Chapter 21

[153b]Even this sonnet is adapted from Drayton. See Sonnet xxii. in 1599 edition:

An evil spirit your beauty haunts me still . . .Thus am I still provoked to every evilBy this good-wicked spirit, sweet Angel-Devil.

But Shakespeare entirely alters the point of the lines by contrasting the influence exerted on him by the woman with that exerted on him by a man.

[155]The work was reprinted by Dr. Grosart in hisOccasional Issues, 1880, and extracts from it appear in the New Shakspere Society’s ‘Allusion Books,’ i. 169 seq.

[157]W. S. are common initials, and at least two authors bearing them made some reputation in Shakespeare’s day. There was a dramatist named Wentworth Smith (see p. 180infra), and there was a William Smith who published a volume of lovelorn sonnets calledChlorisin 1595. A specious argument might possibly be devised in favour of the latter’s identity with Willobie’s counsellor. But Shakespeare, of the two, has the better claim.

[161]No edition appeared before 1600, and then two were published.

[162]Oberon’s Vision, by the Rev. W. J. Halpin (Shakespeare Society), 1843. Two accounts of the Kenilworthfêtes, by George Gascoigne and Robert Laneham respectively, were published in 1576.

[163]Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1844.

[164]All these details are of Shakespeare’s invention, and do not figure in the old play. But in the crude induction in the old play the nondescript drunkard is named without prefix ‘Slie.’ That surname, although it was very common at Stratford and in the neighbourhood, was borne by residents in many other parts of the country, and its appearance in the old play is not in itself, as has been suggested, sufficient to prove that the old play was written by a Warwickshire man. There are no other names or references in the old play that can be associated with Warwickshire.

[165]Mr. Richard Savage, the secretary and librarian of the Birthplace Trustees at Stratford, has generously placed at my disposal this interesting fact, which he lately discovered.

[167]It was licensed for publication in 1594, and published in 1598.

[168a]The quarto of 1600 reads Woncote: all the folios read Woncot. Yet Malone in the Variorum of 1803 introduced the new and unwarranted reading of Wincot, which has been unwisely adopted by succeeding editors.

[168b]These references are convincingly explained by Mr. Justice Madden in hisDiary of Master Silence, pp. 87 seq., 372-4. Cf. Blunt’sDursley and its Neighbourhood, Huntley’sGlossary of the Cotswold Dialect, and Marshall’sRural Economy of Cotswold(1796).

[170]First adopted by Theobald in 1733; cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 257.

[172a]Remarks, p. 295.

[172b]Cf. Shakespeare Society’s reprint, 1842, ed. Halliwell.

[172c]This collection of stories is said by both Malone and Steevens to have been published in 1603, although no edition earlier than 1620 is now known. The 1620 edition ofWestward for Smelts,written by Kinde Kit of Kingston, was reprinted by the Percy Society in 1848. Cf.Shakespeare’s Library, ed. Hazlitt, I. ii. 1-80.

[174]Diary, p. 61; see p. 167.

[175]Nichols,Progresses of Elizabeth, iii. 552.

[176a]Cf. Domestic MSS. (Elizabeth) in Public Record Office, vol. cclxxviii. Nos. 78 and 85; and Calendar of Domestic State Papers, 1598-1601, pp. 575-8.

[176b]Cf. Gilchrist,Examination of the charges. . .of Jonson’s Enmity towards Shakspeare, 1808.

[177]Latten is a mixed metal resembling brass. Pistol inMerry Wives of Windsor(I. i. 165) likens Slender to a ‘latten bilbo,’ that is, a sword made of the mixed metal. Cf.Anecdotes and Traditions, edited from L’Estrange’s MSS. by W. J. Thoms for the Camden Society, p. 2.

[179]This, or some synonym, is the conventional epithet applied at the date to Shakespeare and his work. Weever credited such characters of Shakespeare as Tarquin, Romeo, and Richard III with ‘sugred tongues’ in hisEpigramsof 1595. In theReturn from Parnassus(1601?) Shakespeare is apostrophised as ‘sweet Master Shakespeare.’ Milton did homage to the tradition by writing of ‘sweetest Shakespeare’ inL’Allegro.

[180]A hack-writer, Wentworth Smith, took a hand in producing thirteen plays, none of which are extant, for the theatrical manager, Philip Henslowe, between 1601 and 1603.The Hector of Germanie, an extant play ‘made by W. Smith’ and published ‘with new additions’ in 1615, was doubtless by Wentworth Smith, and is the only dramatic work by him that has survived. Neither internal nor external evidence confirms the theory that the above-mentioned six plays, which have been wrongly claimed for Shakespeare, were really by Wentworth Smith. The use of the initials ‘W.S.’ was not due to the publishers’ belief that Wentworth Smith was the author, but to their endeavour to delude their customers into a belief that the plays were by Shakespeare.

[181]Cf. p. 258 infra.

[182]There were twenty pieces in all. The five by Shakespeare are placed in the order i. ii. iii. v. xvi. Of the remainder, two—‘If music and sweet poetry agree’ (No. viii.) and ‘As it fell upon a day’ (No. xx.)—were borrowed from Barnfield’sPoems in divers Humours(1598). ‘Venus with Adonis sitting by her’ (No. xi.) is from Bartholomew Griffin’sFidessa(1596); ‘My flocks feed not’ (No. xvii.) is adapted from Thomas Weelkes’sMadrigals(1597); ‘Live with me and be my love’ is by Marlowe; and the appended stanza, entitled ‘Love’s Answer,’ by Sir Walter Ralegh (No. xix.); ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together’ (No. xii.) is a popular song often quoted by the Elizabethan dramatists. Nothing has been ascertained of the origin and history of the remaining nine poems (iv. vi. vii. ix. x. xiii. xiv. xviii.)

[184]A unique copy of Chester’sLove’s Martyris in Mr. Christie-Miller’s library at Britwell. Of a reissue of the original edition in 1611 with a new title,The Annals of Great Brittaine, a copy (also unique) is in the British Museum. A reprint of the original edition was prepared for private circulation by Dr. Grosart in 1878, in his series of ‘Occasional Issues.’ It was also printed in the same year as one of the publications of the New Shakspere Society. Matthew Roydon in his elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser’sColin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney’s obsequies by the turtle-dove, swan, phœnix, and eagle, in verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare’s account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to Chester’s volume. This resemblance suggests that Shakespeare’s poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roydon’s elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare’s concluding ‘Threnos’ is imitated in metre and phraseology by Fletcher in hisMad Loverin the song ‘The Lover’s Legacy to his Cruel Mistress.’

[187]Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 186.

[188a]There is an admirable discussion of the question involved in the poet’s heraldry inHerald and Genealogist, i. 510. Facsimiles of all the documents preserved in the College of Arms are given inMiscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 2nd ser. 1886, i. 109. Halliwell-Phillipps prints imperfectly one of the 1596 draft-grants, and that of 1599 (Outlines, ii. 56, 60), but does not distinguish the character of the negotiation of the earlier year from that of the negotiation of the later year.

[188b]It is still customary at the College of Arms to inform an applicant for a coat-of-arms who has a father alive that the application should be made in the father’s name, and the transaction conducted as if the father were the principal. It was doubtless on advice of this kind that Shakespeare was acting in the negotiations that are described below.

[189]In a manuscript in the British Museum (Harl. MS.6140, f. 45) is a copy of the tricking of the arms of William ‘Shakspere,’ which is described ‘as a pattent per Will’m Dethike Garter, principale King of Armes;’ this is figured in French’sShakespeareana Genealogica, p. 524.

[190]These memoranda, which were as follows, were first written without the words here enclosed in brackets; those words were afterwards interlineated in the manuscript in a hand similar to that of the original sentences:

‘[This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand in paper. xx. years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne][A Justice of peace] And was a Baylife of Stratford uppo Avon xv. or xvj. years past.That he hathe lands and tenements of good wealth and substance [500 li.]That he mar[ried a daughter and heyre of Arden, a gent. of worship.]’

‘[This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand in paper. xx. years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne]

[A Justice of peace] And was a Baylife of Stratford uppo Avon xv. or xvj. years past.

That he hathe lands and tenements of good wealth and substance [500 li.]

That he mar[ried a daughter and heyre of Arden, a gent. of worship.]’

[191]‘An exemplification’ was invariably secured more easily than a new grant of arms. The heralds might, if they chose, tacitly accept, without examination, the applicant’s statement that his family had borne arms long ago, and they thereby regarded themselves as relieved of the obligation of close inquiry into his present status.

[192a]On the gravestone of John Hall, Shakespeare’s elder son-in-law, the Shakespeare arms are similarly impaled with those of Hall.

[192b]French,Genealogica Shakespeareana, p. 413.

[193]The details of Brooke’s accusation are not extant, and are only to be deduced from the answer of Garter and Clarenceux to Brooke’s complaint, two copies of which are accessible: one is in the vol. W-Z at the Heralds’ College, f. 276; and the other, slightly differing, is in Ashmole MS. 846, ix. f. 50. Both are printed in theHerald and Genealogist, i. 514.

[194a]Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 478.

[194b]The tradition that Shakespeare planted the mulberry tree was not put on record till it was cut down in 1758. In 1760 mention is made of it in a letter of thanks in the corporation’s archives from the Steward of the Court of Record to the corporation of Stratford for presenting him with a standish made from the wood. But, according to the testimony of old inhabitants confided to Malone (cf. hisLife of Shakespeare, 1790, p. 118), the legend had been orally current in Stratford since Shakespeare’s lifetime. The tree was perhaps planted in 1609, when a Frenchman named Veron distributed a number of young mulberry trees through the midland counties by order of James I, who desired to encourage the culture of silkworms (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 134, 411-16).

[197a]I do not think we shall over-estimate the present value of Shakespeare’s income if we multiply each of its items by eight, but it is difficult to state authoritatively the ratio between the value of money in Shakespeare’s time and in our own. The money value of corn then and now is nearly identical; but other necessaries of life—meat, milk, eggs, wool, building materials, and the like—were by comparison ludicrously cheap in Shakespeare’s day. If we strike the average between the low price of these commodities and the comparatively high price of corn, the average price of necessaries will be found to be in Shakespeare’s day about an eighth of what it is now. The cost of luxuries is also now about eight times the price that it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Sixpence was the usual price of a new quarto or octavo book such as would now be sold at prices ranging between three shillings and sixpence and six shillings. Half a crown was charged for the best-placed seats in the best theatres. The purchasing power of one Elizabethan pound might be generally defined in regard to both necessaries and luxuries as equivalent to that of eight pounds of the present currency.

[197b]Cf. Henslowe’sDiary, ed. Collier, pp. xxviii seq. After the Restoration the receipts at the third performance were given for the author’s ‘benefit.’

[199a]Return from Parnassus, V. i. 10-16.

[199b]Cf. H[enry] P[arrot]’sLaquei Ridiculosi or Springes for Woodcocks, 1613, Epigram No. 131, headed ‘Theatrum Licencia:’

Cotta’s become a player most men know,And will no longer take such toyling paines;For here’s the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flowAnd brings them damnable excessive gaines:That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs,Since Greene’sTu Quoqueand those Garlicke Jigs.

GreensTu Quoquewas a popular comedy that had once been performed at Court by the Queen’s players, and ‘Garlicke Jigs’ alluded derisively to drolling entertainments, interspersed with dances, which won much esteem from patrons of the smaller playhouses.

[200]The documents which are now in the Public Record Office among the papers relating to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, were printed in full by Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312-19.

[202]In 1613 Robert Daborne, a playwright of insignificant reputation, charged for a drama as much as £25.Alleyn Papers, ed. Collier, p. 65.

[203]Ten pounds was the ordinary fee paid to actors for a performance at the Court of James I. Shakespeare’s company appeared annually twenty times and more at Whitehall during the early years of James I’s reign, and Shakespeare, as being both author and actor, doubtless received a larger share of the receipts than his colleagues.

[204a]Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312-19; Fleay,Stage, pp. 324-8

[204b]Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 17-19.

[206a]See p. 195.

[206b]Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 77-80.

[208]Accounts of the Revels, ed. Peter Cunningham (Shakespeare Society), p. 177;Variorum Shakespeare, 1821, iii. 406.

[210a]It was reproduced by the Hakluyt Society to accompanyThe Voyages and Workes of John Davis the Navigator, ed. Captain A. H. Markham, 1880. Cf. Mr. Coote’s note on theNew Map, lxxxv-xcv. A paper on the subject by Mr. Coote also appears inNew Shakspere Society’s Transactions, 1877-9, pt. i. 88-100.

[210b]Diary, Camden Soc. p. 18; the Elizabethan Stage Society repeated the play on the same stage on February 10, 11 and 12, 1897.

[210c]Bandello’sNovelle, ii. 36.

[211a]First published in 1579; 2nd edit. 1595.

[211b]Hamlet, III. ii. 109-10.

[213a]On December 31, 1601, the Lords of the Council sent letters to the Lord Mayor of London and to the magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex expressing their surprise that no steps had yet been taken to limit the number of playhouses in accordance with ‘our order set down and prescribed about a year and a half since.’ But nothing followed, and no more was heard officially of the Council’s order until 1619, when the Corporation of London remarked on its practical abrogation at the same time as they directed the suppression (which was not carried out) of the Blackfriars Theatre. All the documents on this subject are printed from the Privy Council Register by Halliwell-Phillipps, 307-9.

[213b]The passage, act ii. sc. ii. 348-394, which deals in ample detail with the subject, only appears in the folio version of 1623. In the First Quarto a very curt reference is made to the misfortunes of the ‘tragedians of the city:’

‘Y’ faith, my lord, noveltie carries it away,For the principal publike audience thatCame to them are turned to private playesAnd to the humours of children.’

‘Private playes’ were plays acted by amateurs, with whom the ‘Children’ might well be classed.

[214a]All recent commentators follow Steevens in interpreting the ‘late innovation’ as the Order of the Privy Council of June 1600, restricting the number of the London playhouses to two; but that order, which was never put in force, in no way affected the actors’ fortunes. The First Quarto’s reference to the perils attaching to the ‘noveltie’ of the boys’ performances indicates the true meaning.

[214b]Hamlet, II. ii. 349-64.

[215]At the moment offensive personalities seemed to have infected all the London theatres. On May 10, 1601, the Privy Council called the attention of the Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly levelled by the actors of the ‘Curtain’ at gentlemen ‘of good desert and quality,’ and directed the magistrates to examine all plays before they were produced (Privy Council Register). Jonson subsequently issued an ‘apologetical dialogue’ (appended to printed copies of thePoetaster), in which he somewhat truculently qualified his hostility to the players:

‘Now for the players ’tis true I tax’d themAnd yet but some, and those so sparinglyAs all the rest might have sat still unquestioned,Had they but had the wit or conscienceTo think well of themselves. But impotent theyThought each man’s vice belonged to their whole tribe;And much good do it them. What they have done against meI am not moved with, if it gave them meatOr got them clothes, ’tis well; that was their end,Only amongst them I am sorry forSome better natures by the rest so drawnTo run in that vile line.’

[217]See p. 229, note I,ad fin.

[218]The proposed identification of Virgil in the ‘Poetaster’ with Chapman has little to recommend it. Chapman’s literary work did not justify the commendations which were bestowed on Virgil in the play.

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

Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without causeWill he be satisfied

(III. i. 47-8). The rhythm and sense seem to require the reinsertion after the word ‘wrong’ of the phrase ‘but with just cause,’ which Jonson needlessly reprobated. Leonard Digges (1588-1635), one of Shakespeare’s admiring critics, emphasises the superior popularity of Shakespeare’sJulius Cæsarin the theatre to Ben Jonson’s Roman play ofCatiline, in his eulogistic lines on Shakespeare (published after Digges’s death in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’sPoems):

So have I seen when Cæsar would appear,And on the stage at half-sword parley wereBrutus and Cassius—oh, how the audienceWere ravish’d, with what wonder they went thenceWhen some new day they would not brook a lineOf tedious, though well laboured, Catiline.

[221]I wrote on this point in the article on Thomas Kyd in theDictionary of National Biography(vol. xxxi.): ‘The argument in favour of Kyd’s authorship of a pre-Shakespearean play (now lost) on the subject of Hamlet deserves attention. Nash in 1589, when describing [in his preface toMenaphon] the typical literary hack, who at almost every point suggests Kyd, notices that in addition to his other accomplishments “he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches.” Other references in popular tracts and plays of like date prove that in an early tragedy concerning Hamlet there was a ghost who cried repeatedly, “Hamlet, revenge!” and that this expression took rank in Elizabethan slang beside the vernacular quotations from [Kyd’s sanguinary tragedy of]Jeronimo, such as “What outcry calls me from my naked bed,” and “Beware, Hieronimo, go by, go by.” The resemblance between the stories ofHamletandJeronimosuggests that the former would have supplied Kyd with a congenial plot. InJeronimoa father seeks to avenge his son’s murder; inHamletthe theme is the same with the position of father and son reversed. InJeronimothe avenging father resolves to reach his end by arranging for the performance of a play in the presence of those whom he suspects of the murder of his son, and there is good ground for crediting the lost tragedy ofHamletwith a similar play-scene. Shakespeare’s debt to the lost tragedy is a matter of conjecture, but the stilted speeches of the play-scene in hisHamletread like intentional parodies of Kyd’s bombastic efforts inThe Spanish Tragedy, and it is quite possible that they were directly suggested by an almost identical episode in a lostHamletby the same author.’ Shakespeare elsewhere shows acquaintance with Kyd’s work. He places in the mouth of Kit Sly in theTaming of the Shrewthe current phrase ‘Go by, Jeronimy,’ fromThe Spanish Tragedy. Shakespeare quotes verbatim a line from the same piece inMuch Ado about Nothing(I. i. 271): ‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke;’ but Kyd practically borrowed that line from Watson’sPassionate Centurie(No. xlvii.), where Shakespeare may have met it.

[222]Cf. Gericke and Max Moltke,Hamlet-Quellen, Leipzig, 1881. The story was absorbed into Scandinavian mythology: cf.Ambales-Saga, edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz, 1898.

[224]Cf.Hamlet—parallel texts of the first and second quarto, and first folio—ed. Wilhelm Vietor, Marburg, 1891;The Devonshire Hamlets, 1860, parallel texts of the two quartos edited by Mr. Sam Timmins;Hamlet, ed. George Macdonald, 1885, a study with the text of the folio.

[226a]Arber’sTranscript of the Stationers’ Registers, iii. 226.

[226b]Ib.iii. 400.

[228]Less satisfactory is the endeavour that has been made by Mr. F. G. Fleay and Mr. George Wyndham to treatTroilus and Cressidaas Shakespeare’s contribution to the embittered controversy of 1601-2, between Jonson on the one hand and Marston and Dekker and their actor friends on the other hand, and to represent the play as a pronouncement against Jonson. According to this fanciful view, Shakespeare held up Jonson to savage ridicule in Ajax, while in Thersites he denounced Marston, despite Marston’s intermittent antagonism to Jonson, which entitled him to freedom from attack by Jonson’s foes. The appearance of the word ‘mastic’ in the line (1. iii. 73) ‘When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws’ is treated as proof of Shakespeare’s identification of Thersites with Marston, who used the pseudonym ‘Therio-mastix’ in hisScourge of Villainy. It would be as reasonable to identify him with Dekker, who wrote the greater part ofSatiro-mastix. ‘Mastic’ is doubtless an adjective formed without recondite significance from the substantive ‘mastic,’i.e.the gum commonly used at the time for stopping decayed teeth. No hypothesis of a polemical intention is needed to account for Shakespeare’s conception of Ajax or Thersites. There is no trait in either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading of Chapman’sHomerwould fail to suggest. The controversial interpretation of the play is in conflict with chronology (forTroiluscannot, on any showing, be assigned to the period of the war between Jonson and Dekker, in 1601-2), and it seems confuted by the facts and arguments already adduced in the discussion of the theatrical conflict (see pp. 213-219). If more direct disproof be needed, it may be found in Shakespeare’s prologue toTroilus, where there is a good-humoured and expressly pacific allusion to the polemical aims of Jonson’sPoetaster. Jonson had introduced into his play ‘anarmedprologue’ on account, he asserted, of his enemies’ menaces. Shakespeare, after describing in his prologue toTroilusthe progress of the Trojan war before his story opened, added that his ‘prologue’ presented itself ‘arm’d,’ not to champion ‘author’s pen or actor’s voice,’ but simply to announce in a guise befitting the warlike subject-matter that the play began in the middle of the conflict between Greek and Trojan, and not at the beginning. These words of Shakespeare put out of court any interpretation of Shakespeare’s play that would represent it as a contribution to the theatrical controversy.

[230]England’s Mourning Garment, 1603, sign. D. 3.

[231]At the same time the Earl of Worcester’s company was taken into the Queen’s patronage, and its members were known as ‘the Queen’s servants,’ while the Earl of Nottingham’s company was taken into the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and its members were known as the Prince’s servants. This extended patronage of actors by the royal family was noticed as especially honourable to the King by one of his contemporary panegyrists, Gilbert Dugdale, in hisTime Triumphant, 1604, sig. B.

[232a]The entry, which appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, was first printed in 1842 in Cunningham’sExtracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, p. xxxiv. A comparison of Cunningham’s transcript with the original in the Public Record Office (Audit Office—Declared Accounts—Treasurer of the Chamber, bundle 388, roll 41) shows that it is accurate. The Earl of Pembroke was in no way responsible for the performance at Wilton House. At the time, the Court was formally installed in his house (cf.Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603-10) pp. 47-59), and the Court officers commissioned the players to perform there, and paid all their expenses. The alleged tradition, recently promulgated for the first time by the owners of Wilton, thatAs You Like Itwas performed on the occasion, is unsupported by contemporary evidence.

[232b]The grant is transcribed in the New Shakspere Society’sTransactions, 1877-9, Appendix ii., from the Lord Chamberlain’s papers in the Public Record Office, where it is now numbered 660. The number allotted it in theTransactionsis obsolete.

[233a]A contemporary copy of this letter, which declared the Queen’s players acting at the Fortune and the Prince’s players at the Curtain to be entitled to the same privileges as the King’s players, is at Dulwich College (cf. G. F. Warner’sCatalogue of the Dulwich Manuscripts, pp. 26-7). Collier printed it in hisNew Factswith fraudulent additions, in which the names of Shakespeare and other actors figured.

[233b]Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in hisOutlines, i. 213, cites a royal order to this effect, but gives no authority, and I have sought in vain for the document at the Public Record Office, at the British Museum, and elsewhere. But there is no reason to doubt the fact that Shakespeare and his fellow-actors took, as Grooms of the Chamber, part in the ceremonies attending the Constable’s visit to London. In the unprinted accounts of Edmund Tilney, master of the revels, for the year October 1603 to October 1604, charge is made for his three days’ attendance with four men to direct the entertainments ‘at the receaving of the Constable of Spayne’ (Public Record Office,Declared Accounts, Pipe Office Roll 2805). The magnificent festivities culminated in a splendid banquet given in the Constable’s honour by James I at Whitehall on Sunday, August 19/29—the day on which the treaty was signed. In the morning all the members of the royal household accompanied the Constable in formal procession from Somerset House. After the banquet, at which the earls of Pembroke and Southampton acted as stewards, there was a ball, and the King’s guests subsequently witnessed exhibitions of bear baiting, bull baiting, rope dancing, and feats of horsemanship. (Cf. Stow’sChronicle, 1631, pp. 845-6, and a Spanish pamphlet,Relacion de la jornada del excmoCondestabile de Castilla, etc., Antwerp, 1604, 4to, which was summarised in Ellis’sOriginal Letters, 2nd series, vol. iii. pp. 207-215, and was partly translated in Mr. W. B. Rye’sEngland as seen by Foreigners, pp. 117-124).

At the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A 204) are the original accounts of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber for various (detached) years in the early part of James I’s reign. These documents show that Shakespeare’s company acted at Court on November 1 and 4, December 26 and 28, 1604, and on January 7 and 8, February 2 and 3, and the evenings of the following Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday, 1605.

[235]These dates are drawn from a memorandum of plays performed at Court in 1604 and 1605 which is among Malone’s manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and was obviously derived by Malone from authentic documents that were in his day preserved at the Audit Office in Somerset House. The document cannot now be traced at the Public Record Office, whither the Audit Office papers have been removed since Malone’s death. Peter Cunningham professed to print the original document in his accounts of the revels at Court (Shakespeare Society, 1842, pp. 203et seq.), but there is no doubt that he forged his so-called transcript, and that the additions which he made to Malone’s memorandum were the outcome of his fancy. Collier’s assertion in hisNew Particulars, p. 57, thatOthellowas first acted at Sir Thomas Egerton’s residence at Harefield on August 6, 1602, was based solely on a document among the Earl of Ellesmere’s MSS. at Bridgwater House, which purported to be a contemporary account by the clerk, Sir Arthur Maynwaring, of Sir Thomas Egerton’s household expenses. This document, which Collier reprinted in hisEgerton Papers(Camden Soc.), p. 343, was authoritatively pronounced by experts in 1860 to be ‘a shameful forgery’ (cf. Ingleby’sComplete View of the Shakspere Controversy, 1861, pp. 261-5).

[237]Dr. Garnett’sItalian Literature, 1898, p. 227.

[239]Cf. Letter by Mrs. Stopes inAthenæum, July 25, 1896.

[240]Cf.Macbeth, ed. Clark and Wright, Clarendon Press Series.

[241a]This fact is stated on the title-page of the quartos.

[241b]Sidney tells the story in a chapter entitled ‘The pitiful state and story of the Paphlagonian unkind king and his blind son; first related by the son, then by his blind father’ (bk. ii. chap. 10, ed. 1590 4to; pp. 132-3, ed. 1674, fol.)

[242]It was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 by Dyce, who owned the manuscript.

[245]Mr. George Wyndham in his introduction to his edition of North’sPlutarch, i. pp. xciii-c, gives an excellent criticism of the relations of Shakespeare’s play to Plutarch’s life of Antonius.

[246]See the whole of Coriolanus’s great speech on offering his services to Aufidius, the Volscian general, IV. v. 71-107:

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath doneTo thee particularly and to all the Volsces,Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness mayMy surname, Coriolanus . . . to do thee service.

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

Should we be silent and not speak, our raimentAnd state of bodies would bewray what lifeWe have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . .

[249]See p. 172 and note 2.

[250]In I. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as ‘past grace’ in the theological sense. In I. ii. 30-31 the Second Lord remarks: ‘If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned.’

[251a]See p. 255, note I. Camillo’s reflections (I. ii. 358) on the ruin that attends those who ‘struck anointed kings’ have been regarded, not quite conclusively, as specially designed to gratify James I.

[251b]Conversations with Drummond, p. 16.

[251c]InWinter’s Tale(IV. iv. 760 et seq.) Autolycus threatens that the clown’s son ‘shall be flayed alive; then ‘nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp’s nest,’ &c. In Boccaccio’s story the villain Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare’s Iachimo), after ‘being bounden to the stake and anointed with honey,’ was ‘to his exceeding torment not only slain but devoured of the flies and wasps and gadflies wherewith that country abounded’ (cf.Decameron, translated by John Payne, 1893, i. 164).

[253a]Printed in Cohn’sShakespeare in Germany.

[253b]Golding’s translation of Ovid’sMetamorphoses, edit. 1612, p. 82b. The passage begins:

Ye ayres and windes, ye elves of hills, ye brookes and woods alone.

[254]Variorum Shakespeare, 1821, xv. 423. In the early weeks of 1611 Shakespeare’s company presented no fewer than fifteen plays at Court. Payment of £150 was made to the actors for their services on February 12, 1610-11. The council’s warrant is extant in theBodleian Library MS.Rawl. A 204 (f. 305). The plays performed were not specified by name, but some by Shakespeare were beyond doubt amongst them, and possibly ‘The Tempest.’ A forged page which was inserted in a detached account-book of the Master of the Court-Revels for the years 1611 and 1612 at the Public Record Office, and was printed as genuine in Peter Cunningham’sExtracts from the Revels’ Accounts, p. 210, supplies among other entries two to the effect that ‘The Tempest’ was performed at Whitehall at Hallowmas (i.e.November 1) 1611 and that ‘A Winter’s Tale’ followed four days later, on November 5. Though these entries are fictitious, the information they offer may be true. Malone doubtless based his positive statement respecting the date of the composition of ‘The Tempest’ in 1611 on memoranda made from papers then accessible at the Audit Office, but now, since the removal of those archives to the Public Record Office, mislaid. All the forgeries introduced into the Revels’ accounts are well considered and show expert knowledge (see p. 235, note I). The forger of the 1612 entries probably worked either on the published statement of Malone, or on fuller memoranda left by him among his voluminous manuscripts.

[255a]Cf.Universal Review, April 1889, article by Dr. Richard Garnett.

[255b]Harmonised scores of Johnson’s airs for the songs ‘Full Fathom Five’ and ‘Where the Bee sucks,’ are preserved in Wilson’sCheerful Ayres or Ballads set for three voices, 1660.

[257a]Cf. Browning,Caliban upon Setebos; Daniel Wilson,Caliban,or the Missing Link(1873); and Renan,Caliban(1878), a drama continuing Shakespeare’s play.

[257b]When Shakespeare wroteTroilus and Cressidahe had formed some conception of a character of the Caliban type. Thersites say of Ajax (III. iii. 264), ‘He’s grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster.’

[258a]Treasurer’s accounts in Rawl. MS. A 239, leaf 47 (in the Bodleian), printed in New Shakspere Society’sTransactions, 1895-6, part ii. p. 419.

[258b]The Merry Devill of Edmonton, a comedy which was first published in 1608, was also re-entered by Moseley for publication on September 9, 1653, as the work of Shakespeare (see p. 181supra).

[259a]Dyce thought he detected traces of Shirley’s workmanship, but it was possibly Theobald’s unaided invention.

[259b]The 1634 quarto of the play was carefully edited for the New Shakspere Society by Mr. Harold Littledale in 1876. See also Spalding,Shakespeare’s Authorship of‘Two Noble Kinsmen,’ 1833, reprinted by New Shakspere Society, 1876; article by Spalding inEdinburgh Review, 1847;Transactions, New Shakspere Society, 1874.

[260]Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle inTransactionsof the New Shakspere Society, 1882.

[261]Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, 1675, pp. 425-6. Wotton adds ‘that the piece was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of Pomp and Majesty, even to the matting of the Stage; the Knights of the Order, with their Georges and Garters, the Guards with their embroidered Coats, and the like: sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now KingHenrymaking a Masque at the CardinalWolsey’sHouse, and certain Canons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle Smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that vertuous fabrique; wherein yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle[d] ale.’ John Chamberlain writing to Sir Ralph Winwood on July 8, 1613, briefly mentions that the theatre was burnt to the ground in less than two hours owing to the accidental ignition of the thatch roof through the firing of cannon ‘to be used in the play.’ The audience escaped unhurt though they had ‘but two narrow doors to get out’ (Winwood’sMemorials, iii. p. 469). A similar account was sent by the Rev. Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, Bart., from London, June 30, 1613. ‘The fire broke out,’ Lorkin wrote, ‘no longer since than yesterday, while Burbage’s company were acting at the Globe the play ofHenry VIII’ (Court and Times of James I, 1848, vol. i. p. 253). A contemporary sonnet on ‘the pittifull burning of the Globe playhouse in London,’ first printed by Haslewood ‘from an old manuscript volume of poems’ in theGentleman’s Magazinefor 1816, was again printed by Halliwell-Phillipps (i. pp. 310, 311) from an authentic manuscript in the library of Sir Matthew Wilson, Bart., of Eshton Hall, Yorkshire.

[263a]Bodl. MS.Rawl. A 239; cf. Spedding inGentleman’s Magazine, 1850, reprinted in New Shakspere Society’sTransactions, 1874.

[263b]Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle in New Shakspere Society’sTransactions, 1884.

[264]Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 87.

[265a]Manningham,Diary, March 23, 1601, Camd. Soc. p. 39.

[265b]Cf. Aubrey,Lives; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 43; and art. Sir William D’Avenant in theDictionary of National Biography.

[267]The indenture prepared for the purchaser is in the Halliwell-Phillipps collection, which was sold to Mr. Marsden J. Perry of Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., in January 1897. That held by the vendor is in the Guildhall Library.

[268]Shakespeare’s references to puritans in the plays of his middle and late life are so uniformly discourteous that they must be judged to reflect his personal feeling. The discussion between Maria and Sir Andrew Aguecheek regarding Malvolio’s character inTwelfth Night(II. iii. 153 et seq.) runs:

Maria. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.Sir Andrew. O! if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.Sir Toby. What, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight.Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for ‘t, but I have reason good enough.

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

Sir Andrew. O! if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.

Sir Toby. What, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight.

Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for ‘t, but I have reason good enough.

InWinter’s Tale(IV. iii. 46) the Clown, after making contemptuous references to the character of the shearers, remarks that there is ‘but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.’ Cf. the allusions to ‘grace’ and ‘election’ in Cymbeline, p. 250, note 1.

[269a]The town council of Stratford-on-Avon, whose meeting-chamber almost overlooked Shakespeare’s residence of New Place, gave curious proof of their puritanic suspicion of the drama on February 7, 1612, when they passed a resolution that plays were unlawful and ‘the sufferance of them against the orders heretofore made and against the example of other well-governed cities and boroughs,’ and the council was therefore ‘content,’ the resolution ran, that ‘the penalty of xs. imposed [on players heretofore] be xli. henceforward.’ Ten years later the King’s players were bribed by the council to leave the city without playing. (See the present writer’sStratford-on-Avon, p. 270.)

[269b]The lines as quoted by Aubrey (Lives, ed. Clark, ii. 226) run:

Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows,But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes;If any man ask, who lies in this tomb?Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.

Rowe’s version opens somewhat differently:

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

The lines, in one form or another, seem to have been widely familiar in Shakespeare’s lifetime, but were not ascribed to him. The first two in Rowe’s version were printed in the epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot], 1608, and again in Camden’sRemaines, 1614. The whole first appeared in Richard Brathwaite’sRemainsin 1618 under the heading: ‘Upon one John Combe of Stratford upon Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon a Tombe that he had Caused to be built in his Life Time.’

[271]The clumsy entry runs: ‘Sept. Mr. Shakespeare tellyng J. Greene that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe.’ J. Greene is to be distinguished from Thomas Greene, the writer of the diary. The entry therefore implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene that the writer of the diary, Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the enclosure. Those who represent Shakespeare as a champion of popular rights have to read the ‘I’ in ‘I was not able’ as ‘he.’ Were that the correct reading, Shakespeare would be rightly credited with telling J. Greene that he disliked the enclosure; but palæographers only recognise the reading ‘I.’ Cf.Shakespeare and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe, a facsimile of Greene’s diary, now at the Birthplace, Stratford, with a transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited by Dr. C. M. Inglehy, 1885.

[272a]British Magazine, June 1762.

[272b]Cf. Malone,Shakespeare, 1821, ii. 500-2; Ireland,Confessions, 1805, p. 34; Green,Legend of the Crab Tree, 1857.

[272c]The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to May 3 in the new; Cervantes, whose death is often described as simultaneous, died at Madrid ten days earlier—on April 13, in the old style, or April 23, 1616, in the new.

[273]Hall’s letter was published as a quarto pamphlet at London in 1884, from the original, now in the Bodleian Library Oxford.

[274]Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., has been kind enough to give me a legal opinion on this point. He wrote to me on December 9, 1897: ‘I have looked to the authorities with my friend Mr. Herbert Mackay, and there is no doubt that Shakespeare barred the dower.’ Mr. Mackay’s opinion is couched in the following terms: ‘The conveyance of the Blackfriars estate to William Shakespeare in 1613 shows that the estate was conveyed to Shakespeare, Johnson, Jackson, and Hemming as joint tenants, and therefore the dower of Shakespeare’s wife would be barred unless he were the survivor of the four bargainees.’ That was a remote contingency, which did not arise, and Shakespeare always retained the power of making ‘another settlement when the trustees were shrinking.’ Thus the bar was for practical purposes perpetual, and disposes of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps’s assertion that Shakespeare’s wife was entitled to dower in one form or another from all his real estate. Cf.Davidson on Conveyancing; Littleton, sect. 45;Coke upon Littleton, ed. Hargrave, p. 379b, note I.

[276a]A hundred and fifty pounds is described as a substantial jointure inMerry Wives, III. iii. 49.

[276b]Leonard Digges, in commendatory verses before the First Folio of 1623, wrote that Shakespeare’s works would be alive

[When] Time dissolves thy Stratford monument.

[277]Cf. Dugdale,Diary, 1827, p. 99; see under article on Bernard Janssen in theDictionary of National Biography.

[278a]‘Timber,’ inWorks, 1641.

[278b]John Webster, the dramatist, made vague reference in the address before his ‘White Divel’ in 1612 to ‘the right happy and copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, and M. Heywood.’

[280]The words run: ‘Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife of Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 yeares.

‘Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti,Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo!Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore,Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua.Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget,Clausa licet tumulo, mater, et astra petet.’

[281]Cf. Hall,Select Observations, ed. Cooke, 1657.

[282]Baker,Northamptonshire, i. 10;New Shaksp. Soc. Trans.1880-5, pt. ii. pp. 13†—15†.

[283]Halliwell-Phillipps,Hist. of New Place, 1864, fol.

[284]Wise,Autograph of William Shakespeare. . .together with4,000ways of spelling the name, Philadelphia, 1869.

[285]See the article on John Florio in theDictionary of National Biography, and Sir Frederick Madden’sObservations on an Autograph of Shakspere, 1838.

[286]Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps,New Lamps or Old, 1880; Malone,Inquiry, 1796.

[290]Mr. Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery, who has ittle doubt of the genuineness of the picture, gave an interesting account of it at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 12, 1895. Mr. Cust’s paper is printed in the Society’sProceedings, second series, vol. xvi. p. 42. Mr. Salt Brassington, the librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial Library, has given a careful description of it in theIllustrated Catalogue of the Pictures in the Memorial Gallery, 1896, pp. 78-83.

[291a]Harper’s Magazine, May 1897.

[291b]Cf. Evelyn’sDiary and Correspondence, iii. 444.

[291c]Numberless portraits have been falsely identified with Shakespeare, and it would be futile to attempt to make the record of the pretended portraits complete. Upwards of sixty have been offered for sale to the National Portrait Gallery since its foundation in 1856, and not one of these has proved to possess the remotest claim to authenticity. The following are some of the wholly unauthentic portraits that have attracted public attention: Three portraits assigned to Zucchero, who left England in 1580, and cannot have had any relations with Shakespeare—one in the Art Museum, Boston, U.S.A.; another, formerly the property of Richard Cosway, R.A., and afterwards of Mr. J. A. Langford of Birmingham (engraved in mezzotint by H. Green); and a third belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who purchased it in 1862. At Hampton Court is a wholly unauthentic portrait of the Chandos type, which was at one time at Penshurst; it bears the legend ‘Ætatis suæ 34’ (cf. Law’sCat. of Hampton Court, p. 234). A portrait inscribed ‘ætatis suæ 47, 1611,’ belonging to Clement Kingston of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was engraved in mezzotint by G. F. Storm in 1846.

[292]In the picture-gallery at Dulwich is ‘a woman’s head on a boord done by Mr. Burbidge, ye actor’—a well-authenticated example of the actor’s art.

[296a]It is now the property of Frau Oberst Becker, the discoverer’s daughter-in-law, Darmstadt, Heidelbergerstrasse 111.

[296b]Some account of Shakespeare’s portraits will be found in the following works: James Boaden,Inquiry into various Pictures and Prints of Shakespeare, 1824; Abraham Wivell,Inquiry into Shakespeare’s Portraits, 1827, with engravings by B. and W. Holl; George Scharf,Principal Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864; J. Hain Friswell,Life-Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864; William Page,Study of Shakespeare’s Portraits, 1876; Ingleby,Man and Book, 1877, pp. 84 seq.; J. Parker Norris,Portraits of Shakespeare, Philadelphia, 1885, with numerous plates;Illustrated Cat. of Portraits in Shakespeare’s Memorial at Stratford, 1896. In 1885 Mr. Walter Rogers Furness issued, at Philadelphia, a volume of composite portraits, combining the Droeshout engraving and the Stratford bust with the Chandos, Jansen, Felton, and Stratford portraits.

[297]Cf.Gentleman’s Magazine, 1741, p. 105.

[298]A History of the Shakespeare Memorial,Stratford-on-Avon, 1882;Illustrated Catalogue of Pictures in the Shakespeare Memorial, 1896.

[299]This was facsimiled in 1862, and again by Mr. Griggs in 1880.

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

[303]Perfect copies range in price, according to their rarity, from £200 to £300. In 1864, at the sale of George Daniel’s library, quarto copies of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and of ‘Merry Wives’ (first edition) each fetched £346 10s. On May 14, 1897, a copy of the quarto of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (printed by James Roberts in 1600) was sold at Sotheby’s for £315.

[304]See p. 183.

[306]Cf.Bibliographica, i. 489 seq.

[308]This copy was described in theVariorum Shakespeareof 1821 (xxi. 449) as in the possession of Messrs. J. and A. Arch, booksellers, of Cornhill. It was subsequently sold at Sotheby’s in 1855 for £163 16s.

[309a]I cannot trace the present whereabouts of this copy, but it is described in theVariorum Shakespeareof 1821, xxi. 449-50.

[309b]The copy seems to have been purchased by a member of the Sheldon family in 1628, five years after publication. There is a note in a contemporary hand which says it was bought for £3 15s., a somewhat extravagant price. The entry further says that it cost three score pounds of silver, words that I cannot explain. The Sheldon family arms are on the sides of the volume, and there are many manuscript notes in the margin, interpreting difficult words, correcting misprints, or suggesting new readings.

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