The Shakespeare and myth: William Shakespeare and circumstantial evidence

Front matter

THE McEWEN COLLECTION

OF SHAKESPEAREANA

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Preface To The Second Edition

When, four years ago, I prepared the first edition of this work, I had very little idea that its appearance was to be considered a personal affront to the memory of William Shakespeare, or that I was myself to be accused of heterodoxy — rank disloyalty—- threatened with active adverse operation of the Stratford curse, etc. Being familiar with the difficulty (to which the more honest commentators confessed) of believing, from internal evidence, that but one single hand wrote the Plays and Poems, I supposed myself only doing Shakespeare students a service by grouping the external evidence thereto for them as well. To be sure, the book presented an extreme view of the circumstantial case against Shakespeare, but there seemed to be no other plan of making the discussion valuable. One can hardly be expected to argue heroically in support of a conceded presumption, and I certainly did not propose to myself a re-writing of the stereotype Essay on Shakespeare, which — like Major-General Stanley's military knowledge — accrued

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at about the beginning of the present century. Neither did it seem to me that orthodox Shakespeareans (if by that term we mean those who believe William Shakespeare to have written every line, exit, entrance — to have made every pen stroke in some thirty-seven plays; to have borrowed plots and incidents by the handful, but never by any chance to have used the words or speech of another) were exactly in a position to protest against an alleged claimant being fully, even emphatically, heard. They had certainly had ample time to present their side. Their day in court had lengthened out to over two centuries. To raise the hue and cry against hearing the other side seemed to me as if they proposed to confess that they had half heartedly, feebly, and imperfectly presented their own case, or felt incompetent to be intrusted with it further, or lacked confidence in the presumption in their favor.

Still less was I, nor am I yet, able to see anything emotional, anything over which gentlemen should lash themselves into a temper, in a passionless historical question as to something which happened three hundred years ago. So long as the capital question of a Shakespeare Canon remains open, a discussion of the secondary question of the William Shakespeare authorship, whether considered as a whole (as is the method of the Baconian Society) or as to particular works, or parts of works (as conducted by

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Mr. Fleay in his admirable " Shakespeare Manual," and Mr. Rolfe, in his invaluable " Friendly Edition "), would seem to be proper. I, for one, am willing to confess that after many years of familiarity with it the question as to what William Shakespeare wrote with his own pen, and what became his (to use Mr. R. G. "White's language)." after the theatrical fashion and under the theatrical conditions of his day," is, in my opinion, an inquiry as legitimate as it is fascinating — entitled to the fullest examination and treatment on purely historical grounds; and one which may not only be pursued to any extent without casting suspicion on the querist's loyalty or othodoxy, but whose discussion is always a contribution the more — and therefore always welcome — to the world's noble and ever magnifying Library of Shakespeareana.

In leaving the subject of the authorship as a whole (for I shall never touch it, except possibly in detail, again), there are one or two points to which I ask permission to call attention, viz. : *

I. The very great elaboration the Baconian Theory has received — since my first edition — at the hands of Mrs. Henry Pott, Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, and others.

II. The wonderful demonstration which my friend Ex-Governor Davis has given in his " The Law in Shakespeare," of the argument from the Legalisms which is only touched upon in my own pages. The eloquent Governor has gone beyond all his predeces-

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sors in showing that the Plays are Dot only fluent in the use of our lawyers' and attorneys' jargon and technicalities; but that their very structure is legal and juridicial; that the Hamlet, at least, was once thoroughly revised by some one learned in the law of England, by supplying the legal explanation ol the succession of Fortinbras, just as, in another play, a misconstruction of the Salic law was set right, etc.

On re-reading the following pages I see only two points as to which I have something to add, viz :

In the first edition I was obliged to confess that the evidence that Sakespeare's verses were favorites at court, and he the friend of Southampton, did not impress me as of any particular value. But it has since occurred to me that, although obituary poetry is not of any legal value as evidence, yet Ben Jonson, writing for his contemporaries, would hardly have introduced such a line as

" That did so take Eliza and our James," if he had not been pretty sure of his facts; especially since Elizabeth's courtiers were still alive, and "our James" himself upon the throne. The Plays, then, did attract some attention at court, and the playwright may have been sent for, even though we have no evidence to that effect. And I was in error also in inferring that when young Shakespeare left Stratford for London, he was liable to arrest under the statute against u schollers, idlers, common

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players of interludes and minstrels wandering abroad, jugglers, tinkers and petty chapmen." On referring to that statute (39 Eliz. c. 4), I find that it was not passed until 1599, the year Shakespeare's father received his grant of arms. However, as to the friendship between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, I am still not only skeptical, but every record of those times which I approach, confirms me in my disbelief.

The answers to the first edition (I have read ninetythree of them) seem to me mostly sentimental. The only practical point made appears to be that the discrepancies of the Will are to be accounted for by supposing the Plays to have passed either to Mrs. Shakespeare the relict, or to Dr. John Hall the executor, of the dramatist. But in either case, entries to that effect in the Books of the Stationers' Company would have been imperatively essential. And it must be remembered, too, that copyright in those days — being by common law and not by statute — did not expire by limitation at all, but was perpetual. (In other words, were it possible to trace them, we could find to-day parties in whom the copyright of the Shakespeare Plays still vests.) If light is wanted as to the laws of literary property in Elizabeth's and James's days, why guess at it, when law libraries are accessible, and the Books of the Stationers' Company extant? Blount and Jaggard, who printed the First

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Folio, were alive to their own interests, when (November 8, 1623,) they copyrighted the sixteen Plays first printed in that Folio. How did they obtain a right to print the remaining twenty which had already been copyrighted? Nobody knows. They did not re-copyright them for the simple reason that, having helped themselves to them, they had no legal rights to make registry of. Blount and Jaggard were not interfered with, because these Plays, having lost for the time their commercial value, were not esteemed worth a lawsuit by their former printers. But the interesting fact remains that it was the firm of Blount and Jaggard, and not their predecessors, who printed " stolne and surreptitious copies." It is simply silly to talk, as commentators will, of Shakespeare omitting to mention his Plays in his Testament, because his copyrights in them had expired, or because he or his representatives had sold them to the Globe Theater.

If his Plays had never been entered for copyright on the Books of the Stationers' Company, he or his executors might undoubtedly have sold them without registering the transfer. But, unfortunately, these Plays were registered ; and, once registered, it was impossible to alienate them except by registry of later date. If, however, William Shakespeare never owned more than what we call to-day a Stageright in the Plays, all is accounted for. There was no law

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compelling an entry of stageright in the Stationers' Books, and no public office at which anything analogous to — (what nowadays becomes of such large pecuniary value) — a right to represent and perform dramatic productions — could be entered and secured.

In reading the late autobiographies of Anthony Trollope and Sergeant Ballantyne, I was impressed with the conviction that — down to the first quarter of the present century — nothing thorough (except flogging) was considered essential to the education of the British youth, in country schools. 1 was led by this to examine carefully into what must have been the course of instruction in Stratford school, when young Shakespeare is supposed to have been a student thore. To make my examinations as valuable as possible, I cited the testimony of Roger Asham, John Milton, and others nearly contemporary, and went to the pains of compiling a considerable glossary of the Warwickshire Dialect. The result was too bulky, of course, for adding to this work, and has been published elsewhere in a volume by itself.

While I have never yielded my assent to the Baconian theory, I have been so widely accused of bringing it aid and comfort that I would like to say a final word or two in regard to it :

It seems to me quite as impossible that Francis Bacon should have written certain portions of the Plays and Poems as that William Shakespeare should have

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written those other portions which the general consent of the New Shakespeare Society, Mr. Fleay, Mr. W. J. Rolfe, and others have rejected. But yet Francis, afterward Lord, Bacon, was one of the most versatile men who ever lived. It is not safe to judge of his poetical powers by his Paraphrase of the Psalms, which was written — just as John Milton's paraphrase was written — in what is to us, to-day, the purest doggerel. But that these versions were so written purposely, in order that the meanest intellects might commit them to memory and sing them, no one at all familiar with the times can doubt for a moment. If there is any degree in doggerel, Milton's versions are the most ridiculous. But the purpose for which both paraphrases were made is evidently one and the same. Nor can we exactly rail at the absurdity of a lord chancellor of England writing stage plays in the days of Elizabeth, when we have seen a prime minister of England writing novels in the age of Victoria. We can, even now, hear the twenty-second century's comparative critic cry, "Ridiculous to conceive of the great Beaconsfield, the man whose statesmanship grappled with the world, who, singly and alone, confronted an empire in its flush of victory, and forced it to relinquish a prize its sword had just won — to conceive of that man writing a few florid and stagey novels. And then, if it were not ridiculous on its face, look at the

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internal evidence; count the 'stopped' and the c unstopped' and the 'double' endings: the 'run on' lines, and the 'alternates:' and, for the 'birth marks of style' (which anyone not 'color-blind' can see for himself), put one of his speeches at the Berlin congress alongside a chapter of Lothair ! " In short, so versatile, so great in every literary walk of that day, was Francis Bacon, that nobody can wonder that the old school Shakespearean, — while willing to admit Greene, Marston, Nash, Middleton, Fletcher, or anybody else, a collaborateur with Shakespeare in the plays, — stands aghast at any approach of Francis Bacon to that vicinity, and cries " sacrilege 7 ' and " lunacy ! "

For my part I have never been able to decide whether the Baconian Theory were the greater compliment to Bacon or to Shakespeare himself. Certainly "William Shakespeare is the only man who ever lived whose works are accounted too sublime for himself — the only man as to whom the centuries are still debating whether he was not — after all — a Demigod I

Shakespeare Society, • October 2, 1885.

Preface To The First Edition

M. Guizot, in his History of England, states the Shakespearean problem in a few words, when he says :

"Let us finally mention the great comedian, the great tragedian, the great philosopher, the great poet, who was in his lifetime butcher's apprentice, poacher, actor, theatrical manager, and whose name is William Shakespeare. In twenty years, amid the duties of his profession, the care of mounting his pieces, of instructing his actors, he composed the thirty-two tragedies and comedies, in verse and prose, rich with an incomparable knowledge of human nature, and an unequaled power of imagination, terrible and comic by turns, profound and delicate, homely and touching, responding to every emotion of the soul, divining all that was beyond the range of his experience and for ever remaining the treasure of the age — all this being accomplished, Shakespeare left the theater and the busy world, at the age of forty-five, to return to Stratford-on-Avon, where lived peacefully in the most modest retirement, writing nothing and never return-

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ing to the stage — ignored and unknown if his works

had not forever marked out his place in the world —

a strange example of an imagination so powerful,

suddenly ceasing to produce, and closing, once for all,

the door to the efforts of genius."

But M. Guizot is very far from suggesting any

prima facie inconsistency in this statement as it

stands.

Since every man reads the Shakespearean pages for

himself and between the lines, much of what we are expected to accept as Shakespearean criticism must fail of universal appreciation and sympathy. But none who read the English tongue can well be unconcerned with the question as to who wrote those pages; and it would be affectation to deny that the intense realism of our day is offering some startling contributions to the solution of that question.

For instance, the gentlemen of the " New Shakespeare Society " (whom Mr. Swinburne rather mercilessly burlesques in his recent "Studies of Shakespeare") submit these dramas to a quantitative analysis; and, by deliberately counting the "male," "female," "weak," and " stopped" endings, and the Alexandrines and catalectics (just as a mineralogist counts the degrees and minutes in the angles of his crystals), insist on their ability to pronounce didactically and infallibly what was written by William Shakespeare, and at what age ; what was composed by Dekker, Fletcher, Marlowe, or

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anybody else ; what was originally theirs, touched up by William Shakespeare or vice versa, etc. It is curious to observe how this process invariably gives all the admirable sentiments to William Shakespeare, and all the questionable ones to somebody else ; but at least these £Te\v Shakespearean gentlemen have surrendered somewhat of the' c cast-iron"theory of our childhood — that every page, line, and word of the immortal Shakespearean Drama was written by William Shakespeare demigod, and by none other — perhaps, even opened a path through which the unbelievers may become, in due time, orthodox.

There are still, however, a great many persons who are disposed to wave the whole question behind them, much as Mr. Podsnap disposed of the social evil or a famine in India. It is only a " Historic Doubt," they say, and " Historic Doubts " are not rare, are mainly contrived to exhibit syllogistic ingenuity in the teeth of facts, etc., etc. The French, they say, have the same set of problems about Moliere. Was he a lawyer? was he a doctor ? etc. — and they all find their material in internal evidence — e. g., an accurate handling of the technique of this or that profession or science : parallelism, practical coincidence, or something of that sort.

The present work is an attempt to examine, for the benefit of these latter, from purely external evidence, a question which, dating only within the current quar-

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ter century, is constantly recurring to confront investigation, and, like Banquo's troublesome shade, seems altogether indisposed to " down."

I have to add my acknowledgments to Mr. Julian Norris, for his careful preparation of the Index to these pages.

Grandview-on-Hudson, October 2, 1881.

THE SHAKESPEAREAN MYTH.

Part I. The Mystery

HE thirty-seven plays called, collectively, " Shakespeare/' are a phenomenon, not only in English letters, but in human experience. The literature of the country to which they belong, had, up to the elate of their appearance, failed to furnish, and has been utterly powerless since, to produce any type, likeness, or formative trace of them ; while the literature of other nations possesses not even a corresponding type. The history of a century on either side of their era discloses, within the precincts of their birth, no resources upon which levy could have been made for their creation. They came and went like a meteor; neither borrowing of what they found, nor loaning to what they left, their own peculiar and unapproachable magnificence.

The unremitting researches of two centuries have only been able to assign their authorship (where it rested at first) to an hiatus in the life of a wayward village lad named William Shakespeare — who fled his native town penniless and before the constable, to re turn, in a few years, a well-to-do esquire — with a coa:

of arms and money in his pocket.

We have the history of the hoy, and certain items as to the wealthy squire, who left behind him two or three exceedingly common-place and conventional epitaphs (said to be his handiwork) and a remarkable will ; but, between them, no hint of history, chronicle, or record. Still, within this unknown period of this man's career, these matchless dramas came from somewhere, and passed current under his name.

The death of their reputed author attracted no contemporary attention, and for many years thereafter the dramas remained unnoticed. Although written in an idiom singularly open to the comprehension of all classes and periods of English-speaking men, no sooner did they begin to be remarked, than a cloud of what are politely called "commentators" bore down upon them; any one who could spell feeling at liberty to furnish a " reading;" and any one who supposed himself able to understand one of these " readings," to add a barnacle in the shape of a " note." From these " commentators " the stately text is even now in peril, and rarely, even to-clay, can it be perused, except one line at a time, across the top of a dreary page of microscopic and exasperating annotation. But, up to within a very few years, hardly a handful of Shakespearean students had arisen with courage to admit — what scarcely any one of the " commentators" even, could have failed to perceive — the utterly inadequate source ascribed to the plays themselves.

It is not. yet thirty years since an American lady was supposed to have gone crazy because she declared that William Shakespeare, of the Globe and Blackfriars theaters in London, in the days of Elizabeth, was not the author of these certain dramas and poems

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for which — for almost three hundred years — he has stood sponsor.

Miss Bacon's " madness," indeed, has been rapidly contagious. Now-a-days, men make books to prove, not that William Shakespeare did not write these works, but that Francis Bacon, "Walter Raleigh, or some other Elizabethan, did not. And we even find, now and then, a treatise written to prove that William Shakespeare was, after all, their author ; an admission, at least, that the ancient presumption to that effect no longer covers the case. And, doubtless, the correct view is within this admission. For, probably, if permitted to examine this presumption by the tests which would be applied to any other question of fact, namely, the tests of contemporary history, muniments, and circumstantial evidence, it will be found to be quite as well established and proved that William Shakespeare was not the author of the plays that go by his name, as any other fact, occurring in London between the years 1585 and 1616, not recorded in history or handed down by tradition, could be established and proved in 1881.

If a doubt as to the authorship of the plays had arisen at any time during or between those years, and had been kept open thereafter, the probability is that it would have been settled by this time. But, as it is, we may be pretty certain that no such doubt did arise 5 and that no such question was asked, during the years when those who could have dispelled the doubt or answered the question were living. When we are about to visit a theater in these days, what we ask and concern ourselves with is: Is the play entertaining? Does it "draw?" And, when we witness it, the question is : Do we enjoy it — or does it bore us? Will we recommend our friends to come that they may be entertained, too, and that we may discuss it with them ? or will Ave warn them to keep away? We very speedily settle these questions for ourselves. Doubtless we may and do inquire who the author is. But we do not enter into any discussion upon the subject, or charge our minds enough with the matter to doubt it when we are told. The author's name is, not unusually, printed on the play-bill before us; we glance at it indifferently, take what is told us for granted, and think no more about it. If the name happens to be assumed, we may possibly see its identity discussed in the dramatic columns of our newspapers next morning, or we may not. If the play entertains us, we commend it. If it drags, we sneer at it, get up and go off. That is all the concern we give it. The evening has slipped away; and, with it, any idle speculations as to the playwright who has essayed to amuse us for an hour.

If, three hundred years hence, a question as to who wrote the play we saw at Mr. Daly's theater or Mr. Wallack's theater last evening should come up, there would be very little evidence, not any records, and scarcely an exhibit to refer to in the matter. Copies of the play -bill or the newspapers of the day might chance to be discovered ; but these — the internal testimony of the play itself, if any, and a sort of tacit presumption growing out of a statement it was nobody's cue to inquire into at the time it was made, and had been nobody's business to scrutinize since — would constitute all the evidence at hand. Now this supposititious case is precisely all-fours with the facts

PART I. — THE MYSTERY. 13

in the matter of the dramatic works which we call, collectively, Shakespeare's. Precisely: except that, on the evenings when those plays were acted, there were no play-bills, and, on the succeeding morning, no daily newspaper. We have, therefore, in 1881, much fewer facilities for setting ourselves right as to their authorship than those living three hundred years after us could possess in the case we have supposed. The audiences who witnessed a certain class of plays at Shakespeare's theaters, in the years between 1585 and 1616, were entertained. The plays "drew." People talked of them about town, and they become valuable to their proprietors. The mimic lords and ladies were acceptable to the best seats; the rabble loved the show and glitter and the alarum of drums ; and all were Britons who gloated over rehearsal of the prowess of their own kings and heroes, and to be told that their countrymen at Agincourt had slain ten thousand Frenchmen at an expense of but five and twenty of themselves. But, if M. Taine's description of the Shakespearean theaters and the audience therein wont to assemble may be relied upon, we can pretty safely conclude that they troubled themselves very little as to who fashioned the dialogue the counterfeit kinsrs and queens, soldiers, lords, and ladies spoke ; or that they saw any thing in that dialogue to make such speculation appear worth their while. Nor can we discover any evidence, even among the cultured courtiers who listened to them — or in the case of Elizabeth herself, who is said to have loved them (which we may as. well admit for the argument's sake) — that any recognition of the plays as works worthy of any other than a stage-manager, occurred.

Even if it should appear that these plays thus performed were the plays we now call Shakespeare's ; had any of this audience suspected that these plays were not written for them, hut for all time; that, three hundred years later — when the plays should not only he extant, hut more loved and admired than ever — the thinking world should set itself seriously to probe the mystery of their origin ; there might have been some interest as to their producer manifested, and we might have had some testimony competent to the exact point to-day.

But it is evident enough that no such prophetic vision was vouchsafed to them, and no such prophetic judgment passed. Nor is the phenomenon exceptional. The critic does not live, even to-day, however learned or cultured or shrewd, who would take the responsibility of affirming upon his own judgment, or even upon the universal judgment of his age and race, that any literary composition would be, after a lapse of three hundred years, not only extant, but immortal, hugged as its birthright by a whole world. Such a statement would have been contrary to experience, beyond the prophecy of criticism, and therefore only to be known — if known at all — as a Fact. Moreover, it could only be known as a fact at the expiration of the three hundred years. Doubtless, few critics would care, in any case, to commit themselves upon record one way or the other in a matter so hypothetical and speculative as the judgment of posterity upon a literary performance, and certainly nothing of the sort occurred in Shakespeare's day, even if there were any dramatic or literary critics to speculate upon the subject. There can be no doubt — and it must be conceded

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— that certain acted plays did pass with their first audiences, and that certain printed plays, both contemporaneously and for years thereafter, did pass with the public who read them, as the compositions of Mr. Manager Shakespeare; and that probably even the manager's pot companions, who had better call to know him than any others, saw nothing to shake their heads at in his claim to be their author (provided he ever made any such claim ; which, by the way, does not appear from any record of his life, and which nobody ever asserted as a fact). If they did — with the exception only of Robert Greeue — they certainly kept their own counsel. On the one hand, then, the question of the authorship was never raised, and, on the other hand, if it had been, the scholars and critics who studied the plays (supposing that there were any such in those days) could not possibly have recognized them as immortal. If they had so recognized them, they would doubtless have left us something more satisfactory as to the authorship of the compositions than the mere " impression that they were informed" that the manager of the theater where they were produced wrote them; that they supposed he was clever enough to have done so, and they therefore took it for granted that he did. That is all there is of the evidence of Shakespeare's own day, as to the question — if it still is a question — before us.

But how about the presumption — the legal presumption, arising from such lapse of time as that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary — the presumption springing from tradition and common report — that William Shakespeare composed the Shakespearean plays ? It is, of course, understood that one presumption is as good as another until it is disturbed. It is never safe to underrate an existing presumption ; as long as it stands at all, it stands as conclusive; once overthrown, however, it is as if it had never existed.

A presumption three hundred years old may be a strong one to overthrow. But if its age is all there is of it — if it be only strong in years — it can yet be toppled over. Once overthrown, it is no more venerable because it is three hundred years old than if it were only three. An egg-shell will toss upon the crest of an angry surf, and, for very frailty, outride breakers when the mightiest ship man ever framed could not survive an instant. But it is only an egg-shell, for all that, and a touch of the finger will crush and destroy it. And so, formidable as it was in age, the presumption as to William Shakespeare's authorship of the great dramas which for three hundred years had gone by his name, had only to be touched by the thumb and finsrer of common sense to crackle and shrivel like the egg that sat on the wall in the Kindergarten rhyme, whieh all the king's army and all the king's men could not set up again, once it had tumbled over.