Meanwhile, in 1597, the poet had taken openly in his own person a more effective step in the way of rehabilitating himself and his family in the eyes of his fellow townsmen. On May 4 he purchased the largest house in the town, known as New Place. It had been built by Sir Hugh Clopton more than a century before, and seems to have fallen into a ruinous condition. But Shakespeare paid for it, with two barns and two gardens, the then substantial sum of £60. Owing to the sudden death of the vendor,William Underhill, on July 7, 1597, the original transfer of the property was left at the time incomplete. Underhill’s son Fulk died a felon, and he was succeeded in the family estates by his brother Hercules, who on coming of age, May 1602, completed in a new deed the transfer of New Place to Shakespeare.[194a]On February 4, 1597-8, Shakespeare was described as a householder in Chapel Street ward, in which New Place was situated, and as the owner of ten quarters of corn. The inventory was made owing to the presence of famine in the town, and only two inhabitants were credited with a larger holding. In the same year (1598) he procured stone for the repair of the house, and before 1602 had planted a fruit orchard. He is traditionally said to have interested himself in the garden, and to have planted with his own hands a mulberry-tree, which was long a prominent feature of it. When this was cut down, in 1758, numerous relics were made from it, and were treated with an almost superstitious veneration.[194b]Shakespeare does not appear to have permanently settled at New Place till 1611. In 1609the house, or part of it, was occupied by the town clerk, Thomas Greene, ‘alias Shakespeare,’ who claimed to be the poet’s cousin. His grandmother seems to have been a Shakespeare. He often acted as the poet’s legal adviser.
It was doubtless under their son’s guidance that Shakespeare’s father and mother set on foot in November 1597—six months after his acquisition of New Place—a lawsuit against John Lambert for the recovery of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilmcote. The litigation dragged on for some years without result.
Three letters written during 1598 by leading men at Stratford are still extant among the Corporation’s archives, and leave no doubt of the reputation for wealth and influence with which the purchase of New Place invested the poet in his fellow-townsmen’s eyes. Abraham Sturley, who was once bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently to a brother in London, says: ‘This is one special remembrance from our father’s motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near about us: he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and would do us much good.’ Richard Quiney, another townsman, father of Thomas (afterwards one of Shakespeare’s two sons-in-law),was, in the autumn of the same year, harassed by debt, and on October 25 appealed to Shakespeare for a loan of money. ‘Loving countryman,’ the application ran, ‘I am bold of you as of a friend craving your help with xxxli.’ Quiney was staying at the Bell Inn in Carter Lane, London, and his main business in the metropolis was to procure exemption for the town of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. Abraham Sturley, writing to Quiney from Stratford ten days later (on November 4, 1598), pointed out to him that since the town was wholly unable, in consequence of the dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped ‘that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak., would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when and where, and how.’
The financial prosperity to which this correspondence and the transactions immediately preceding it point has been treated as one of the chief mysteries of Shakespeare’s career, but the difficulties are gratuitous. There is practically nothing in Shakespeare’s financial position that a study of the contemporary conditions of theatrical life does not fully explain. It was not until 1599, when the Globe Theatre was built, that he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse. But his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor were by no means contemptible at an earlier date. His gains in the capacity of dramatist formed the smaller source of income. The highest price known to have been paid before 1599 to an author for a play by the manager of an acting company was£11; £6 was the lowest rate.[197a]A small additional gratuity—rarely apparently exceeding ten shillings—was bestowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first production was especially well received; and the author was by custom allotted, by way of ‘benefit,’ a certain proportion of the receipts of the theatre on the production of a play for the second time.[197b]Other sums, amounting at times to as much as £4, were bestowed on the author for revising and altering an old play for a revival. The nineteen plays which may be set to Shakespeare’s credit between 1591 and 1599, combined with such revising work as fell to his lot during those eight years, cannot consequently have brought him less than £200, or some £20 a year. Eight or nine of these plays were published during the period, but thepublishers operated independently of the author, taking all the risks and, at the same time, all the receipts. The publication of Shakespeare’s plays in no way affected his monetary resources, although his friendly relations with the printer Field doubtless secured him, despite the absence of any copyright law, some part of the profits in the large and continuous sale of his poems.
But it was as an actor that at an early date he acquired a genuinely substantial and secure income. There is abundance of contemporary evidence to show that the stage was for an efficient actor an assured avenue to comparative wealth. In 1590 Robert Greene describes in his tract entitled ‘Never too Late’ a meeting with a player whom he took by his ‘outward habit’ to be ‘a gentleman of great living’ and a ‘substantial man.’ The player informed Greene that he had at the beginning of his career travelled on foot, bearing his theatrical properties on his back, but he prospered so rapidly that at the time of speaking ‘his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for £200.’ Among his neighbours ‘where he dwelt’ he was reputed able ‘at his proper cost to build a windmill.’ In the university play, ‘The Return from Parnassus’ (1601?), a poor student enviously complains of the wealth and position which a successful actor derived from his calling.
England affords those glorious vagabonds,That carried erst their fardles on their backs,Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,And pages to attend their masterships;With mouthing words that better wits had framed,They purchase lands and now esquires are made.[199a]
England affords those glorious vagabonds,That carried erst their fardles on their backs,Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,And pages to attend their masterships;With mouthing words that better wits had framed,They purchase lands and now esquires are made.[199a]
The travelling actors, from whom the highwayman Gamaliel Ratsey extorted a free performance in 1604, were represented as men with the certainty of a rich competency in prospect.[199b]An efficient actor received in 1635 as large a regular salary as £180. The lowest known valuation set an actor’s wages at 3s. a day, or about £45 a year. Shakespeare’s emoluments as an actor before 1599 are not likely to have fallen below £100; while the remuneration due to performances at Court or in noblemen’s houses, if the accounts of 1594 be accepted as the basis of reckoning, added some £15.
Thus over £130 (equal to £1,040 of to-day) would be Shakespeare’s average annual revenue before 1599. Such a sum would be regarded as a very large income in a country town. According to the author of ‘Ratseis Ghost,’ the actor, who may well have been meant for Shakespeare, practised in London a strict frugality, and there seems no reason why Shakespeare should not have been able in 1597 to draw from hissavings £60 wherewith to buy New Place. His resources might well justify his fellow-townsmen’s opinion of his wealth in 1598, and suffice between 1597 and 1599 to meet his expenses, in rebuilding the house, stocking the barns with grain, and conducting various legal proceedings. But, according to tradition, he had in the Earl of Southampton a wealthy and generous friend who on one occasion gave him a large gift of money to enable ‘him to go through with’ a purchase to which he had a mind. A munificent gift, added to professional gains, leaves nothing unaccounted for in Shakespeare’s financial position before 1599.
After 1599 his sources of income from the theatre greatly increased. In 1635 the heirs of the actor Richard Burbage were engaged in litigation respecting their proprietary rights in the two playhouses, the Globe and the Blackfriars theatres. The documents relating to this litigation supply authentic, although not very detailed, information of Shakespeare’s interest in theatrical property.[200]Richard Burbage, with his brother Cuthbert, erected at their sole cost the Globe Theatre in the winter of 1598-9, and the Blackfriars Theatre, which their father was building at the time of his death in 1597, was also their property. After completing the Globe they leased out, for twenty-one years, shares in the receipts of the theatre to ‘those deserving men Shakespeare,Hemings, Condell, Philips, and others.’ All the shareholders named were, like Burbage, active members of Shakespeare’s company of players. The shares, which numbered sixteen in all, carried with them the obligation of providing for the expenses of the playhouse, and were doubtless in the first instance freely bestowed. Hamlet claims, in the play scene (III. ii. 293), that the success of his improvised tragedy deserved to get him ‘a fellowship in a cry of players’—a proof that a successful dramatist might reasonably expect such a reward for a conspicuous effort. In ‘Hamlet,’ moreover, both a share and a half-share of ‘a fellowship in a cry of players’ are described as assets of enviable value (III. ii. 294-6). How many shares originally fell to Shakespeare there is no means of determining. Records of later subdivisions suggest that they did not exceed two. The Globe was an exceptionally large and popular playhouse. It would accommodate some two thousand spectators, whose places cost them sums varying between twopence and half a crown. The receipts were therefore considerable, hardly less than £25 daily, or some £8,000 a year. According to the documents of 1635, an actor-sharer at the Globe received above £200 a year on each share, besides his actor’s salary of £180. Thus Shakespeare drew from the Globe Theatre, at the lowest estimate, more than £500 a year in all.
His interest in the Blackfriars Theatre was comparatively unimportant, and is less easy to estimate. The often quoted documents on which Collier depended to prove him a substantial shareholder in thatplayhouse have long been proved to be forgeries. The pleas in the lawsuit of 1635 show that the Burbages, the owners, leased the Blackfriars Theatre after its establishment in 1597 for a long term of years to the master of the Children of the Chapel, but bought out the lessee at the end of 1609, and then ‘placed’ in it ‘men-players which were Hemings, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.’ To these and other actors they allotted shares in the receipts, the shares numbering eight in all. The profits were far smaller than at the Globe, and if Shakespeare held one share (certainty on the point is impossible), it added not more than £100 a year to his income, and that not until 1610.
His remuneration as dramatist between 1599 and 1611 was also by no means contemptible. Prices paid to dramatists for plays rose rapidly in the early years of the seventeenth century,[202]while the value of the author’s ‘benefits’ grew with the growing vogue of the theatre. The exceptional popularity of Shakespeare’s plays after 1599 gave him the full advantage of higher rates of pecuniary reward in all directions, and the seventeen plays which were produced by him between that year and the close of his professional career in 1611 probably brought him an average return of £20 each or £340 in all—nearly £30 a year. At the same time the increase in the number of Court performances under James I, and the additional favour bestowed on Shakespeare’scompany, may well have given that source of income the enhanced value of £20 a year.[203]
Thus Shakespeare in the later period of his life was earning above £600 a year in money of the period. With so large a professional income he could easily, with good management, have completed those purchases of houses and land at Stratford on which he laid out, between 1599 and 1613, a total sum of £970, or an annual average of £70. These properties, it must be remembered, represented investments, and he drew rent from most of them. He traded, too, in agricultural produce. There is nothing inherently improbable in the statement of John Ward, the seventeenth-century vicar of Stratford, that in his last years ‘he spent at the rate of a thousand a year, as I have heard,’ although we may reasonably make allowance for exaggeration in the round figures.
Shakespeare realised his theatrical shares several years before his death in 1616, when he left, according to his will, £350 in money in addition to an extensive real estate and numerous personal belongings. There was nothing exceptional in this comparative affluence. His friends and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell, amassed equally large, if not larger, fortunes. Burbage died in 1619 worth £300 in land, besides personal property; while a contemporary actor and theatrical proprietor, EdwardAlleyn, purchased the manor of Dulwich for £10,000 (in money of his own day), and devoted it, with much other property, to public uses, at the same time as he made ample provision for his family out of the residue of his estate. Gifts from patrons may have continued occasionally to augment Shakespeare’s resources, but his wealth can be satisfactorily assigned to better attested agencies. There is no ground for treating it as of mysterious origin.[204a]
Between 1599 and 1611, while London remained Shakespeare’s chief home, he built up at Stratford a large landed estate which his purchase of New Place had inaugurated. In 1601 his father died, being buried on September 8. He apparently left no will, and the poet, as the eldest son, inherited the houses in Henley Street, the only portion of the property of the elder Shakespeare or of his wife which had not been alienated to creditors. Shakespeare permitted his mother to reside in one of the Henley Street houses till her death (she was buried September 9, 1608), and he derived a modest rent from the other. On May 1, 1602, he purchased for £320 of the rich landowners William and John Combe of Stratford 107 acres of arable land near the town. The conveyance was delivered, in the poet’s absence, to his brother Gilbert, ‘to the use of the within named William Shakespere.’[204b]A third purchase quickly followed. On September 28, 1602, at a court baron of the manor of Rowington, oneWalter Getley transferred to the poet a cottage and garden which were situated at Chapel Lane, opposite the lower grounds of New Place. They were held practically in fee-simple at the annual rental of 2s. 6d. It appears from the roll that Shakespeare did not attend the manorial court held on the day fixed for the transfer of the property at Rowington, and it was consequently stipulated then that the estate should remain in the hands of the lady of the manor until he completed the purchase in person. At a later period he was admitted to the copyhold, and he settled the remainder on his two daughters in fee. In April 1610 he purchased from the Combes 20 acres of pasture land, to add to the 107 of arable land that he had acquired of the same owners in 1602.
As early as 1598 Abraham Sturley had suggested that Shakespeare should purchase the tithes of Stratford. Seven years later, on July 24, 1605, he bought for £440 of Ralph Huband an unexpired term of thirty-one years of a ninety-two years’ lease of a moiety of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. The moiety was subject to a rent of £17 to the corporation, who were the reversionary owners on the lease’s expiration, and of £5 to John Barker, the heir of a former proprietor. The investment brought Shakespeare, under the most favourable circumstances, no more than an annuity of £38, and the refusal of persons who claimed an interest in the other moiety to acknowledge the full extent of their liability to the corporation led that body to demandfrom the poet payments justly due from others. After 1609 he joined with two interested persons, Richard Lane of Awston and Thomas Greene, the town clerk of Stratford, in a suit in Chancery to determine the exact responsibilities of all the tithe-owners, and in 1612 they presented a bill of complaint to Lord-chancellor Ellesmere, with what result is unknown. His acquisition of a part-ownership in the tithes was fruitful in legal embarrassments.
Shakespeare inherited his father’s love of litigation, and stood rigorously by his rights in all his business relations. In March 1600 he recovered in London a debt of £7 from one John Clayton. In July 1604, in the local court at Stratford, he sued one Philip Rogers, to whom he had supplied since the preceding March malt to the value of £1 19s. 10d, and had on June 25 lent 2s. in cash. Rogers paid back 6s., and Shakespeare sought the balance of the account, £1 15s. 10d. During 1608 and 1609 he was at law with another fellow-townsman, John Addenbroke. On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare, who was apparently represented by his solicitor and kinsman Thomas Greene,[206a]obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of £6, and £1 5s. costs, but Addenbroke left the town, and the triumph proved barren. Shakespeare avenged himself by proceeding against one Thomas Horneby, who had acted as the absconding debtor’s bail.[206b]
With an inconsistency that is more apparent than real, the astute business transactions of these years (1597-1611) synchronise with the production of Shakespeare’s noblest literary work—of his most sustained and serious efforts in comedy, tragedy, and romance. In 1599, after abandoning English history with ‘Henry V,’ he addressed himself to the composition of his three most perfect essays in comedy—‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ ‘As You Like It,’ and ‘Twelfth Night.’ Their good-humoured tone seems to reveal their author in his happiest frame of mind; in each the gaiety and tenderness of youthful womanhood are exhibited in fascinating union; while Shakespeare’s lyric gift bred no sweeter melodies than the songs with which the three plays are interspersed. At the same time each comedy enshrines such penetrating reflections on mysterious problems of life as mark the stage of maturity in the growth of the author’s intellect. The first two of the three plays were entered on the ‘Stationers’ Registers’ before August 4, 1600, on which day a prohibition was set on their publication, as well as on the publication of ‘Henry V’ and of BenJonson’s ‘Every Man in his Humour.’ This was one of the many efforts of the acting company to stop the publication of plays in the belief that the practice was injurious to their rights. The effort was only partially successful. ‘Much Ado,’ like ‘Henry V,’ was published before the close of the year. Neither ‘As You Like It’ nor ‘Twelfth Night,’ however, was printed till it appeared in the Folio.
In ‘Much Ado,’ which appears to have been written in 1599, the brilliant and spirited comedy of Benedick and Beatrice, and of the blundering watchmen Dogberry and Verges, is wholly original; but the sombre story of Hero and Claudio, about which the comic incident revolves, is drawn from an Italian source, either from Bandello (novel. xxii.) through Belleforest’s ‘Histoires Tragiques,’ or from Ariosto’s ‘Orlando Furioso’ through Sir John Harington’s translation (canto v.) Ariosto’s version, in which the injured heroine is called Ginevra, and her lover Ariodante, had been dramatised before. According to the accounts of the Court revels, ‘A Historie of Ariodante and Ginevra was showed before her Majestie on Shrovetuesdaie at night’ in 1583.[208]Throughout Shakespeare’s play the ludicrous and serious aspects of humanity are blended with a convincing naturalness. The popular comic actor William Kemp filled the role of Dogberry, and Cowley appeared as Verges. In both the Quarto of 1600 and the Folio of 1623 these actors’ names areprefixed by a copyist’s error to some of the speeches allotted to the two characters (act iv. scene ii.)
‘As You Like It,’ which quickly followed, is a dramatic adaptation of Lodge’s romance, ‘Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie’ (1590), but Shakespeare added three new characters of first-rate interest—Jaques, the meditative cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all Shakespeare’s fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for the scene of Orlando’s encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone’s description of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book called ‘Saviolo’s Practise,’ a manual of the art of self-defence, which appeared in 1595 from the pen of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian fencing-master in the service of the Earl of Essex. None of Shakespeare’s comedies breathes a more placid temper or approaches more nearly to a pastoral drama. Yet there is no lack of intellectual or poetic energy in the enunciation of the contemplative philosophy which is cultivated in the Forest of Arden. In Rosalind, Celia, Phœbe, and Audrey, four types of youthful womanhood are contrasted with the liveliest humour.
The date of ‘Twelfth Night’ is probably 1600, and its name, which has no reference to the story, doubtless commemorates the fact that it was designed for a Twelfth Night celebration. ‘The new map with the augmentation of the Indies,’ spoken of by Maria (III. ii. 86), was a respectful reference to the great map of the world or ‘hydrographical description’ which was first issued withHakluyt’s ‘Voyages’ in 1599 or 1600, and first disclosed the full extent of recent explorations of the ‘Indies’ in the New World and the Old.[210a]Like the ‘Comedy of Errors,’ ‘Twelfth Night’ achieved the distinction, early in its career, of a presentation at an Inn of Court. It was produced at Middle Temple Hall on February 2, 1601-2, and Manningham, a barrister who was present, described the performance.[210b]Manningham wrote that the piece was ‘much like the “Comedy of Errors” or “Menechmi” in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called “Inganni.”’ Two sixteenth-century Italian plays entitled ‘Gl’ Inganni’ (‘The Cheats’), and a third called ‘Gl’ Ingannati,’ bear resemblance to ‘Twelfth Night.’ It is possible that Shakespeare had recourse to the last, which was based on Bandello’s novel of Nicuola,[210c]was first published at Siena in 1538, and became popular throughout Italy. But in all probability he drew the story solely from the ‘Historie of Apolonius and Silla,’ which was related in ‘Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession’ (1581). The author of that volume, Barnabe Riche, translated the tale either direct from Bandello’s Italian novel or from the French rendering of Bandello’s work in Belleforest’s ‘Histoires Tragiques.’ Romantic pathos,as in ‘Much Ado,’ is the dominant note of the main plot of ‘Twelfth Night,’ but Shakespeare neutralises the tone of sadness by his mirthful portrayal of Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian, the clown Feste, and Maria, all of whom are his own creations. The ludicrous gravity of Malvolio proved exceptionally popular on the stage.
In 1601 Shakespeare made a new departure by drawing a plot from North’s noble translation of Plutarch’s ‘Lives.’[211a]Plutarch is the king of biographers, and the deference which Shakespeare paid his work by adhering to the phraseology wherever it was practicable illustrates his literary discrimination. On Plutarch’s lives of Julius Cæsar, Brutus, and Antony, Shakespeare based his historical tragedy of ‘Julius Cæsar.’ Weever, in 1601, in his ‘Mirror of Martyrs,’ plainly refers to the masterly speech in the Forum at Caæsar’s funeral which Shakespeare put into Antony’s mouth. There is no suggestion of the speech in Plutarch; hence the composition of ‘Julius Cæsar’ may be held to have preceded the issue of Weever’s book in 1601. The general topic was already familiar on the stage. Polonius told Hamlet how, when he was at the university, he ‘did enact Julius Cæsar; he was kill’d in the Capitol: Brutus kill’d him.’[211b]A play of the same title was known as early as 1589, and was acted in 1594 by Shakespeare’s company. Shakespeare’s piece is a penetrating study of political life, and, although themurder and funeral of Cæsar form the central episode and not the climax, the tragedy is thoroughly well planned and balanced. Cæsar is ironically depicted in his dotage. The characters of Brutus, Antony, and Cassius, the real heroes of the action, are exhibited with faultless art. The fifth act, which presents the battle of Philippi in progress, proves ineffective on the stage, but the reader never relaxes his interest in the fortunes of the vanquished Brutus, whose death is the catastrophe.
While ‘Julius Cæsar’ was winning its first laurels on the stage, the fortunes of the London theatres were menaced by two manifestations of unreasoning prejudice on the part of the public. The earlier manifestation, although speciously the more serious, was in effect innocuous. The puritans of the city of London had long agitated for the suppression of all theatrical performances, and it seemed as if the agitators triumphed when they induced the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, to issue to the officers of the Corporation of London and to the justices of the peace of Middlesex and Surrey an order forbidding the maintenance of more than two playhouses—one in Middlesex (Alleyn’s newly erected playhouse, the ‘Fortune’ in Cripplegate), and the other in Surrey (the ‘Globe’ on the Bankside). The contemplated restriction would have deprived very many actors of employment, and driven others to seek a precarious livelihood in the provinces. Happily, disaster was averted by the failure of the municipal authorities and the magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex to make the order operative. All the Londontheatres that were already in existence went on their way unchecked.[213a]
More calamitous was a temporary reverse of fortune which Shakespeare’s company, in common with the other companies of adult actors, suffered soon afterwards at the hands, not of fanatical enemies of the drama, but of playgoers who were its avowed supporters. The company of boy-actors, chiefly recruited from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and known as ‘the Children of the Chapel,’ had since 1597 been installed at the new theatre in Blackfriars, and after 1600 the fortunes of the veterans, who occupied rival stages, were put in jeopardy by the extravagant outburst of public favour that the boys’ performances evoked. In ‘Hamlet,’ the play which followed ‘Julius Cæsar,’ Shakespeare pointed out the perils of the situation.[213b]The adultactors, Shakespeare asserted, were prevented from performing in London through no falling off in their efficiency, but by the ‘late innovation’ of the children’s vogue.[214a]They were compelled to go on tour in the provinces, at the expense of their revenues and reputation, because ‘an aery [i.e.nest] of children, little eyases [i.e.young hawks],’ dominated the theatrical world, and monopolised public applause. ‘These are now the fashion,’ the dramatist lamented,[214b]and he made the topic the text of a reflection on the fickleness of public taste:
Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away?Rosencrantz. Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too.Hamlet. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away?
Rosencrantz. Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too.
Hamlet. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
Jealousies in the ranks of the dramatists accentuated the actors’ difficulties. Ben Jonson was, at the end of the sixteenth century, engaged in a fierce personal quarrel with two of his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker. The adult actors generally avowed sympathy with Jonson’s foes. Jonson, by way of revenge, sought an offensive alliance with ‘the Children of the Chapel.’ Under careful tuition the boys proved capable of performing much the same pieces as the men. To ‘the children’ Jonson offeredin 1600 his comical satire of ‘Cynthia’s Revels,’ in which he held up to ridicule Dekker, Marston, and their actor-friends. The play, when acted by ‘the children’ at the Blackfriars Theatre, was warmly welcomed by the audience. Next year Jonson repeated his manœuvre with greater effect. He learnt that Marston and Dekker were conspiring with the actors of Shakespeare’s company to attack him in a piece called ‘Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of the Humourous Poet.’ He anticipated their design by producing, again with ‘the Children of the Chapel,’ his ‘Poetaster,’ which was throughout a venomous invective against his enemies—dramatists and actors alike. Shakespeare’s company retorted by producing Dekker and Marston’s ‘Satiro-Mastix’ at the Globe Theatre next year. But Jonson’s action had given new life to the vogue of the children. Playgoers took sides in the struggle, and their attention was for a season riveted, to the exclusion of topics more germane to their province, on the actors’ and dramatists’ boisterous war of personalities.[215]
In his detailed references to the conflict in ‘Hamlet’ Shakespeare protested against the abusive comments on the men-actors of ‘the common stages’ or public theatres which were put into the children’s mouths. Rosencrantz declared that the children ‘so berattle [i.e.assail] the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither [i.e.to the public theatres].’ Hamlet in pursuit of the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the vogue of the ‘child-actors’ did them a poor service, because when the boys should reach men’s estate they would run the risk, if they continued on the stage, of the same insults and neglect which now threatened their seniors.
Hamlet. What are they children? Who maintains ’em? how are they escoted [i.e.paid]? Will they pursue the quality [i.e.the actor’s profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players—as it is most like, if their means are no better—their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?Rosencrantz. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tarre [i.e.incite] them to controversy: there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.Hamlet. Is it possible?Guildenstern. O, there has been much throwing about of brains!
Hamlet. What are they children? Who maintains ’em? how are they escoted [i.e.paid]? Will they pursue the quality [i.e.the actor’s profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players—as it is most like, if their means are no better—their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?
Rosencrantz. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tarre [i.e.incite] them to controversy: there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.
Hamlet. Is it possible?
Guildenstern. O, there has been much throwing about of brains!
Shakespeare clearly favoured the adult actors in their rivalry with the boys, but he wrote more like a disinterested spectator than an active partisan when he made specific reference to the strife between the poet Ben Jonson and the players. In the prologue to ‘Troilus and Cressida’ which he penned in 1603, he warned his hearers, with obvious allusion to Ben Jonson’s battles, that he hesitated to identify himself with either actor or poet.[217]Passages in Ben Jonson’s ‘Poetaster,’ moreover, pointedly suggest that Shakespeare cultivated so assiduously an attitude of neutrality that Jonson acknowledged him to be qualified for the role of peacemaker. The gentleness of disposition with which Shakespeare was invariably credited by his friends would have well fitted him for such an office.
Jonson figures personally in the ‘Poetaster’ under the name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his friends, Tibullus and Gallus, eulogise the work and genius of another character, Virgil, in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson is known to have applied to Shakespeare that they may be regarded as intended to apply to him (act v. sc. i.) Jonson points out that Virgil, by his penetrating intuition, achieved the great effects which others laboriously sought to reach through rules of art.
His learning labours not the school-like glossThat most consists of echoing words and terms . . .Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance—Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts—But a direct and analytic sumOf all the worth and first effects of arts.And for his poesy, ’tis so rammed with lifeThat it shall gather strength of life with being,And live hereafter, more admired than now.
His learning labours not the school-like glossThat most consists of echoing words and terms . . .Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance—Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts—But a direct and analytic sumOf all the worth and first effects of arts.And for his poesy, ’tis so rammed with lifeThat it shall gather strength of life with being,And live hereafter, more admired than now.
Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched with telling truth upon every vicissitude of human existence.
That which he hath writIs with such judgment laboured and distilledThrough all the needful uses of our livesThat, could a man remember but his lines,He should not touch at any serious pointBut he might breathe his spirit out of him.
That which he hath writIs with such judgment laboured and distilledThrough all the needful uses of our livesThat, could a man remember but his lines,He should not touch at any serious pointBut he might breathe his spirit out of him.
Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Cæsar to act as judge between Horace and his libellers, and he advises the administration of purging pills to the offenders. That course of treatment is adopted with satisfactory results.[218]
As against this interpretation, one contemporary witness has been held to testify that Shakespeare stemmed the tide of Jonson’s embittered activity by no peace-making interposition, but by joining his foes, and by administering to him, with their aid, the identical course of medicine which in the ‘Poetaster’ is meted out to his enemies. In the same year (1601) as the ‘Poetaster’ was produced, ‘The Return from Parnassus’—a third piece in a trilogy of plays—was ‘actedby the students in St. John’s College, Cambridge.’ In this piece, as in its two predecessors, Shakespeare received, both as a playwright and a poet, high commendation, although his poems were judged to reflect somewhat too largely ‘love’s lazy foolish languishment.’ The actor Burbage was introduced in his own name instructing an aspirant to the actor’s profession in the part of Richard the Third, and the familiar lines from Shakespeare’s play—
Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this sun of York—
Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this sun of York—
are recited by the pupil as part of his lesson. Subsequently in a prose dialogue between Shakespeare’s fellow-actors Burbage and Kempe, Kempe remarks of university dramatists, ‘Why, here’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.’ Burbage adds: ‘He is a shrewd fellow indeed.’ This perplexing passage has been held to mean that Shakespeare took a decisive part against Jonson in the controversy with Dekker and Dekker’s actor friends. But such a conclusion is nowhere corroborated, and seems to be confuted by the eulogies of Virgil in the ‘Poetaster’ and by the general handling of the theme in ‘Hamlet.’ The words quoted from ‘The Return from Parnassus’ hardly admit of a literal interpretation. Probably the ‘purge’ that Shakespeare was alleged by the authorof ‘The Return from Parnassus’ to have given Jonson meant no more than that Shakespeare had signally outstripped Jonson in popular esteem. As the author of ‘Julius Cæsar,’ he had just proved his command of topics that were peculiarly suited to Jonson’s vein,[220]and had in fact outrun his churlish comrade on his own ground.
At any rate, in the tragedy that Shakespeare brought out in the year following the production of ‘Julius Cæsar,’ he finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and reputation. This new exhibition of the force of his genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the adult actors who interpreted his work, and the boys’ supremacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 Shakespeare produced ‘Hamlet,’ ‘that piece of his which most kindled English hearts.’ The story of the Prince of Denmark had been popular on the stage as early as 1589 in a lost dramatic version by another writer—doubtless Thomas Kyd, whose tragedies of blood, ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ and ‘Jeronimo,’ long held the Elizabethan stage. To that lost version of ‘Hamlet’ Shakespeare’s tragedy certainly owed much.[221]The story was also accessible in the‘Histoires Tragiques’ of Belleforest, who adapted it from the ‘Historia Danica’ of Saxo Grammaticus.[222]No English translation of Belleforest’s ‘Hystorie of Hamblet’ appeared before 1608; Shakespeare doubtless read it in the French. But his authorities give little hint of what was to emerge from his study of them.
Burbage created the title-part in Shakespeare’s tragedy, and its success on the stage led to the play’s publication immediately afterwards. The bibliography of ‘Hamlet’ offers a puzzling problem. On July 26, 1602, ‘A Book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his Servants,’ was entered on the Stationers’ Company’s Registers, and it was published in quarto next year by N[icholas]L[ing] and John Trundell. The title-page stated that the piece had been ‘acted divers times in the city of London, as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere.’ The text here appeared in a rough and imperfect state. In all probability it was a piratical and carelessly transcribed copy of Shakespeare’s first draft of the play, in which he drew largely on the older piece.
A revised version, printed from a more complete and accurate manuscript, was published in 1604 as ‘The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy.’ This was printed by I[ames] R[oberts] for the publisher N[icholas] L[ing]. The concluding words—‘according to the true and perfect copy’—of the title-page of the second quarto were intended to stamp its predecessor as surreptitious and unauthentic. But it is clear that the Second Quarto was not a perfect version of the play. It was itself printed from a copy which had been curtailed for acting purposes.
A third version (long thetextus receptus) figured in the Folio of 1623. Here many passages, not to be found in the quartos, appear for the first time, but a few others that appear in the quartos are omitted. The Folio text probably came nearest to the original manuscript; but it, too, followed an acting copy which had been abbreviated somewhat less drastically than the Second Quarto and in adifferent fashion.[224]Theobald in his ‘Shakespeare Restored’ (1726) made the first scholarly attempt to form a text from a collation of the First Folio with the Second Quarto, and Theobald’s text with further embellishments by Sir Thomas Hanmer, Edward Capell, and the Cambridge editors of 1866, is now generally adopted.
‘Hamlet’ was the only drama by Shakespeare that was acted in his lifetime at the two Universities. It has since attracted more attention from actors, playgoers, and readers of all capacities than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. Its world-wide popularity from its author’s day to our own, when it is as warmly welcomed in the theatres of France and Germany as in those of England and America, is the most striking of the many testimonies to the eminence of Shakespeare’s dramatic instinct. At a first glance there seems little in the play to attract the uneducated or the unreflecting. ‘Hamlet’ is mainly a psychological effort, a study of the reflective temperament in excess. The action develops slowly; at times there is no movement at all. The piece is the longest of Shakespeare’s plays, reaching a total of over 3,900 lines. It is thus some nine hundred lines longer than ‘Antony and Cleopatra’—the play by Shakespeare that approaches ‘Hamlet’ more closely in numerical strength of lines. At the same time the total length of Hamlet’s speeches farexceeds that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other of his characters. Humorous relief is, it is true, effectively supplied to the tragic theme by Polonius and the grave-diggers, and if the topical references to contemporary theatrical history (II. ii. 350-89) could only count on an appreciative reception from an Elizabethan audience, the pungent censure of actors’ perennial defects is calculated to catch the ear of the average playgoer of all ages. But it is not to these subsidiary features that the universality of the play’s vogue can be attributed. It is the intensity of interest which Shakespeare contrives to excite in the character of the hero that explains the position of the play in popular esteem. The play’s unrivalled power of attraction lies in the pathetic fascination exerted on minds of almost every calibre by the central figure—a high-born youth of chivalric instincts and finely developed intellect, who, when stirred to avenge in action a desperate private wrong, is foiled by introspective workings of the brain that paralyse the will.
Although the difficulties of determining the date of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ are very great, there are many grounds for assigning its composition to the early days of 1603. In 1599 Dekker and Chettle were engaged by Henslowe to prepare for the Earl of Nottingham’s company—a rival of Shakespeare’s company—a play of ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ of which no trace survives. It doubtless suggested the topic to Shakespeare. On February 7, 1602-3, James Roberts obtained a license for ‘thebooke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men,’i.e.Shakespeare’s company.[226a]Roberts printed the Second Quarto of ‘Hamlet’ and others of Shakespeare’s plays; but his effort to publish ‘Troilus’ proved abortive owing to the interposition of the players. Roberts’s ‘book’ was probably Shakespeare’s play. The metrical characteristics of Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’—the regularity of the blank verse—powerfully confirm the date of composition which Roberts’s license suggests. Six years later, however, on January 28, 1608-9, a new license for the issue of ‘a booke called the history of Troylus and Cressida’ was granted to other publishers, Richard Bonian and Henry Walley,[226b]and these publishers, more fortunate than Roberts soon printed a quarto with Shakespeare’s full name as author. The text seems fairly authentic, but exceptional obscurity attaches to the circumstances of the publication. Some copies of the book bear an ordinary type of title-page stating that the piece was printed ‘as it was acted by the King’s majesties servants at the Globe.’ But in other copies, which differ in no way in regard to the text of the play, there was substituted for this title-page a more pretentious announcement running: ‘The famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid, excellently expressing the beginning of their loues with the conceited wooing of Pandarus, prince of Lacia.’ After this pompous title-page there was inserted, for the first and only time in the case of a play by Shakespeare that waspublished in his lifetime, an advertisement or preface. In this interpolated page an anonymous scribe, writing in the name of the publishers, paid bombastic and high-flown compliments to Shakespeare as a writer of ‘comedies,’ and defiantly boasted that the ‘grand possessers’—i.e.the owners—of the manuscript deprecated its publication. By way of enhancing the value of what were obviously stolen wares, it was falsely added that the piece was new and unacted. This address was possibly the brazen reply of the publishers to a more than usually emphatic protest on the part of players or dramatist against the printing of the piece. The editors of the Folio evinced distrust of the Quarto edition by printing their text from a different copy showing many deviations, which were not always for the better.
The work, which in point of construction shows signs of haste, and in style is exceptionally unequal, is the least attractive of the efforts of Shakespeare’s middle life. The story is based on a romantic legend of the Trojan war, which is of mediæval origin. Shakespeare had possibly read Chapman’s translation of Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ but he owed his plot to Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Cresseid’ and Lydgate’s ‘Troy Book.’ In defiance of his authorities he presented Cressida as a heartless coquette; the poets who had previously treated her story—Boccaccio, Chaucer, Lydgate, and Robert Henryson—had imagined her as a tender-hearted, if frail, beauty, with claims on their pity rather than on theirscorn. But Shakespeare’s innovation is dramatically effective, and accords with strictly moral canons. The charge frequently brought against the dramatist that in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ he cynically invested the Greek heroes of classical antiquity with contemptible characteristics is ill supported by the text of the play. Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon figure in Shakespeare’s play as brave generals and sagacious statesmen, and in their speeches Shakespeare concentrated a marvellous wealth of pithily expressed philosophy, much of which has fortunately obtained proverbial currency. Shakespeare’s conception of the Greeks followed traditional lines except in the case of Achilles, whom he transforms into a brutal coward. And that portrait quite legitimately interpreted the selfish, unreasoning, and exorbitant pride with which the warrior was credited by Homer, and his imitators.
Shakespeare’s treatment of his theme cannot therefore be fairly construed, as some critics construe it, into a petty-minded protest against the honour paid to the ancient Greeks and to the form and sentiment of their literature by more learned dramatists of the day, like Ben Jonson and Chapman. Although Shakespeare knew the Homeric version of the Trojan war, he worked in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ upon a mediæval romance, which was practically uninfluenced either for good or evil by the classical spirit.[228]
Despite the association of Shakespeare’s company with the rebellion of 1601, and its difficulties with the children of the Chapel Royal, he and his fellow actorsretained their hold on Court favour till the close of Elizabeth’s reign. As late as February 2, 1603, the company entertained the dying Queen at Richmond. Her death on March 26, 1603, drew from Shakespeare’s early eulogist, Chettle, a vain appeal to him under the fanciful name of Melicert, to
Drop from his honied muse one sable teare,To mourne her death that gracèd his desert,And to his laies opened her royal eare.[230]
Drop from his honied muse one sable teare,To mourne her death that gracèd his desert,And to his laies opened her royal eare.[230]
But, except on sentimental grounds, the Queen’s death justified no lamentation on the part of Shakespeare. On the withdrawal of one royal patron he and his friends at once found another, who proved far more liberal and appreciative.
On May 19, 1603, James I, very soon after his accession, extended to Shakespeare and other members of the Lord Chamberlain’s company a very marked and valuable recognition. To them he granted under royal letters patent a license ‘freely to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralls, pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other like as they have already studied, or hereafter shall use or studie as well for the recreation of our loving subjectes as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall thinke good to see them during our pleasure.’ The Globe Theatre was noted as the customary scene of their labours, but permission was granted to them toperform in the town-hall or moot-hall of any country town. Nine actors are named. Lawrence Fletcher stands first on the list; he had already performed before James in Scotland in 1599 and 1601. Shakespeare comes second and Burbage third. The company to which they belonged was thenceforth styled the King’s company; its members became ‘the King’s Servants’ and they took rank with the Grooms of the Chamber.[231]Shakespeare’s plays were thenceforth repeatedly performed in James’s presence, and Oldys related that James wrote Shakespeare a letter in his own hand, which was at one time in the possession of Sir William D’Avenant, and afterwards, according to Lintot, in that of John Sheffield, first duke of Buckingham.
In the autumn and winter of 1603 the prevalence of the plague led to the closing of the theatres in London. The King’s players were compelled to make a prolonged tour in the provinces, which entailed some loss of income. For two months from the third week in October, the Court was temporarily installed at Wilton, the residence of William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, and late in November the company was summoned by the royal officersto perform in the royal presence. The actors travelled from Mortlake to Salisbury ‘unto the Courte aforesaide,’ and their performance took place at Wilton House on December 2. They received next day ‘upon the Councells warrant’ the large sum of £30 ‘by way of his majesties reward.’[232a]Many other gracious marks of royal favour followed. On March 15, 1604, Shakespeare and eight other actors of the company walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the King on his formal entry into London. Each actor received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document authorising the grant Shakespeare’s name stands first on the list.[232b]The dramatist Dekker was author of a somewhat bombastic account of the elaborate ceremonial, which rapidly ran through three editions. OnApril 9, 1604, the King gave further proof of his friendly interest in the fortunes of his actors by causing an official letter to be sent to the Lord Mayor of London and the Justices of the Peace for Middlesex and Surrey, bidding them ‘permit and suffer’ the King’s players to ‘exercise their playes’ at their ‘usual house,’ the Globe.[233a]Four months later—in August—every member of the company was summoned by the King’s order to attend at Somerset House during the fortnight’s sojourn there of the Spanish ambassador extraordinary, Juan Fernandez de Velasco, duke de Frias, and Constable of Castile, who came to London to ratify the treaty of peace between England and Spain, and was magnificently entertained by the English Court.[233b]Between All Saints’ Day [November 1]and the ensuing Shrove Tuesday, which fell early in February 1605, Shakespeare’s company gave no fewer than eleven performances at Whitehall in the royal presence.
Under the incentive of such exalted patronage, Shakespeare’s activity redoubled, but his work shows none of the conventional marks of literature that is produced in the blaze of Court favour. The first six years of the new reign saw him absorbed in the highest themes of tragedy, and an unparalleled intensity and energy, which bore few traces of the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illumined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the composition of two plays can be confidently assigned, one of which—‘Othello’—ranks with Shakespeare’s greatest achievements; while the other—‘Measure for Measure’—although as a whole far inferior to ‘Othello,’ contains one of the finest scenes (between Angelo and Isabella, II. ii. 43 sq.) and one of the greatest speeches (Claudio on the fear of death, III. i. 116-30) in the range of Shakespearean drama. ‘Othello’ was doubtless the first new piece by Shakespeare that was acted before James. It was produced at Whitehall on November 1. ‘Measure for Measure’ followed on December 26.[235]Neither was printed in Shakespeare’slifetime. The plots of both ultimately come from the same Italian collection of novels—Giraldi Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi,’ which was first published in 1565.
Cinthio’s painful story of ‘Othello’ (decad. iii. nov. 3) is not known to have been translated into English before Shakespeare dramatised it. He followed its main drift with fidelity, but he introduced the new characters of Roderigo and Emilia, and he invested the catastrophe with new and fearful intensity by making Iago’s cruel treachery known to Othello at the last, after Iago’s perfidy has impelled the noble-hearted Moor in his groundless jealousy to murder his gentle and innocent wife Desdemona. Iago became in Shakespeare’s hands the subtlest of all studies of intellectual villainy and hypocrisy. The whole tragedy displays to magnificent advantage the dramatist’s fully matured powers. An unfalteringequilibrium is maintained in the treatment of plot and characters alike.
Cinthio made the perilous story of ‘Measure for Measure’ the subject not only of a romance, but of a tragedy called ‘Epitia.’ Before Shakespeare wrote his play, Cinthio’s romance had been twice rendered into English by George Whetstone. Whetstone had not only given a somewhat altered version of the Italian romance in his unwieldy play of ‘Promos and Cassandra’ (in two parts of five acts each, 1578), but he had also freely translated it in his collection of prose tales, ‘Heptameron of Civil Discources’ (1582). Yet there is every likelihood that Shakespeare also knew Cinthio’s play, which, unlike his romance, was untranslated; the leading character, who is by Shakespeare christened Angelo, was known by another name to Cinthio in his story, but Cinthio in his play (and not in his novel) gives the character a sister named Angela, which doubtless suggested Shakespeare’s designation.[237]In the hands of Shakespeare’s predecessors the tale is a sordid record of lust and cruelty. But Shakespeare prudently showed scant respect for their handling of the narrative. By diverting the course of the plot at a critical point he not merely proved his artistic ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and moral elevation to a degraded and repellent theme. In the old versions Isabella yields her virtue as the price of her brother’s life. The central fact of Shakespeare’s play is Isabella’s inflexible and unconditional chastity. Other of Shakespeare’salterations, like the Duke’s abrupt proposal to marry Isabella, seem hastily conceived. But his creation of the pathetic character of Mariana ‘of the moated grange’—the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella’s would-be seducer—skilfully excludes the possibility of a settlement (as in the old stories) between Isabella and Angelo on terms of marriage. Shakespeare’s argument is throughout philosophically subtle. The poetic eloquence in which Isabella and the Duke pay homage to the virtue of chastity, and the many expositions of the corruption with which unchecked sexual passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely comic interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to efface natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is little in the play that seems designed to recommend it to the Court before which it was first performed. But the two emphatic references to a ruler’s dislike of mobs, despite his love of his people, were perhaps penned in deferential allusion to James I, whose horror of crowds was notorious. In act i. sc. i. 67-72 the Duke remarks:
I love the people,But do not like to stage me to their eyes.Though it do well, I do not relish wellTheir loud applause and aves vehement.Nor do I think the man of safe discretionThat does affect it.
I love the people,But do not like to stage me to their eyes.Though it do well, I do not relish wellTheir loud applause and aves vehement.Nor do I think the man of safe discretionThat does affect it.
Of like tenor is the succeeding speech of Angelo (act ii. sc. iv. 27-30):
The general [i.e.the public], subject to a well-wish’d king, . . .Crowd to his presence, where their untaught loveMust needs appear offence.
The general [i.e.the public], subject to a well-wish’d king, . . .Crowd to his presence, where their untaught loveMust needs appear offence.
In ‘Macbeth,’ his ‘great epic drama,’ which he began in 1605 and completed next year, Shakespeare employed a setting wholly in harmony with the accession of a Scottish king. The story was drawn from Holinshed’s ‘Chronicle of Scottish History,’ with occasional reference, perhaps, to earlier Scottish sources.[239]The supernatural machinery of the three witches accorded with the King’s superstitious faith in demonology; the dramatist lavished his sympathy on Banquo, James’s ancestor; while Macbeth’s vision of kings who carry ‘twofold balls and treble sceptres’ (iv. i. 20) plainly adverted to the union of Scotland with England and Ireland under James’s sway. The allusion by the porter (ii. iii. 9) to the ‘equivocator . . . who committed treason’ was perhaps suggested by the notorious defence of the doctrine of equivocation made by the Jesuit Henry Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share in the ‘Gunpowder Plot.’ The piece was not printed until 1623. It is in its existing shape by far the shortest of all Shakespeare’s tragedies, (‘Hamlet’ is nearly twice as long) and it is possible that it survives only in an abbreviated acting version. Much scenic elaboration characterised the production. Dr. Simon Forman witnessed a performance of the tragedy at the Globe in April 1611, and noted that Macbeth and Banquo entered the stage on horseback, and that Banquo’s ghost was materially represented (iii. iv. 40 seq.) Like ‘Othello,’ the play ranks with the noblest tragedies either of the modern or the ancient world. The characters of hero and heroine—Macbeth and his wife—are depicted with the utmost subtlety and insight. In three points ‘Macbeth’ differs somewhat from other of Shakespeare’s productions in the great class of literature to which it belongs. The interweaving with the tragic story of supernatural interludes in which Fate is weirdly personified is not exactly matched in any other of Shakespeare’s tragedies. In the second place, the action proceeds with a rapidity that is wholly without parallel in the rest of Shakespeare’s plays. Nowhere, moreover, has Shakespeare introduced comic relief into a tragedy with bolder effect than in the porter’s speech after the murder of Duncan (II. iii. I seq.) The theory that this passage was from another hand does not merit acceptance.[240]It cannot, however, be overlooked that the second scene of the first act—Duncan’s interview with the ‘bleeding sergeant’—falls so far below the style of the rest of the play as to suggest that it was an interpolation by a hack of the theatre. The resemblances between Thomas Middleton’s later play of ‘The Witch’ (1610) and portions of ‘Macbeth’ may safely be ascribed to plagiarism on Middleton’s part. Of two songs which, according to the stage directions, were to be sung during the representation of ‘Macbeth’ (III. v. and IV. i.), only the first line of each is noted there, but songs beginning with the same lines are set out in full in Middleton’s play; they were probably by Middleton, and were interpolated by actors in a stage version of ‘Macbeth’ after its original production.