* Ante, page 68.
Surely it is a much less violent supposition that this funny Mr. Shakespeare—who happened to be employed in the theater where certain masterpieces were taken to be cut up into plays to copy out of them each actor's parts—that this waggish penman, as he wrote out the parts in big, round hand, improved on or interpolated a palpable hit, a merry speech, thelast popular song, or sketched entire a role with a name familiar to his boyish ear—the village butt, or sot, or justice of the peace, * may he; or, why not some fellow scapegrace of olden times by Avon banks? He did it with a swift touch and a mellow humor that relieved and refreshed the stately speeches, making the play all the more available and the copyist all the more valuable to the management. But, all the same, how this witty Mr. Shakespeare would have roared at a suggestion that the centuries after him should christen by his—the copyist's—name all the might and majesty and splendor, all the philosophy and pathos and poetry, every word that he wrote out, unblotting a line, for the players!
* He had not failed to see Dogberry and Shallow in thelittle villages of Warwickshire—and the wonderful "Watch."The "Watch" of those days was indeed something to wonder at.In a letter of Lord Burleigh to Sir Francis Walsingham,written in 1586, the writer says that he once saw certain ofthem standing "so openly in pumps" in a public place, that"no suspected person would come nigh them;" and, on hisasking them what they stood there for, they answered thatthey were put there to apprehend three men, the onlydescription they had of them was that one of them had ahooked nose. "If they be no better instructed but to findthree persons by one of them having a hooked nose, they maymiss thereof," reflects Burghley, with much reason. Mr.Halliwell Phillips, in his "Outline of the Life of WilliamShakespeare" (Brighton, 1881), page 66, thinks that this isunlikely, because the magistrate mentioned by Aubrey wouldhave been too old in 1642, if he had been the model sought.
It must be conceded, say the new theorists:
I. That the plays, whether in the shape we now have them or not, are, at least, under the samenames and with substantially the same dramatis personæ.
II. That William Shakespeare was the stage manager, or stage editor; or, at any rate, touched up the plays for representation.
III. That the acting copies of the plays, put into the hands of the players to learn their parts from, were more or less in the handwriting of William Shakespeare, and that from these acting copies the first folio of 1623 was set up and printed.
At least, the best evidence at hand seems to establish all three of these propositions. This evidence is meager and accidental, but, for that very reason, involuntary, and, therefore, not manufactured; and it establishes the above propositions, as far as it goes, as follows:
I. In a volume, "Poste, with a racket of Madde-Letters," printed in 1603, a young woman is made to say to her lover: "It is not your liustie rustie can make me afraide of your big lookes, for I saw the plaie of Ancient Pistoll, where a craking coward was well cudgelled for his knavery; your railing is so near the rascall that I am almost ashamed to bestow so good a name as the rogue upon you."
Again, Sharpham, in his "Fleire," printed in 1607, has this piece of dialogue:
"Kni.—And how lives he with 'am?
"Fie.—Faith, like This be in the play, a' has almost killed himselfe with the scabbard!"
The first author thus makes his young woman to have seen Henry V., and the second alludes to the Midsummer-Night's Dream, where the bumpkin is made to kill himself by falling on hisscabbard instead of his sword. Besides, in the imperfect versions of the plays which the printers were able to make up, from such unauthorized sources as best served them, it is thought that there are unmistakable evidences that one of the sources was the shorthand of a listener, who, not catching a word or phrase distinctly, would put down something that sounded enough like it to betray the sources and his copy. For example: In the spring of 1602, a play called "The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." was presented at the Globe theater. In 1603, two booksellers, Ling and Trundell, printed a play of that title, put William Shakespeare's name to it, and sold it. Now, in this version, we have such errors as "right done" for "write down" (Act I., Scene ii.); "invenom'd speech" for "in venom steeped" (Act I., Scene i.); "I'll provide for you a grave" for "most secret and most grave" (Act III, Scene iv.); "a beast devoid of reason" for "a beast that wants discourse of reason," and the like. Ling and Trundell, somehow or other, procured better copy, and printed a corrected edition in the following year; but the errors in their first edition were precisely such as would result from an attempt to report the play phonetically, as it was delivered by the actors on the stage. All the printers of the day seem to have made common piracy out of these plays, impelled thereto by their exceeding popularity. Hash says that the first part of King Henry VI., especially, had a wonderful run for those days, being witnessed by at least ten thousand people. *
* We take all these references from "Outlines of the Life ofShakespeare," by I. O. Halliwell Phillips (Brighton. Printedfor the author's friends, for presents only. 1881), page 40,to which capital volume we acknowledge our exceedingobligation. Mr. Grant White in the Atlantic Monthly, October1881, believes that he is able to trace the surreptitious"copy" of this first Hamlet to the actor who took the partof Voltimand. The inference from Mr. White's account of thetransaction, is precisely that we have noted in the text.
Ofthis play a garbled version was put on the market by Millington, who, soon after, did the same thing by the Henry V.
II. Davenant instructed Betterton how to render the part of Henry VIII., assuring him that he (Davenant) had his own instructions from Lowin, and that Lowin got them from William Shakespeare in person. * (We have not accepted Davenant's evidence as likely to be of much value, when assuming to be Shakespeare's son, successor, literary executor, and the like, but this does not appear, on its face, improbable, and is no particular less if untrue.) Ravens-croft, who re-wrote Titus Andronicus in 1687, says, in his preface: "I have been told by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it (this play) was not originally his (Shakespeare's), but brought by a private actor to be acted, and he only gave some master touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." **
"I am assured," says Gildon, *** "from very good hands, that the person that acted Iago was in much esteem as a comedian, which made Shakespeare put several words and expressions into his part, perhaps not so agreeable to his character, to make the audience laugh, who had not yet learned to endure to be serious a whole play."
* Id.** Id.*** Reflections on Rymer's "Short View of Tragedy," quotedby Mr. Halliwell Phillips, in his work cited in last note.
(But if Shakespeare put them in to "catch the ear of the groundlings," who tookthem out again for the folio of 1623? The Baconians would probably ask: "Did Bacon, after Shakespeare was dead?" And it could not have been a proofreader; for, if there was any proof-reader, he was the most careless one that ever lived. The folio of 1623 is crowded with typographical errors.) Somebody—necessarily Shakespeare—was in the habit of introducing into these Shakespearean plays the popular songs of the day. For example, the song, "A Lover and His Lass," in "As you Like it." was written by Thomas Morley, and printed in his "First Book of Ayres; or, Little Short Songs," in 1600. * And the ballad, "Farewell, Dear Love," in "Twelfth Night," has previously appeared in 1601, in the "Book of Ayres" of Robert Jones. ** It is probable, however, says Mr. Halliwell Phillips, that William Shakespeare had withdrawn from the management of the Globe; at the date of its destruction during the performance of Henry VIII. (which Mr. Phillips calls the first play on the English stage in which dramatic art was sacrificed to stage effect. It is curious, this being the case, to find the New Shakespeare Society rejecting the Henry VIII. as not Shakespearean on the philological evidence, and assuring us that Wolsey's soliloquy is not Shakespeare's, as did Mr. Spedding so many years before).
* In the last issue of the "Transactions of the NewShakespeare Society" is a copy of what purports to be amanuscript respecting the delivery of certain red cloth toShakespeare, on the occasion of a reception to James I., bythe corporation of London, in 1604, unearthed and guaranteedby Mr. Furnivall.** Folio, London, 1601.
The story of Queen Elizabeth's order for "Falstaff in Love" first appeared, in 1702, in thepreface to John Dennis's "Comicale Gallant," from whom Rowe quoted. Although smacking of the same flavor as the Southampton and King James "yarns"—it is worth noting that this story may possess, perhaps, some vestige of foundation. If these sounding plays, so full of religion, politics, philosophy, and statecraft, were presented at Shakespeare's theater, it is only natural that it should come to Elizabeth's ears. The lion Queen did not care to have her subjects instructed too far. She liked to keep them well in hand, and was only—she and her ministers—too ready to "snuff treason in certain things that went by other's names." The run of comedies at other theaters were harmless enough (an adultery for a plot, and an unsuspecting husband for a butt. This was a comedy; plus a little blood, it was a tragedy). Let the people have their fill of amusement, but it is better not to meddle with philosophy and politics. So there are things more unlikely to have happened than that Elizabeth, through her Lord Chamberlain, should have intimated to manager Shakespeare to give them something more in the run and appetite of the day. * The "Merry Wives of Windsor" was, in due time, underlined. But, somehow or other, it was with a would-be adulterer, rather than an injured husband, for a butt; and, somehow or other, Galen and Esculapius and Epicurius had intruded where there was no need of them.
* Collier—"Lives of Shakespeare's Actors, Introduction,page xv."—says that there were at least two, and perhapsthree, other William Shakespeares in London in these days.
The salaciousness Elizabeth wanted (if the story is true) was all there, as well as the transformation scene; but, at the end, there is a rebuke to lechery and to lecherous minds that is not equivocal in its terms. * But that any of this Shakespeare fortune came, by way of gift or otherwise, from Southampton, there is no ground, except silly and baseless rumor, for believing. If Southampton had been the Rothschild of his time—which he was very far from being—he would not have given a thousand pounds (a sum we have estimated as equaling $25,000 to-day, but which Mr. Grant White puts at $30,000, and which Mr. Halliwell Phillips, ** on account of the "often fictitious importance attached to cash, arising from its comparative scarcity in those days," says ought even be as high as twelve pounds for one) to a casual acquaintance. The mere passing of such a sum would seem to involve other relations; and if Southampton knew Shakespeare, or Shakespeare Southampton, let it be demonstrated from some autobiographical or historical source—from some other source than the "Biographies of William Shakespeare," written by those slippery rhapsodists, the Shakespereans. If Damon and Pythias were friends, let it appear from the biographies of Damon, as well as from the biographies of Pythias. Let us find it in some of Southampton's papers, or in the archives or papers of some of his family, descendants, contemporaries, or acquaintances; in the chronicles of Elizabeth, Raleigh, Cecil, Essex, Rutland, Montgomery, Camden, Coke, Bacon, Tobie Mathew, Ben Jonson, or of somebody alive and with open eyes in Londonat about that date, before we yield it historical assent, and make oath to it so solemnly.
* Perhaps, if the story were true, a rebuke to Elizabethpersonally in the line (Act V., Scene v.), "Our radiantQueen hates sluts and sluttery."
As a matter of fact, and as the industrious Mr. Lodge confesses, * there is no such trace or record. Except from, the "biographers" of Shakespeare, no note, hint, or surmise, connecting the two names, can be anywhere unearthed, and they only draw the suggestion on which they build such lofty treatises from a dedication printed in the days when printers helped themselves to any name they wanted without fear of an injunction out of chancery. That any sonnets were ever dedicated to Southampton by anybody, is, we have seen, pure invention.
III. But that the famous First Folio of 1623 was set up from piecemeal parts written for separate actors, and that these were in William Shakespeare's handwriting, there seems to be contemporary circumstantial evidence.
We have seen that, although Ben Jonson has, for two hundred and fifty years, been believed when he said in poetry that William Shakespeare was not only the "Star of Poets" for genius, but that besides he would "sweat and strike the second heat upon the muses's anvil;" when he said in prose that "The players often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that in writing (whatever he wrote) he never blotted out a line," he was supposed to be using a mere figure of speech. But it seems that he was telling the truth. For, in 1623—Shakespeare having been dead seven years—Heminges and Condell—two "players" (i. e.,actors), and the same that Shakespeare in his Will calls his "fellows"—publish the first edition of the plays we now call "Shakespeare"—and, on the title-page of that edition, advertise them as "published according to thetrue original copies."
* Portraits, Henry Wreothlesey, Earl of Southampton, Yol.III., page 155. Bohn's edition.
Further on in their preface, they repeat, almost in his very words, Ben Jon-son's statement, asserting that "We have scarce received from him (William Shakespeare) a blot in his papers." What papers? What indeed, but "the true original copies" of these plays which were in William Shakespeare's handwriting? What else could it have been that "the players" (according to Ben Jonson) saw? Does anybody suppose that the poet's own first draft, untouched of the file and unperfumed of the lamp, went into "the players'" hands, for them to learn their parts from? And, even ifoneplayer was allowed to study his part from the inspired author's first draft, his fellow "players" must have taken or received a copy or copies of their parts; they could not all study their parts from the same manuscript. The only reasonable supposition, therefore, is, that William Shakespeare made it part of his duties at the theater towrite outin a fair hand the parts for the different "players" (and no wonder they mentioned it, as "an honor" to him, that he lightened their labors considerably by the legibility of his penmanship, by never blotting out a line) and that, in course of time, these "true original copies" were collected from their fellow-actors by Heminges and Condell, and by them published; they remarking, in turn, upon the excellence of the penmanship so familiar to them. There is only wanted to confirm this supposition, a piece ofactual evidence as to what Heminges and Condelldidprint from.
Now, it happens that, by their own careless proof reading, Heminges and Condell have actually supplied this piece of missing circumstantial evidence, as follows: Naturally, in these true original copies of a particular actors part, the name of the actor assuming that part would be written in the margin, opposite to or instead of the name of the character he was to personate; precisely as is done to-day by the theater copyist in copying parts for distribution among the company. It happened that, in setting up the types for this first edition from these fragmentary actors' copies, the printers would often accidentaly, from following "copy" too closely, set up these real names of the actors instead of the names of the characters. And—as any one taking up a copy or fac-simile of this famous "first folio" can see for himself—the editors carelessly overlooked these errors in the proof, and there they remain to this day: "Jacke Wilson," for "Balthazar," "Andrew" and "Cowley," for "Dogberry;"
"Kempe," for "Verges," and the like—the names of Shakespeare's actors—instead of the parts they took in the piece. It seems superfluous to again suggest that these unblotted "copies" could not have been the author's first draft of a play, or that an author does not write his compositions in manifold, or that there had been many actors to learn their parts in the course of from sixteen to twenty years.
Besides—even if Heminges and Condell had not told us—it would have still been perfectly evident, from an inspection of the "first folio," that the "copy" it was set up from was never completely in their hands, butwas collected piecemeal during the manufacture. For instance, we see where the printers left a space of twenty-nine pages, between "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Cæsar," in which to print the "Timon of Athens." But all the copy they could find of the "Timon" only madeeighteenpages, and so—by huge "head pieces" and "tail pieces," and a "Table of the Actor's Names" (given in no other instance) in coarse capitals—they eked out the "signature;" and, by omitting the whole of the next "signature," carried the pagination over from "98" to "109." The copy for "Troilus and Cres-sida" seems not to have been received until the volume was in the binder's hands (which is remarkable, too, for that play had been in print for fourteen years). The play is not mentioned in the table of contents, but is tucked in without paging (except that the first five pages are numbered 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, whereas the paging of the volume had already reached 232). "Troilus and Cressida," thus printed, fills two "signatures" lacking one page, and so somebody at hand wrote a "Prologue" in rhyme—setting out the argument—to save the blank page, and the like. Whatever "papers" Heminges and Condell "received from William Shakespeare then, were fair, unblotted copies of the actor parts, made by him for their use. It appears then, that—minute scholarship and the records apart—the foreman of a printing-house would have been at any time in the past two hundred and fifty years, without assistance from the commentators, able to settle the great Shakespearean authorship controversy.
While—from one standpoint—this testimony of the types is strong circumstantial evidence againstthe Baconian theory, taken from another standpoint it is quite as strongly corroborative. For on the one hand, Bacon was alive when this folio was printed, and the man who rewrote his essays eleven times would scarcely have allowed his plays to go to the public so shiftlessly printed. But on the other hand, if the book was printed without consulting him, that insurmountable barrier—the fact that Bacon never claimed these plays—is swept away at once. We have simply to assume that he always intended, at some convenient season, to acknowledge them: that he was not satisfied with them as they appeared in the Heminges and Condell edition, and proposed revising them himself before claiming them, (we know how difficult he found it to satisfy his own censorship) or that he purposed completing the series, (for which the sketch of the Henry VII may have been placed among his private memoranda) at his leisure. We have then only to imagine that death overtook him suddenly (his death was sudden) before this programme had been completed, and his not acknowledging them; not leaving them—incomplete as he believed them—to "the next ages," was characteristic of the man.
"If I go, who remains? If I remain, who goes?" said Dante to the Council of Florence. Take the Shakespearean pages away from English literature, and what remains? Detain them, and what departs? And yet are men to believe that the writer of these pages left no impress on the history of his age and no item in the chronicle of his time? that, in the intensest focus of the clear, calm, electric-light of nineteenth century inspection and investigation, their authorstands only revealed in the gossip of goodwives or the drivel of a pot-house clientage? Who is it—his reason and judgment once enlisted—who believes this thing?
Columbus discovered the continent we call after the name of another. Where shall we find written the names of the genii whose fruit and fame this Shakespeare has stolen. Having lost "our Shakespeare" both to-day and forever, it will doubtless remain—as it is—the question, "Who wrote the Shakespearean dramas?" The evidence is all in—the testimony is all taken. Perhaps it is a secret that even Time will never tell, that is hidden deep down in the crypt and sacristy of the Past, whose seal shall never more be broken. In the wise land of China it is said that when a man has deserved well of the state, his countrymen honor, with houses and lands and gifts and decorations, not himself, but his father and his mother. Perhaps, learning a lesson from the Celestials; we might rear a shaft to the fathers and the mothers of the Immortality that wrote the Book of Nature, the mighty book which "age can not wither, nor custom stale" and whose infinite variety for three centuries has been and, until Time shall be no more, will be close to the hearts of every age and cycle of men—household words for ever and ever, The Book—thank heaven!—that nothing can divorce from us.
A.Actors, names of Shakespeare, printed by mistake in first folio,314.Actors, fellows of W. S. Did they suspect imposition?,037.Of Shakespeare's day, expected to improvise,260.Actresses, none in Shakespeare's day,273.Addison, Joseph, his estimate of Shakespearean plays,026.Alterations of the plays in 1st folio. See Emendations.Althea, classical error as to,210.Angling, knowledge of, displayed in plays,228.Anonymous authorship,283.Or pseudonymic, fashionable in those days,176.Anti-Shakespearean theories—A compromise of, suggested,300.Theobald anticipates,301.Areopagitica, Milton's, first asserted author's rights,108.Aristotle, Bacon and Shakespeare misquote passage of,241.Arms, John Shakespeare's, purchased by his son,097.Coat of, "cut from whole cloth",274.Obtained by falsehood,274,275, note.Protest against them,274, note.Purchased with Shakespeare's first earnings,274.Why Shakespeare purchased,274.Article in Chambers' Journal first raises authorship question,185.Aubrey, his testimony,047,069,071.Expert evidence of,303,304.Audiences. See Plays.Did not want scientific treatises,229.Formative days of,263.Not critical,013.The Shakespearean,114,259.Author, his interest to be anonymous,113.Eights, what were,108.Compensation, how obtained,108.Author of the plays. See Plays.His fidelity to national characteristics,042.Insight of, into the human heart, no guess work,043.Of text, did not write stage business,117.Authorship of Henry VI., R. 0. White's idea of,303.Anonymous,283.Anonymous or pseudonymic authorship, prevalent,176.See Joint authorship.Insecurity of. See Author, Copyright, Nashe, Printers, Plays.Insecurity of authorship. See Star Chamber.Autographs of W. S. See "Florio'" autograph.
B.Bacon, and Shakespeare misquote passage of Aristotle,241.And Shakespeare, unknown to each other,144.Appears in New Theory,284.Believes in teaching history by drama,242.Could have appraised the S. Drama,180.Did William Shakespeare write works of,038,039.Directs certain MS. locked up,244.Driven to "the Jews",233. See "Shylock."His acquirements,232.His estimate of the theatre,203.His letter to the Queen,237.His "Northumberland MS.",242.His reasons for concealment,201,316.His "Sonnet" what may be,280,281.His youth compared with Shakespeare's,232.Last act of, his memorandum concerning,297.Letter to Sir John Davies,236,237.May have brought together first folio,236.Neglected nothing,297.No cause to mourn for Elizabeth,243.Not mentioned to Shakespeare by Jonson,145.Bacon, often wrote in other's names,243.Or is he told of Shakespeare by,145.Possesses the qualities assigned to author of the dramas,175.Silent as to William Shakespeare,180.Surmised philosophical purpose,203.When appointed attorney-general plays cease to appear,233.Bacon, Delia, apparent audacity of announcement,186.Believed in a joint authorship,206.Believes "Hamlet" to be key-note of the plays,190.Claims to have discovered Bacon's clew,192.Death of,200.Estimate of her book,196, note.Extracts from her first paper,189.Her approach to an overt act,197,199.Her belief as to the manuscripts,193,194.Her poverty,188,195.Her question as to the MS. answered,244.History of her theory,188.What it really was,191.Reception of her theory in America,187.In England,187.Supposed to be mad,010,011.But her madness contageous,011.Visits Stratford,174,195.Old Verulam, id.What her madness was,191,300.Writes her first paper in 1855,186."Baconian" and "Delia Bacon" theories discriminated,201.Baconian theory, abstract of,232.Bibliography of the,246.Indifferent as to Wm. S. being a law student,245.In general, what,203.Preponderance for,297.Bailey, Rev. John, invents a new Shakespeare story,160, note."Bartholomew Fair," induction to. See Jonson, Ben,139.Becker Death Mask, the,103.Bed, the second best,050.Not explained by R. Gr. White or by Steevens,065."Beeston," author of "Schoolmaster story",060."Beeston," who was he?,160.Belleforest, borrowed from in the plays,221.Berni, paraphrased by Iago,064.Best seats at theatres on the stage,273.Bible, Shakespeare and the,060, note,231.Bibliography of the Baconian theory,246."Biographies" of William Shakespeare, modern,161.De Quincy's,157.Birthday of W. S. See St. George's day.Blackfriars Theater, James Burbage builds,256.Blood, circulation of the,208,210.Boaden, James, his summary of the portraits,093.Boccaccio, borrowed from in the plays,221.Bohemia. See Sea-coast of Bohemia.Book-making, knowledge of, displayed in plays. See Printing.Botany, knowledge of, displayed in the plays. See Flowers.Boucicault, Dion, a surmised example of what W. S. was,031.His suggestion,285.Answer to,285.Boys, took female parts in Shakespeare's day,273.Brother of W. S. See Oldys.Brown C. Armitage, his discovery as to Sonnets,278.Brown, Henry, theory of the Sonnets,279.Bunyan, John, analogy of life to Shakespeare,165,166.Illustrations of what genius can not do,164.Burbage, James, builds the Blackfriars theater,256.Burbage, Richard, lines interpolated in Hamlet to suit,034, note.Said to have painted portraits of W. S.,099.Burns, Robert, an example of genius,162.Comparison between, and "Shakespeare",219.Illustration of what genius can not do,163."Business" of Wm. Shakespeare, now obsolete,298.Bust in possession of Garrick Club,105. See Garrick Club Bust.Bust, the Stratford,097. See Portraits.Whitewashed, by Malone,097.Byron, Lord, his estimate of the Shakespearean plays,019.