heart of the kingdom.

In order to draw a fancy picture of the Elizabethan city as Shakespeare knew it, one who is familiar with the modern metropolis must blot from his mind all present associations — not only in regard to size, but also in regard to outward aspect, and in the manners and customs of the people; for in these respects the city of that day was wholly different from the city of this. It should be remembered that the fire of 1666 practically swept away all but the suburbs of Elizabethan London. Hardly a town in the world of ancient origin preserves so few of its original structures as does the capital of England. One can go about the city to-day and encounter practically nothing besides the street names that reminds him of times before the Fire. Roughly speaking, a line connecting the Tower, Crosby Hall, Christ Church, Ludgate Circus, and the approach to Blackfriar's Bridge includes the part of the city destroyed by the great conflagration. And this area, though it is but a small part of the city we know, constituted the major part of the city in I6OO.*

In the latter part of the sixteenth century a Dutch traveler by the name of Hentzner visited England, and afterward wrote a very interesting account of his foreign travels. He visited London, and his quaint account of the sights is full of the local color of which we are so desirous. Let us for a moment station ourselves where he must have been when he first caught a glimpse of what was then, as it is to-day, one of the chief cities of the world.

We are on the Surrey side, approaching London

* The part of the modern metropolis known as The City approximates in area the Elizabethan city.

along the old Roman road which leads to the bridge. Perhaps before Hentzner crossed the river he visited St. Mary Overies. If he had ascended the Tower he would have seen a splendid sight. Across a river that was as unlike the modern Thames as imagination can picture lay the bustling city. The river was clear and shining, sparkling with swans that swam gracefully in miniature fleets of snowy whiteness. Behind, on either side, and beyond the busy capital were green fields spotted with flowers or covered with golden grain and emerald turf. The city itself was nestled upon three hills. On an eminence to the right rose the many-towered walls of the citadel surrounding the lofty White Tower of William the Norman. Two small valleys rendered visible by the dip in the red-tiled roof line separate it from the great cathedral pile of St. Paul's. This church was the glory of all England. No other cathedral in the kingdom was so beautiful, the source of so much pride; and one who looks at the modern structure that occupies its site sighs with deep-felt regret over the ignominious contrast.

What perhaps impressed the Dutch traveler most was the innumerable collection of spires that rose from the densely populated city. The Dissolution of the Monasteries had not fallen lightly upon London; in fact, it had left it, as Mr. Besant says, a city of ruins. For all that, the parish churches had been spared. Hardly one had fallen in the national game of snatch-grab that followed the Dissolution. Stow tells us that there were no less than a hundred and twenty, and all of these were provided with towers or steeples. Yet, high above the clustered mass of slender spires rose the great bulk of the cathedral. Its lofty, graceful spire, however, had been burned some years before, and only a mutilated stump replaced it.

If we pause for a moment to listen we can hear the mingled peals of bells and the roar of the city, for it was even more noisy then than now. People lived in the streets and used them constantly as a daily convenience that is suggested to one by modern Paris, not by London.

Immediately beneath us lies the only bridge across the Thames. London Bridge of those days was a little east of the present structure; in fact, it crossed the river just where St. Magnus' Church now stands. It was an arched bridge of nearly a score of arches, no two of them exactly the same in width. About the piers were timber frameworks of wood that so encroached upon the waterway that the flow while the tide was rising and falling was greatly impeded. Such obstacles were thes. lozenge-shaped " starlings," that the backing up of the water at mid-tide produced a fall beneath the bridge of several feet. Pennant alludes to the sound of the falling waters in the following words : " Nothing but use could preserve the rest of the inmates who soon grew deaf to the sound of falling water, the clamors of watermen, or the frequent shrieks of drowning wretches." The old plays sometimes refer to the sound of the bridge being heard over the whole city. This natural waterfall was pressed into use to operate a set of force pumps that supplied water to a large part of the city. Much of the local travel that is now carried on in cabs was then performed upon the river in small boats. The cry with which one hailed a waterman was Westward ho ! or Eastward ho ! according to the direction. If, in the journey, it was necessary to cross the bridge at mid-tide the passenger had to land and wait. Sometimes they " shot " the bridge, that is, took their chances of mishap and went over the fall. The danger that attended this kind of rapid transit gave rise to the proverb : London Bridge was made for wise men to walk over and fools to go under. When the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards the Queen, was conveyed a prisoner to the Tower, it was necessary for the boatman to row about in the neighborhood of the bridge for an hour before it was deemed safe to " shoot."

What to us appears the most peculiar feature of this old bridge was not the starlings or the noisy river, but the covered way or arcade that capped the arches throughout the entire length. From end to end, with the exception of two small openings, London Bridge was covered with houses that inclosed and roofed a narrow street: dwellings above and shops below. There were many kinds of shops, but in the time of Elizabeth the bridge was especially noted for the manufacture of pins, and the fair dames of London often bargained among the narrow stalls above the water for this indispensable article of dress.

At the southern end of the bridge was a huge towered gate-house whose principal use in the days of Queen Bess was to afford a resting place for traitors' heads. Imagine the trait of character that prompted the people to flock to an execution by the hundred, in holiday attire, and afterward gaze unshocked upon a score of bloody heads on pikes, grinning ghastly from the battlemented tower. About midway on the bridge was a handsome chapel. Beneath the last three arches of the northern end were the pumps for forcing water to which allusion has already been made. At the London approach was another tower, almost in ruins by the third quarter of the century, and taken down by the end.

Unless Hentzner hailed a boat at the stairs of the Bear tavern by the bridge foot with the cry of Northward ho ! he must have entered the city along the gloomy bridge. The roadway through this structure was scarcely wider than a single cart, and in the press one had to exercise considerable ingenuity to escape collision, the bridge being always a busy thoroughfare. At two places only were open spaces where people could stand for safety.

Instead of following the Dutch traveler to his tavern, let us take a general view of the outward appearance of the city in methodical order. The city, as has been said, was then comparatively small; it was also comparatively open in the manner of building. For, though the streets presented solid and continuous lines of house fronts, there were gardens behind most of them. In fact, many of the city blocks resembled open courtyards occupied on the four sides with buildings. There were numerous churches, and about most of them burying grounds of considerable size. Furthermore, it was but a short walk to the country in any direction. Ten minutes was sufficient for a person to reach the open fields from any part of London afoot. Hunting and hawking were still common sports of the neighborhood and were carried on as near the center of the city as the British Museum or the Liverpool Street Station.

Elizabethan London, which in area corresponded closely with the modern City, was surrounded by a wall that remained almost intact on three sides till a time long subsequent to that under description. Even so early as the days of Fitzstephen the river side of the wall had disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence except in such names as Dowgate and Billingsgate. The course of the Elizabethan wall was from the north side of the Tower ditch, along the Minories in a northwesterly direction to Aldgate; then, curving west and north, followed Camomile and Wormwood Streets and London Wall. The angle of the wall at the northwest corner is still marked by the existing base of the tower which stands in the churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate. From this point the wall turned directly south along the present Noble Street, west, crossing Aldersgate Street, and southwest between St. Bartholomew's the Great and Christ's Hospital to a point west of Newgate prison. Thence it ran south to Ludgate Hall, west to Ludgate Circus, and south again to the river.

The wall was built, except for a small portion, upon the foundation of an earlier Roman wall. The more recent structure was partly of rough stone and partly of tile, and was capped by a battlemented wall of brick and stone. At short and irregular intervals were small towers in addition to the fortified gate-house. None of these smaller towers has survived, nor is there any accurate description of them. The base of one in St. Giles churchyard has been mentioned and another was discovered after a fire about a century ago. It was two and twenty feet in height, but not complete.

There were several gates: the Tower postern, Aidgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate postern, Aldersgate, Greyfriar's postern, Newgate, and Ludgate. These, with the exceptions of the posterns, were huge towered structures, with, usually, a triple passage: one for vehicles, the others for pedestrians. The latter were closed at night by heavy doors, the former by ponderous portcullises. Newgate and Ludgate were used as prisons, the others often as private dwellings for those who guarded the gates.

The wall on the outer side was bordered by a ditch two hundred feet across ; on the west side, however, the place of the ditch was taken by the Fleet River. Of old time the ditch not only was a defense, but also supplied most of the water and much of the fish used in the city. In Elizabethan times, however, it had become too filthy for such purposes, and was, moreover, encroached upon in many places, filled up with debris, turned into garden plots, and otherwise marred and displaced, much to the chagrin of the old historian Stow.

This relic of mediaeval life had been of real service to the city in the time of Queen Mary, and actually formed an obstacle that turned to naught the ill-starred rebellion of Essex; yet, in spite of these facts, the wall was an obsolete and useless feature of London life. It was no longer necessary as a protection, and, in consequence, the city began to spread beyond the limits of its confines at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. By the end, the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor extended over the adjacent ground north of the river in every direction for a distance varying from one to three-fourths of a mile. All this area, however, was not wholly occupied by buildings. On the east, running northwest from the Tower, was a single row of houses along the Minories. The same was true of much of the north side of the city; but in the immediate vicinity of the gates the populated portion extended along the high road for some little distance. There was, Stow tells us, a continuous line of houses along the river east of the Tower for half a mile or more; and the road from Bishopsgate was well occupied all the way to Shoreditch Church, which was well outside the city limits. Northwest of the city in the vicinity of Smithfield, and the church and hospital of St. Bartholomew's, a considerable hamlet had sprung into existence. The Strand was lined upon the south side with palatial residences all the way to Westminster, though the mayor's jurisdiction stopped then, as it does now, at Temple Bar. The north side of the Strand was built upon for the first time during the reign of Elizabeth.

The population of the city of that day cannot be accurately given; but a fairly trustworthy estimate can be obtained. The city contained in all likelihood not far from one hundred thousand people, with as many more in Westminster, Southwark, and the neighboring suburbs to the north and west. It is interesting to note the foreign population at this time. In 1567 there were 40 Scots, 428 French, 45 Spaniards and Portuguese, 140 Italians, 2,030 Dutch, 44 Burgundians, 2 Danes, and 1 Liegois. In 1580 there were 2,302 Dutch, 1^838 French, ll6 Italians, 1,542 English born of foreign parents, and 664 not specified.

The increase of native population kept pace with the foreign increase, a tendency the government tried hard to interrupt. A proclamation of Elizabeth forbade the erection of any new buildings upon hitherto unoccupied sites within three miles of any of the city gates. The same proclamation forbade more than one family to live together in the same house. The noble persons were fast removing their mansions to new locations without the walls, and the lastmentioned provision of the above proclamation was directed against the popular custom of turning the abandoned mansions into tenement houses, crowded and filthy fosterers of the plague. The reason given for this proclamation and some others of a similar nature, which, however, were frequently violated, was to prevent the danger arising from disease and disorder, both important factors in the Elizabethan life; but there can be but little doubt that under the surface of these building regulations lay a substantial jealousy, if not an actual fear, of the rapidly growing wealth and power of the city corporation.

Within the area bounded by the old wall the city was divided by a few grand thoroughfares, but, for the most part, by narrow and filthy streets. They were dark and dingy from the proj ecting upper stories of the gabled houses that shut out most of the light, and dirty under foot, while one in passing was not infrequently deluged with the house-maid's slops from an upper window. Most of the streets were poorly paved, or not at all, with a kennel half full of stagnant water in the center. Sometimes there was no specially prepared footway; often such a convenience was little more than indicated by a low line of posts. The public streets were made the dumping grounds for all sorts of rubbish. Scalding Alley owed its name to the habit of scalding chickens there for sale in the neighboring market of the Poultry. So little was the value of correct sanitation known that as late as 164-7 the following permission is recorded in the official reports of the Royal Hospital: " No man shall cast urine or ordure in the streets afore the hour of nine in the night. Also he shall not cast it out but bring it down and lay it in the channel." It is not to be wondered at that the people often encountered the blue cross on a doorpost, the sign of plague, or that statutes required every householder to build a fire opposite his house three times a week in order to purge the atmosphere.

The houses that lined these streets were of various kinds. There were still standing many of the fine old mansions of the nobility that retained the appearance, though no longer the reality, of stone fortifications. One of the finest of these remained almost until yesterday — Crosby Hall. The houses of contemporary build were usually of brick and timber, eked out with lath and plaster, and constructed on a less pretentious scale. The woodwork of the fronts was often grotesquely carved and painted, and the roof usually gabled towards the street, as is still to be seen in the Staple Inn.

The windows were generally composed of small panes of glass imbedded in lead, and opening casement-wise; while each story of the house projected several feet beyond the line of the story below. Often a street of fair width on the ground showed but a narrow sky line above, the house fronts being so close together that people could shake hands across the space. In addition, shop-keepers often built penthouses against their lower walls for the display of goods, thus encroaching still further upon the narrow passage.