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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
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SHAKESPEARE
THE MAN AND THE BOOK.
SHAKESPEARE
The Man and The Book:
Being a Collection of Occasional Papers on the Bard
and his Writings.
Part the First.
BY
C. M. INGLEBY, M.A., LL.D., V.P.R.S.L.
'"•
LO N D ON:
Printed by Josiah Allen, of Birmingham,
6- Published by Trubner & Co., 57 6- 59, Ludgate Hill.
1877.
[All Rights Reserved.]
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SHAKESPEARE THE MAN.
Chapter I. — The Spelling of the Surname - - i
Chapter II. — The Meaning of the Surname - - - 12
Chapter III. — Shakespeare's Traditional Birthday - 21
Postscript. On certain Annotated Copies of Langbaine's Account 36
Chapter IV. — The Authorship of the Works attributed to Shakespeare 38
Chapter V. — The Portraiture of Shakespeare (Recent Contributions to) 73
Chapter VI. — Matters Personal to Shakespeare - - 92
Intercalary Notes and Corrections - - - 103
SHAKESPEARE THE BOOK.
Chapter VII. — The Modern Prometheus
Chapter VIII. — The Idiosyncrasy of Hamlet
Chapter IX. — Some Passages Reprieved
Chapter X. — The Soule Arayed -
Intercalary Notes
107
120
137
153
169
3137S0
^ote.
ICHAEL Faraday, in a letter to Mary Somerville under
date 17th January, 1859, wrote, 'It is useful to get
one's scattered papers together, with an index.' This is my
reason for issuing the ensuing collection, of which three papers
are reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Society of
Literature.
I have excluded from it all reviews of books, besides seven
articles on Shakespearian matters, contributed by me to The
Birmingham Gazette, The Englishman 's Magazine, and Once a
Week, which I did not consider worthy of republication. As
to those constituting this instalment, I may honestly say, that,
with the exception of the penultimate chapter, it is not likely
either reader or reviewer will take a more modest estimate
of their value than their author. That chapter has some-
what higher pretensions, for it is devoted to the defense of
Shakespeare's text in five passages which are usually emended
in modern editions.
The chapter on Recent Contributions to ' the Portraiture
of Shakespeare ' was written as a descriptive commentary on
a collection of portraits exhibited at a meeting of the above-
mentioned Society, and apart from them can have but little
interest.
SHAKESPEARE:
THE MAN AND THE BOOK.
— o-
CHAPTER I
THE SPELLING OF THE SURNAME.
|MIDST the many discrepant literal forms in which our
great poet's surname is given by hand-writers, we
have, as it seems to us, to adopt that which was
usually employed by his contemporaries. Mr. Halliwell tells
us {Life of Shakespeare, 1848), p. 281, that it is
a matter of great uncertainty whether Shakespeare was one of the few persons
of the time who adopted a uniform orthography in his signature; but, on
the supposition that he always wrote his name Shakspere, it was contended
as early as 1784 that it should be printed in this curtailed form. The
question is one of very small importance, and the only circumstance worth
consideration in the matter is the tendency of this innovation to introduce
[or revive] the pronunciation Shaxpere, a piece of affectation so far
dangerous, inasmuch as it harmonizes not with the beautiful lines that have
B
Shakespeare: the Man.
been consecrated to his memory by Ben Jonson and other eminent poets;*
and those who have adopted it seem to have overlooked the fact, that in
the orthography of proper names the printed literature of the day is the only
safe criterion. In the case of Shakespeare, there are the poems of Liicrece
and Wiiiis and Adonis, published under his own superintendence, in which
[/. e. , both on the title-pages and in the Dedicatory Epistles] the name
urs as SHAKESPEARE, and so it is found in almost every work printed in
the lifetime of the poet. * * [Besides he] was called SHAKESPEARE by
bis literary friends.
* In this mention of 'Ben Jonson and other eminent poets,' the allusion
is, among other, to the lines:
Looke how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeare's minde and manners brightly shines
In his well torned, and true-filed lines:
In each of which, he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.
To shake or brandish the spear was a menacing gesture preceding the actual
delivery of the weapon. Cf. Spenser's Faery Queen, b. iv, c. iii, st. 10.
He, all enraged, his quivering speare did shake,
And charging him afresh thus felly him bespake :
and Histrio-mastix, or the Player Whipt, 4to, 1610 (Sig. C. 4 recto).
Thy knight his valiant elboe weares,
That when he shakes his furious Speare,
The foe in shivering fearfull sort,
May lay him downe in death to snort :
in which the late lamented Mr. Richard Simpson saw an allusion to
Shakespeare. (New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874, p. 391.)
Besides, the style which alone forms a basis for this conceit is that
uniformly adopted by the writers of commendatory verses (with scarcely
an exception), some half dozen of whom give the name Shake-speare (/'. e.,
with the hyphen) as if to emphasise the pronunciation.
There is a similar conceit in the 119th Epigram of Thomas Bancroft (1639).
To Shakespeare.
Thou hast so us'd thy Pen (or shooke thy Speare),
That Poets startle, nor thy wit come neare.
Shakespeare : the Man.
On this point Mr. HalliwelPs decision is identical with that
arrived at sixteen years later by M. Victor Hugo. He does
indeed, as is usual with him, commit some inaccuracies in
dealing with the question of the orthography : he states one
document to be extant which ceased to be so at some time in
the seventeenth century, and another to have been lost, which
is always exposed to public view in the Department of Manu-
scripts of the British Museum ; but his verdict is substantially
right, and is well expressed. It runs thus ( William Shakespeare,
1864):*
There is little agreement on the orthography of the word Shake-speare,
as a family name : it is written variously — Shakspere, Shakespere, Shake-
speare, Shakspeare;f in the eighteenth century it was habitually written
Shakespear; the present translator [M. Francois Victor Hugo] has adopted
the spelling Shakespeare, as the only true method, and gives for it unan-
swerable reasons. The only objection that can be made is that Shakspeare
is more easily pronounced than Shakespeare, that cutting off the e mute is
perhaps useful, and that for their own sake, and in the interests of literary
currency, posterity has, as regards surnames, a claim to euphony. It is
evident, for example, that in French poetry the orthography Shakspeare
is necessary. However, in prose, and convinced by the translator, we write
Shakespeare.
There is little to be excepted to here, save (perhaps) ' the
only objection.' That indeed is defensible from M. Victor
# We cannot give this extract our approbation, without adding our
censure on the book. Probably, never in the whole course of biographical
literature, were so many ridiculous mistakes and culpable blunders brought
together in a single volume devoted to a single mind as in this strange
rhapsody. A further accession of blunders came in with M. A. Baillot's
wretched English version, which invests the French rhapsodist with a
Nessus-shirt of solecisms.
t And in fifty other forms : see pp. 6-8.
Shakespeare: the Man.
Hugo's own point of view; he believing that Shakespeare's
dedication to Lord Southampton of Venus and Adonis is extant
in Shakespeare's autograph. We heartily wish that belief were
as true as it is new : for there, as in the Dedication to the
same patron of Lucrece, we have the full style of Shakespeare.
We go thus far with the great French romancer : we believe
both dedications were set up from Shakespeare's autograph;
and we therefore hold the spelling, as such, to be entitled to as
much respect as any of those which we possess in Shakespeare's
autograph. But it is on quite other grounds that we give the
preference to the full style in publicly dealing with his life and
works. It is the one style uniformly sanctioned by the press
of his own day. All the title-pages of the first quarto editions
of his separate plays, with one exception, have the surname in
that style, or not at all. The exception is Love's Labour's Lost,
1598, where the name is given Shakespere. In the title-page
of Hamlet, 1603, it is Shake-speare : and in those of Hamlet,
1604, &c, Much Adoe About Nothing, 1600; A Midsommer
Nighfs Dreame, 1600 (both editions); The Merchant of Venice,
1600 (both editions); The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth,
1 600 ; Syr John Falstaffe, and the Merrie Wives of Windsor,
1602 ; The Famous Historie of Troy/us and Cresseid, 1609 (both
editions); Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609, and Othello, 1622, the
name is uniformly Shakespeare. In the case of the remaining
eight earliest quartos, the name of the author does not appear.
All the folio editions concur in giving the same orthography.
Surely such a concurrence of testimony is overwhelming ; and
what evidence have we to set against it ]
Shakespeare : the Alan.
Mr. F. J. Furnivall, the Founder and Director of ' The New
Shakspere Society,' in his ' Prospectus,' adopts the spelling
Shakspere, and attempts to justify it in the following foot-
note.
This spelling of our great Poet's name is taken from the only unquestion-
ably genuine signatures of his that we possess, the three on his will, and the
two on his Stratford conveyance and mortgage. None of these signatures
have an e after the k ;* four have no a after the first e ; the fifth I read -ear.
The e and a had their French sounds, which explain the forms 'Shaxper,'
&c. Though it has hitherto been too much to ask people to suppose that
Shakspere knew how to spell his own name, I hope the demand may not
prove too great for the imagination of the Members of the New Society.
With the facts before us, we are at a loss to account for the
sarcasm of the final sentence. The concession asked for, ' that
Shakespeare knew how to spell his own name,' conveys a
sophism, which ought not to have imposed on many : and
which we take the liberty of exposing for the benefit of the few.
In Shakespeare's time there was no such a thing as the
orthography, or correct spelling, of a man's name. One or two
(as Burghley, perhaps), as far as we know, used one literal form ;
but the rule is the other way. Every man spelt his name, and
his neighbour's name, as best reconciled his eye and ear; and
* The second sentence thus stood in the earlier proofs : ' None of these
signatures have an e after the /', or an a after the first e.'
Then it stood thus : ' None of these signatures have an e after the k :
four have a after the first e ; the fifth I read -ee/r.'
Of these earlier versions, the second, through a misprint, is logically
inconsistent with the first sentence of the foot-note. Of the later versions,
the words, 'the fifth I read -eere' is but the record of a mistake, which,
indeed, has been made before, but ought not to blemish the ' Prospectus '
of 'The New Shakspere Society.'
Shakespeare: the Man.
in the case of some prominent persons we have nearly a dozen
different spellings of one surname. Thus we have Jonson,
Johnson, Jhonson : Henslow (or with the e final), Henslo,
Hensley, Henchley, Hinchlow (or with the e final), Hinchley,
Inclow, &c. ; Raleigh, Rauley, Rawleigh, Rawlegh, Rawley,
&c ; Decker, Dekker, Dickers, &c. ; Hall, Hawle, &c: and so
forth : and if one thing be more certain than another, it is this,
that, as a rule, no one used a single literal form of any
surname — his own, or that of another.
Mr. Halliwell pointed out, in 1848 (Life of Shakespeare,
p. 282), the absurdity of erecting any one autograph of a man's
name into a standard. Unquestionably some, probably all,
of the five signatures of Shakespeare are Shakspere; and
certainly none of them has the e after the k: yet Gilbert
Shakespeare, the bard's brother, spelt his own name
Shakespere. We have no doubt whatever that if we had
access to a large number of signatures by members of the
family, we should find all sorts of spellings, and that every one
adopted several forms of the name on different occasions.
To judge from the documents from which Mr. Halliwell
gives quotations, or which he prints at length, the family of our
bard had a pretty extensive assortment of literal forms to choose
from. We find most of the following many times repeated :
i45° to x 55°-
Schakespeire. Shakespeyre.
Schakespere. Shakespeyr.
Schakspere. Shakspere.
Chacsper. Shakespere.
SJiakcspcarc : the Ulan.
Shakspere. j
Shaksper.
I
i55° to l6 5°-
Shaxpere. Saxpere.
Shaxspere. Saxspere. *
Shaxper. Saxsper(?).
Shaxsper.
Shaxpeare.
Shaxpear (?).
ShaxpeereC?).
Shaxpeer.
Shakxspere (I).
Shakxsper.
Shaxkspere.
Shaxksper (?).
Shakspeare.
Shakspear (?).
Shakspeere.
Shakspeer.
Shakspeyre.
Shakspeyr.
Shackspeare.
Shackspear.
Shackspere.
Shacksper.
ShackspeerC?).
Shackspeere.
Shackspire.
Shakespere.
Shakesper.
Shakespeere.
Shakespeer(l).
Shakeseper.
Shackespeare.
Shackespear (?)
Shackespere.
Shackesper.
* The Registers of Snitterfield, 1596-7, record the burial of ' Margret
Saxpere, widow, being times the wyff of Henry Shakspere.' 1 Doubtless, to
the eyes of the scribe, the one literal form was fully as adequate as the other.
There was no orthography in those days, pace Mr. Furnivall.
ShaxepereC?). Shaxkespere. Shagspere.
Shaxeper. Shaxkesper(?). Sackesper.
Shakespeare: the Man.
Shakispere.
Shakisper(?).
Shakyspare.
Shakysper.
Shakuspeare :
and half a dozen other forms in which an h follows the/.*
This very curious variation occurs occasionally both
in print and in manuscript. In the deed under which
Shakespeare purchased, for ^440, the unexpired term in a
moiety of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton,
and Welcombe, we find Shakespeare once : Shakespear once :
once he is simply initialed : and in the remaining ten cases the
name appears with the second // .• viz.,
Shackesphere thrice,
Shakesphere five times,
Shacksphare once,
and Shaksphere once.
In some editions of Camden's Rcmaines concerning Britaine,
e.g., the edd. of 1614 and 1637, the name, which occurs but once,
is Shakespheare. In Edward Phillips' Theatrum Poetarum,
1675, we find Shakespear four times, and Shakesphear
twice. In Milton's epitaph on the bard, as it appears in the
Poems of 1640, the name is Sheakespeare : a form we do not
* We have appended (?) to those spellings which have not been verified.
Most of them will assuredly be found in documents of the relative period.
Besides the above-recorded forms of spelling our bard's surname, there
are several perversions of it which resulted from wantonness or accident. In
the Cunningham forgeries of the Revels-books of 1605, we have Shaxberd
four times : and in the French translation of Mrs. Montagu's Essay,
printed in 1777, the surname appears on the title-page as Sakespeart!
Shakespeare : the Man.
remember to have seen elsewhere. From this resume it would
be little less than miraculous, if we did find the immediate
family of Shakespeare employing only one form of spelling!
We must add that Mr. Halliwell (p. 283) gives a fac-simile
of an endorsement on the indenture of 1602, between Combes
and Shakespeare, which he reads
' Combe to Shackspeare,' &c,
just as (p. 109) we find Judith's name spelt for her on the
deed of 161 1.
Mr. Halliwell sees sufficient resemblance between this
manuscript surname and the second and third signatures to
Shakespeare's will, to support 'an argument in favour of the
appropriation of the above to Shakespeare [i.e., of the inference
that it is his autograph], and of the correctness of reading
Shakspeare in those two autographs.' Apart from the question
of such a resemblance, we contend that the two last signatures
to the will are not Shakspeare, but, like Malone's tracing of
the first (now partly obliterated), Shakspere. Moreover,
to our eyes, the name in the endorsement of 1602 is quite
unmistakeably Shackspere. There is a German r, made wide
open like a v (as was then the custom in cursives), between two
e's made like o's, in the fashion then and long afterwards
prevalent, the latter straggling out into a flourish. In judging
of the three signatures to the will, we have not wholly relied
upon the decision of our late valued friend, Sir Frederic
Madden : though his decision was that of the most accom-
plished palseographic expert of his day, to which Mr. Furnivall
might be expected to bow with deference. However, we will
c
io SJiakcspcarc : the Man.
append his own remarks on all five signatures. We quote
from his pamphlet Observations on an Autograph of Shakspere,
and the Orthography of his Name, 1S37, pp. 11-14.
The first of these signatures [i.e., to the will], subscribed on the first
idieet, at the right-hand corner of the paper, is decidedly WILLIAM
SHAKSPERE, and no one has ventured to raise a doubt respecting the six
last letters.* The second signature is at the left-hand corner of the second
^heet, and is also clearly WlLL'M SHAKSPERE, although from the tail of the
letter h of the line above intervening between the <• and ;-, Chalmers would
fain raise an idle quibble as to the omission of a letter. The third signature
has been the subject of greater controversy, and has usually been read, By
ME, WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. M alone, however, was the first publicly to
abjure this reading, and in his Inquiry, p. 117, owns the error to have been
[jointed out to him by an anonymous correspondent, who 'shewed most
clearly, that the superfluous stroke in the letter r was only the tremor of his
(Shakspere's) hand, and no #.' In this opinion, after the most scrupulous
examination, I entirely concur. *******
The next document is the mortgage deed, which was discovered in 1768 by
Mr. Albany Wallis, a solicitor, among the title-deeds of the Rev. Mr.
Featherstonehaugh, of Oxted, in Surrey, and was presented to Garrick.
From the label of this, the fac-simile in Malone's edition of Shakspere,
1790, was executed, bearing this appearance, Wm. Shakspe ; and on this,
in conjunction with the third signature of the will, was founded Malone's
mistake in printing the name with an a in the second syllable. The deed
was at that time in the possession of Mrs. Garrick; but in 1796, when
Malone published his Inquiry, and had become convinced of his error, and
of the fault of his engraver, in substituting what looks like the letter a
instead of re (which it ought to be), the original document was missing, and
could not be consulted for the purpose of rectifying the mistake. *
The third document bearing Shakspere's signature, viz., the counterpart of
the deed of bargain and sale, dated the day before the mortgage deed, was
also found among Mr. Featherstonehaugh's Fvidences, and in 1796 was
in the hands of Mr. Wallis, who lent it to Mr. Malone to print in his
often-quoted Inquiry. Here the signature is, beyond all cavil or
SJiakespeare : the Man. 11
suspicion, William SHAKSPER, where the mark above is the usual
abbreviation of the period for the final e.
The deed lost by Garrick is, as we have said, in the British
Museum ; the deed which Mr. Wallis lent to Malone is in the
City of London Library, Guildhall.
With Sir F. Madden we adopt the view that all five
signatures are alike, Shakspere; yet Mr. Furnivall's conclusion
is not justified. The actual case is familiar to the mathe-
matician, in the guise of an urn containing a very large
number of balls, of the colour of which we know nothing :
from which a very small number of white balls are drawn.
The number drawn being very small in comparison of the
number in the urn, the drawing furnishes no ground whatever
for the expectation that the urn contains more white balls than
balls of any other single colour : still less, if possible, that the
urn contains more white balls than balls that are non-white,
/'. e., of any other colours. The fact is that such a drawing does
not raise any probability as to the colour of the undrawn balls.
Now, Shakespeare may very well have signed his name from
3,000 to 5,000 times in his life : and therefore the balls in the
urn are very great in comparison of the number drawn, viz., five :
and we cannot from such a drawing infer, even if ' Shakespeare
knew how to spell his own name,' how he usually spelt it.
We must therefore fall back upon the style which (as Mr.
Halliwell puts it) was bequeathed to us by Shakespeare's
friends, was approved by himself in his two printed dedications
to Lord Southampton, and which, with scarcely an exception,
was adopted by his printers: viz., Shakespeare.
CHAPTER II.
THE MEANING OF THE SURNAME.
ABBLERS in etymology are no worse than other
dabblers in their conceit, presumption, and ignorance.
How few among them have the least notion of the
enormous mass of literature which deals with any one branch
of the subject. In this single department of Proper Names
there are books to be counted by hundreds in many European
languages ; and it is not too much to say that an explorer can
as little afford to be ignorant of the leading works among
them as the historian of Rome to ignore his Gibbon and his
Niebuhr. In all likelihood, a glance at the analytical notice
(far from perfect, however) of writers on the etymology and
history of proper names, given by M. Noel in his Dictionary
(Paris, 1806, pp. 93-97), would serve to scare away the most
conceited of dabblers from the frontiers of so vast and
perplexed a subject.
In this brief chapter we have no intention of meddling with
it, beyond the ensuing brief notification. Eusebius Salverte, in
his History of Names, vol. I, section xi, remarks :
Shakespeare: the Man. 13
The most natural way of distinguishing an individual, and the one which
connects itself the most with the identity of name and person, is that of
giving a name which shall remind others of his most striking peculiarities.*
But this mode of naming is only adapted to a people who have hardly
reached the lowest point in the [ascending] scale of civilisation, and who,
being but one degree removed from the condition of the senseless savages
who inhabit Bornou, are still, like them, destitute of any other system of
nomenclature. When the community increases, and its general intercourse
with other communities becomes more frequent, and more complicated
within itself, there are soon too many members to be described as tall or
short, dark or light, &c. ; an allusion, therefore, to those features is not
sufficiently distinctive. Remarkable deeds, occupations, tastes, habits,
virtues, moral or physical defects, supply other names, which men are soon
obliged to recognise and adopt.
This is our chief guiding light in theorizing on the origin of
proper names : but induction has established a number of rules,
which should be observed in such speculations. One of these
is that we should primarily seek for the etymology of a man's
surname in the language and among the customs and habits of
the country to which he belongs ; unless we possess evidence
of his family having immigrated and become naturalized
elsewhere.
Similarity of sound or of literal form, existing between a
man's surname and certain words in his native language, is not
a safe guide per se: though it may help us to a true inference
in connection with biographical or historical details supporting
it. There is not the least doubt that men were named from
their exceptionable bodily characteristics, as well as from their
avocations.
* From the English version of the Rev. L. H. Mordacque, 1862, vol. i,
14 Shakespeare: the Man.
One class of surnames are indicative of a military extraction.
The most remarkable of these, as illustrating the surname of
our great bard, are
WagstafF,
Wagspear,
Shakeshaft,
Shakelaunce,
Breakspear,
and Fewtarspear.
It is scarcely possible to resist the inference, that all these
were intended to describe some warlike action : to wag or
shake the staff or shaft: to shake the la mice, to break or to
fewtar the spear. Tofewtar a spear, meant to place it in the
rest. A correspondent in Notes and Queries (5th S. ii. 2), Mr.
C. W. Bardsley, calls attention to the occurrence of four of
these names : viz., ' Robert Waggestaff,' in Proc. and Ord.
Privy Council (indeed this name and Shakeshaft have living
representatives), ' Mabill Wag-spere' in the Coldingham Priory
Records (Surtees Society), ' Henry Shake-launce ' in the
Hundred Rolls, 'Hugh Shake-shaft' in St. Ann's Register,
Manchester (date 1744); and he also adds, 'William Shake-
spere' in Bury St. Edmunds Wills (Camden Society). Nicholas
Breakspear is a notorious example of the fifth name on our
list ; and the last, which is obsolete, was once an ordinary
surname.
Dr. Charnock, in Notes and Queries (5th S. ii. 405),
ventured to assert, upon his own unsupported authority, that
Wagstaff and Fewtarspear were local names. Whether or not
Shakespeare: the Man. 15
any case can be made out for Wagstaff, it is almost certain
that Fewtarspear Avas not taken from a place, but was the name
of one who fewtar's the spear: and Rev. W. W. Skeat, in Notes
and Queries (5th S. ii. 444) quoted from Spenser's Faery Queen
(iv. 5-45) the line >
His speare \& feutred, and at him it bore.
Mr. W. J. Bernhard Smith, in Notes and Queries (5th S. ii. 484),
quoted four examples of the expression to feutre the spear from
La Mort d'Arthure, vol. ii. c. 94, 95, 98.
' Then was King Marke ashamed, and therewith he feutred his speare,
and ran against Sir Trian.'
' That saw Sir Dinadan, and hee feutred his speare, and ranne to one of
Sir Berluse's fellowes.'
'And then they feutred their spear es, and this Knight came so egerly
that he smote downe Sir Ewane alone.'
' So Sir Agrawaine feutred his speare, and that other was ready, and
smote him downe over his horse taile to the earth.'
Nothing could be more complete than the parallel between
these two names — Fcwtarspeare and Shakespeare. The heavy
speare was used in tilting, and was feutred* before the onset :
the light speare, or lance, was brandished or shaken, before
being hurled. The derivation of these names from the warlike
acts described is simple and natural ; and is confirmed by
many other surnames, descriptive of distinguishing actions.
Just as Armstrong and Strongitharm express the strength of
arm of the warrior, armourer, or smith, so do Fewtarspeare,
* Does this word mean laid in a rest made of felt ; or does it mean
fettled, i. e., made ready, set in order ? We leave the philologers to decide
the point. It can hardly be related to fewterer, a hound-keeper.
1 6 Shakespeare: the Man.
and Shakespeare, indicate the military calling of the ancestor
who first bore the name.
Dr. R. S. Charnock and Dr. Charles Mackay will not allow
that the name of our bard originated in this manner. Dr.
Charnock puts forward two totally inconsistent derivations,
on an equality with which he puts a conjecture occurring
previously in Notes and Queries : Dr. Mackay, in The Atkenannn,
confidently proposes a fourth ; and another correspondent of
Notes and Queries a fifth. Here is the wonderful pentad.
French Jacques Pierre (or Jakespear).
Saxon Sigisbert.
German Schachs-burh (or Isaacsbury).
Celtic Schacspeir (/. e., Drylegs).
Florentine Lapus Biragus (or Jacobsbire).
I. — Jacques Pierre.
Shakspeare, Derivation of. The name, Shakspeare, no doubt originated
in the Norman or French edition of the double-beloved disciple name
(Jacques-Pierre, James-Peter, Jakespear) of which it is composed ; the
initial J being pronounced s/i, as in many other instances, viz. :
Shenkins for Jenkins.
Sherard — Gerard.
Slides — Giles.
Sherry — ■ Jerry.
Sheridan — Jeridan (Old Jerry).
Shenstone ■ — Johnstone (Johnson).
She — Je, in Switzerland, and elsewhere where the
French language is provincialised, &c.
With such a self-evident derivation before us, we may therefore dispense
with the unlikely reference to the shaking of a spear, which most probably
Shakespeare: the Alan. 17
had nothing to do with the origin of the name when first invented, being
only a suggestion from its accidental English form ; though the idea once
started, the name may with some have seemed to be recommended by it.
Those who consider that Shakspeare originated in spear-shaking rely on
' Break spear,' ' Winspear,' &c, as analogous, these names having a like
termination in, and apparent reference to, action with a spear ; but this
illustration is of the kind ignotum per ignotius. We do not know enough
of Breakspeare, &c, to justify us in saying that their origin was connected
with spears ; nor applying any inferences from them to other names.
Probably Breakspear (a priest) was in part named after St. Peter, the
chief of the apostles, and not after spears. Winspear almost looks like
'Owen' or (John?) ' Peter.'— R. T. A.— Notes and Queries, 2nd S. xi. 86.
(See also 4th S. x. 516 and xi. 133.)
II. — Sigisbert.
We now have little difficulty in tracing the name ' Shakespere,' which
I take to be no other than a corruption of Sigisbert, 'renowned for
victory' (from Old German sieg, Anglo-Saxon sige, Franc, et Alam sigo,
'victory'); thus Sigisbert, Sigsbert, Sigsber, Siksper, Shiksper, Shaksper,
Shakspere. I do not find the name Sigubert, but there is Sigibert
(whence very many English names have been corrupted) and Sigi-nnerus,
as well as Segimerus and Sigimar, and also Siglrmund, whence by con-
traction the Italian form Sismondi. If it should be advanced that we have
the name 'Wagstaff,' I answer that the last syllable in that and in many
other personal names [this must mean, which a/so occurs in many other
personal names] has nothing whatever to do with a ' staff,' which I can prove
if necessary.- — Dr. R. S. Charnock. — Notes and Queries, 2nd S. ix. 459.*
* In Notes and Queries (2nd S. x. 15) Mr. R. Ferguson points out
(1) that Sigisbert might produce Sicisper, on known etymological analogues ;
but Sicisper could hardly produce Shakspere ; (2) that the surname
Shakeshaft (taking the place of the disqualified Wagstaff) is still an obstacle
to Dr. Charnock's doctrine. To this Dr. Charnock rejoins that he will
not allow the shaft, any more than the staff, to mean what it appears to
mean. It is either haft, or haved, or something else : but not our shaft.
Staff, he asserts, is sted.
D
1 8 Shakespeare : tJie Man.
III. — Shachs-burh (Isaacsbury).
The most reasonable derivation of 'Shakspeare' is that from "Jacques
Pierre; but the name would corrupt from Shachs-burh. The German
surname Schach would seem to be a corruption of Isaac. Conf. Sach,
Sacchi, from Isaac ; Sachs, Sax, from Isaacs. I suppose we may now
expect a new pamphlet, ' Was the divine Williams of Jewish descent?'
Dr. R. S. Charnock. — Notes and Queries (5th S. ii. 405).*
* From the concluding sentence one might infer that Dr. Charnock
was, all through, poking fun at us: for who, except the all-too-learned
Doctor himself, would be likely to advocate the Jewish descent of our
great bard — who but the discoverer of this Jewish etymology? However,
on the whole, we are bound to give him credit for being in earnest : so
that we are led to the following conclusions :
1. That Dr. Charnock believes Shaks/>ere to be a corruption of
Sigisbert,
2. That Dr. Charnock believes Shakspeare may have corrupted
from Shachs-burh, which he believes to be identical with
Isaacsbury.
3. That Dr. Charnock — holding both these views — believes
(nevertheless and notwithstanding) that Jacques Pierre is
'the most reasonable derivation.'
The Rev. Walter W. Skeat remarks :
I do not see why English etymology should be considered a fit subject
for such unintelligent guess work. — Notes and Queries, 5th S. ii. 444.
We do. It is good for Messrs. Skeat, Morris, Ellis, and all other
philologers to see, in an extreme case, how utterly foolish is learning without
common sense. Indeed Mr. Skeat assents : for he subsequently remarks,
of Mr. Sala's speculations on Shambles, ' I think his remarks are extremely
valuable, as showing how much it is still the fashion, in questions of English
etymology * * * to disregard entirely not only the history of
the words we use, but also the history of the sounds composing those
words.' — Notes and Queries, 5th S. v. 261.
Shakespeare : the Alan. 19
IV. — Schacspeir (Dryshanks).
Mid-England, where Shakespeare was bom and bred, was not so
thoroughly Saxonised, either in speech or blood, as the southern and eastern
shores of the island. The river Avon has a Gaelic or British name. The
Forest of Arden, where he chased the deer, means in Celtic the ' high '
forest. His mother's name was Celtic, if not his father's ; for it is possible
and probable that Shakespeare is but a Saxonised corruption of the Celtic
Schacspeir, or Chaksper, as his father wrote it,* which signifies — shoe, or
seac, dry : and speir shanks, as we have in our day the Saxon names of
Sheepshank and Craikshank, suggested by a personal malformation or
deformity, in days when surnames were not common, and applied as a
nickname to some early ancestor of the family. Not alone Shakespeare,
but Spencer, Ben Jonson, Marlow, and other writers of that time employed
British words, which were then well understood by the common people,
but which have not been explained by modern commentators, for the
sufficient reason that they have never looked for the explanations in the
only place where it is possible to find them — the language of the unexter-
minated Britons, and of the Anglo-Saxon sons of British mothers, who
retained in after-life the homely words of the nursery and the workshop.
****** — Dr. Charles Mackay.— Th e Athcmntm,
2nd October, 1875, p. 437.
V. — Schacobspire.
For myself, however, I cling to the hope that our bard's family came
from Italy, and that his surname is a corruption of that of the well-known
Florentine historian, Lapus Biragus. It is an undoubted fact that Lapus
is the Florentine abbreviation of Jacob, or Jacobs ; so that the Anglicised
form of his name would be Jacobsbirage, or Jacobsbire [? Jacobsbirg],
or Schacobspire, whence Shakspere would very naturally corrupt. I wonder
Dr. Charnock missed this.— Jabez. — Notes and Queries, 5th S. v. 352.
* John Shakespeare apparently could not sign his name. He is only
known to us as a marksman.
20 Shakespeare: the Man.
Even if we allow that Dr. Charnock was not poking fun
at us, we cannot as readily suppose the last correspondent to
be in earnest, but rather incline to the belief, that by per-
petrating an excess of philological absurdity, he is bent on
throwing deserved ridicule on the speculation of his prede-
cessor, whose sole object was, apparently, to discredit the
simplest and most probable derivation of our bard's surname.
CHAPTER III.
SHAKESPEARE'S TRADITIONAL BIRTHDAY.*
HE birth of Shakespeare is, I believe, universally
celebrated on the 23rd April. The tradition on
which the celebrants rely is, that he was born on the
23rd April, 1564, Old Style; and it is somewhat discomforting
to precisians to learn that in Shakespeare's day the New Style
(which was not then observed in England) was ten days in
advance of the Old ; and that there is now a difference of
twelve days between them : so that the 23rd April, O.S., was
in 1564 the 3rd May, N.S. ; a date which at the present time
corresponds to the 5th May, N.S. It has accordingly been
made a question whether we should not celebrate the occasion
on either the 3rd or the 5th May, in every year.
I refer to this question, which springs out of the difference
of Style, not for the purpose of attempting to settle it, but
simply because it has been so often asserted that Shakespeare
* From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. x.
New Series. Read, May 17, 1871.
■7-7
Shakespeare: the Man.
and Cervantes died on the same day : the fact being that
Shakespeare survived Cervantes ten days.
It is even more discomforting to the punctual keeper of
birthdays to find that the tradition of Shakespeare's birth on
the 23rd April, 1564, O.S., cannot be traced to any authentic
source. The student of Shakespeare-biography soon becomes
inured to scepticism. One cherished fact after another falls
before the scythe of criticism, till only a small and unimportant
residue remains. In sheer despair of ascertaining facts, the
majority of biographers have been content to weave a tissue
of fictions. The most trustworthy memoirs of the bard are
those which support the meagre text by a formidable array of
foot-notes, adduced in disproof of nearly everything that forms
the very staple of the old biographies.
Such work is like pulling down a National Gallery to make
room for a peep-show. There is, indeed, some little proof of
Shakespeare's lineage ; and he himself seems to have been
born in the year 1564 at the traditional birthplace. Bat
having launched our hero on that 'sea of troubles' which
every mortal has to navigate as best he may— some to reach
the wished-for haven, some, on shoal or quicksand, like the
headstrong man in /Eschylus, to perish unwept, unknown
((k-Xoiwroe, aiWoe) — we lose sight of the poet to obtain a few
partial and isolated glimpses of his outer life : but in the hands
of biographers, these glimpses become the more shining parts
of ' a round and varnished tale.' I, too, can find pleasure in
the creations of a semi-prophetic ingenuity ; but I cannot
treat those creations as historical facts.
Shakespeare : the Man.
Sunt et mihi carmina ; me quoque dicunt
Vatem pastores ; sed non ego credulus il lis.
It would occupy too much time and paper if I were to sift,
in detail, the traditional life of Shakespeare : but I may at
least indicate a few points, besides that of the birthday, which
are repeated by almost every biographer, and which have
hitherto remained unsupported by any satisfactory evidence.
i. We are told that Shakespeare 'had been in his younger
yeares a schoolmaster in the country.' We get that scrap of
news from conscientious John Aubrey, whose manuscript (circa
1680) is in the Ashmolean collection ; and Aubrey says he got
it ' from Mr. Beeston.' This was probably William Beeston,
Governor of ' the King and Queen's young Company of
Players,' who lost his office in 1640, and was then succeeded
by D'Avenant.
2. We are told further that Shakespeare had been formerly
'bound apprentice to a butcher' in Stratford, but 'run from
his master to London.' We get that from a letter dated the
10th April, 1693, written by a Mr. John Dowdall to a Mr.
Edward Southwell. Who they were we do not know : but
we know that this Mr. Dowdall professed to have obtained
it from the Parish Clerk of Stratford, who was at that time
over eighty years of age. His testimony, after all, was,
probably, but ill-remembered gossip.
3. We are further told that, in all likelihood, Shakespeare
had been to school ; but we have no evidence whatever of the
fact. Mr. J. O. Halliwell (Phillipps), in his Life of Shake-
speare, 1848, p. 92, makes no question of Shakespeare having
24 Shakespeare: the Man.
been educated at the Stratford Grammar School, and naively
remarks :
It would be a very difficult task to identify the exact position of the
room in which Shakespeare was educated.
But it would not be a whit more difficult to identify the exact
position in that room of the form on which Shakespeare sat !
It is all one, surely, since we really do not know that he ever
attended that school, or any other. If he did go to school, I
make no doubt that, according to the estimate of the day, he
was accounted a shocking dunce; that many a time and oft he
felt the remorseless 'bob' of the village pedagogue, and took
his stand on a stool in the corner of the school-room, wearing
the ensign of duncedom on his head. If, as Mr. Harness
fancifully conjectures, he was lame, he may have contracted
his lameness through the caning of his master or the tunding
of his elders in the school ! Be that as it may, we may
be quite sure that he suffered, if not for his pains, at least
for his brains ; just as, at a later period, Goldsmith and
Byron were punished as incurable dunces, and the immortal
Gauss was flogged for his audacity in solving an arithmetical
problem before the rest of the school had taken it down. It
is pleasant to indulge in such picturesque imaginings : but
imagination is not biography.
4. As to another tradition in Shakespeare's life, viz., the
deer-stealing episode, I am disposed, with De Quincey, to
discredit it altogether, and even to treat it as a myth invented
to account for Shakespeare's seeming animosity toward Sir
Thomas Lucy. My late lamented friend, Charles Holte
Shakespeare: the Man. 25
Bracebridge, following the lead of Malone, has apparently
settled the question, and proved that Charlecote Park was
not a deer preserve,* and that to have sported at Fulbroke
would not have been a breach of the law. The tale, after all,
rests on a manuscript of the Rev. William Fulman, who died
in 1688. Fulman having bequeathed it to the Rev. Richard
Davies, and died, that gentleman recorded the story on the
manuscript in his own handwriting. Mr. Davies died in 1708 ;
and the manuscript is now in Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Whence he obtained the story he does not tell us.
5. Lastly, we are told that when Shakespeare did get to
London, he earned a livelihood by holding horses at the doors
of the theatres. I fear that is a myth too. We get the story
from the anonymous author of The Lives of the Poets of
Great Britain and Ireland, 1753, and he says he obtained it
from a gentleman whose name he does not give.f But after
these two anonyms we get on a little better : for anonym the
second is said to have heard it from Dr. Newton ; and it is
further said that Newton got it from Pope ; and that Pope got
it from Rowe ; and that Rowe got it — with a mass of similar
rubbish — from Betterton, the actor ; and that Betterton got it
* Since writing this, Mr. J. O. Phillipps has called my attention to a
curious entry in The Egerton Papers, 4to, 1840, p. 355, where, among the
'List of Presents at Harefield,' in the year 44 Elizabeth, we read :
vj s viij d Bucke, j Sir Tho. Lucie.
taking that for what it is worth, it fails to disprove Mr. Bracebridge's
conclusion.
t Said by some to have been Dr. Johnson, because Shiels, who wrote
the greater part of the Lives for Cibber, was Dr. Johnson's amanuensis.
E
26 Shakespeare : tJic Man.
from Sir William D'Avenant : but there we lose the scent. Of
such hearsays is our life of Shakespeare manufactured.
After this somewhat long exordium, I turn to the principal
subject of this paper. Our authorities for the dates of Shake-
speare's birth and death are these : (i) the register of his
baptism ; (2) the register of his burial; (3) the inscription on
the tablet under his bust in the chancel of Stratford Church ;
(4) some manuscript notes of Oldys' on Langbaine's Account
of tJie English Dramatic Pods, 1691 ; and (5) manuscript
notes by the Rev. Joseph Greene, master of the Grammar
School at Stratford, and some extracts from the Stratford
register. I give exact copies of all these.
1. — Extract from Register of Baptisms at Stratford Church :
1564
April
26 Gulielmus films Johannes Shakspere.
2. — Extract from Register of Burials at Stratford Church :
1616
April
25 Will Shakspere, Gent.
3. — Inscription on the tablet under Shakespeare's bust (in
the lower right-hand corner):
obiit ano do" 1616
,<etatis, 53. die 23 ap.
4. — Certain manuscript notes on Langbaine (1691), by
Oldys (in the British Museum) :
Obiit An. Dom. 1616
See the Sculpture and 53
Inscription in Dugdale's jEt. 53. die 23 Apr. 1563
Warwickshire. # * # *
Shakespeare : the Man. 27
1 have now no more to do, but
to close up all, with an account
of his Death ; which was on the
Q 23rd of April, 1616.*
5. — Manuscript notes, in the handwriting of Rev. Joseph
Greene, on some extracts from the Stratford Register :
' Died at the age of 53 ' (on the burial item, as in 2).
'Born April 23, 1564' (on the baptismal item, as in 1).
Boswell, the son of Johnson's biographer, who completed
Malone's life of Shakespeare, doubtless had most of these
materials before him when he drew the following inference :
He died on his birthday, April 23rd, 1616, and had exactly completed
his fifty-second year.
But this is not in strict accord with the authorities. If we
accept the testimony of the insculpture, we need not disallow
that of Greene's second note. That Shakespeare was born on
or before the 26th April, 1564, we must allow; for he was
baptized on that day ; and we can only bring the insculpture
into disagreement with the tradition by supposing that Shake-
speare was born on the 24th, the 25th, or the 26th : then,
indeed, he would have been still in his fifty-second year when
he died.
The use which has been made of Oldys' notes is a curious
* The black ink represents Langbaine's text, the red letter Oldys' notes
and lines. The mark opposite the last underwritten line may be the figure 2
or the letter Q. I think it is the latter, and that its function is to express
his doubt as to the relative date.
28 SJiakcspcarc : tJic Man.
and instructive example of the untrustworthiness of critics. As
far as my search has extended, all the biographers who cite
Oldys do not fairly represent him. The late Mr. Bolton Corney
remarks :
Oldys had much experience in biographic composition ; but he asserts
that Shakespeare was born on the 23rd April, 1563, and that he died at the
age of 53, A. D. 1616. lie converts the day and month of the decease of
Shakespeare into the day and month of his birth ; contradicts the parish
register as to the year of his birth ; and contradicts the monumental inscrip-
tion as to his age at the time of his decease. The assertions of Oldys as
testified by his handwriting, have no other basis than his own miscon-
ceptions. — Notes and Queries, 3rd S., v. 225.
It is a fact that in his manuscript notes for a life of
Shakespeare (written on the margins of the Museum copy
of Langbaine) Oldys assigns April 23, 1563, as the day of
Shakespeare's birth, a mistake which evidently arose from his
subtraction of 53 from 16 16 : but he certainly had some
doubt on the subject : for he queries the asserted day of
Shakespeare's death. Oldys' method of finding the year of his
birth is admissible only on the assumption that he knew that
Shakespeare was born on one of the three days intervening
between the 23rd and the 27th April. If any inference is to
be drawn from Oldys' first note, it must be based on the
assumption that, by the subtraction of 53 from 1616, he was
observing an unexceptionable method, and in that case the
inference would be that Shakespeare was believed by him to
have been born on the 24th or 25th, or even possibly on the
day of his baptism, the 26th April. Clearly he could not have
been born later in the month : and if he were born as early as
Shakespeare: the Man, 29
the 23rd April, in the year 1563, he would have entered his
54th year when he died ; just as he must have been born on
or before the 23rd April, in the year 1564, in order that his
death might take place in his 53rd year. It is plain to us
that Oldys did not clearly perceive these simple arithmetical
relations : and I dare say they have puzzled many other
educated persons. Anyhow, Mr. Corney must have failed to
see his way through these various details of date, or he would
not have categorically committed himself to the so-called
Argument on the assumed birthday of Shakespeare*
Mr. Bolton Corney's argument is thus epitomized by
himself :
As Shakespeare died on the 23rd April [1616], in his ftfty-tAird year,
he must have been born before the 2yd April, 1564.
This happens to be just one of those precise categorical
assertions which admits of exact refutation. It is false in the
same sense in which any arithmetical calculation is false. For
instance, if it were demanded of me how many days elapse
between the first and last days of January, and I should
answer, ' there must be less than thirty days,' I am asserting a
necessity which follows from something in my thoughts, and
* Mr. Corney's Argument was in 1864 'reduced to shape' in a
pamphlet of 16 pp. ; where he writes, ' So Master Oldys, in some non-lucid
moment, underscores die 23 Apr. — subtracts 53 from 1616 — and writes
down 1563. He assumes that the words anno cetatis 53 are equivalent to
vixit aiuws 53, and that the words die 23 Aprilis refer to anno cetatis,
instead of being the object of Obiit. Such is the process, never before
described, by which the birthday of Shakspere was discovered.'— Mr.
Corney's Tract, p. 7.
30 Shakespeare: t/ie Man.
not from the mere terms of the question. That assertion is
therefore false. Mr. Bolton Corney's assertion is just as
false.
It is also as demonstrably false : and herein lies the only
difficulty with which I have to contend in this refutation. I
am sorry to say, that, according to my experience, the general
mind is averse from demonstration. If a conclusion rest on
probable evidence, or on feeling only, and people are invited
to entertain it, and exhorted to embrace it, there are reasonable
hopes that it will find many adherents, upon whose minds it
has wrought to the extent of producing an impression in its
favour, which I cannot describe as either belief or faith without
doing violence to philosophical language. But if, on the con-
trary, the conclusion advanced be supported by an iron chain of
demonstration, the general mind, either grudging the exertion
of thought necessary to master the proof, or flying off under
the influence of anger from what seems an invasion of its
freedom, a restriction on its maundering habits, will not away
with it.*
* This position was curiously, and to me very interestingly, exemplified
on an occasion when I had to show the rotation of the moon on her
axis, in opposition to the crotchet of the late Mr. Jellinger Symons. I
reduced my premises to machinery, and exhibited the conclusion by the
motion of its parts. I had a model of the earth, into which (merely for
convenience) I had inserted an iron rod, to which a ball, representing the
moon, was attached. When the latter was made to circulate around the
former, the former exhibited the phenomenon (admitted by both parties to
the controversy) of one unvarying hemisphere of the moon being constantly
presented to the earth. But, firmly fixed on the spindle or axis of the
moon (which was perpendicular to the iron rod, and worked freely in it),
was also a disc divided at the edge into degrees and numbered, and an
Shakespeare: the Man. 31
The simple denial, or contradictory, of Mr. Corney's
assertion is this :
If Shakespere died on the 23rd April [1616], in his fifty-third year, he
may have been born on the 23rd April, 1564.
This is the proposition I undertake to establish.
But before doing so, I wish it to be understood that by the
assumption of the most unquestionable premises I can prove
the direct opposite, or contrary, of Mr. Corney's assertion, viz. :
If Shakespeare was born on the 23rd April [1564], he must have
entered his fifty-third year on the 23rd April, 1616.
Let me consider this point first.
A pretty extensive adduction of authorities on the question,
' When does a person complete the first, second, third, etc.,
year of his age % ' justifies me in the statement that the late
Professor De Morgan was the only writer (save, perhaps,
Mr. Corney) who ever asserted that the duration of a year is
prolonged beyond the vigil of its anniversary. In an article
index, or pointer, with an arrow head, was inserted into the side of the
moon, and thus pointed out the angular amount by which the relative
positions of the moon and the disc might be changed. By means of an
unnecessary mechanical contrivance, for which I might very well have sub-
stituted a weight, this disc was kept constantly in one position with respect
to the frame of the machine. By turning a handle the moon was made to
revolve, and the index showed the revolution of the moon on the spindle.
'This motion is either real or apparent; if it be apparent, it must be the
disc which revolves on the moon's axis. But we have "ocular demonstra-
tion" that the disc does not so revolve.' There was not, I am certain, a
single person in the lecture-room who did not feel, in some degree, the
rigour of the proof; and I shall never forget the howl of indignation with
which this was greeted. The great majority showed me, in a most unmis-
takable manner, that such an interference with their liberty of mind was
not to be tolerated for an instant.
32 Shakespeare: the Man.
contributed to the Companion to the Almanac, 1850, the
learned professor wrote :
The anniversary of birth used to be celebrated as the first day of a new
year ; it is now considered as the completion of an old one.
To this Mr. A. E. Brae, in his very able work, An
Examination of the Century Question, 1850 (p. 25), replied :
To assert, however, that in this respect moderns differ from the
ancients, is a libel upon moderns which they certainly do not deserve.
There is no difference in respect of birthday usage. It is with moderns, as
it was with ancients, the celebration of renewed birth ; and the very
meaning of the expression ' New Year's Day,' the anniversary of the year,
is of itself sufficient to show that Mr. De Morgan's modern instances are as
incorrect as his ancient inferences.
This seems to me to be undoubtedly correct. Yet, even
adopting Professor De Morgan's view, the usage of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would decidedly place
Shakespeare in his 53rd year on the day of his death, sup-
posing it to have been also the 52nd anniversary of his birth,
or, counting the birth itself as one, the 53rd event.*
* According to the probabilities of the case, an innumerable number of
persons would be found to have died on the anniversary of birth, and it is,
therefore, not surprising that a considerable number of eminent persons are
known to have done so. John Williams, Archbishop of York, died on his
birthday, March 25th, in the 69th year of his age : 'anno atatis 68° expletoe'
Hackefs Life of Archbishop Williams, 1693, fo. p. 229. He was born
March 25th, in 15S2, and therefore died on March 25th, 1650. Archdeacon
Sandford (of Coventry) died on his birthday, March 22nd, in the 73rd year
of his age; and as he was born March 22nd, 1801, he must have died on
March 22nd, 1873. The first Sir Henry Holland died on his birthday,
October 27th, in the 87th year of his age. He was born October 27th,
1787; and therefore died October 27th, 1873. These examples sufficiently
illustrate our position, though many more might readily be adduced.
Shakespeare : the Man. 33
The fact that on every anniversary of a birth a new year
has already been entered upon, is evident in the very attempt
to deny it ; for, otherwise, in the first year there would be two
birthdays, the real one and its anniversary. In order that
every year may have its new year's day — i. e., that the first
year may have its birthday, and every succeeding year its
anniversary, that anniversary, or new year's day, must be the
first day of each year. Accordingly, it is quite unquestionable
that, supposing Shakespeare to have been born on the 23rd
April, 1564, he was already in his fifty-third year at any time
on the 23rd April, 161 6. This proof is indeed sans replique,
unless we allow a division of days. I am not aware of Mr.
Corney having taken refuge in the doctrine that in the
inscription on Shakespeare's tomb, the day mentioned is not
a unit, but a number (as twenty-four hours) susceptible of
division, one part of which might be counted in one year,
and the other part in another. But as this is the only resource
left to any one attempting the refutation of my position, I
will now address myself to that point.
If the critical exactness of determining such fractions of
days be attempted, it must take into its account the fraction
by which the year exceeds 365 days ; for by so much must
the hour of birth be advanced in each succeeding year, and
retrenched again in leap year. The practical effect of this
would be that no two birth-epochs would harmonize, and a
calculation, something like that of a horoscope, would have
to be entered into for every successive anniversary of birth !
Need I add, that there is not a particle of evidence on record
F
34 Shakespeare : the J fan.
that such critical exactness in determining births was ever
attempted except for astrological purposes.
The establishment of the contrary position,
If Shakespeare was born on the 23rd April, 1564, he must have
entered his fifty-third year on the 23rd April, 16 1 6,
logically includes the contradictory of Mr. Corney's thesis.
But in order to establish that contradictory independently of
the narrower proposition, it is only requisite to exhibit one
or more alternatives to the position which he asserts as a
necessary inference, i. e., to show that in certain cases,
If Shakespeare died on the 23rd April, 1616, in his fifty-third year,
he may have been born on the 23rd April, 1564.
The following are three of such alternatives :
I. If the writer of the inscription on the tomb adopted
the usage of his nation and his time, counting the anniversary
of Shakespeare's birth as the first day of a new year —
disallowing fractions of days.
II. If he did so — yet allowed a division of the day, and
knew that Shakespeare's birth took place in the earlier and his
death in the later portion of the day.
III. If the inscription, though good evidence for the date
of Shakespeare's death, is not (in the absence of an exact date)
to be regarded as good evidence for the date of his birth — a
view by no means absurd, since the term year of age (cetate sua)
is open to such uncertain interpretation, and so often the
record of mere guesswork or repute.
In any one of these cases we may accept both the
Shakespeare : the Man. 35
traditional birthday of Shakespeare and the day of his death
as recorded on the monumental tablet. Mr. Bolton Corney's
argument would require that each of these cases should be
severally disallowed. He simply ignored them all ! *
* These strictures on Mr. Corney's pamphlet were written in his
lifetime, and intended to invite his counter-criticism. He died September 10,
1870, after this paper was promised. As printed in the Transactions of
the Royal Society of Literature, it contains some passages unjustly taxing
Mr. Corney with inaccuracy in quoting Oldys' notes. I was misled by the
collation of a friend in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum,
who strangely overlooked some of the notes of Oldys.
2,6 Sliakcspcarc : the Man.
POSTSCRIPT ON CERTAIN ANNOTATED COPIES OF
LANGBAINE.
The following valuable note is from Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, Feb. 1,
1862, pp. 82-83.
" The most valuable and curious work left by Oldys is an annotated copy
of Gerard Langbaine's Account of the Early Dramatick Poets, Oxford, 1691,
Svo. It has already been stated {ante, p. 3), that the first copy of this work
with his notes had passed into the hands of Mr. Coxeter. After Mr.
Coxeter's death his books and manuscripts were purchased by Osborne,
and were offered for sale in 1748. The book in question, No. 10,131 in
Osborne's Catalogue for that year, was purchased either by Theophilus
Cibber, or by some bookseller who afterwards put it into his hands; and
from the notes of Oldys and Coxeter, the principal part of the additional
matter furnished by Cibber (or rather by Shiels) for the Lives of the Poets,
five vols. l2mo, 1753, was unquestionably derived. Mr. Coxeter's manuscripts
are mentioned in the title-page, to whom, therefore, the exclusive credit of
the work is assigned, but which really belongs as much, if not more, to
Oldys.
Oldys purchased a second Langbaine in 1727, and continued to annotate
it till the latest period of his life. This copy was purchased by Dr. Birch,
who bequeathed it to the British Museum. [Press Mark, C. 28, g. 1.]
It is not interleaved, but filled with notes written in the margins and
between the lines in an extremely small hand. Birch granted the loan of
it to Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, who made a transcript of the notes
into an interleaved copy of Langbaine in four vols. 8vo. It was from
Bishop Percy's copy that Mr. Joseph Haslewood annotated his Langbaine.
He says, ' His Lordship was so kind as to favour me with the loan of this
book, with a generous permission to make what use of it I might think
proper; and when he went to Ireland, he left it with Mr. Nichols, for the
benefit of the new edition of the Tatter, Spectator, and Guardian, with
Notes and Illustrations, to which work his Lordship was by his other
valuable communications a very beneficial contributor.'
George Steevens likewise made a transcript of Oldys's notes into a copy
of Langbaine, which at the sale of his library in 1800, was purchased by
Shakespeare : the Man.
Richardson, the bookseller, for £g, who resold it to Sir S. Egerton Brydges
in the same year for fourteen guineas. At the sale of the Lee Priory Library
in 1834, it fell into the hands of Thorpe, of Bedford Street, Covent Garden,
from whom the late Dr. Bliss purchased it on February 7, 1835, for nine
guineas. It is now in the British Museum.
Malone, Isaac Reed, and the Rev. Rogers Ruding, also made transcripts
of Oldys's notes. The Malone transcript is now at Oxford ; but Ruding's
has not been traced. In a cutting from one of Thorpe's catalogues, preserved
by Dr. Bliss, it is stated to be in two volumes, the price £$. 5s. ; that
Ruding transcribed them in 1784, and that his additions are very numerous.
In Heber's Catalogue (part iv, No. 12 15) is another copy of Langbaine,
with very important additions by Oldys, Steevens, and Reed. This was
purchased by Rodd for £4. 4s. In 1845, Edward Vernon Utterson had an
interleaved Langbaine. What became of it?"
It is more important to inquire what has become of the copy of Langbaine
first annotated by Oldys. After making various inquiries in London and
Oxford, I am still unable to trace it. — C. M. I.
313780
CHAPTER IV.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE WORKS ATTRIBUTED TO
SHAKESPEARE.*
NE does not look for popularity in the attempt to
disturb a popular belief. One may, nevertheless,
bespeak a favourable consideration for the most
startling views, if only they are supported by facts, and their
advocacy is addressed to a competent tribunal.
An American essayist, who speaks from an intellectual
eminence which justifies the speculation, asserts —
that what is best written or done by genius, in the world, was no man's
work, but came by wide social labour, when a thousand wrought like one,
sharing the same impulse, f
He points to the English Bible, the Anglican Ritual, and
the Dramas of Shakespeare, as examples in point. He remem-
bers, and so must we, that Shakespeare did not write for fame ;
* From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Vol. IX,
new series. Read, January 22, 1868.
f Representative Men, by R. W. Emerson. A like passage occurs in
his masterly Essay on Compensation, Essays, 1 841, p. 108.
SJiakcspcare : the Man. 39
that he claimed no property in his published works, and did
not assert their originality. If their whole merit has been
assigned to him, it was by no act of his. They were produced
for representation, not for literature, and their producer was
rather a showman than an author.
The time may come when every personal interest about the
man will be forgotten, when the schoolboys of an American
empire will confound the man with his works, as schoolboys
nowadays are said sometimes to look upon Euclid as the name
of a science. When that time comes, the reading public will
be no more astonished by the assertion that Lord Bacon
wrote Shakespeare than we are by the assertion that Babrius
wrote y£sop. But at present we have not wholly identified
Shakespeare with ' his booke ; ' and when Lady Bab, in
Garrick's farce, High Life below Stairs, asks ' Did you never
read Shikspur 1 ' and Mrs. Kitty replies, ' Shikspur 1 Shikspur 1
Who wrote it 1 ' the humour is still as fresh as the day when
it was written.
Before seriously entertaining Lady Bab's question, we must
determine in what sense it is to be understood. If the inquiry
be after some one man who originated, designed, and executed
the various dramas of the ' booke,' let us consider whether
such a requirement would be reasonable in the case of any
great work of art. Was Tennyson the sole author of those
Arthurian Romances which have won for him a corner of
Spenser's footstool 1 Not at all. The legends and materials
were made to his hand. Yet, in the truest sense, Tennyson
may be called the author of the Idylls of the King, for he
40 Shakespeare: the Man.
re-imagined and re-created them, without infringing the rights
of another. In this sense, then, was the actor, William
Shakespeare, the author of The Merry Wives of Windsor, The
Taming of the Shrew, The Life and Death of King John, The
Life of King Henry V, the First, Second, and Third Parts of
King Henry VL, The Life of King Henry VLLI, Titus Andronicus,
Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Hamlet, and Pericles ? It
seems not. You may suppose I have not selected those thir-
teen plays at random. The fact is, that not one of them is
free from the suspicion that another hand has contributed to
that fame which has been appropriated to Shakespeare alone.
We are here introduced into the thick of some of the
most intricate problems of dramatic criticism, which I can
only glance at now. Among the waifs which the wreck of
the early Elizabethan drama has bequeathed to us are four
plays bearing the following names : The Troublesome Reigne of
John, King of England, 4 to, 1591, 1611, 1622; The First
Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of
Yorke and Lancaster, small 8vo, 1594, and 4to, 1600 and
1619; The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, 4to, 1595,
1600, and 16 19; and A Pleasant Conceited Historic called the
Taming of a Shrew, 4to, 1594, 1596, and 1607.
These respectively correspond to four of the plays attributed
to Shakespeare, viz., The Life and Death of King John, the
Second and Third Parts of King Henry VL, and The Taming of
the Shrew.
It is nearly certain that Shakespeare did not write a line of
the old King John, on which he constructed his play so named.
Sliakcspeare : the Man. 41
It is equally certain that he had no hand whatever in the old
Taming of a Shreiv, which we have every reason for believing
to have been written by Christopher Marlow ; but, on the other
hand, it would be a rash inference that Shakespeare had used
this play in the composition of his own. Some day the knot,
perhaps, will be untied ; and then we shall probably see Charles
Knight's conjecture established by the discovery of evidence
that Marlow and Shakespeare used one and the same original
in the composition of their dramas. I wish it were possible
for us to see our way as clearly in dealing with The First Part
of the Contention and The True Tragedie. They seem to have
been originally the joint compositions of Marlow and Robert
Greene, not improbably touched by Shakespeare subsequently,
and exhibiting those touches in the edition of 16 19; anyhow,
Marlow's hand is unmistakably apparent in both plays. The
following examples are adduced in support of this view by
Mr. Halliwell in his edition of the First Sketches of the Second
and Third Farts of Henry VI, printed for the Shakespeare
Society, 1843 :
The wild O'Neile, my lord, is up in The wild O'Neile, with swarms of
arms, Irish kernes,
With troupes of Irish kernes, that Lives uncontroul'd within the En-
uncontroul'd glish pale.
Do plant themselves within the Marlow's Edward II.
English pale.
First Part of the Contention.
This villain, being but captain of I remember, Ismena, that Epi-
a pinnace, threatens more plagues cuius measured every man's dyet by
G
42
Shakespeare: the Man.
than Abradas, the great Macedo-
nian pirate. — Ibid.
his own principles, and Abradas,
the great Macedonian pirat, thought
every one had a letter of mart that
bare sayles in the ocean.
Green's Penelope's Web, 1588.
What, will the aspiring blood of But when the imperial lion's flesh
Lancaster is gored,
Sink into the ground ? I thought He rends and tears it with his
it would have mounted. wrathful paw,
The True Tragedie. And highly scorning, that the lowly
earth
Should drink his blood, mounts up
to the air.
Marlow's Edward II.
Stern Falconbridge commands the
narrow seas. — Ibid.
The haughty Dane commands the
narrow seas. — Ibid.
I am, however, far from sure that the argument founded on
these and other similarities between the Contention and the
works of Marlow and of Greene, would not go to prove that
some of the very additions to the old plays, in the Second and
Third Parts of King Henry VI, with which Shakespeare is
credited, were the work of one or other of his contemporaries.
I give one example to show what I mean. In The Second Part
of Henry VI, i. 3, occurs the line :
She bears a duke's revenues on her back.
In the 4to, 16 19, of The First Part of the Contention, the
line stands thus :
She bears a duke's whole revenues on her back ;
Shakespeare : the Man. 43
but it is wholly wanting in the earlier editions; and it is this
edition of 16 19, which Mr. Hallivvell regards as an intermediate
version, presenting Shakespeare's first draft of The Second
Part of Henry VI Now this very addition is almost wholly
the property of Marlow, for in his Edward II, we read —
He wears a lord's revenue on his back.
Here then is an intricate problem. Was Marlow the
amender of the old play of The First Part of the Contention 1
and was Shakespeare a purloiner from Marlow? Perhaps neither.
In order to show in what manner Shakespeare availed
himself of the old plays of The First Part of the Contention,
and The True Tragedie, I will adduce five passages from
these plays, and place in juxtaposition with them the cor-
responding passages in The Second and Third Parts of King
Henry VI. Further, with a view to afford the reader the
means of appreciating the true character of the quarto edition
of 1619, which contains both parts of the Contention, I have
added the corresponding passages in this edition, which Mr.
Halliwell regards as 'an intermediate composition.' I need
only add that, with the exception of a passage containing
the genealogy of the Duke of York, there is none other
which countenances, or at least supports, Mr. Halliwell's view.
The other variations are (as it seems to me) of no greater
significance than the general run of various readings in the
early quarto editions of Shakespeare, and which assuredly
have no source more respectable than the blunders of printers
and copyists, and the tinkerings of players.
44 Shakespeare: the Man.
(l.) Humphrey. This night when I was laid in bed, I dreampt that
This my staffe mine Office badge in Court,
Was broke in two, and on the ends were plac'd,
The heads of the Cardinall of Winchester,
And William de la Poule first Duke of Suffolke.
The First Part of the Contention, 4to, 1594.
This night when I was laid in bed, I dreamt
That this my staffe, mine office badge in Court,
Was broke in twaine, by whom I cannot gesse :
But as I thinke by the Cardinall. What it bodes
God knowes ; and on the ends were plac'd
The heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset,
And William de la Pole first Duke of Suffolke.
Ibid., 4to, 16 19.
Methought this staff, mine office-badge in Court,
Was broke in twain ; by whom I have forgot,
But as I think, it was by the Cardinal ;
And on the pieces of the broken wand
Were placed the heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset,
And William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk.
This was my dream : what it doth bode, God knows.
II Henry VI, folio, 1623.
(2.) Elnor. lie come after you, for I cannot go before,
But ere it be long, He go before them all,
Despight of all that seeke to crosse me thus,
The First Fart of the Contention, 4to, 1594.
He come after you, for I cannot go before,
As long as Gloster beares this base and humble minde :
Were I a man, and Protector as he is,
I'de reach to th' crowne, or make some hop headlesse.
And being but a woman, ile not behinde
For playing of my part, in spite of all that seek to crosse me thus
Ibid., 4to, 16 19.
Shakespeare: the Man. 45
Yes, my good lord, I'll follow presently,
Follow I must ; I cannot go before,
While Gloucester bears this base and humble mind.
Were I a man, a duke, and next of blood,
I would remove these tedious stumbling-blocks •
And smooth my way upon their headless necks ;
And being a woman, I will not be slack
To play my part in Fortune's pageant.
II Henry VI, folio, 1623.
(3.) And his proud wife, high minded Elanor,
That ruffles it with such a troupe of Ladies,
As strangers in the Court takes her for the Queene.
The First Part of the Contention, 4to, 1 594.
And his proud wife, high minded Elanor,
That ruffles it with such a troupe of Ladies,
As strangers in Court take her for the Queene ;
She beares a Dukes whole revennewes on her backe.
Ibid., 4to, 16 19.
Not all these lords do vex me half so much
As that proud dame, the lord protector's wife.
She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,
More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife :
Strangers in the court do take her for the queen :
She bears a duke's revennues upon her back, etc.
II Henry VI, folio, 1623.
(4.) I have seduste a headstrong Kentishman,
John Cade of Ashford,
Under the title of Sir John Mortemer,
To raise commotion, etc.
The First Part of the Contention, 4to, 1594.
I have seduste a headstrong Kentish man,
John Cade of Ashford,
Under the title of Sir John Mortimer,
(For he is like him every kinde of way)
To raise commotion, etc. Ibid., 4to, 16 19.
46 Shakespeare : the Alan.
I have seduced a headstrong Kentish man,
John Cade of Ashford,
To make commotion, as full well he can,
Under the title of John Mortimer.
II Henry VI, folio, 1623.
(5.) Clarence beware, thou keptst me from the light,
But I will sort a pitchie daie for thee.
For I will buz abroad such prophesies,
As Edward shall be fearefull of his life,
And then to purge his feare, He be thy death.
Henry and his sonne are gone, thou Clarence next,
And one by one I will dispatch the rest,
Counting my selfe but bad, till I be best.
He drag thy bodie in another roome,
And triumph Henry in thy daie of doome.
The True Tragedie, 1595.
Clarence beware, thou keptst me from the light,
But I will sort a pitchie daie for thee.
For I will buz abroad such prophesies,
Under pretence of outward seeming ill,
As Edward shall be fearefull of his life,
And then to purge his feare, He be thy death.
King Henry, and the Prince his sonne are gone,
And Clarence thou art next to follow them,
So by one and one dispatching all the rest,
Counting my selfe but bad, till I be best.
He drag thy bodie in another roome,
And triumph Henry in thy daie of doom.
Ibid., 1 6 19.
Clarence, beware; thou keep'st me from the light:
But I will sort a pitchy day for thee ;
For I will buz abroad such prophecies
That Edward shall be fearfull of his life,
And then, to purge his feare, I'll be his death.
Shakespeare : the Man. 47
King Henry and the prince his son are gone :
Clarence thy turn is next, and then the rest,
Counting myself but bad till I be best.
I'll throw thy body in another room
And triumph, Henry, in thy day of doom.
Ill Henry VI, folio, 1623.
If Shakespeare had no hand in these two old plays, it is
demonstrable that more than four-sevenths of those plays were
borrowed, and appropriated verbatim, by Shakespeare, in the
composition of the Second and Third Paris of King Henry VI
Mr. Halliwell, however, thinks it not unlikely that they are
both rifacimenti by Shakespeare of older plays {The First
Sketches of II and III Henry VI, edited by Halliwell for the
Shakespeare Society, 1843, introd., p. 19), a conjecture which
is unhappily unsupported by evidence, or it would relieve
Shakespeare from the charge of appropriation. But we need
not, I think, be very nice on that score, when we consider the
large levies he made on contemporary prose literature.* I
ought to add that we know of no old play corresponding to
The First Part of King Henry VI This default, considered
in conjunction with the poverty of that performance, might
incline one to think that it owes as little to the genius of
* Compare, for example, Shakespeare's Roman plays with North's
Plutarch: take Coriolanns as a sample: or, better still, perhaps, consult
Florio's Montaigne, and see how Shakespeare could appropriate a long and
curious passage. In all such cases he made no attempt to stamp his own
originality on what he borrowed; he simply touched it up, so as to make it
serviceable to his needs, and fall into fair blank verse. In this art he
certainly did not surpass Byron or Coleridge.
48 Shakespeare : the Man.
Shakespeare as do The First Part of the Contention and The
True Tragedie*
These four (or five) plays form a class by themselves. Into
another class fall four other plays, which are almost universally
received and always cited as first sketches by Shakespeare :
these are as follows : An excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo
and Juliet, 4to, 1597; The Chronicle Historie of Henry the
Fifth, 4to, 1600, 1602, and 1608; A most pleasaunt and excel-
lent conceited Comedie of Syr John Falstajfe, and the Merry
Wives of Windsor, 4to, 1602, and 1619; and The Tragicall
Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 4to, 1603.
These respectively correspond to Romeo and Juliet, The
Life of King Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and
Hamlet, of the folio collections. But though I have, for con-
venience, assigned these four sketches to one class, no two of
them can be said to possess common characteristics. In the
first place, I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare had the
lion's share in the composition of the old Romeo and Juliet,
and the old Hamlet bears abundant internal evidence of having
been printed from a manuscript copy which had been fabricated
out of the odds and ends furnished by an unskilled reporter.
This play was entered on the books of the Stationers' Com-
pany in 1602, and so may have been acted some years before.
It seems, however, not improbable that it was a rifacimento of
* Readers may consult with advantage the Harness Prize Essay for
1874, by Mr. G. L. Rives, which deals exclusively with the authorship of
the three parts of Henry VI. His statements, however, contain some inac-
curacies which endanger the soundness of his conclusions.
Shakespeare : the Man. 49
an older play; that it was the older Hamlet which was played
at Henslow's theatre on June 9th, 1594, and that this was the
play alluded to by Nash in his ' Epistle to the Gentlemen
Students of the two Universities,' prefixed to Robert Greene's
Alenaphon, 1589, and also by Lodge in that eccentric brochure,
entitled Wifs Miserie, or the World's Madnesse, 1596.* But
these are questions which it is impossible to discuss in the
compass of this paper, f
Into another class I must place the remaining four plays
of those above cited, on which I will bestow but a passing
remark. It is almost certain that John Fletcher wrote the
greater part of The Life of King Henry VIII. The author of
Titus Andronieus it is now impossible to determine. As far
as I know it has never been satisfactorily made out that
Shakespeare wrote any part of it. It must be admitted that all
the external evidences give him the sole authorship, as indeed
they do in the case of several plays universally allowed to be
* Oxberry, the player, in his acting edition of Marl W 's Dramatic }Vorks,
1818, asserts that in Richard II, Shakespeare has borrowed largely, 'and,
to speak with candour, rather too largely,' from Marlow's Edward II. In
support of this he cites from Edward II the scene in which Edward is
required by Leicester and others to give up his crown ; and ' the looking-
glass scene' from Richard II, viz., that in which Richard is required by
Bolingbroke and Northumberland to do the like. The passages are too
long for quotation here, and, in my opinion, do not support Oxberry's
charge. Nevertheless, Mr. A. C. Swinburne may be right in his view that
Marlow's Edward II ' must undoubtedly be regarded as the immediate
model of Shakespeare's Richard II.' ( Fortnightly Review, May, 1875, P- 629).
t I cannot but believe that the allusion to Hamlet in Sir Thomas
Smithes Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia, 1605; in Dekker's Belman's
Vight Walks, 1612; and in Rowlands' Night Raven, 1620, are also to the
pre- Shakespearian drama.
H
50 Shakespeare: the Man.
spurious; but in this (as in those) the internal evidences wholly
negative his claim. Tinwn of Athens is a joint composition,
of which it is quite easy to determine the parts which were
written by Shakespeare, and those which were written by
another dramatist. As an example of this, take the two
following speeches of Apemantus :
Iloyday,
What a sweepe of vanitie comes this way.
They daunce ! They are madwomen,
Like madnesse is the glory of this life,
As this pompe shewes to a little oyle and roote.
We make our selves fooles, to disport our selves,
And spend our flatteries, to drinke those men,
Upon whose age we voyde it up agen
With poysonous spight and envy.
Who lives, that's not depraved, or depraves ?
Who dyes, that beares not one spurne to their graves
Of their friends guift ?
I should feare, those that dance before me now,
Would one day stampe upon me : 't has bene done,
Men shut their doores against a setting sunne.
We may be quite sure that this is the older work. It has
not the ring of Shakespeare in any of his moods : nay more,
it has not a single feature, turn, or style which suggests him,
and might, for aught I see to the contrary, have been written
by one who bombasted it when Kyd and Marlow were in
their swaddling clothes.* When Shakespeare condescends to
* Mr. Fleay is confident that this (Knight's) view is untenable. He
writes, 'The un-Shaksperian parts were certainly the latest written.' Tr.
N. S.S., 1874, P. I, p. 139. I am unconvinced. Some speeches in the
play seem to me to be not only inferior but older work.
Shakespeare: the Man. 51
repair the old rubbish, see what sterling work he makes of it.
Here is Shakespeare's Apemantus:
what, think'st
That the bleake ayre, thy boysterous chamberlaine,
Will put thy shirt on warme ? Will these moss'd trees,*
That have out-liv'd the eagle, page thy heeles
And skip when thou point'st out ? Will the cold brooke
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste
To cure thy o're-nights surfet ? Call the creatures,
Whose naked natures live in all the spight
Of wrekefull Heaven, whose bare unhoused trunkes,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,
Answer meere nature : bid them flatter thee.
O thou shalt finde thou flatter'st misery.
Do you not here catch the rare old tones of him who sang
the outcast king in the storm, and the banished duke in the
forest of Ardenne 1 f The study of Pericles leads us to a
similar conclusion, but the dissection is not so easy. J
To these remarks I should add, that in The Life and Death
of King Richard II, Shakespeare may have utilized an older
play. Anyhow, there was at least one old play on this subject.
Such a play was acted in 1601, and again in 1611.
In using up old materials, and grafting one play upon
* ' Moss'd trees' is Hanmer's reading. The folios have moist trees.
f After making this selection, I observed that Mr. Knight, in his Studies
of Shakespeare, 185 1, p. 72, had selected the same speeches for comparison;
to which he adds two speeches of Flavius, the just steward, viz., that
beginning, 'What will this come to?' and that beginning, 'If you suspect
my husbandry.' These exhibit the double authorship almost as well as the
former pair; but, of course, the grander is the character, the more striking
is the contrast.
% Mr. Fleay takes the opposite view.
52 Shakespeare: tJte Man.
another, Shakespeare was merely conforming to an established
usage. We can hardly regret that he did so, even though the
practice is to be reprehended, as likely to give currency to
falsehood. Be that as it may, we cannot but marvel at that
magic skill, which at the first touch endows the grub with
wings, and then transmutes it into a lovely butterfly. The
material he used up seems mostly to have been the livelier
portions of the old play-house stock, which, like the bones in a
dust-heap, become the property of the first person who takes
the trouble to turn them to account. Verily the poet must
have wrought /// magus, who made those dry bones live.*
Justifiable or not, the practice was eminently advantageous;
it not only effected a great economy in the playwright's mental
resources and ' midnight oil,' but ensured for the audience the
maintenance of their old interest in the story represented.
T have elsewhere pointed out and established the low social
status of the dramatist at this time.f Play-writing and acting
were neither trades nor professions. When the Professor in
The Water Babies caught Tom in his net, he called him an
eft, but observing that he had no tail (so that he could not be
an eft) and was to all appearance a land-baby (and therefore
could not live under water), he let him go, and struck him
out of the book of life. Like Tom, the Elizabethan players and
: Ut magus; two words from Horace ( Ep. i., lib. ii. 1. 213) which
surmount the noble portrait of Shakespeare, attributed to Cornelius Jansen,
the property of the Duke of Somerset.
t See Was Tliomas Lodge a player? An exposition touching the social
status of the Dramatist in the reign of Elizabeth, imp. 8vo, 1868 ; and
Shakspere Allusion-Rooks, Part I, 'General Introduction,' p. iii.
Shakespeare: the Man. 53
dramatists ' fell between two stools.' Their patrons regarded
them as persons sans aveu, and therefore statutable vagrants.
Accordingly, it came to pass that where all was disreputable,
no particular scandal arose from one dramatist annexing the
lucubration or inspiration of another, unless, indeed, the pre-
serve of one theatre were poached upon by the playwright of
another. In that event fired out the smouldering jealousy
which maintained the standing quarrels of rival theatres. To
this wretched jealousy we are indebted for a most curious
piece of evidence, that Shakespeare did some poaching at the
Globe, whatever he may have done at Charlecote or Fulbrooke.
I refer to the famous passage in Greens Groatsworth of Wit
bought with a Million of Repentance, 1592, to which I shall
shortly revert. A propos of that, Mr. Halliwell quotes from a
quarto tract, dated 1594, called Greene's Funeralls, by R. B.,
Gent., 1594, the last couplet of the following stanza:
Greene is the pleasing object of an eye,
Greene pleased the eyes of all that looked upon him,
Greene is the ground of every painter's dye,
Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him.
Nay more, the men that so eclipst his fame
Purloin'd his plumes, can they deny the same ? *
Shakespeare was certainly one of the men censured here.
* I have never seen a copy of this scarce book. For the complete
stanza I am indebted to Mr. Rives' Harness-Prize Essay. The fourth line
is misquoted by Mr. S. Neil in his Biography of Shakespeare, 4to, 1869,
p. 22; and by myself in the Shakspere Allusion -Books, Part I, 1874,
'General Introduction,' p. xi. I copied from Mr. Neil. From whom
did he copy?
54 Shakespeare: tJie Man.
I have called the more ancient Elizabethan plays, waifs
from the general wreck of the older drama. In the coming
days of Macaulay's New Zealander, the grander works of
Shakespeare will remain to our posterity, not like waifs that
have drifted down by reason of their lightness, but like the
boulders which, by reason of their solidity and weight, have
escaped the general denudation. Perhaps, too, in time to
come, the Apollyon power of criticism may reveal Shakespeare's
method of composition, by some subtle process of disintegration
of which we now know nothing. I have marked, on the sea
beach at Filey, the work of destruction which the tide is
ceaselessly waging among the Oolitic rocks. The primeval
sand had been amassed by the ancient sea in the usual rippled
form, and thus became stratified. The sea is now silting out
the less solid particles from the rock, and breaking it up into
slabs, whose cleavage shows the old ripple-mark. ' Nature,'
says Emerson, 'can never keep a secret;' she never wholly
erases her footprints, and we may be sure that the genius of
Shakespeare was not more subtle or cunning than nature.
Putting aside the questions suggested by the plays, it is
necessary, for the completion of our inquiry, to ascertain
what contemporary testimony is extant, which by identifying
William Shakespeare, the player, with the author of the plays,
may prevent or rebut all rational doubt on the subject. Any
difficulty which we may meet with here more or less infects all
the poetic literature of that day. For instance, the beautiful
epigram on ' Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,' which is
No. 15 in Ben Jonson's Underwoods, is also in a collection
Shakespeare : the Man. 55
of poems by Jonson's friend, William Browne {Lansdowne
Manuscripts, 777, first printed by Sir Egerton Brydges), with
an additional verse. I suspect the second verse is all that
belongs to Browne. The pastoral, ' Come live with me and
be my love,' is assigned to Marlow in England's Helicon, 1600,
and the nymph's reply, ' If love and all the world were young,'
is there given to Raleigh, under the pseudonym Ignoto : yet
the first of these, and the first verse of the second, constitute
No. 20 in the collection of short pieces attributed to Shake-
speare, printed in 1599, and senselessly called The Passionate
Pilgrim. No. 1 1 in the same collection, ' Venus with young
Adonis sitting by her,' occurs in a volume called Fidessa, a
collection of Sonnets, by B. Griffin, 1596, and Nos. 8. and 21,
'If Music and sweet Poetry agree,' and 'As it fell upon a
day,' are included in a collection called Poems in Divers Humors,
1598, attributed to Richard Barnefeild. Who has sufficient
knowledge to solve these questions of authorship 1 and those
which relate to the drama are (for various reasons inapplicable
to minor poetry) infinitely more intricate and perplexing.
There is a growing school which affects to disbelieve in
Shakespeare's authorship of the works attributed to him.
There were probably sceptics of this sort before 1852 ; but the
earliest attempt to impugn the prevalent belief, so far as I know,
was made in the number of Chambers'' Edinburgh Journal for
August 7 th in that year. The spirit of the article is healthy
enough. The scantiness of our evidence is fairly pointed out ;
at the same time, the two dedications to Lord Southampton,
and the testimony of Jonson, both prose and verse, are
$6 Shakespeare: the Man.
admitted to weigh heavily against the doubters. On the other
hand, the omission of all mention of Shakespeare from the
works of Raleigh and Bacon is noticed, without the sug-
gestion of their possible authorship of the works attributed to
Shakespeare. The game thus started was hunted, by Miss
Delia Bacon, in Putnditfs Monthly for January, 1856 (vol.
vii, p. 1). It is here that the claims of Lord Bacon to the
authorship of those works were first advanced. In 1856, an
original inquirer, Mr. William Henry Smith ( then of Brompton,
now or late of Highgate), published a letter to the first Lord
Ellesmere, with the interrogative title, Was Lord Bacon the
Author of Shakespeare's plays ? This he followed up, in 1857,
with a small volume on the same subject, entitled Bacon and
Shakespeare. In the same year was published the enormous
volume (the composition of which cost Miss Delia Bacon her
reason and her life) called The Philosophy of the Plays of
Shakespeare unfolded. In this book the joint claims of Raleigh
and Bacon are advocated with the faith and earnestness of a
martyr. Lastly, in 1866 was published in America a large
volume entitled, The Authorship of the Plays attributed to
Shakespeare, by Nathaniel Holmes, one of the Judges of the
Supreme Court of the State of Missouri. This work is entirely
devoted to the advocacy of Lord Bacon's authorship. Mr.
Holmes having presented Mr. James Spedding, the editor of
Bacon's works, with a copy of this book, and solicited his
opinion thereupon, was so fortunate as to elicit an admirable
criticism on the general question. This, together with other
private letters which have passed between Messrs. W. H.
Shakespeare : the Alan. 57
Smith, Spedding, and Holmes, I have been permitted to read,
but I am not at liberty to make known their very curious
contents.*
This remarkable controversy is not without its uses. It
serves to call particular attention to the existence of a class
of minds which, like Macadam's sieves, retain only those
ingredients that are unsuited to the end in view. Mix up a
quantity of matters relevant and irrelevant, and those minds
will eliminate from the instrument of reasoning every point
on which the reasoning ought to turn, and then proceed to
exercise their constitutional perversity on the residue. This
is the class of minds to which Bishop Warburton belonged ;
so that what Thomas De Quincey ( Works, A. & C. Black,
vol. vi, p. 259) writes of that prelate will serve for a generic
description :
The natural vegetation of his intellect tended to that kind of fungus
which is called ' crochet ; ' so much so that if he had a just and powerful
thought (as sometimes in germ he had), or a wise and beautiful thought,
yet by the mere perversity of his tortuous brain, it was soon digested into
a crochet.
The profession of the law (which at first was Warburton's)
has (as De Quincey perceived) the inevitable effect of fostering
the native tendency of such minds. For a fresh field of
* This correspondence has been since published as an appendix to the
third edition of Judge Holmes' work, issued in 1876. Other works on this
curious controversy are — William Shakspere not an Impostor, 1857; Who
wrote Shakspere? by J. V. P. {Eraser's Magazine, August, 1874); Bacon
versus Shakespeare, a Plea/or the Defendant, by J. D. King, 1875 ; and The
Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy, by E. O. Vaile, 1875 (Scr/bner's Monthly,
April, 1875).
58 Shakespeare: the Man.
studying their idiosyncrasy we are indebted to this contro-
versy. It has also another use. It incites us to look up our
evidences for Shakespeare's authorship ; and we are reminded
how few and meagre they are.
The critic has the same interest in the works of Miss Delia
Bacon, Mr. W. H. Smith, and Judge Holmes, as the physician
has in morbid anatomy. He reads them, not so much for the
light which they throw on the question of authorship, as for
their interest as examples of wrong-headedness. It is not at
all a matter of moment whether Bacon, Raleigh, or another
be the favourite on whom the works are fathered ; but it is
instructive to discover by what plausible process the positive
evidences of Shakespeare's authorship (scanty as they are) are
put out of court. As to Bacon as first favourite, I suppose anyone
conversant with the life and authentic works of that powerful
but unamiable character, must agree with Mr. Spedding's
judgment, that, unless he be the author of "Shakespeare,"
neither his life nor his writings give us any assurance that
he could excel as a dramatic poet. Of all men who have left
their impress on the reign of the first maiden Queen, not
one can be found who was so deficient in human sympathies
as Lord Bacon. As for such a man portraying a woman
in all her natural simplicity, purity, and grace; as to his
imagining and bodying forth in natural speech and action such
exquisite creations as Miranda, Perdita, Cordelia, Desdemona,
Marina — the supposition is the height of absurdity. What, as
it seems to me, has led astray the few writers who have set
up a claim for Lord Bacon, is his admirable gift of language,
Shakespeare : the Man. 59
scarcely inferior to that of Shakespeare himself* This almost
unique endowment caused Bacon to manifest a kind of like-
ness to Shakespeare in matters into which the sympathies of
the man and the training of the dramatic poet do not enter.
Hence it is easy to cull from the works of these two great
masters a considerable number of curious parallels. I have
looked over the collections of Messrs. W. H. Smith and
Holmes, and I must confess I am astonished; but my astonish-
ment has not been provoked by the quantity or closeness of
the resemblances adduced, but by the spectacle of educated
men attempting to found such an edifice on such a foundation.
I could from my own reading add to their collections some
remarkable parallelisms which they have overlooked. t But
what of that % Is there anything singular in the case 1 Not
at all. For if parallelisms can prove identity of authorship,
what an array of anonymous plays ought to be put to
Shakespeare's credit ! For instance, the old play of Lust's
Dominion has no owner: in the course of its perusal, I observed
some very remarkable parallels between its text and that of
* Unquestionably Mr. Tennyson is the most richly endowed, in this
respect, of all the poets of our day; a fact which was adroitly turned to
his disadvantage by the late Lord Lytton, who sneeringly said, ' Tennyson
is a poet with a great vocabulary.'
f For instance, compare the following:
'And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it
comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand,' etc. — Essay
lxvi.
O, it came o'er my ear, like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets;
Stealing and giving odour. — Twelfth Night, i, 1.
60 SJiakcspearc : the Man.
Shakespeare. I will mention two by way of illustration. In
act i, scene i, the Moor, speaking of the multitude, asks the
Queen-mother,
Who arms this many-headed beast, but you ?
Compare this with Corio/anus, act iv, scene i —
The beast
With many heads butts me away.
and with the Induction to II Henry IV,
the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant waving multitude.
Again, the Queen-mother, at the end of the play (act v,
scene 3), when all her troubles are consummated, says,
I'll now repose myself in peaceful rest,
And fly into some solitary residence,
Where I'll spin out the remnant of my life,
In true contrition for my past offences:
a passage which reminds us of Paulina's last speech in
A Winter's Tale, somewhat as a flowered tea-tray reminds us
of a garden.
How many of such resemblances think you between lust's
Dominion and Shakespeare would prove the right of that play
to a place in the received collection 1 My answer is that a
large number of such cases would assuredly dispose of that
claim, and a small number would go no way to prove it. It
requires no minute acquaintance with Shakespeare's text for
a reader to be struck with that inexhaustible pregnancy of
language which rarely repeats an image once expressed,
Shakespeare : the Man. 61
without expressing it anew. In fact it is one argument against
Shakespeare's authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which
has his name, along with Fletcher's, on the title, that so many
Shakespearianisms occur in its text.
And I
Doe here present this Machine, or this frame.
Two Noble Kinsmen, iii, 6.
Thou mighty one, that with thy power has turn'd
Green Neptune into purple.
Ibid., v, I.
Palamon (addressing Mars).
Thou great decider
Of dusty and old titles, that heal'st with blood
The earth when it is sick, and cur'st the world
O' the pluresie of people.
Ibid., v, I.
And yet we are asked to believe that, because Bacon writes,
'All was inned at last unto the King's barn,' and 'the cold
becometh more eager, 1 therefore he was the author of AlPs
Well that Ends Well and Hamlet.
Summarily disallowing, then, the claims set up on behalf
of Bacon, I proceed to consider, with the utmost brevity,
those evidences on which we are justified in attributing to
Shakespeare the chief authorship of the dramas which have the
passport of his name. I own at the outset that those evidences
are scanty : not so scanty as Mr. W. H. Smith would have us
believe, for he cites but four witnesses whose testimony was
given in or close upon Shakespeare's lifetime, viz., Francis
Meres (1598)3 William Basse (1622 eirea); the anonymous
author of The Return from Pernassus (1606, said to have been
62 Shakespeare : the Man.
acted in 1602), and Ben Jonson. In fact, there are at least
eleven besides; two of whom are among our chief witnesses.*
But so little weight do I attach to contemporary rumour
as an evidence of authorship, that I shall trouble you with
seven witnesses only. Of these, there are but four who directly
identify the man, or the actor, with the writer of the plays
and poems.
The first witness I shall call is John Harrison, the publisher;
though it is but little that he can tell us. It was for him that
Venus and Adonis w T as printed in 1593, and Lticrece in 1594.
No author's name is on the title-page of either. But fortunately
he prefixed to each a dedication to Lord Southampton, sub-
scribed ' William Shakespeare.' It is to me quite incredible
that Harrison would have done this, unless Shakespeare had
# I do not count Spenser, for the oft-quoted line from his Teares of
the Muses,
'Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late,'
unquestionably referred to Sir Philip Sydney, who (like some other
poets) was alluded to under the pastoral name of Willy. Thus, in an
eclogue signed A. W., in the Poetical Rhapsody quoted by Mr. Collier,
in his Introduction to Seven English Poetical Miscellanies, 1867, occurs
the following, in reference to Sydney's recent death :
We deem'd our Willy aye should live,
So sweet a sound his pipe could give ;
But cruell death
Hath stopt his breath :
Dumb lies his pipe that wont so sweet to sound !
Besides, as Mr. Halliwell argues, Spenser's allusion could not be to
Shakespeare; for the Peares of the Muses was probably written about 15S0,
though it was not published till ten years later. Shakespeare was but
sixteen years old in 1580, and was not known in London as a poet till
eight or nine years afterwards.
Shakespeare: the Man. 63
written the dedications, or at least had been a party to them.
Now in dedicating the first poem, the undersigned speaks of
it as ' my unpolisht lines,' and ' the first heir of my invention,'
and he promises to honour his patron ' with some graver
labour : ' in dedicating the second poem he speaks of it as
' my untutored lines,' and adds, ' what I have done is yours,
what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devoted
yours.'
So far, then, we have a tittle of evidence to prove that
one William Shakespeare was the author of both these poems.
Three or four years later a well-known man of letters,
named Francis Meres, speaks of Shakespeare as the author
of Venus and Adonis, Luereee, sundry sonnets, and ten speci-
fied plays. Of these plays nine are known to us and received
as Shakespeare's. Meres' testimony is given in seven pages
of his book, called Palladis Tamia, Wit's Commonwealth,
1598; but I have never seen quoted any of his remarks
on Shakespeare's works, except the stock passages on folios
281 and 282, which one writer evidently borrows from another,
to save himself the trouble of consulting the original. It
is especially noteworthy that on the first page of folio 280,
Meres selects Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton,
Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow and Chapman, as the poets
by whom the English tongue was ' mightily enriched, and
gorgeouslie invested in rare ornaments and resplendent
abiliments ; ' and it is evident from subsequent remarks that
he awarded the palm to the authors of the Faerie Queen
and the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
64 Shakespeare: the Man.
Robert Greene (the abler and better known of the two
Elizabethan poets of that surname) wrote a number of plays
in conjunction with Marlow, Lodge, Nash and others, which
had great popularity before the advent of Shakespeare. In
his last publication, called A Groatsworth of Wit Bought
with a Million of Repentance, 1592, he addresses an admonition
to three of his associates, exhorting them to abandon play-
writing. These we may readily identify as Marlow, Nash and
Peele. Then follow the words, so often quoted, which are
for us the important testimony :
Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned :
for unto none of you (like me) sought those buries to cleave : those
Puppits (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht
in our colours. . . . Yes, trust them not : for there is an upstart
Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in
a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke
verse as the best of you : —
so far it might be conjectured that Shakespeare is the man
alluded to : providentially Greene adds these words, which
almost convert that conjecture into a certainty :
and being an absolute Johannes fac totnm, is in his owne conceit the
onely Shake-scene in a countrie.
Burs, puppets, antics, crows in [peacocks] feathers — such are
the hard words he gives the players ; and these he follows
up with a second instalment of abusive epithets — apes, rude
grooms, buckram gentlemen, peasants, and painted monsters ! *
* These were but conventional terms : so John Davies of Hereford has
apish actors, men more base, &c. ; Thomas Hey wood, puppets, painted images,
&c. ; Robert Burton, butterflies, baboons, apes, and antics ; and so forth.
Shakespeare; the Man. 65
Now in turning this extract to account, we must be more
cautious than dramatic critics usually are to avoid reasoning in
a circle. If we are fully satisfied that ' Shake-scene ' contains a
pun upon Shakespeare (and that independently of the verse),
we may infer, perhaps, that Greene, or one of the dramatists
admonished by him, wrote the whole or a part of The True
Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and that Shakespeare
pillaged his predecessor's work to ' beautifie,' or rather to
fabricate, his Third Part of Henry VI. Anyhow, the line
travestied occurs in both The True Tragedy and The Third
Part of Henry VI.
The conclusion being reached that Shakespeare is the
player assailed by Greene, the testimony of Henry Chettle,
the editor of Greene's Groatsworih of Wit, is invested with
a curious and special interest. Immediately after the appear-
ance of that book, Chettle published a work of fiction called
Kind-Harts Dreame. In the preface to this he refers to the
preceding work, and confesses to having expunged from the
manuscript some of Greene's hard words : but he protests that
he added nothing to it. After remarking on the admonition
to the three dramatists he adds this splutter of solecisms :
The other, whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I
wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heate of living writers,
and might have usde my owne discretion (especially in such a case),
the Author beeing dead, that I did not, I am as sory as if the originall
fault had beene my fault, because my selfe have seene his demeanor
no lesse civill, than he exelcnt in the qualitie he professes : Besides,
divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues
his honesty, and his facetious grace in wriltmg, that aprooves his Art.
K
65 Shakespeare: the Man.
This is indeed a singular apology. We may picture to
our mind's eye the shadowless man, the tinker of old plays,
the second rate actor, who had already, like one of his
heroes,
bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
but who as yet had not become a man of worship, and an
armiger in right of gentle blood, by the mere force of his
unpretending frankness, modesty and gentleness, disarming
his jealous and contemptuous traducers ; insomuch that the
respectable Henry Chettle, who had never been a motley and
a vagrant, is prompted to give the author of Hamlet an ac-
ceptable testimonial. For my part, I honour Chettle for this
tardy act of justice.
I suppose I must, in the next place, cite the ostensible
editors of the first collection of Shakespeare's works; for
they were none other than Heminge and Condell, two of
the company who at the accession of James the First played
under the joint management of Lawrence Fletcher and William
Shakespeare. But, unfortunately for their credit and our satis-
faction, their prefatory statement contains, or at least suggests,
what they must have known to be false. They would lead
us to believe that their edition was printed from Shakespeare's
manuscripts :
Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser
of it. His mind and hand went together : And what he thought, he
uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot
in his papers.
Shakespeare: the Man. 67
Now we have positive knowledge of a fact inconsistent with
this excerpt. We know that the texts of eight of the plays
in that edition were printed from the early quarto editions,*
which they denounce as stolen and surreptitious, 'maimed,
and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious im-
postors,' and which plays they now offer ' cur'd and perfect
of their limbes.' But notwithstanding this, the testimony of
Shakespeare's fellows must be allowed to have some weight
in the question of authorship. It is to me incredible that
they should in that matter have attempted a fraud which must
have been transparent to the noble brothers who lent their
patronage to the volume, and which must sooner or later
have been exposed in the face of all England.
Our last and principal witness is Ben Jonson, though he
is less communicative than might have been expected con-
sidering the closeness of his friendship with Shakespeare. In
what he writes of the man he seems to take it for granted that
we know all about him already, and the things he tells us
are not those we most want to know. There are the verses
prefixed to the first folio of Shakespeare, and the remarks
entitled, De Shakespeare nostrati, in his posthumous work called
Timber ; or Discoveries made upon Men and Jl/atter. These
remarks must be read in connection with Heminge and
Condell's preface to the first folio, and with the Induction to
Ben Jonson's play, entitled The Staple of News. In the latter,
* Viz., Richard II, The First Part of King Henry IV, Love's Labour' 1 s
Lost, Much Ado about Nothing, Romeo and jfuliet, Titus Andro/iicus, A
Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merchant of Venice.
68 Shakespeare: the Man.
Expectation says to Prologue, ' Sir, I can expect much.'
Prologue answers, 'I fear too much, lady; and teach others
to do the like.' Expectation rejoins, ' I can do that, too, if
I have cause.' Upon which Prologue says, 'Cry you mercy,
you never did wrong, but with just cause.' Truly one would
never have found any evidence for Shakespeare in that, but
for the explanation which Ben vouchsafes in his Timber.
He writes :
I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to
Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) he never blotted
out [? one] line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand.
Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this,
but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their
friend by, wherein he most faulted : and to Justine mine owne candor, (for
I lov'd the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as
much as any). Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature :
had an excellent Phantsie, brave notions, and gentle expressions : wherein
hee flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be
stop'd : Sufflaminandus erat ; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was
in his owne power ; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times
hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter : As when he said in
the person of Casar, one speaking to him ; Ccesar thou dost me wrong. Hee
replyed : Ciesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like ; which
Mere ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his virtues. There was
ever more in him to be praysed then to be pardoned.
This is direct testimony, not merely to the fact that
Shakespeare wrote the play of Julius Ccesar, but that Caesar's
reply to Metellus Cimber was —
Caesar did never wrong but with just cause,
Nor without cause will he be satisfied.
Shakespeare: the Alan. 69
But of course the editors will not have it. It is proverbial
that office is a strong perverter of the judgment. It would
seem as if a critic became blear-eyed so soon as he turned
editor.
We may, I think, unreservedly accept the whole of Ben's
testimony in this matter. Probably, the five couplets, which
he wrote on Droeshout's engraved portrait of Shakespeare
prefixed to the early folios, are merely complimentary, for they
convey but a trite and common sentiment. * I do not, however,
rely on them as an evidence of authorship, but on the forty
couplets which follow the preface to the Folio 1623, addressed
by Ben 'To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William
Shakespeare : and what he hath left us.' These verses are a
precious testimony, both to the authorship of the plays and
to Ben's friendly estimate of the author's genius. But foras-
much as they do not deal in specialities I have no occasion to
quote them at length. It is curious that one of the phrases
of eulogy here employed is repeated by Ben almost toiidem
verbis in a note entitled ' Scriptorum Catalogus,' in his Timber;
but it is there applied to Lord Bacon. To Shakespeare he
says —
O, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, etc.
Of Bacon he writes —
* On this matter see Shakespeare s Centurie of Prayse, 1874, p. 169.
yo Shakespeare: the Man.
he who hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue
which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece, or haughty
Rome.
Of course the heretics have not been slow to avail themselves
of this resemblance. They are welcome to what it is worth.
The conclusion which I think we may safely draw from
the evidences adduced is, that no other known name is en-
titled to the credit awarded by common consent to 'William
Shakespeare,' unless we go back to the playwrights who pre-
ceded him, and are able to identify the authors of those plays
on which Shakespeare founded so many of his. In this case
a residual problem is presented to us of so great difficulty,
that at present no approximation has been made to its solu-
tion, and though it is one which has a special interest for me
and comes within the scope of my subject its treatment would
require the monopoly of a separate paper. *
Certain it is that in a considerable number of the plays (I
think more than one-half) Shakespeare's all-assimilating genius
derives its pabulum from the clumsy productions of earlier
writers. To get an adequate notion of Shakespeare's art in
this sort of work, I commend to your attention the play of
King John, in comparison with The Troublesome Reign, and
I shall be much surprised if you do not acquire an entirely
new notion of Shakespeare's dramatic talent.
* Since this was written an 'approximation' has been arrived at in
the case of, at least, six plays. The 'separate paper,' which was then
a vague possibility, is now an actuality, and will be found in the second
part of this work.
Shakespeare: the Man. 7 1
If I might venture to express my own opinion on this
difficult inquiry, I should say, that in all probability, several
of the comedies (strictly so called), and of the tragedies,
Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Julius Ccesar, are not indebted to
any older plays on the same subject ; * and that Antony and
Cleopatra, and the Tempest, are, in the profoundest sense,
original compositions, the entire structure, as well as the
architecture of each play, being wholly due to Shakespeare's
incomparable art. Looking at those three plays only, unless,
indeed, my judgment has been warped by force of habit, I
there discern the figure of a poet who was of a more 'select
and generous chief than any of the imaginative writers of
Elizabeth's reign. Hazlitt, who proclaimed Shakespeare's in-
tellectual and aesthetic superiority to the men of that day,
qualified his verdict by saying that ' it was a common and
a noble brood.' With Mr. Alexander Dyce, let me say that
' falser remark was never made by critic' That the times were
curiously favourable to genius may be allowed ; and we may
agree with Goethe's opinion, that much of what the giants of
those days became and achieved was due to the ' stimulating
atmosphere' in which they lived. f None can say to what forest
trees the garden flowers of our day, such as Tennyson and
Browning, might have waxed, had they been planted in an
* Since this was written the Rev. F. G. Fleay has made an unfortunate
attempt to fix on both Macbeth and Julius Ccesar the brand of double
authorship. Nevertheless I think very highly of his labours in the cases
of Timon of Athens and Pericles.
t I observe a similar remark in Emerson's Essay on Eloquence, in his
Letters and Social Aims, 1876, p. 117.
J2 SJuikcspcarc : the Man.
Elizabethan soil. But if so much be due to a man's surround-
ings, we must also admit with sorrow, that the direction into
which the energies of Englishmen have been diverted is not
only unfavourable but fatal to artis'tic life, and that an artist
of Shakespeare's stamp will never more be possible among
us: —
'We ne'er shall look upon his like again.'
CHAPTER V.
win
THE PORTRAITURE OF SHAKESPEARE.*
HE title of my paper may well provoke this question —
'Seeing that Shakespeare has been dead and buried
257 years, what can be known of his personal appear-
ance beyond what may be gathered from the few accredited
portraits, for which he is believed to have sat 1 and granting
that all those are unsatisfactory and imperfect representations
of the man, how is it possible to add to their verisimilitude,
except by the discovery of another authentic portrait 1 ' Of
course I do not pretend that this is possible ; nor am I able to
announce to you any discovery of the sort since 1849, when
the Becker Mask was deposited at the British Museum. Never-
theless I have somewhat to communicate, which may be both
new and interesting, touching certain recent attempts to recover
the lost lineaments of Shakespeare,
And steal dead seeming of his living hue. f
* Read at a Meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, Jan. 21, 1874,
and reported (in brief) in the Presidential Address of 1874, p. 50.
t From Shakespeare's sixty-seventh Sonnet.
74 Shakespeare : the Man.
Doubtless the chances are against the success of such
attempts : but it is not difficult to see that in one respect at
least they may be helpful and instructive. If we only consider
what a bust or a portrait must be in order to express the 'form
and favour' of a man at his best, we shall readily arrive at a
principle, which, while it serves to explain that diversity of
expression which is found in different copies from the same
picture, to some extent justifies the attempt to recover a lost
likeness.
1 have frequently observed that the ' portrait of a gentleman,'
painted by an indifferent artist, bears a certain resemblance to
the artist himself. In the Epistle of St. James it is asserted
that a man ' beholding his natural face in a glass, goeth his
way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.'
I am not sure that this is strictly true ; but, if it be so, I
am none the less convinced that every man has a latent im-
pression of his own countenance, which he is more apt to
delineate than any other. Moreover, I have observed that in
portraits, executed by the best artists and possessing all the
attributes of a faithful likeness, there is always an expression
which it is impossible to attribute to anything seen in the
face of the sitter. The truth seems to be, that the artist who
has studied his subject, so as to seize the expression of the face
at its best, is dependent upon his own powers of imagination
and memory: and on these he draws largely to supplement the
expression of the blank and wearied face which periodically
confronts him in his studio. It thus happens that in repre-
senting his subject he imparts something of himself, and the
Shakespeare: tlic Ulan. 75
most life-like portraits are those which represent the very heart
of the painter.
On this principle we can clearly understand how it comes
to pass that of all the known engravings of Jansen's portrait
of Shakespeare, in the collection of the Duke of Somerset,
there are not two that have the same expression. But the
Chandos portrait, which is the property of the nation, from
its damaged condition and obscurity offers a still better field
for experiment. It has been engraved and copied in oils
times without number, and so different are the expressions
of the resulting prints and paintings that it is difficult to believe
that they are all from the same exemplar. I can certify as
a fact that Cousins' engraving is a remarkably faithful copy
of the original. Now compare it with Scriven's print of
Ozias Humphry's drawing, and it is difficult to resist the con-
clusion that the fire and severity of this last are wholly due
to the temperament of the copyist. It is well known that
William Blake could conjure up before him the visible forms
of the dead, and retain them long enough to paint their
likenesses. From some of these we may conclude that the
latent memory of ancient portraits was at least a factor in
this singular phenomenon ; but the portraits of ' the Man who
built the Pyramids' and 'the Ghost of a Flea' do not so
readily yield to this explanation. You will perhaps call to
mind an incident related by the elder Varley respecting the
portraiture of 'the Ghost of a Flea.' The old man was
present during the 'sitting,' and he relates that, the Flea
having opened his mouth, Blake was unable at once to com-
y6 Shakespeare : the Man.
plete the drawing, but drew on a separate piece of paper a
sketch of the open mouth. The apparition having once
more closed his mouth, Blake resumed the first sketch, and
finished the portrait. This seems a veritable case of portrait-
painting from the inmost consciousness: and what is most
curious about Blake's portrait of ' the Ghost of a Flea ' is that
it is a caricature of the well-known features of the late Lord
Lytton.
However ridiculous may appear the notion that Blake could
summon into his presence the forms and faces of persons no
longer existing, or those whose existence is impossible, and
could draw from them, as from real flesh and blood, I am
convinced from my own experience that Blake gave a truthful
account of the matter, and that he was wholly unconscious
of the process by which such appearances were produced.
That process, which is a sort of concurrence of imagination
with certain states of the brain and the optic nerve, probably
affecting the retina in as perfect a manner as the light from
natural objects, is unconsciously performed by all persons who
have the experience of optical illusions.
Now that very constructive power, which in the case of
Blake was at times monopolised by the nerves of vision, may
just as well act through the hand, and, instead of presenting an
illusory object which the artist may delineate or depict may
guide him unconsciously in the production of an ideal portrait.
Such things are called ' spirit drawings,' which I regard as a
most misleading title. But without entering upon that allied,
if not strictly relevant, inquiry, I may state generally that every
Shakespeare : the Man. yj
genial portrait owes perhaps as much to the ideal of the artist
as to his faculty of faithful representation ; and that he works
from within as well as from without. Herein lies the justi-
fication of the attempts that are made from time to time to
produce a thoroughly satisfactory portrait of Shakespeare. In
this pursuit we have little to guide us beyond a few portraits of
somewhat doubtful authenticity and of very short pedigrees,
the bust in the Chancel of Stratford Church and Droeshout's
engraving prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare.
Beyond the suggestion of these generally inadequate and
discrepant representations we have no guidance from without.
Unfortunately for our inquiry Shakespeare does not stand
on the same footing as other great men of his time. He is
sui generis, that is, of a class by himself in every respect.
There is scarcely a poet above mediocrity who has not written
commendatory verses on his fellows. We do not know of a
single copy of such verses by Shakespeare. Allusions to his
contemporaries are to be found in the writings of every other
poet and dramatist of that day; some poems and plays are
obtrusively crowded with such personal allusions. In the whole
thirty-seven dramas credited to Shakespeare there is one obscure
allusion to Spenser and one distinct allusion to Marlow. The
prose works published in the later part of the sixteenth, and
the earlier part of the seventeenth centuries contain abundant
notices of every poet of mark save Shakespeare, whose name
and works are rarely and only slightly mentioned : and when
he is named or alluded to he is praised as an amatory poet or
as an actor, rarely as a dramatist. The works of Lord Brooke,
yS Shakespeare: the Alan.
Sir John Davies, Lord Bacon, Selden, Sir John Beaumont,
Henry Vaughan (Silurist), Lord Clarendon, &c, &c, show
no consciousness of Shakespeare's existence. Can it be that
the poor player was evidently despised \ that he was too
humble to be selected as the subject of much eulogy in those
early times, or to be invited to become the eulogist of another 1
For the same reason, whatever it was, hardly anyone cared to
possess his portrait; and until John Aubrey records in 1680,
i. c, sixty-four years after Shakespeare's death, that he was
reputed to have been ' a handsome, well-shaped man,' no writer
ever said a word as to his personal appearance. It is but fair
to add, that as to portraits, Edmund Spenser stands in precisely
the same position as Shakespeare. The portraits claimed for
him are hopelessly discrepant ; and it is hard to say which
should be accepted and which rejected. If we reckon up all
the painted portraits (excluding known forgeries) said to re-
present Shakespeare, we shall find that their number is about
twenty-two. Some of these, at most two or three, may have
been taken from life ; and certainly one is of the requisite
antiquity. Not a few, however, are probably genuine portraits
of other gentlemen of the time ; and some are idealised
portraits of Shakespeare. To these must be added two busts,
one plaster cast and one engraving on brass; and we have
reckoned up our whole capital. A very few words on some
of these relics.
Foremost in authenticity is the Bust in the Chancel of
Stratford Church. We know quite enough about this to make
it our most important possession. Apart from what we know,
Shakespeare : the Man. 79
it is a priori most improbable that the family and friends of
Shakespeare should soon after his death have placed in the most
conspicuous place in the church of his native town, where
almost every one was as familiar with his personal appearance
as with that of their most intimate friends, a life-sized bust of
the Bard which would not be recognised by his fellow-townsmen.
We might, in the absence of any relative knowledge, presume
that the bust is a likeness. But we know from Sir William
Dugdale that it was the work of a Dutch sculptor named Gerard
Johnson; and we know enough of this sculptor to believe that
he was not a common mason, though certainly quite a second-
rate artist. We all know wherein such an one fails, and wherein
he succeeds : he can usually make an obtrusively striking
likeness, though always an unpleasant one. Here is just such
a work. How awkward is the ensemble of the face ! What a
painful stare, with its goggle eyes and gaping mouth ! The
expression of this face has been credited with humour, bon-
hommie, hilarity and jollity. To me it is decidedly clownish ;
and is suggestive of a man crunching a sour apple, or struck with
amazement at some unpleasant spectacle. Yet there is force
in the lineaments of this muscular face. One can hardly doubt
that it is an unintentional caricature ; but for that very reason
it should be an unmistakeable likeness. In the plaster casts
taken from Bullock's copy, and in those separately prepared
from the original by Warner and Michele, that peculiar ex-
pression is toned down to insipidity, and one catches some
touch of dignity and refinement with utter loss of force. But
the casts do not give a truthful representation of the bust.
So Shakespeare; the Man.
We obtain some important facts from this rude work. As
it is at present coloured the eyes are light-hazel, the hair and
beard auburn. Such were the colours put on in 1748 by
Mr. John Hall, the limner of Stratford, and which reappeared
on the removal, by Mr. Collins, of Malone's white paint. We
have no reason to doubt that when the bust was renovated in
1748, the very colours it had received by order of Dr. John
Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, were repeated by his namesake.
The extraordinary depth of the upper lip, which measures
an inch and a quarter, has been accounted for by the conjecture
that the sculptor may have had an accident with the nose. I
have remarked that it is very dangerous to frame hypotheses
respecting Shakespeare, for they are apt to get converted into
' obscure traditions,' and may come at last to be regarded as
historical facts, the evidence of which has been lost. This
happened to the conjecture of Capell and Waldron that
Shakespeare was lame, in order to explain two lines in the
sonnets, the meaning of which he had wholly misapprehended.
In the next century Mr. Harness revised the conjecture, with-
out any mention of Capell ; Mr. Thorns accounted for the
supposed defect by making Shakespeare a soldier : and finally
the late Mr. Richard Simpson published a note in which he
referred the circumstance of Shakespeare's lameness to ' an
obscure tradition,' and proceeded to employ it as a fact to
elucidate some expressions in Jonson's Poetaster. Just so, in
the matter of Shakespeare's nose; Mr. J. Hain Friswell remarks
(Life Portraits, p. 8): 'the nose of the bust of Shakespeare,
like that of Tristram Shandy, it is said, has met with an
Shakespeare: the Man. 81
accident, the former from the instrument of Dr. Slop, the latter
from the chisel of the sculptor.' 'It is said,' is the magical
formula, which becomes the germ of the myth. I cannot
find that it ever was said, except as a hypothesis to explain
the disproportionate depth of the upper lip : and on measure-
ment, it was found that the depth of Sir Walter Scott's upper
lip exceeded that of Shakespeare's bust.
I am afraid we must take our stand on the fidelity of this
bust — at least with some allowable qualifications. When we
find a sculptor dismissing his work in this rough fashion, so
that, as Mr. Fairholt says, 'the eyes are untrue to nature, &c,
the ciliary cartilages are straight, hard and unmeaning, and
the glands at the corners next the nose entirely omitted,' we
may be sure the fidelity of the face must be received with
something more than the proverbial grain of salt.
Next in authenticity to the bust is Droeshout's engraving,
prefixed to the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's Works. It
must have been executed after Shakespeare's death; and
therefore we may be sure it was taken from some sketch or
painting, probably in the possession of Mrs. Shakespeare or
Dr. John Hall. No such exemplar has come down to us or is
known to have existed, unless the Felton Portrait be the one
that was so employed; and this is, on the whole, unlikely, for
reasons to be stated when I come to speak of that portrait. But
allowing the probability that such an exemplar did exist (and
apart from it, no reliance could be placed on the engraving),
it may have perished along with Shakespeare's papers. It has
been surmised that these papers fell a victim to some pious
M
82 Shakespeare: the Man.
soul's puritanical ardour. Unhappily the suspicion, if it be to fall
anywhere, involves Shakespeare's wife or Shakespeare's daughter.
The sorry Latin elegiacs engraved in brass on Mrs. Shakespeare's
gravestone contain no allusion to her immortal husband, being
concerned only with the good lady's immortality. She must
not be held responsible for them; at least no further than
she justified their encomium. The English verses on Mrs.
Elizabeth Hall's tablet are enigmatical.
Witty above her sexe, but that's not all,
Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall :
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholy of him with whom she's now in blisse.
The things compared are Mrs. Hall's supersexual wit, and
her wisdom to salvation. Which is ' that,' and which is ' this ] '
In strictness % hie plerumque ad posterius, ille ad prius refertur: '
so that the lines seem to say, she owed her wit partly to
Shakespeare; her piety wholly to him, with whom she is in
bliss. Meanwhile where is her mother 1 It has been suggested
that the lines mean the reverse, ' this ' and ' that ' being trans-
posed for the sake of the rhyme : viz., that she owed her piety
in some degree to Shakespeare; her wit wholly to him: but
that would seem to make the wit her claim to salvation.
Another suggestion is, that him refers to the Saviour; and I
incline to that view myself: at the same time I am afraid we
are inquiring too curiously in putting these old epitaphs to the
question ; and I do not think they tell at all against Mrs.
Shakespeare. Probably both Mrs. Shakespeare and Mrs. Hall
were good religious souls, but one does not see why either of
Shakespeare:, the Man. 83
them should be ashamed of the Bard, so as to disown his
works and destroy his manuscripts. There is one curious fact,
however, which is quite enough to beget a myth, like those of
Shakespeare's lameness and his bust's broken nose. Heminge
and Condell had the plays printed from the quartos and play-
house copies; they even had a title-page printed with the date
1622. They may have hoped to be able to correct the press
from manuscripts left by Shakespeare at New Place, in the
custody of his widow. Now the facts are, that Mrs. Shakespeare
died on August 8, 1623, and that the editors had a new title
printed, with the date 1623. Did they wait till she was dead
before venturing to issue the volume'?
Be that as it may, the folio appeared with the Droeshout
engraving. Even in its best state it is such a monstrosity, that
I, for one, do not believe it had any trustworthy exemplar.
Those who have, as I have, examined the engraved portraits
prefixed to the various collective editions of the time, will not
be greatly astonished at the pretence of attaching such an
abomination as the Droeshout head to the folio editions of
Shakespeare.
Next in order we must place the splendid portrait, said to
be by Cornelius Jansen, which passes for Shakespeare in the
collection of the Duke of Somerset. Unfortunately its pedigree
does not extend farther back than 1761; but Woodbum, who
published in 181 1 the first print from it, stated that it had
belonged to Prince Rupert, who left it to his natural daughter,
Mrs. Emmanuel Scroopes Howes: whence it must have come
into the hands of Spackman the picture-dealer: and thence to
84 Shakespeare: the Man.
Mr. Jennens in 1761. The picture is of undoubted antiquity,
and bears in the right hand corner, ^Et. 46, 16 10; which corres-
ponds with Shakespeare's age in that year. As Jansen is
known to have painted the daughter of Henry Wriothesley,
Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's friend and patron, it is not
improbable that he should have painted for the earl's collection
the bard himself. Then we take the Lumley, the Chandos, the
Felton, the Ashbourne and the Challis portraits.
Such was our stock of the more important representations
of the Bard up to about the middle of this century. Since
then it has received two acquisitions, both of which were at
different times in the possession of Professor Owen, at the
British Museum : viz., the Duke's Theatre Bust, now in the
vestibule of the Garrick Club, and the cast discovered by
Ludwig Becker, now belonging to Dr. Ernest Becker, of
] )armstadt. The latter professes to have been cast from a
wax-mould taken from Shakespeare's face very soon after
death; and I must candidly say I am not able to spot a
single suspicious fact in the brief history of this most curious
relic. Along with it is a miniature in oils, painted in 1637
from the cast, representing Shakespeare lying in state, his head
crowned with bays.
The comparison of these various works reveals the fact
that the Somerset Portrait, the Ashbourne Portrait, the Challis
Portrait, and the Becker Cast, despite numberless petty dis-
crepancies, present a substantial agreement. One can hardly
doubt that they all represent one man, and that man AVilliam
Shakespeare. But unfortunately for the trustworthiness of our
Shakespeare: the Man. 85
most authentic representations there is no resemblance between
any of these and either the Stratford Bust or the Droeshout
engraving ! In fact the former is countenanced only by the
Chandos and Lumley Portraits ; while the latter may have had
the same original as the Felton Portrait, or the Felton may be
an idealised portrait from the Droeshout.
We thus see that we have three classes of portraits : the
first being led by the Stratford Bust and followed by the
Lumley and the Chandos Portraits ; the second led by the
Droeshout engraving and followed by the Felton Portrait ;
or vice versa; while the third and by far the most interesting
class is led by the Somerset Portrait and followed by the
Ashbourne and the Challis Portraits, and most remarkably
corroborated by the Becker Cast. How any two of these
classes are to be identified I must confess myself unable to
suggest. As far as I am aware no adequate experiments have
been made. For one thing, I would have a plaster bust
modelled after the Becker Cast ; I would restore this, then
vulgarise it, till I had got a poor insipid thing, such as is
the Stratford Bust ; I would then break off the end of the
nose, and elongate the upperdip : and I should then see
whether the outcome was anything like that Bust. A great
many different experiments of the sort might be suggested ;
but the fact that most of these relics are in private collections,
and some hardly accessible, renders the task of tentative
experiment both costly and difficult.
I have now to mention the various attempts that have
been made in recent times to construct a trustworthy and
86 Shakespeare: tJic Man.
satisfactory portrait or bust of Shakespeare. The more im-
portant of the earlier idealised portraits are the Becker
Miniature, Sir Godfrey Kneller's Portrait after the Chandos,
presented by that artist to Dryden, Sir Joshua Reynolds'
Portrait after the same, painted for Bishop Newton, and the
Hunt Portrait, now in the ante-room of Shakespeare's birth-
room at Stratford. The last is believed to have been taken
from the Stratford Bust, probably for something connected
with the Stratford Jubilee. If so, it is singular that the nose
of the bust, which is fairly arched, is not reproduced in the
painting. It is, however, a very pleasing portrait ; and its
benignity and intelligence are very poorly represented in any
of the photographic prints taken from it that I have seen.
The one in Mr. J. Hain Friswell's Life Portraits has most
unfortunately curtailed the magnificent forehead of the original.
To these we must add Schemaker's Statue in Westminster
Abbey and Roubiliac's Statuette, modelled for Garrick. The
last furnishes the bust of our image-makers.
It is remarkable, but a fact, that the Tercentenary of
Shakespeare's birth produced no work of art, either portrait
or bust, which deserves mention here : nor since that time
has anything of the kind been attempted in England, save
Mr. Armistead's relievo of Shakespeare on the east side of
the Albert Memorial.* America, however, is favourably con-
trasted with England in this particular. The Americans had
many years ago testified to their enthusiasm for Shakespeare
* Another statue has since been placed in Leicester Square. It appears
to be taken from Schemaker's.
Shakespeare: the Man. 87
by producing a fine bust of him, modelled by Mr. Greenough
after the Caen Portrait, which had been discovered by one
Mr. Joy, and brought by him to Boston. Since that time their
appreciation of Shakespeare's genius, and their interest in all
that concerns him, have been continually on the increase.
In April, 1872, a bronze statue, executed by Mr. J. Q. A.
Ward, an eminent American sculptor, was placed in Central
Park, New York, and inaugurated with the usual ceremonies
of unveiling and speech-making. From that time to the
present this work has been a constant subject of controversy.
On receiving a photograph of it from a friend in Philadelphia
I was at once struck with its feebleness and untruth. It
suggested to me a stern philosophic student, and certainly
not a man of acute observation, ready wit and hilarious
temperament. Its faults are so admirably summed up by a
writer in Lippincotf s Magazine that I offer no apology for
making the following extract from his article. Mr. William
R. O'Donovan writes >
The ideal in art, simply stated, means the portrayal of certain things
in nature, giving due prominence to the characteristics in the order of
their importance. Applying this proposition to Sculpture, a portrait-
statue of Shakespeare should be a just expression of his individuality,
based upon such portraits of him as exist. * * * Beginning
with the head of the statue, the first thing that strikes one is the facial
angle, which instead of approximating to the perpendicular line which
distinguishes the highest Caucasian type, slopes backward, giving the angle
of the lower races. A line drawn from the tube of the ear to the point of
the chin will be found longer than one drawn from the same point to the
prominence of the frontal bone, thus giving undue importance to the
masticating apparatus, the teeth and jaws, which not only detracts from
88 Shakespeare: the Man.
the dignity of the head, but at once precludes all possibility of its expressing
intellectuality. * * Again, the head of the statue, as
viewed from the front, * * is a compressed head, somewhat
less than the usual width, and from the angle of the lower jaw to the
parietal bone the line is almost straight, giving an insipidity of expression.
* The artist has modeled one side of the face from the other,
making them as near alike as he could, thus [violating a great principle
of nature and) departing from a most noticeable feature in the mask, &c.
and the writer shows how utterly untrue to the principal guides
(the Stratford Bust, the Becker Mask, &c.) is Mr. Ward's work.
He then attacks the poise of the figure, the trunk and the legs;
and after some columns of very trenchant but just criticism,
he closes with this peroration :
Shakespeare divined alike the motives of the boor and the king, the
tenderest emotions of the most fragrant womanhood and the profoundest
depths of sensuousness. As he was the greatest of poets, we may well
believe him to have been the manliest of men, serene and gentle in
conscious power, and thoroughly human, with inclinations as deep and
varied as his thoughts. Let the reader filled with such impressions turn
to this poor image and seek for one responsive thought. The opposite
of every quality of .Shakespeare will be suggested — first effort, the Philoso-
pher, not the Poet, reason, not song ; then self-assertion, rather than
conscious power. The head is bowed in contemplation, as if the mind
were digesting something just read ; the mouth is compressed and the eyes
are distended ; in every part of the figure there is exaggeration and effort
without definite purpose.
Such is Mr. O'Donovan's judgment on the first statue of
Shakespeare attempted in America : and so far as the photo-
graph enables me to appreciate the various points he discusses,
it seems to me a dispassionate and objective judgment.
The last contribution to the portraiture of Shakespeare
Shakespeare : the Man. 89
which I shall bring before you is also American : this is the
so-called American Mask, being an integration of the Becker
Mask, by Mr. William Page of New York. I subjoin an
account of it which was published in The New York Herald
and several other American journals of the time.
Over two years ago a distinguished gentleman called upon Mr. William
Page, the artist, to ask him to paint a picture of Shakespeare. Upon
consenting to perforin such a task, Mr. Page had only in mind such
materials as the Droeshout print, the Chandos portrait and the Stratford
bust afforded for the composition of the work.
Finding, afterwards, that Messrs. J. Q. A. Ward and Launt Thompson,
the sculptors, had each a photograph of a certain mask of Shakespeare,
which was an object of some speculation to them just then, on account of
their joint competition in furnishing a model for the statue of Shakespeare
to be erected in the Central Park, he visited their studios and examined
what was indeed to him a revelation. Both his brother artists asserted
they had not sufficient data to settle the authenticity of the mask. Mr.
Ward had availed himself of his photograph to a certain extent in the
beginning, but later, feeling uncertain respecting it, he laid it aside, long
before his model was perfected.
Finishing his picture for the gentleman mentioned, which the latter
wished to have approximated in the general character to the Chandos
portrait, Mr. Page commenced the magnum opus of his life. He soon
obtained from England some twelve or thirteen different views of the
Mask, a photograph of the Chandos as made by the Arundel Society, and
the information concerning Becker's discovery, &c, which has already been
set forth. When he had fairly entered upon his work, the whole matter
seemed more and more plausible — the authenticity of the mask, its
resemblance to the Droeshout, the Chandos and the Stratford bust. It was
no easy process to properly fill up cavity after cavity from which the original
pieces were wanting in the Becker Mask and still preserve or rather revive
them in his own. Had Becker's Mask happily occupied his studio then,
much of this trouble mic;ht have been obviated and the opportunity of
N
90 Shakespeare: the Man.
terminating His labor at an earlier day been given him. It was left for
him to overcome these difficulties.
The American Mask is about two feet long, and were a figure of
proportionate size made for it the whole would stand seventeen feet high.
Never was there so wonderfully expressive and majestic a face as this. In
it nothing is omitted ; nothing is made out by negation. The veins, the
wrinkles in the skin, the indications of the muscles under the skin, the
smallest part recognizable to the naked eye, are given there with the same
ease and exactness, with the same prominence and the same subordination,
as they would be cast from nature — i. e., in nature itself. Alternate action
and repose are admirably displayed in it. Now the lids seem about to
open, the shadow of a smile appears to linger on the lips ; now again the
face is grave and meditative. There is a harmony, a unity of spirit, diffused
throughout the wondrous mass and every part of it, which is the glory of
it. It has the freedom, the variety, the stamp of nature. There is no
ostentation, no stiffness, no over-labored finish. Every part is in its place
and degree and put to its proper use.
It is said, that a side view recals the profile of Julius Csesar ;
the front view, the countenance of Napoleon I.
As the American Mask reproduces with scrupulous nicety
every detail in the original, save such as Mr. Page refers to the
decomposition of the face or to accidental injury to the plaster,
it exhibits, of course, the long scar on the forehead over the
right eye. It has been half seriously suggested that this is the
matter to which Shakespeare refers in the 112th Sonnet :
Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stampt upon my brow ;
as if the blemish had been attributed to a discreditable source,
as a tavern brawl, and the bard had been thought in danger
of ' gliding almost imperceptibly from the world,' like the late
Shakespeare: the Man. 91
Mr. Bardell in Picktvick. Mr. Thorns will, I doubt not, hail
this discovery as fresh evidence that Shakespeare had been
a soldier; and Mr. Gerald Massey will find in the Becker
Mask and the 112th Sonnet the needed confirmation of his
view that some lines in John Davies' Paper's Complaint refer to
to Shakespeare. I give the lines in extenso, because Mr. Massey
imposed on his readers a garbled version of them. ( The Secret
Drama of Shakespeare 's Sonnets, &c, 1872, Familiar Epistle &c.)
But, Fame reports, ther's one (forthcomming, yet)
That's comming forth with A r o tes of better Sett ;
And of this Nature ; Who, both can, and will
With descant, more in tune, me fairely fill.
And if a senselesse creature (as I am ;
And, so am made, by those whome thus I blame)
May judgment give, from those that know it well,
His Notes for Arte and Judgement do excell.
Well fare thee man of Arte, and World of Witt,
That by supremest Mercy livest yet ;
Vet, dost but live; yet, livst thou to the end:
But, so thou paist for Time, which thou dost spend,
That the deere Treasure of thy precious Skills
The World with pleasure and with profitl fills.
Thy long-wing'd, active and ingenious Sprigkt
Is ever Tinvring to the highest height
Of Witt, and Arte ; to beautifie my face :
So, deerely gracest life for lifes deere Grace. *
* I quote from The Scourge of Folly, 1620, pp. 231 & 232. The allusion
is thought by Dr. Brinsley Nicholson to be to Raleigh, who was in the Tower
from 1603 to 1615. The poem was first printed in 4to in 161 1, and therefore
too early for Cartwiight. All that Mr. Massey says of it is wide of the mark.
Besides omitting, without notice, some lines from the heart of his quotation,
he fancies that Davies, as Paper, is speaking in his own proper person.
CHAPTER VI.
MATTERS PERSONAL TO SHAKESPEARE.*
O all true lovers of Shakespeare the most glorious thing
about ' the man ' is that his feet of clay are hidden
from us by the impenetrable cloud of ages, while his
Jovine head shines for us by its own light in his deathless
works. + After the lapse of two centuries and a half of gropings
into the vulgar life and outward seeming of the man, it is
happily quite hopeless to 'draw his frailties from their dread
abode.' It is very little indeed we may be said to know of him :
and the very scantiness of our knowledge becomes the occasion
of a doubt, whether the man who was in real truth the author
of those works could have passed away from his surroundings
without leaving some traces to shew that such a genius had
* Part of this chapter was published in Notes &> Queries, 5 tli S. i. 81.
-f- A most accomplished lady, who went to her longed-for rest eleven
years ago, wrote me several letters on Lewes' Life of Goethe. In one she
thus remarks on Shakespeare : ' I have oftentimes grieved that so little was
known of the inner life, the daily surroundings, of our own Shakespeare :
now I thank Heaven devoutly for all that is untold. We have the golden
head of our idol ; if the feet were of clay, let none dare to uncover them.
But he could never have been like Goethe.'
Shakespeare : the Man. 93
lived amongst us. Chambers, in the article to which reference
has been already made (p. 55), gave this doubt a better ex-
pression than it has since received from the pen of any other
writer. He says :
On the one hand, research has traced his life from the cradle to the
grave, and by means of tradition, legal documents, records, and inscrip-
tions, [has] formed a very accurate skeleton biography; while, on the other
hand, with the single exception of Ben Jonson, records and [with the ex-
ception of a few anecdotes noted by Manningham and Aubrey, and later
by Oldys] even traditions are silent upon his walk and conversation ;
and though his signature has been several times disinterred, his whole
correspondence, if he ever wrote a letter, has sunk like lead beneath the
dark waters of oblivion, [leaving not so much as a] sentence that might
give a faint echo of Hamlet. Now this, to say the least, is singular to the
very last degree. The unsurpassed brilliancy of the writer throws not one
si>igle spark to make noticeable the quiet uniform mediocrity of the man. Is
it more difficult to suppose that Shakespeare was not the author of the poetry
ascribed to him, than to account for the fact that there is nothing in the
recorded or traditionary life of Shakespeare which in any way connects the
poet with the man ?
To this sort of argument Professor Hiram Corson thus
replies in The Cornell Review (May, 1875):
Such testimony is more abundant in the case of Shakespeare than is
any similar contemporary and immediately subsequent testimony, in the
case of almost any other author of the time, either in English or in
European Literature, who was not connected 7uith state affairs. The per-
sonal history of a mere author, with no influence at court, was not considered
of sufficient importance to be recorded, in those days when the court was
everything, and the individual man without adventitious recommendations
nothing.
We are certainly bound to give due weight to this con-
sideration ; and if it can be shewn that Jonson, as Poet
94 Shakespeare: the Man.
Laureate, or as reversionary (and virtual) Master of the Revels,
was (however indirectly) 'connected with public affairs,' we
need not be surprised to find the main facts of his life as well
known as those of Raleigh's; while the trail of the greater
meteor has almost entirely faded out. But I cannot discern
in Ben's status an adequate reason for this enormous difference.
It is true that we owe some of the traces of his career to his
relations with the powerful and great. One of his extant
autographs is a letter of two folio pages addressed by him to
the Earl of Salisbury; and its preservation is unquestionably
due to the rank and eminence of its recipient. But Ben's
situation as a suppliant from prison was not exceptional ; nor
did Shakespeare enjoy an immunity from those dangers which
attended upon all theatrical performances. Every dramatist in
those days was wont to use old examples for the representation
of modern instances, and, as it were, teach a lesson in current
politics by pointing the moral of an ancient story. In doing
this he could not be always sure that neither the sock nor the
buskin would tread upon the corns of some influential states-
man or courtier. In fact, we know that Shakespeare did thus
put contemporary politics on his stage ; but we have not a
scrap in his handwriting soliciting a favour, or suing for an
indulgence. The nearest thing to a letter from Shakespeare
which remains to us is a letter addressed to him by his son-in-
law's father.
But in the case of Ben Jonson, there are not only many
extant letters written and signed by himself, but autograph
manuscripts of The Tares of the Hoivers (The Tivelvth Nights
Shakespeare : the Man. 95
JRevells), 1604, signed at the end by Ben Jonson : The Masque of
Queenes, 1609, with his name on the title-page: The Masque
of the Mctamorphosd Gipsies, and several of his poems, are in
the British Museum Old Royal Collection, 17 B. xxxi, and
18 A xlv; and Harleian Collection, 4955. Perhaps there is a
reason why the original manuscript of a Masque was more
likely to be preserved than that of a Play : viz., that the
manager or prompter might use the latter, the actors using
plats:* while that of the Masque would probably remain in
the possession of the author, who would himself conduct the
private or semi-private performance. But we should still have
to answer these questions: Why should not Shakespeare have
written Masques % Why should not the original of a poem by
Shakespeare be preserved as we know some of Ben Jonson's
were 1 Evidently, the discrepancy is not yet explained.
It must be observed that, in the matter of Plays, Jonson's
* When a play was rough-drafted it was submitted to the Master of
the Revels for his censorship. He cancelled what he did not approve
and wrote his directions in the margin. In compliance with these the
author wrote insertions which were attached to the draft, and the whole was
submitted to the censor. There is one manuscript drama extant which
has been so served: viz., Sir Thomas More (Harleian Collection, No. 7368).
The play was then copied on pasteboards for the players. These were
called flats, or cards. In Hamlet v, 1, 'to speak by the card' (an
expression misunderstood by the Johnsonian critics) means just 'to speak
no more than is set down' (iii, 2). Not more than half-a-dozen original
plats are extant. Three of these were fac-similied for Mr. Halliwell in
i860: viz., The Battle of Alcazar (attributed to Peele), Frederick and
Basilea, and The Dead Mail's Fortune. The last two of these plays are
lost. The plat of the third contains the earliest notice of Burbage as an
actor, and that of the first gives the names of some of Alleyn's company.
gG Shakespeare; the Man.
manuscripts have shared the same fate as Shakespeare's: but
we know more about the former than the latter. We know that
'they were carefully guarded by their author with a view to
publication, and that they were destroyed by fire in the year in
which Shakespeare died.* I do not know whether the suggestion
has ever been made before, but it is surely worth consideration
whether Ben had not the custody of Shakespeare's manuscripts
for the same purpose as his own. Whom could Shakespeare
have found so fit as Jon son to be his literary executor and
editor, both as the chief friend of the author and as the chief
scholar of his day in dramatic literature 1 I am strongly per-
suaded of this, that, if our bard did not carry his manuscripts
to New Place, he left them in London to the care of his one
faithful friend. Shakespeare died April 23, 16 16, O. S. : Ward,
the Stratford vicar, says that he died of a fever consequent on a
merry meeting and hard drinking in company with Michael
Drayton and Ben Jonson : (Diary, arranged by Dr. Severn,
1839, p. 183). Ben was not improbably still at New Place
when Shakespeare died. Now, if Shakespeare's manuscripts
were then at New Place, it seems to me not unlikely that Ben
took them with him to London. We have then two contin-
gencies, in both of which he would have the custody of
Shakespeare's manuscripts for editing and printing, and, if so,
they were all destroyed in the fire at Ben's house. This is, in
my judgment, a far more probable supposition than that of
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, that Shakespeare's granddaughter took
* I state this on Clifford's authority.
Shakespeare : the Man. 97
them with her to the seat of her second husband, Abingdon
Hall, now the property of Lord Overstone, and that they are
now mouldering away behind one of the ancient oaken panels
of that mansion. I do not wonder that the noble owner
regards the proposed search as a wild-goose-chase comparable
to that of the lamented Delia Bacon.*
Nor yet — either in manuscript or in print — do we find
any mention of Shakespeare's personal appearance till we have
passed out of the period of testimony into that of tradition ;
and in this we have but one, and that a very indefinite, note on
the subject. Aubrey, to whose painstaking research we owe so
much, (though he lived too late by more than half a century
to have direct knowledge of any fact about Shakespeare),
mentions the tradition that 'he was a handsome well-shapt
man.' In the absence of any evidence whatever rebutting this
tradition, we are bound to accept it. Yet, so far from doing so,
the commentators have been busy at the discreditable task of
manufacturing what they call ' obscure traditions,' in order to
prove that Shakespeare was ill-shaped, if not ugly : and worse,
they have done their utmost to detract from his fair fame,
partly by reliance on unauthenticated stories of gallantry, and
partly by conclusions extorted, without the least judgment or
fairness, from his Sonnets.
To shew how easy it is to manufacture such pseudo-bio-
graphy, take the so-called ' obscure traditions ' of Shakespeare's
lameness. In a long and elaborate article on ' Ben Jonson's
Quarrel with Shakespeare,' which was published in the North
* Illustrations of the Life of Shakespeare, parti., 1874, pp. 79-80.
O
98 Shakespeare: the Man.
BritisJi Review, July, 1870, and which appears to have been
claimed by the late Mr. Richard Simpson (Notes &> Queries,
4th S. viii. 3, col. 1), it is stated, in a foot-note to p. 411, that :
There is some obscure tradition of a defect in Shakespeare's legs, to
which he is supposed to allude in the sonnet [s] ;
— and the writer finds an allusion to this defect in Jonson's
Poetaster, where Chloe asks Crispinus, 'Are you a gentleman
born 1 ' and expresses satisfaction at sight of his little legs. At
least, if that be not the writer's meaning, I am unable to assign
a reason for the foot-note.
Now there never was any tradition on the subject. The
first writer who makes mention of Shakspeare's lameness was
Capell. He, however, takes credit to himself for the hypothesis,
that when Shakspeare wrote, in Sonnet 37 :
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, &c.
and in Sonnet 89 :
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt, &c.
he was signalizing his own personal defect. Waldron enter-
tained the same opinion, and ventilated the subject in the
Introduction to his Edition of Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd.
A correspondent of Notes 6^ Queries (5th S. iii. 134), who
mentions this fact, adds :
Waldron's opinions were extensively taken up and circulated by the
reviews and magazines of the period : and it was this circumstance,
probably, that gave rise to the so-called 'tradition.' Waldron backed
his argument by referring to the commonly received opinion that Shakspeare,
as an actor, played no leading characters, confining his representations to
parts requiring no activity, as the ghost in Hamlet, Adam in As You Like It,
Shakespeare; the Ulan. 99
and kings in general. Upon the tradition that Shakspeare played Adam
he laid great stress, since Adam (he says) was manifestly lame :
' There is a poor old man
Who after me hath many a weary step
Limp'd in pure love.'
After Waldron the hypothesis met with little notice and
no entertainment. Malone, however, speaks of it thus :
A late editor, Mr. Capell, &c, conjectured that Shakspeare was literally
lame ; but the expression appears only to have been figurative. So again
in Coriolanus :
I cannot help it now,
Unless by using means I lame the foot
Of our design.
Again in As You Like' It :
Which I did store to be my foster-nurse,
When service should in my old limbs lie lame.
In the 89th Sonnet the poet speaks of his friends imputing a fault to him
of which he was not guilty, and yet he says, he would acknowledge it ; so
(he adds) were he to be described as lame, however untruly, yet rather than
his friend should appear in the wrong, he would immediately halt. If
Shakspeare was in truth lame, he had it not in his power to halt occasionally
for this or any other purpose. The defect must have been fixed and
permanent.
So far Malone. From the time when Malone's common-
sense note appeared in the variorum edition of 182 1, (vol. xx.
p. 261), Capell's ridiculous fancy met with no countenance.
Some fifteen years later, however, my late friend, the Rev. Wm.
Harness, the Editor of Shakespeare, took up the neglected
crotchet, and gave it careful nursing. In his Life of Shakespeare
he re-states the hypothesis as a fact, but without any mention
of its author ! Mr. Harness's remarks consist mainly of an
ioo Shakespeare : the Man.
answer to Malone. 'It appears,' he writes, 'from two places
in his Sonnets that he was lamed by accident.' He then quotes
the two lines from the Sonnets, and thus proceeds:
This imperfection would necessarily have rendered him unfit to appear
as the representative of any characters of youthful ardour in which rapidity
of movement or violence of exertion was demanded ; and would oblige him
to apply his powers to such parts as were compatible with his measured and
impeded action. Malone has most inefficiently attempted to explain away
the palpable meaning of the above lines Surely many an
infirmity of the kind may be skilfully concealed ; or only become visible in
the moments of hurried movement. Either Sir Walter Scott or Lord
Byron might, without any impropriety, have written the verses in question.
They would have been applicable to either of them. Indeed the lameness
of Lord Byron was exactly such as Shakespeare's might have been ; and I
remember as a boy that he selected those speeches for declamation which
would not constrain him to the use of such exertions as might obtrude the
defect of his person into notice.
Curiously enough, the biographer himself was, during the
years of my acquaintance with him, too lame for the dis-
simulation which he imagined to have afforded Shakspeare
a valuable resource. Mr. Harness having thus converted the
foolish conjecture into a fact, it became a current remark, that
our three greatest poets were afflicted with lameness !
In 1859, Mr. W. J. Thorns added his little quota to float
the tradition. In Notes &> Queries (2nd S. vii. 333) he suggested
that Shakspeare's lameness might have been occasioned by his
soldiering :
The accident may well have happened to him while sharing in some of
those encounters from witnessing which, as I believe, he acquired that
knowledge of military matters of which his writings contain such abundant
evidence.
Shakespeare: the Man. 101
By this time the myth had germinated, and was ready for use
by any forger of Shakspeare-biography ; and thus it became
'an obscure tradition.' After all, the 'obscure tradition' turns
out to be so obscure as never to have existed ; the whole truth
being that the notion of Shakspeare's lameness was a conjecture
of the eighth editor of his works, based upon a most absurd
and improbable interpretation of the 37th and 89th Sonnets.
I am aware that critics of our own day are not at one as to
the meaning of ' lame ' and ' lameness ' in these Sonnets. In
any interpretation we ought to bear in mind that ' lame ' had
then a much wider sense than the word has now. In Jonson's
New Inn, iv. 3, we read :
So pure, so perfect ; as the frame
Of all the universe was lame :
where ' lame ' seems to mean simply out of gear. For one
thing ; it would have been much easier for Shakespeare, if he
were not lame, to simulate lameness than, if he were lame, to
' skilfully conceal ' it. For my own part, I have not a shadow
of doubt that 'lame ' is used metaphorically in Sonnet 37 : and
everyone ought to see that ' lameness ' in Sonnet 89 cannot be
taken literally without making nonsense of the line in which it
occurs.
It has been reserved for me to inform the world that
Shakspeare was crook-backed, for has he not written, in Sonnet
90, the line :
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow?
By Fortune's spite, then, he was a hunch-back, and by Fortune's
dearest spite, he was a limper ! It has been recently discovered
102 Shakespeare: the Man.
in America that Shakspeare had a scar over the left eye, to
which he alludes in the same Sonnet : and his ghost appeared
thrice to a Stratford gentleman, exhibiting the newly-made gash
on the forehead ! * So it is plain we shall have to construct a
new Shakspeare, who shall be halt, hunch-backed, and scarred,
like his own Richard III.
* Birmingham Daily Mail, Jan. 9, 1874.
Sntmalarp |>otcg.
P. 8. — With this list of sixty- four forms of our bard's surname may be
compared the following fifty-seven modes in which our Scandinavian friends
spell Ipswich. They are taken from the envelopes of letters addressed to
Mr. C. T. Townsend, the Danish and Norwegian Consul there.
Elsfleth, Epshoics, Epshvidts, Epsids, Epsig, Epsvet, Epsvidts,
Epwich, Evswig, Ex-wig, Hoispis, Hvisspys, Ibsvi, Ibsvig, Ibsvithse,
Ibwich, Ibwigth, Iepsich, Ie yis Wich, Igswield, Igswig, Igswjigh,
Ipesvivk, Ipis Wug, Ips Witis, Ipsiwisch, Ipsovich, Ipsveten, Ipsvick,
Ipsvics, Ipsvids, Ipsvidts, Ipsvig, Ipsvikh, Ipsvits, Ipsvitx, Ipsvoigh,
Ipswch, Ipsweich, Ipswgs, Ipswiche, Ipswick, Ipswict, Ipswiech, Ipswig,
Ipswigh, Ipswight, Ipswish, Ipswith, Ipswitz, Ispich, Ispovich, Ispwich,
Ixvig, Iysuich, Uibsvich, and Vittspits.
P. ii. The orthography Shakespeare does, in fact, represent (in the
spelling of the time) the received etymology. Dr. R. G. Latham retrenches
the e final in his admirable Dictionary ; for which he gave me his reason,
viz., that we do not write spear with the e final : he having no more doubt
as to the etymology shake (vibro) and spear (hasta) than other philologers
— always saving Drs. Charnock and Mackay, and a few other paradoxers.
The Georgian editors and commentators adopted the same spelling on the
same ground ; most, however, omitting the first e as well as the last.
Godwin, who omits the latter e only, thus justifies the procedure :
A frivolous dispute has been raised respecting the proper way of spelling
the name of our great dramatic poet. His own orthography in this
point seems to have been unsettled. Perhaps, when the etymology of a
proper name is obvious, it becomes right in us to supersede the fancy of
the individual, and to follow a less capricious and more infallible guide.
Preface (p. iii) to Godwin's Life of Chancer, 1804 (second edition).
P. 14. Shakeshaft is the name of a publican at Latchford near War-
rington, and Wagstaffe was the name of several well-known writers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the south side of Broad Street,
Birmingham, we find both Wagstaff and Breakspear. There are many
[04 Shakespeare : the Man.
Longstaffs and Shakespeares. The most distinguished of the latter name
is Mr. William Shakespeare, an eminent musician and contrapuntist.
Since writing my second chapter I have observed some pertinent remarks
by Professor J. R. Lowell {lily Study Windows, Sampson Low, 1871,
p. 262). He writes :
" Fautre (sometimes faltre or feutre) means in old French the rest of a
lance. Thus in the Roman dit Renart (26517) :
Et mist sa lance sor le fautre.
But it also meant a peculiar kind of rest. In .Sir F. Madden' s edition of
Gawayne we read :
Theyjeutred their lances, these knyghtes good ;
and in the same editor's William and the Werwolf:
With sper fastened va/euter, him for to spille.
In a note on the latter passage Sir F. Madden says, ' There seems no
reason, however, why it [/enter] should not mean the rest attached to the
armour.' But Roquefort was certainly right in calling it a 'garniture d'une
selle pour tenir la lance.' A spear fastened to the saddle gave more deadly
weight to the blow. The ' Aim for to spille' implies this. So in Merlin
(E. E. Text Soc, p. 488) : 'Than thei toke speres grete and rude, and
putte hem in fewtre, and that is the grettest crewel te that oon may do, ffor
turnement oweth to be with-oute felonye, and they meved to smyte hem as
in mortall werre.' The context shows that the fewtre turned sport into
earnest. A citation in Raynouard's Lexique Roman (though wrongly ex-
plained by him) directed us to a passage which proves that this particular
kind of rest for the lance was attached to the saddle, in order to render the
blow heavier : —
Lances a [lege as] arfotis afeutrees
Pour plus de dures cottes rendre.
Branche des Royaux Lignages, 4514-15."
P. 30, foot-note. This discussion was reported in the Birmingham
Daily Press of Tuesday, March 3, 1856.
P. 48, foot-note. Since this chapter was printed I have received the
proof-sheets of Miss Jane Lee's paper "On the Authorship of the Second
and Third Parts of Henry VI, and their originals ; " read at a meeting of
the New Shakspere Society, October 13, 1876. It does not add much to
what we already know, but is a useful summary of what has been written
on the subject.
Shakespeare : the Alan. 105
P. 55, line 22. ' There were probably sceptics of this sort before 1852.'
Singer refers to a paper in the Monthly Review, vol. lxxxix, p. 361,
&c, and vol. xciii, p. 61, &c, in which an attempt is made to show
that Marlow and Shakspeare may have been one and the same person.
'This paradox is sustained,' he says, 'by some very specious arguments.'
Preface to Singer's Edition Hero and Leander, 1821, p. xiii.
I note also (in respect to p. 63, line 21) that in this Preface Singer
does quote from p. 280 of Meres' Palladis Ta?nia.
P. 60. Chapman employs the same image in his Monsieur Z>' Olive,
IV. I :
What is the opinion of the many-headed Be[a]st touching my new
adition of Honour?
The many-headed beast is, of course, Hydra.
The common sort, the Hydra multitude. — Ariosto's Seven Planets
Governing Italie, 4to, 1611.
Hydra is similarly used by Shakespeare in Henry V, i. 1, and in
Coriolanus, iii. I.
P. 69, foot-note. The reader is referred to some notes on the subject
of 'the Inadequate Powers of Portraiture' in Notes 6° Queries, 5th S. iv.
363, 416, 496; v. 238, 497 ; vi. 276. The samples there cited thoroughly
establish the position, that Ben Jonson's five couplets prefixed to the
Droeshout print of Shakespeare were purely conventional, and ought not
to be taken as conveying Ben's approbation of the portrait.
P. 73, 1. 1. The original title of this paper was 'On some recent
contributions to the Portraiture of Shakespeare.' Hence the force of the
opening sentence.
P. 93. Since this paper was read to the Royal Society of Literature, Mr.
Page has executed a bust of Shakespeare from the Becker Mask. If I may
judge from the two photographs of it that I have seen, I must candidly own
I do not think it worthy of either poet or sculptor.
There is also a plaster bust after the Becker Mask by Hermann Linde,
which, to judge from a photograph, seems a work of merit.
P. 100, 1. 23. Lameness has been imputed to Marlow also, and on
utterly untrustworthy evidence.
I'
io6 Shakespeare: the Man.
I take this opportunity of notifying the following corrections of the
text :
P. I, 1. 5, for "), p. 281," read ", p. 281)."
P. 7, I. 16, dele "(?)" and add " Shakspire," and "Shakespeare."
P. 15, 1. 3, for "fewtar's" read "fewtars."
P- 39) !• f S> f° r "Garrick's" read " Townley's."
F. 52, second foot-note, for "a player" read "an Actor."
P. 57, penult. 1. of foot-note, dele the first "1875."
P. 64, foot-note, for "more" read "most."
P. 76, 1. 20, prefix "such" to "optical."
P. 8o, 1. 18, for "he" read "they."
P. 86, 11. 16 and 28, for " Schemaker's " read " Scheemakers'."
P. S7, 1. 7, for "was" read "has been."
CHAPTER VII
THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.*
SipX®*)®', oiaig aiKiaunv
5iaKvai6/.tEvoc rbv /xvpierrj
Xpovov aO\Evaw
Prometheus Vinctus, 93 — 95.
VEN the few who care for both the integrity and the
preservation of Shakespeare's works will form but a
very faint notion of the subject of this preliminary!
essay from the motto. What can be the outrage which
threatens either the one or the other 1 Are not his works,
like ' the lexicons of ancient tongues,' ' comprised in a few
volumes,' of which millions of copies exist? Yes, indeed;
but are they ' immutably fixed 1 ' Nay, more, is it at all likely
that they will be immutably fixed 1 That is the doubt which
suggested the following remarks. The works of Shakespeare
were manifestly written to serve his own personal ends, or at
* Prefixed as a 'Justification of the Motto,' to The Still Lion.
t The essay was originally printed in The Birmingham Gazette, June,
1867, and subsequently prefixed to the first separate edition of The Still
Lion, 1874. In its present place it is preliminary to the essays which
constitute Shakespeare the Pooh.
ioS Shakespeare : tlie Book.
most to serve the narrow ends of his own generation; and,
yet, in a higher sense, they were written for all time — to
subserve the pleasure and profit of ages to come. Ben Jonson
summed this up in the famous line — much staled, and generally
misquoted —
He was not of an age, but for all time.
Now Jonson meant to say of Shakespeare, that he was
both for an age and for all time, which the line as it is often
misquoted is made to contradict,* but also that he was not of
an age; meaning thereby that, unlike his compeers, he was
unconventional and catholic. We have a proverbial saying,
1 He is a nice man for a small tea-party' — exquisite expansion
of the petit maitre! A man may be that without being of the
tea-party; he may likewise be of the tea-party without being
that. The early Christians were exhorted to be in the world,
not of the world. St. Paul, for example, was not of the world ;
yet he was for the world; and many a man of the world lives
for himself and not for the world. Things more distinct than
of and for it were hard to find. Shakespeare was in the world
of his own day; but he was not of it: he lived in an intel-
lectual sphere above it, and so lived and wrote for it and for
all time.
Even we of the nineteenth century, or fourth A.S., know
very little what will be. We have great faith in the destiny of
* The most inexcusable case is that of Mr. John Leighton's ' Official
Seal for the National Shakespeare Committee of 1864,' the scroll at the
base of which bears the misquotation —
Not for an age, but for all time:
Shakespeare : the Book. 109
Shakespeare's works, and believe that, if they are preserved
entire, they will be a most important element among those
forces which go to mould the English of the future ; and that
what iEschylus is to us Shakespeare will be to those who speak
a tongue as yet unknown, when the English of Shakespeare is
bound in death.
A living language is like the mythic Proteus. It is a
fluxion : no photography is swift and sharp enough to catch
and arrest any one of its infinite and infinitesimal phases. But
as in the old fable Proteus caught basking on the sea-shore
became oracular, so when at last a language dies it not only
becomes a dry logical instrument, but an oracle revealing the
history of a people long after every material trace of their
existence has vanished from the earth. {Englishman 's Maga-
zine, vol. i., p. 49 ; January, 1865.)
The language we speak and write is not perfectly identical
with that employed by Shakespeare. English speech has moved
on, and is still moving on towards the goal; and in a period
which is incalculable, not for its length, but for want of exact
data, it will be as dead as Zend, Sanscrit, Greek, or Latin. It
is of no use lamenting this destiny, for it is inevitable. By no
other course can a language attain to the rank of a classic
tongue. Happily, when a language is dead its literature may
survive. How many literatures have been swallowed up already
is only known to the Creator of their creators. To deal with
two only of those languages, we have reason to be thankful that
the sentence executed on Hebrew and Greek spared so large
and so grand a fraction of their literatures as Job, David, Isaiah,
no Shakespeare : the Book.
Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Homer, yEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Aristophanes !
^Eschylus had a narrow escape. He was judged an immortal
before his death. The late Mr. Charles Knight thought
Shakespeare was judged so too; but we doubt if all the evi-
dences that can be gathered from the literatures of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries would prove that he was thought
essentially superior to Marlow, Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont
or Fletcher — all men of the age. Even the most illiterate
Greeks who were privileged to live and move in the Athens of
Pericles knew that they had a demi-god among them. Every
soul in that mighty auditory knew that his ^Eschylus ' was not
of an age, but for all time.' Nay, more; ^Eschylus was twice as
industrious a writer as Shakespeare. He created, and published
in that vast arena, where from twenty to thirty thousand per-
sons were always found to enjoy a foretaste of immortality,
twice as many tragedies as Shakespeare wrote plays. Above
seventy dramas were the pledges of their writer's earthly im-
mortality : yet only seven survive. When the first Alexandrine
Library was burnt it is said that nearly seventy single exemplars
of his tragedies perished. Happily for us the immortality of
^Eschylus was guaranteed by the fact that imperfect copies
of seven dramas existed in other libraries. Had they been
perfect our Greek scholarship would have been more imper-
fect; for nothing short of imperfection in such works could
have called into healthy activity the powers of our best
Grecians. But only think what a narrow escape this great
writer had ! But for the extant seven, we could have known
Shakespeare : the Book. ill
nothing of him at first hand. At most we might have known
that the great Sophocles had a contemporary greater than
himself; but we could have had no sufficient evidence to
estimate the majesty and sublimity of him whose works had
fallen a victim to the ambition of Csesar.
Now, against such a catastrophe as that, Shakespeare is
amply secured. Thank God, there are no single exemplars of
any work of his. Compared with the great Greek his works
are not so vast — thirty-seven plays, two long poems, a noble
collection of sonnets, and a small volume of ' Remains,' con-
stitute our whole stock-in-trade. But of the existing exemplars
of each work the name is Legion ! At any price from is. up
to £100 the book-fancier may appropriate a complete copy of
Shakespeare's works. The fount is open to all : come, all ye
thirsty souls — be ye prince, poet, gentleman, artisan, labourer,
tramp, or what not, here's the work for your money. Here are
Warne's Chandos edition, 8vo, in boards, for is, ; Dicks's
edition, 8vo, stitched, for is., and in boards for 2s. ; Lenny's
edition, 121110, for 2s. 6d, or, if you can afford another 6d.,
here is Keightley's smaller edition, 12 mo and the Blackfriars
edition, 8vo. You had better pay 3^. 6d., and then you may
have a better choice : the Globe edition, 8vo, Mrs. Cowden
Clarke's edition, 8vo or Lenny's selected edition, 121110.
Besides these there is Gray Bell's edition, 8vo, $s. iod., which
is now reduced ; and when you get up to 4s. or 5X. you may
have the pick of a score of one-volume editions, and so
forth, till we mount up to those costly monuments of human
enterprise, Boydell's illustrated edition and Mr. Halliwell's
112 Shakespeare: the Book.
folio edition, and lastly the original First Folio edition, ac-
cessible only to princes and merchant-princes. A thousand
Alexandrine conflagrations would not at this present time burn
up Shakespeare.
No ! It is from no such danger that we have to rescue
Shakespeare ; it is from a destruction now in progress, and the
cause is latent, insidious, slow and sure. The mere destruc-
tion of copies is more than compensated by new impressions;
but it is precisely because there is this succession, this constant
and unstaying process of supplantation and substitution, that
the immortality of Shakespeare is in jeopardy. If this cause
shall continue, it is demonstrable that Shakespeare's immor-
tality can be guaranteed by only one event — the continued
practice of reprinting verbatim the First Folio edition. It makes
one tremble to think that but for photography there was a bare
possibility (perhaps a very small one) of Shakespeare faring
like ^Eschylus. It is almost certain that after the lapse of
ages every copy which was in existence in the sixteenth, seven-
teenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and all which are
now extant, will be utterly destroyed. We say Shakespeare's
immortality is only guaranteed by the multiplication of copies.
Now, from what exemplars are they made 1 ? There is a cause
of corruption, constantly in operation, which must sooner or
later revolutionize the whole text, viz., the practice of modern-
izing the old language, so as to bring it down to the standard
of the English of three hundred years later. Where is this to
stop? Clearly, nowhere. Language finds no arrest; it must
grow or die. The innocent-looking little modifications which
Shakespeare: the Book. 113
we now introduce into Shakespeare on the plea of textual
misprinting will sooner or later themselves require modernizing.
No part of the text is safe against these well-intentioned per-
versions; and in the meanwhile what becomes of Shakespeare?
The one fact which bids fair to secure him against this fate is
the multiplication of copies by photography from the folio of
1623. There is no one deed in the history of Shakespeare-
literature which deserves more thanks than the recent fac-simile
reprint of the first folio edition by the photolithographic pro-
cess. Few know (as the writer of this volume does) the
stupendous difficulties under which the first promoter of that
great undertaking laboured. It would be easy to name several
gentlemen who were employed in the various departments of
that reproduction, to all of whom the greatest credit is due for
the conscientious discharge of their several tasks ; but when the
history of that reprint shall be written, as written it will be,
who will stand out as the originator and the finisher of the
work 1 One there was who, at first with little aid and no
sympathy, originated that reprint, and after infinite labour,
miscarriage, vexation and loss, as well of health as of capital,
succeeded in carrying it to a successful issue ; and his name
is Howard Staunton.
To his indefatigable and persistent exertions is it mainly due
that Shakespeare is delivered from one source of destruction.
One shoal is weathered : another is imminent; but it is one
that can only acquire importance in the event of Mr. Staunton
suffering a final check-mate in this new chess-game, i. e., in
the event of all verbatim reprints of the first folio being
Q
ii4 Shakespeare: the Hook.
destroyed.* This source of destruction is contingent only ; but
whatever it is let us diagnose it. It is here that Shakespeare
appears in the character of the modern Prometheus. He has
committed the heinous offence of endowing men with the
irvpbQ ai-Xag of heaven, the blaze of the fire of genius. For
this the Olympian Sire, who seems to represent Persistent
Conventionality, is angry, and he sends down on the Bard two
ministers of vengeance. The destinies of Literature are com-
mitted to certain publishing coteries; these rule the Reviews;
and the Reviews forge the thunderbolts of criticism, which at
one time wound a Byron or a Shelley, and at another kill a
Keats; or pour the vials of vengeance on an offending party;
as once on the so-called Lake Poets. The mischief is, that
Freedom and Power, the attributes of Zeus, belong (for a time)
to those who have not the genius to appreciate the philosophy
of mind and language, and thus to integrate the fluxion of
written speech. Accordingly these Procrustean censors have
determined, and seem determined to determine to all eternity,
that the text of Shakespeare shall be measured by a standard
which is hardly adequate to the criticism of Tennyson or
Robert Browning. The English of Shakespeare in ten thou-
sand places is not what now passes for good English ; therefore,
say the censors, it must be made good English. In a small
* Our friend suffered another kind of 'final check-mate' during the
printing of this work. He died on June 22nd, 1874. Against the other
Messrs. Chatto and Windus have guaranteed us by the issue of a reduced
reproduction of Mr. Staunton's Folio : 1876, price Ss. 6c/. Prefixed to it is
a very accurate and lucid account of the First Folio, from the pen of Mr.
]. O. Halliwell Phillipps. But why is Mr. Staunton not mentioned?
Shakespeare : the Book. 1 1 5
percentage of cases they allow the possibility of an obsolete
phraseology; but not at all as to the mass. Where they do
not and cannot understand him he is assumed to have fallen
a prey to his own impetuosity or carelessness, or to the blun-
dering of a compositor, and it is their task to set him right.
The sluice is thus opened, and Shakespeare's language is
inundated with words and phrases, some of which, indeed,
he might have used ; but, so far as we know, did not use :
the poetry and special sense are concurrently eliminated in
every spot where the critic sets his mark; and instead of 'the
text of Shakespeare,' England prints and publishes ' the text
of Shakespeare restored.'' Restored! The very word suggests
a similar process applied to architecture : indeed, the modern
mode of restoring Shakespeare cannot be better illustrated than
by comparing him to such an edifice as Beverley Minster:
where not only is something put in the place of what has fallen
a victim to time and chance, but much of what remains of the
old work is ruthlessly removed to make room for an imitation
of the old work by some village stonemason, who has no
knowledge of or feeling for his business.
But the parallel between Shakespeare and Prometheus may
be worked out in greater detail. One motive to the persecu-
tion of greatness is the jealousy of excellence, a sentiment
which is begot between the Sense of Inferiority and the Love
of Power. To be confronted with an author whose works have
stimulated in his admirers for eight or nine generations a
passion of gratitude and worship, and to find his works strange
and uncouth, his phrases unusual (if not unintelligible) and his
1 1 6 Shakespeare : the Book.
allusions obscure, is to suffer humiliation. The critic of con-
scious intellect and learning is offended that Shakespeare should
have won a world of worshippers by works which he finds but
imperfectly intelligible. He naturally seeks to disabuse those
worshippers, to convict them of Fetish-worship and to bring
down their idol to their own level. He will at least show them
•who is a power in the world ; he will explain and correct this
writer and banish to the limbo of oblivion whatever he cannot
understand. As to the unfathomable, which some believe to
be in Shakespeare, he says, 'Away with it to the unfathomable
abyss — like to like!' All the while the critic is getting by
a side wind a considerable reputation for his disinterested,
courageous, and sensible conduct. This battered idol is all
very well for Buddha; but he is very ugly, and (by your leave)
the artist shall mend his nose and transport him to the back
garden. Or the Olympian plan shall be tried, which is preferable
on the whole, seeing that (as Oceanus says to Prometheus) it is
not profitable to kick against the pricks,* for in the world of
letters the press is exposed to the goad of public opinion, and
that Shakespeare is a demi-god and was an inspired poet, is
a part of its creed. It is to be acknowledged, then, that this
Promethean Shakespeare is a god; he had, it is allowed, great
genius and power; he did give you fire from heaven and teach
* This expression, which occurs in the account of the Conversion of
St. Paul {Acts ix, 5), is nearly akin to those in the Prometheus Vinctus and
the Agamemnon. It sounds strangely out of place in sequence with our
Lord's declaration : for it is evident that both our Lord and the Apostle could
not be at once the driver and the driven. If St. Paul were the persecutor
— the 'pursuer' — it would not be in his power to 'kick against the pricks.'
Shakespeare : the Book. 1 1 7
you all arts. But look you, he is ungrammatical and profane,
he had no knowledge of the classics, and his geography was
very shaky. However, we think that much of this may have
been caused by the blunders of reporters, copyists and printers.
So the god is taken captive by Zeus, the public press, and
handed over to the tender mercies of two emissaries, not as of
old Strength and Force, but Duiness and Ignorance ; and these
have it in charge to manacle him hand and foot to the rock of
Pedantry. But these gentlemen, though very able in their way,
are not blacksmiths, so Hephaestus (Vulcan), the Philologer, is
called in to help. A very unwilling and altogether unsympa-
thizing agent is he. He tells them plainly, ' I really have not
the heart to bind my fellow-god to this weather-beaten cliff.
Yet I must on every account take heart for this business, for it
is no trifle to disobey the orders of the Sire.' The prejudices
of the Press infect him, and we find him clenching manacle
after manacle on the suffering god ; like Home Tooke teaching
us that Frenchmen are (according to Shakespeare) brayed in a
mortar, or at least that Bertram was : {Diversions of Parley,
1805, ii. 50); or like Mr. F. J. Furnivall asserting that Timon's
'wappen'd widow' was merely wrapt or shrouded in her widow's
weeds: {Alhenceum, May, 1873) :f with many other things quite
as absurd. Philology perverted and degraded does the work
of Conventionality, Duiness and Ignorance, till at last Duiness
gives Prometheus a left-handed compliment to his greatness —
f We are glad to learn that our friend has withdrawn that explanation.
Dr. Stratmann, however, gives the same explanation of Shakespeare's
' wappen'd widow.'
1 1 8 Shakespeare: the /look.
' How can mortals ever lighten thine agonies'? By no true title
do the divinities call thee Prometheus;^;- thou thyself wilt need
a Prometheus to help thee to escape this work of craft* How
true that is ! None but the man of genius can really help
Shakespeare. It is only the hero who discerns, and has power
to enfranchise, the hero.
The truth is, that the Sire, as the Choragus says, is adminis-
tering new conventions, vsoxpolc vopoiQ Kparvvet and wiping out
those things which men used to think great, rd irplv wiXibpia (Yi<jT6i
Here is, indeed, the gist of the crime against Shakespeare. The
continual ebb and flow of language, in its growth from the
conventional to the classic, is the cause of all the evil that has
befallen him. It is to the strong-armed and gentle-hearted
Hephaestus that we must look for help. At present he is but
lame — we know who has lamed him — but sooner or later
those rivets will be undone ; that transfixing bolt will be with-
drawn ; the idiom, idiotisms and, above all, the idiasms of
Shakespeare will be thoroughly understood, and so much that
now goes by the board in all modern editions will be restored
with intelligent reverence. This is the great work that is com-
mitted to all who have discernment or faith in the great and
suffering bard.
In this case, the cause of Prometheus is the cause of our
Mother Tongue. It is impossible to doubt that a great future
is in store for the English language. A time must come when
that language will be the language of half the world. Future
literatures are bound up in its fate. Now, without exception,
Shakespeare, of all who have expressed their thoughts in it,
Shakespeare : the Book. 119
knew best how to use it. It is not from a county, a parish or
a household that a language becomes enriched and defined.
It is rather from the works of great popular writers. Hence it
is that language acquires healthy growth and development. We
can readily see, then, how large a factor in the future of English
will be the works of Shakespeare, and it is now a question for
us whether that factor shall be of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, having Shakespeare's proper impress and power, or
whether it shall be a stunted and modernised Shakespeare that
is to have that influence. It is now a question for us, whether
we shall take side with ' the Sire ' (the public critic or the
press) or with Vulcan, freed from the tyranny of Zeus — whether
the Promethean Bard, who has endowed us with so many
heavenly gifts, shall be bound and impaled on the rock of
pedantry or of conventionalism, or whether he shall be free
and powerful, as he is god-like and benevolent.
I say that question is for us. But who are we % It is little
we can do against the tyranny of 'the Sire.' We may at least
do our little without fearing his censure or coveting his praise.
Others may cast in their lot with him ; may exalt Marlow or
even Addison, and depress Shakespeare ; may sneer at the
Promethean fire as George III did, calling it 'poor stuff,' or
scoff at Prometheus himself, as a late noble lord did, calling
him ' Silly Billy.' We, for our parts, will take our stand with
him against the criticasters and the detractors, and will not
relax in our exertions to enfranchise Shakespeare ; though it
will not be our fortune to proclaim 'Prometheus Unbound:'
'for he that shall deliver is not yet.'
CHAPTER VIII
THE IDIOSYNCRASY OF HAMLET.
N the Tragedy of Hamlet we are presented with a
psychological study, which has afforded delight to
many an English and many a German philosopher,
and which has taxed their critical powers to the utmost. The
outcome of such study has been so various, and the proposed
solutions of the Hamlet-problem are so discrepant, that one
can only conclude that it is indeterminate, i. e., admitting of
more than one solution. In this chapter I do not propose to
grapple with the problem' as a whole, but merely to discuss
one of the elements of a complete solution : viz., the peculiar
idiosyncrasy of the moody Prince of Denmark.
Hamlet is introduced to us, after he has been exposed to
the first disturbing influence of his life. The death of his
father and the consequent marriage of his mother with his uncle
have demoralised the Danish court, and Hamlet is called upon
to sustain the shock of those sudden and disastrous events.
We do not know what manner of man he was before calamity
Shakespeare : the Book. 1 2 1
had marred the freshness of his youth, and driven him prema-
turely to take refuge in contemplation. But we do meet with
him in two scenes before he is subjected to the more violent
shock of the Ghost's communication ; and these are for us the
most important evidences of his unspoiled character.
In act i, sc. 2 and 4, we are witnesses to his conversation
with the King and Queen; we hear his frsf soliloquy on suicide;
and we have his first and second conversations with Horatio
and the watch. On the entry of the Ghost all is changed for
Hamlet : all is changed with him. Up to this point we have
to gather the first data of the problem. With the King the
prince is grimly jocular: to the Queen he is solemnly senten-
tious : and left to himself he is the personification of melan-
choly. In all this we discern his dislike towards his uncle,
springing from that monarch's usurpation (legal in both respects,
however,) of his late brother's marital and monarchical rights.
He is generous and hearty to his old schoolfellow, Horatio; he
is courteous to the watch ; to all — even to the despised monarch
— he is the perfect gentleman. Though to himself he censures
his mother for her ' wicked speed,' he is dutiful in his bearing
towards her. Though to Horatio he censures his uncle for his
drunkenness and his incestuous marriage, he is guarded and
ceremonious in the few words (sarcastic as they are) which he
addresses to the King. Beyond his kindly feeling towards all
(save the usurper), and his gentlemanly demeanour, we so far
see nothing especially admirable in Hamlet's character. His
evident envy and his dominant melancholy are weaknesses,
which, however natural to a young prince whose hopes and
R
1 2 2 Shakt 's/>t are : the Hook.
affections had been so early blighted, are no trustworthy guides
to any of the secrets of his character. They are merely vulgar
attributes. His irony and humour, which up to this point are
manifested in only three brief utterances, are something more.
They belong to a higher class of mind, and give the promise of
genius. But, so far as we can see, there is nothing extraordinary
in this young prince but his premature melancholy ; and that
only argues a highly sensitive organisation. So far then, we
see in Hamlet a man of imagination and affection, to which
early sorrow and disappointment have imparted a morbid bias.
We see him first on the unfavourable side — moody, satirical,
complaining, desponding ; but the worst features of that side: his
selfishness and cunning: his procrastination and self-deception:
his ribaldry and rant: are not yet manifest: they all slumber
there, awaiting the invocation of circumstance. It is the second
shock, consequent on his first interview with his father's spirit,
that brings out both his strength and his weakness.* Much in
his conduct that is to us eccentric and wayward is only an
incident of the nationality and period to which he belongs.
* Ophelia's estimate of Hamlet, before the advent of his troubles,
must, of course, be taken cum grano. We must allow for the extravagance
of partiality and wonderment. Her unfathomable grief was not for the loss
of his love merely, but for the loss of himself: it was not so much that the
Hamlet she loved had ceased to love her, but that he had been transmuted
into a new person towards whom she now felt more pity than love : that
a greater passion than love had cast love into the shade, and transported
her lover into a new sphere. She now measured the change in him by the
force of contrast impressed upon her while reeling from the shock. Ac-
cordingly, the change seemed to her immeasurable, and she portrayed his
lost self in colours that were exaggerated by that force of contrast.
Shakespeare: the Book. 123
Apart from these, Hamlet's is just the sort of idiosyncrasy
which we nowadays find so difficult to square with our con-
ventional views of sanity. Accordingly the ' mad-doctors ' find
it a congenial study, and experience no difficulty in proving
him to be insane. Let them once get hold of Hamlet, and
there would be small fear of his troubling any king of Denmark's
peace. But they overlook the differentia of this peculiar case,
which is this : there is no eccentricity in the Prince but what
is naturally provoked by the force of circumstances. It is not
this makes a man mad, whom it does not find so. The
madman forges his circumstances, or (to profit by Shakespeare's
unrivalled power of expression) imagines, or bodies forth as
objects, his own incertain thought, and then takes the false objects
so imagined for real objects evoking his mental and emotional
disturbance. . Hamlet's case is just the reverse. A real ghostly
visitation disturbs him, but does not unsettle or derange him.
His demeanour consequent upon that visitation is only so far
eccentric as the stimulus is eccentric: his eccentricity is healthy;
and not to have manifested strange passion, after experiencing
so strange and awful an event, would not have proved his
sanity, but would have argued an insensibility and dulness
comparable to that of the fat Lethean weed. Once go with
the ' mad-doctors,' and assume as a datum of interpretation
Hamlet's insanity, and his conduct becomes inexplicable, and
his character more perplexing than the phenomena of storms.
But it has seemed to the critics the maddest of mad freaks
for Hamlet to have assumed madness. Well, there is much to
be said in excuse for this, if excuse were needed : but it is
124 Shakespeare: tJie Book.
Shakespeare, and not Hamlet, that would need the excuse,
which would be found in the old romance from which the plot
was derived. If further excuse be needed, I can only say
I find it in the exquisite skill with which Shakespeare has
grafted this incident upon a new character. An anonymous
writer of 1736 thus comments on the point in question.
To conform to the groundwork of his plot Shakespeare makes the young
prince feign himself mad. I cannot but think this to be injudicious ; for
so far from securing himself from any violence which he feared from the
usurper, it seems to have been the most likely way of getting himself
confined, and consequently debarred from an opportunity of revenging his
father's death, &c.
Now the King being an elected monarch could not be an
usurper, and so far he could have no temptation to meddle with
Hamlet. Moreover, the King was assured that Hamlet could
not by any natural means know the fact or circumstances of his
father's ' taking off.' The King, then, had no cause of fear,
save on account of ' the general gender,' with whom Hamlet
was a favourite, and the prince could have had no thought of
'securing himself from [his uncle's] violence.' Hamlet's motive
is no secret ; perhaps it is a wild enough motive : but certain it
is that it was to give himself a plausible excuse for uncivil
demeanour and illegal acts. It is on this score, viz., temporary
derangement, that he excuses himself to Guildenstern for in-
civility : ' I cannot make you a wholesome answer : my wit's
diseased : ' and for the death of Polonius to Laertes. Some-
what after the manner of St. Paul, who argues 'So then it is
Shakespeare: the Book. 125
no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,' Hamlet
addresses Laertes thus:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
And, when he's not himself, does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it then ? His madness : if't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd ;
an argument which is quite worthy of the clown in the fifth act.
As I read the play, this is given by Shakespeare as an example
of the self-justification to which Hamlet intended, in the event
of indiscretion, to put in his claim. But things turned out
very different from what he expected. The error of taking
Polonius for his betters and killing him like vermin frustrated
all his plans, and the madness which was to have saved him
harmless becomes a good reason for his removal. He learned
too late the danger of deep plotting. We must, however,
bear in mind that the madness assumed by Hamlet was a mere
' antic disposition,' occasionally resorted to, and least of all
dreamed of when he is carried away by that passion to which
the idiosyncrasy of the Dansker as well as the Norseman was
peculiarly liable. It is to this Hamlet refers when he says to
Laertes, at Ophelia's grave,
I pr'ythee take thy hand from off my throat ;
For, though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear.
This passion, in its more awful and destructive phases, con-
stituted what was called the Berserkir Rage; which is well
126 Shakespeare : the Book.
described by Sir Walter Scott in the following lines in Harold
the Dauntless.
Profane not youth — it is not thine,
To judge the spirit of our line —
The bold Berserker's rage divine,
Through whose inspiring, deeds are wrought
Past human strength and human thought.
When full upon his gloomy soul
The champion feels the influence roll,
He swims the lake, he leaps the wall —
Heeds not the depth, nor plumbs the fall;
Unshielded, mailless, on he goes
Singly against a host of foes;
Their spears he holds like withered reeds,
Their mail like maidens' silken weeds;
One 'gainst a hundred will he strive,
Take countless wounds, and yet survive.
Then rush the eagles to his cry
Of slaughter and of victory ;
And blood he quaffs like Odin's bowl,
Deep drinks his sword — deep drinks his soul,
And all that meet him in his ire
He gives to ruin, rout, and fire ;
Then, like gorged lion, seeks some den,
And couches till he's man agen.
Mr. Carlyle, in his Early Kings of Norway, thus describes
the rage of the same Harold at Stamford Bridge.
Enraged at that breaking loose of his steel ring of infantry, Norse
Harald [Hardrade, this time] blazed up into true Norse fury, all the old
Vseringer and Berserkir rage awakening in him ; sprang forth into the front
of the fight, and mauled., and cut, and smashed down, on both sides of
him, everything he met, irresistible by any horse or man, till an arrow cut
him through the windpipe, and laid him low for ever. That was the end
of King Harald and of his workings in this world.
Shakespeare : the Book. 127
Hamlet's rage, as exhibited first, after the armed Ghost's
disappearance, and last at the grave of Ophelia, is but a child's
pet compared with the Berserkir Rage ; and in the same propor-
tion is the soul of Hamlet to that of a knightly Norseman.
But for the visit of the Ghost, which is the instrument to try
the stuff the prince is made of, he might have passed for a
strong-hearted and doughty youth, in whom the hereditary rage
had been subdued by knightly training. What such a true
knight was, both before and after the rage had been brought
into subjection, we may learn from La Motte Fouque. In his
Theodolf we have the Hamlet-like humour, kindliness, coolness,
and energy of character, exquisitely balanced, and coexisting
with the purest ethic grandeur. Here, too, the emergency arises
which intensifies one pole of his character, and the current of
motive is completed.* At length the one weakness in the
* Theodolf's Berserker rage had awoke. Once again he asked, with
flashing eyes, ' Wilt thou give her to me? Is she ready to depart?' And
the delay of the answer was the signal for the most fearful outbreak.
Knives and other sharp instruments, caught up at the moment by the
furious Icelander, flew on all sides of the room like a shower; and many
fell senseless or dead to the ground, on whose lips a bold smile yet rested.
As the rest rushed in anger and terror against the raging youth, a mighty
stroke of the battle-axe struck the breast of the foremost ; and then the
good sword Throng-piercer began its fearful meal.
It was less a fight than the annihilating wrath of nature's strength let
loose against man's weakness. Soon there were only bloody corpses lying
about in the hall just before so gay; and a few wounded men, with every
sign of terror, were tottering down the stairs. The fearful Theodolf stood
alone in the deserted blood-stained hall. #####*
and he sank down among the dead in heavy exhaustion, more overcome by
the weight of grief [for the loss of Isolde] than by his wounds. — Theodolf
the Icelander. [London: Edward Lumley. 1865. P. 153.]
128 Shakespeare: the Book.
character of Theodolf, viz., the hereditary Berserkir Rage, is
over-matched by that ethic sovereignty which wins him over
to ' the White Christ.' In the case of Hamlet, as in that of
Theodolf, it is the emergency that tries his mettle, and from
his conduct in it may we infallibly infer his character. For
another example, Fouque"s hero, Count Wildeck, is introduced
to us as a worthy knight before his character is put to proof.
But his courage, truth and fealty — in a word, his virtue or
manly worth — cannot be duly estimated till his encounter with
the terrible maniac in the castle of Rosaura's kinsman. Had
he resorted to selfish lying or stratagem, had he been carried
away by any pathological influence whatever, or, as our old
writers say, ' forsaken himself,' we should have felt that his was
a weak character deserving our pity if not our contempt : and
that is the only alternative offered us in the case of Hamlet.
But we are not driven to have recourse to fiction to illustrate
the peculiarities of Hamlet's idiosyncrasy. We are sure to find
among imaginative men many examples in point: and especially
among philosophic poets. Coleridge was a very different being
from Hamlet : and yet he manifested in a remarkable degree
the disposition to dissolve action in meditation. In fact, he
himself was struck with the resemblance.* He lacked, like
Hamlet, the stimulus of a healthy narrowness. Had his roots
been confined to a flower-pot, his stem would have been forced
* ' I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so ' ( Tabic Talk,
1 85 1, p. 40). This modest assertion becomes in Mr. Minto's hands a 'notion
that Hamlet's character was exceedingly like his own.' —Characteristics of
E)tglish Poets, 1874, p. 279.
Shakespeare : the Book. 1 29
into flower and fruit.* As it was, his intellectual vagrancy was
fatal to sustained exertion ; so that much of what he attempted
was but inchoate, if not abortive ; and much more that he
intended to accomplish never got one step beyond the inten-
tion. He whose task is coextensive with the world will hardly
attempt its performance; while the restricted task which a man
does achieve must be the whole world to him.
* ' As the air we breathe is not all air, and true courage has an ingre-
dient of fear in it, the intellect should part with something of its own nature
to qualify itself as proper human intellect. It should yoke itself contentedly
with a wholesome narrowness, in a compound practical and intellectual
being. Its largeness tends, without such check, to feebleness. The mind
of Hamlet lies all abroad, like the sea — an universal reflector, but wanting
the self-moving principle. Musing, reflection, and irony upon all the world,
supersede action, and a task evaporates in philosophy.' — Prof. J. B. Mozley's
article in the Christian Remembrancer (art. vii, vol. xvii, January, 1849).
On this Mr. C. J. Monro writes to me as follows : —
' I do not feel satisfied of the truth of this doctrine at all, at least as
stated. Is not unhealthy width simply inadequate will ? I do not mean
will below the average strength, but below the strength adequate to
intellect. I suppose a comprehensive intellect requires a corresponding
strength of will : and the chances are that a man of extraordinary com-
prehensiveness would not also have an extraordinary force of will. I am
supposing the two gifts to be tolerably independent, so that we are not
obliged to suppose them antagonistic in order to account for the rarity of
adequate force of will in men of extraordinary comprehensiveness : and
surely the combination is only rare, not unknown. As to Hamlet's
idiosyncrasy, there is a point which may have been often noticed, for
certainly it is obvious, real or not ; namely, that if thought outweighs will,
speech outweighs everything else in him. In two places he shows some
consciousness of being more in word than matter; as, when he checks his
own protestations to Horatio with ' something too much of this,' and when
he reproaches himself, at the end of a soliloquy, with unpacking his heart
with words. But he shows it unconsciously and with exquisite simplicity
when he admires the poor player so highly in comparison with himself,
because he can give tongue so powerfully and all for Hecuba.'
130 Shakespeare; the Book.
Hamlet's generalization, which he calls ' thinking too pre-
cisely on the event,' is the inner correspondent to that analytical
irony which Horatio (good, common-sense man) calls 'con-
sidering too curiously.' One might summarize the matter thus,
that the irony is Hamlet's revenge for having allowed his reso-
lution to evaporate in meditation.* He takes it out in vivi-
section. In this there is no little spite, and a good deal ot
foolishness. Hamlet is humorous, and humour is commonly a
sign of intellect. The lack of humour in Milton and Tennyson
is a psychological fact deserving study. But even humour is
in morbid excess, if it degenerate into wanton mischief or
cowardly malice. Such was the humour of Dean Swift; and in
that he was much worse than Hamlet, whose malice usually
stops short of malignity and evaporates in banter or mockery.
It is thus that he makes his father's ghost a 'mole' and a
' pioneer,' as if he were a bodily substance, burrowing his way
through the earth from place to place in suite of the watch.
It is thus that he shows 'how a king may go a progress through
the guts of a beggar,' viz., by the mediation of a fish that has
eaten a maggot bred in the king's carcase. It is thus that he
traces 'the dust of Alexander till he finds it stopping a beer-
barrel ' or staunching a hole in the roof. Akin to this perverse
analysis is the irreverence with which he habitually treats those
whose condition entitles them to the respect or the pity of their
* ' The lofty ruminator within exhibits himself as a jester and an oddity
without; and, not content with levity, he assumes madness, as if to enable
himself to enjoy a fantastic isolation from the world and human society
altogether, and to live alone within himself.'— Prof. Mozley's article in the
Christian Remembrancer.
Shakespeare : the Book. 1 3 1
fellows : Ophelia, a simple, trustful, fragile young creature, who
had loved him and in filial duty had rejected him, is a fair mark
alike for his heartless mockery and his ribald gallantry; and the
superannuated old chamberlain, her father, is mocked behind
his back, and twitted to his face with the infirmities of age. I
am far from denying that the horrible web of crime and vice
in which Hamlet found himself thus early entangled should be
allowed to extenuate, if not palliate, the guilt of such conduct
in a man with such predispositions: but that is because the
predispositions are there.
The poet Shelley had all Hamlet's faculty of subtil analysis
and more than all his poetical furor, but with little of the
humour that characterizes the Dane. Accordingly we find in
Shelley the same proclivity to associate objects with disgusting
if not irrelevant details: e. g.,
Yet not the meanest worm
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath,
Spirit of Nature! — Queen Mob, i.
and on that arm [the King's]
The worm has made his meal. — Ibid., iii.
And thou did'st laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel
Felt cold in her torn entrails. — Ibid., vi. *
* I once heard the reply of an accomplished man of the world to the
question — 'Why not call a spade a spade ? ' He answered — ' By all means,
except in cases where the common sense of the world has covered its naked-
ness with the garb of decency. In those cases what is to be gained by
stripping it off? Why should we be ever reminded of our weaknesses and
impurities ? No : the advantage is all the other way.'
132 Shakespeare: the Book.
Lord Byron had more than all Hamlet's selfishness, mood-
iness, ribaldry and heartless mockery. Lord Lindsay {The
Times, Oct, 1 8, 1869) thus describes him : he might have been
describing Hamlet: —
There was a waywardness in Byron's mind, a tinge, not merely of that
'madness' which is so nearly allied to 'great wit,' but of 'hereditary
melancholy,' which ran, like a subtil poison, through all its mazes, and
broke out alternately in self-accusation, enhanced (as in many such cases)
by the pleasure of producing a sensation, and in a grim, if not ferocious,
and (so to say) freakish merriment, the very reverse of romance and enthu-
siasm while it lasted, that may well have amazed, terrified, and disenchanted
a young and inexperienced, although noble-spirited, woman like Lady Byron.
This last consideration, the morbid tinge which, not amounting to insanity
proper, renders such men liable to abnormal conditions of temper and con-
duct, subjecting them to unmerited constructions, * * * may
seriously modify any conclusion come to from Lady Anne [Barnardj's
narrative.
Lady Anne Barnard thus writes of the marriage of Lord and
Lady Byron.
They had not been an hour in the carriage which conveyed them from
the church when, breaking into a malignant sneer, ' Oh ! what a dupe you
have been to your imagination. How is it possible a woman of your sense
could form the wild hope of reforming me? Many are the tears you will
have to shed ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough for me that you
are my wife for me to hate you ; if you were the wife of any other man I
own you might have charms,' * &c.
Many were the sallies he made on her in that spirit, some of
which seemed to have vacillated between jest and earnest, and
* This admirative reflection strongly recals Lamia's reply to Titus,
who had been advising him to take a second wife, Domitian having
appropriated the first : /j?) ko'i av yajAtjaat Qf\uQ ; — as if the Prince himself
were looking out for an eligible partner.
Shakespeare : the Book. 133
some were mere admirable acting, what he called 'philosophical
experiments,' which were intended to serve no other end than
to make her understand that he had mastered her, or seen
through her, and despised her for her simplicity. His assumed
insanity, too, is curiously illustrative of Hamlet's. 'He would
then,' writes Lady Anne Barnard, ' accuse himself of being
mad, and throw himself on the ground in a frenzy.' Again,
' he has wished to be thought partially deranged, or on the
brink of it, to perplex observers and prevent them from tracing
effects to their real causes through all the intricacies of his
conduct.' In all this he over-acted the part of Hamlet, and
shewed himself more selfish and malignant than the Dane; yet
the two characters have many points of contact. The man of
knightly breeding, while he shows no mercy to the meannesses
and vices of human nature, habitually and delightedly treats its
infirmities with gentleness and compassion. The pretty follies
and naive mischief of the child, the weaknesses of the woman
and the foibles of the old are alike the objects of his affectionate
consideration. To recur once more to fiction for the illustration
of this point : we may note how in De Quincey's Avenger it
is said, that Margaret's filial tenderness for her old grandfather
was not only on her dead mother's account, but that he was
himself ' continually making more claims on her pity, as the
decay of his memory and a childish fretfulness growing upon
him from day to day marked his increasing imbecility.' Again
we may call to mind that exquisite touch of knightly breeding
which Mrs. Gaskell imparts to her poor farmer-lad, Will Leigh,
who seeing a half-drunken old man, who was being mocked by
134 Shakespeare: the Book.
a crowd of juvenile Hamlets for the unsteadiness of his gait,
took care of him and escorted him home. ' For his £own]
father's sake Will regarded old age with tenderness, even when
most degraded and removed from the stern virtues which digni-
fied that father.' {Lizzie Leigh, p. 10.) To such a feeling as
that Hamlet is an utter stranger. As it seems to me a selfish
conceit infests his every thought and action. To him an old
man who had run to belly was known by the familiar sobriquet
of 'guts,' and his shrunken, feeble legs and rheumy eyes were
to him nothing but the fruits of intemperance and unchastity.
For my part, I know not how any man of right feeling can
find sufficient excuses for Hamlet's perverse humour, in the
disappointment of his young ambition and the sensitiveness
of his organisation. His temperament and his surroundings
may help us to explain his eccentricities, but hardly to excuse
them.
Allowing, as I do, that the excess of reflection in Hamlet
was a factor in his irresolution and procrastination, there
is still another factor, and one that is a special motive to
that particular line of conduct which he pursued; viz., his own
selfish interest. The disappointment and humiliation which
he suffers in consequence of his uncle's election provoke a
sentiment which has two poles: hatred of the supplanter and
desire of redress. So far forth any promptings he might have
to remove by violence the obstacle in the path of his ambition
are neutralized by the fear of damaging his own chance of
succession. Then comes the Ghost's injunction in corrobora-
tion of the former pole; and in the first passion of indignation
Shakespeare: the Book. 135
and grief Hamlet is capable enough to execute the vengeance
to which he is thus doubly incited. But, unlike the preceding
motives, this added motive is liable to diminution by lapse
of time. All such impressions wear away, unless renewed, as
Coleridge well remarks of the terrors of a popular revolution.*
The lesson, however startling, is soon forgotten. In Hamlet's
case, the first impression of the Ghost's visit is strong and deep ;
but it soon begins to wane. Finding this to be the case, and
seeking to blind himself to the fact, that his newly formed
purpose is being blunted, the Prince pretends that he may be
the dupe of an evil spirit : his uncle may be innocent : the
Ghost may have been a messenger from hell or an infernal
hallucination. ' I'll have proof more relative than this,' he
exclaims. The device of the play removes the scruple, and
then Hamlet tries to make himself believe that he is as hot
for revenge as when the Ghost left him. ' Now could I drink
hot blood.' But it is all poor acting. The second visit of the
Ghost deepens the impression, which, however, is destined
again to fade into insignificance. The prince's self-interest
has still the ascendancy, and remains the dominant motive
to the end of the play. He kills Polonius, hastily judging him
to be the King, and thinking that if it were any other eaves-
dropper it would not much matter. Whoever it was, ' the
situation would excuse the act ; but he will not do it when the
King is at prayers, because he fears the consequences of such
an open murder.' f We may be sure he would now, without
* Coleridge's Friend, 1844, vol. i, p. 244.
t These are the words of Mr. A. E. Brae, in a letter to myself, dated
28th November, 1853.
136 Shakespeare: the Book.
any additional motive, have killed the King, if he could have
done so without danger to his succession. Whatever is a bar
to his self-interest or promotion is doomed to be destroyed
• with safest haste.' He knew, for instance, that Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern were wholly innocent of participating in the
design against his life : but he had the opportunity of silencing
them without compromising himself, and he was not the man
to let it slip: and having accomplished their destruction he
does not find them near his conscience, because 'they made
love to their employment.' *
* This fragment was the only written part of a dissertation originally
designed for a volume of Shakespeare Essays, by various authors, which
never saw the light.
CHAPTER IX.
SOME PASSAGES REPRIEVED.
INCE the publication of Shakespeare Hermmeutics in
1875, several isolated criticisms have been brought
under my notice which might well have been included
in that volume. Most of these relate to passages in A Winter's
Tale and Cymbeline, a pair of plays which having been written
about the same time, probably in 161 1, present many features
in common, and aptly illustrate what we may call the meta-
dimax of Shakespeare's genius. At this time he had written
his greatest comedy, Measure for Measure, and his five greatest
tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and
Coriolanus ; and probably also The Tempest, in which the signs
of decadence, both in grammatical construction and in metre,
are most strongly marked. The other criticisms deal with
passages in As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra. These
we will dispose of first.
T
138 Shakespeare: the Book.
I. — As You Like It, act ii, sc. 1.
Duke Sen. Now my coe-mates, and brothers in exile :
Hath not old custome made this life more sweete
Then that of painted pompe ? Are not these woods
More free from perill then the envious Court ?
Here feele we not the penaltie of Adam,
The seasons difference, as the Icie phange
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blowes upon my body
Even till I shrinke with cold, I smile, and say
This is no flattery : these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am :
On the assumption that there is no misprint in this text, three
interpretations have been suggested.
1. That of Boswell (the continuator of M alone), who
proposed to take feel in the sense of feel injuriously or suffer
from : as to which it is sufficient to refer to the last line, where
to 'feelingly persuade' is obviously to persuade by means so
painful as to be comparable to the bite of a venomous creature :
so that the Duke could not consistently say
Here feele we not [injuriously] the penaltie of Adam
if that penalty was the vicissitudes of the seasons.
2. It has been proposed to understand by ' the penaltie of
Adam,' bodily labour, but this makes nonsense of the after-
passage commencing with ' the seasons difference : ' besides
which a passage in Paradise Lost, book x, line 651, and Bp.
Newton's note on lines 668 et seq., attest the prevalence of the
old scholastic doctrine that the changes of the seasons was
the immediate consequence of Adam's fall.
SJiakcspcarc : the Book. 139
3. The last and most rational of the attempts which have
been made to interpret the unaltered text is that of Mr. C. J.
Monro, who wrote to me, under date November 17, 1874, as
follows :
All I can say is that, as it seems to me, the directest sense is got by
retaining not and making the sentence interrogative. Interrogative — because
the Duke cannot wish to affirm that they feel not, etc. : and retaining not —
because but would only fit in if he wished to minimize what they feel,
whereas that is not his intention in the relative words. But this only
shows that you thus get the directest sense : for I cannot reconcile myself to
the interrogation, because it makes the sentence an enigma for the last five
lines. So if it is really true that not and but are often interchanged (at
least, if not is often put for but), I should incline to Theobald's emendation.
Reading but, I suppose the Duke to mean
'Now that we are away from the Court, we do not feel ourselves among
the perils of envy and hatred [and flattery]: we only feel the weakness
entailed, by Adam's transgression, upon humanity, and it does one good to
be made to feel this.''
But there seems to me something too jaunty in setting out with a but
with the sense of only ; so I am not quite satisfied any way.
However we may regulate and interpret the passage, there
is certainly a hitch; but it is to me very questionable whether
the hitch be sufficiently great to justify verbal emendation.
Assuredly if emendation be resorted to Theobald's conjecture
is very plausible. But probably sufficient justification might
be found for now in the place of ' not ' : now referring to the
present time of winter, after which the ' penaltie ' would be no
longer felt 1
140 Shakespeare: the Book.
II. — //v./, act ii, sc. 6.
Jaques. ■ . O that I were a foole,
I am ambitious for a motley coat.
Duke Sea. Thou shalt have one.
Jaques. It is my only suite,
Provided that you weed your better judgements
Of all opinion that growes ranke in them,
That I am wise. I must have liberty
Withall, as large a Charter as the winde,
To blow on whom I please, for so fooles have :
And they that are most gauled with my folly,
They most must laugh : And why sir must they so ?
The why is plaine as way to Parish Church : *
Hee, that a Foole doth very wisely hit,
Doth, very foolishly, although he smart
Seeme senselesse of the bob. If not,
The Wise-man's folly is anathomiz'd
Even by the squandering glances of the foole.
Invest me in my motley : Give me leave
To speake my minde, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foule bodie of th' infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
I here give the disputed passage with as much of the
immediate context as will serve to explain it. When I gave
my brief interpretation in Shakespeare Hermeneutics, pp. 81, 82,
I was hopeful, too hopeful as the event showed, of carrying
every reader with me. I must own to no little regret that
such an able exponent of Shakespeare as Mr. W. Aldis Wright
should find my interpretation inadmissible. (See the Clarendon
* Unfortunately Shakespeare's commentators have not found it so.
Theobald missed the way ; and all but a certain worthy named Whiter
followed Theobald, and went astray.
Shakespeare : the Book. 141
Press Edition of As You Like Lt, pp. 115-116.) Were I
engaged in the restoration of a corrupt text, I should regard
the prolonged discussion of a verbal emendation as too sug-
gestive of ' the mountain in labour.' But the defence and
exposition of a passage in the Folio text stand on a very
different footing; and I shall make no apology for restating
the argument on which I rely for the interpretation of Jaques'
speech.
The wind is the symbol of lawlessness. It blows where it
listeth, and upon whom it listeth, not seldom inflicting pain
with its 'icy fang and churlish chiding.' The moral of As You
Like It is, the lesson conveyed in so many verbal forms, that
such evils are but ' the penalty of Adam,' ' that feelingly
persuade us what we are.'
In Henry V, i, 1, we read,
When he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still.
So Jaques asks for
' as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please.'
He demands the fool's privilege of taking random shots, of
uttering indiscriminate and general censure. Mr. Staunton
had this passage in mind when he proposed tax as a substitute
for wax in Timon of Athens, i, 1,
My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of tax. No level'd malice
Infects one comma of the course I hold.
142 SJiakcspcarc : tJtc Book.
So Jaques, in his diatribe on pride of dress and the love of
bravery (which follows the passage under consideration), says :
if it [my tongue] do him right,
Then he hath wrong' d himself: if he be free,
Why then my taxing like a wild-goose flies,
Unclaim'd of any man.
The advantage of this course is, that no one can take offence
without admitting the applicability of the hit to himself.
And they that are most galled with my folly,
They most must laugh : And why, Sir, must they so ?
Then Jaques proceeds to show ' the why.' He follows Euclid's
method, in first restating the proposition in another form, and
then proving it by reduciio ad absurdum. The following is the
enunciation of the proposition to be proved :
He, that a fool doth very wisely hit,
Doth* . . (although he smart)
Seem senseless of the bob.
This is proved as follows :
If not,
The . man's folly is anatomiz'd
Even by the squandering glances of the fool.
Which I may paraphrase in these words :
If you deny it, let us suppose that, because he smarts, he does not seem
senseless of the bob, but winces under it : now he thereby shows that he
* This ' doth ' is merely auxiliary : cf.
'Doth very foolishly seem senseless' &c,
and ' Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.'
Hamlet, i, 2.
Shakespeare: the Book. 143
is a 'galled jade,' that one of the fool's blows has wrung him; and
accordingly he is anatomized,* i. e., his faults are shown up, even by the
random hits of the fool. But no man in his senses would do this. There-
fore etc., Q.E.D.
It will be observed that I have omitted some words in the
foregoing quotations. I am sensible that I laid too great an
emphasis upon 'very foolishly' and 'wise' in the brief exposition
I gave in Shakespeare Hermenentics, p. 81. I now see plainly
that neither qualification is essential to the sense. The assailant
being ' a fool,' the assailed is considered as ' wise.' The fool is
said to hit 'very wisely' when he hits a blot,t and therefore by
similar contrast the sufferer is said to act 'very foolishly.' This
is perhaps all the weight we should lay on these qualifications.
At the same time, it should be recognised that they will carry
more. The assailed may well be called wise if he does not
betray his folly by wincing under the lash. Yet, for all that, he
cannot help feeling very foolish in dissembling his mortification.
He is thus made to feel foolish in acting wisely, and the fool
makes him act wisely by making him conscious of his folly.
* Cf. Oliver's speech to Charles in act i, sc. I.
I speake but brotherly of him, but should I anathomize him to thee, as
hee is, I must blush and weep, and thou must looke pale and wonder.
Also the following lines in Dryden's prologue to "Julius Caesar :
Cf. Johnson with skill dissected human kind,
And shew'd their faults, that they their faults might find ;
But then, as all anatomists must do,
He to the meanest of mankind did go,
And took from gibbets such as he would show.
t The more the pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men
do foolishly. — As You Like It, i, 2.
144 Shakespeare: the Hook.
Mr. Aldis Wright records three objections to my inter-
pretation of this passage.
First. — ' It is not said that the fool doth wisely in hitting a
wise man.' I allow this and take the consequences.
Secondly. — ' Dr. Ingleby's explanation would seem to require
'because he smarts' instead of 'although he smarts,' as showing
how it is that the wise man's dissimulation is foolish or awkward.'
Mr. Aldis Wright here mistakes my reading of the passage.
He supposes me to take 'although he smart' (not 'smarts') as
qualifying ' very foolishly,' whereas I take it as qualifying ' doth
seem senseless of the bob.' The wise man dissembles the smart
although he feels it ; and this, notwithstanding that he does it
foolishly because he feels it.
Thirdly. — The reading I stand by is (in Mr. Aldis Wright's
view) a mere repetition of what Jaques has just said —
And he that is most galled with my folly
He most must laugh.
If this objection were of the least validity it would be a
ground for the emendation of every proposition in Euclid
which is proved by reductio ad absurdum : his method being to
state the proposition in its generality showing the thing to be
proved ; then to restate it in its application to the method of
proof, and lastly, to trace the consequences of denying it. The
only difference, in fact, between Euclid and Jaques lies in this,
that Jaques proves the general proposition in order to sub-
stantiate a particular application of it : a difference which gives
the repetition the fullest justification. In point of fact, Jaques'
proof beginning ' If not ' is inconsequent unless it follows the
Shakespeare : the Book. 145
particular affirmative statement ; and Theobald's emendation,
which Mr. Aldis Wright accepts, viz. —
Doth very foolishly although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not, &c.
saddles the passage with a glaring solecism which we have no
right to impute to Shakespeare : who, to convey the sense
required by Theobald, would have written (but for the metre)
Would do very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob. If so, &c.
III. — In Antony and Cleopatra, ii, 2, Caesar brings a series of
charges against Antony, the first of which is on this wise :
Your wife and brother
Made wars upon me ; and their contestation
Was theme for you, you were the word of war.
This Antony denies, and adds —
If you'll patch a quarrel,
As matter whole you have to make it with,
It must not be with this.
Ctzs. You praise yourself
By laying defects of judgment to me; but
You patch'd up your excuses.
Rowe introduced the word not after ' you have;' and in this lie
was supported by Dr. Johnson, Malone and nearly all the
editors: and all modern editions read
As matter whole you have not to make it with.
The words, as they stand in the Folio,
As matter whole you have to make it with,
U
1 46 Sha kt 'spi 'are : the Bo< <k .
admit of grammatical analysis in two ways : either ' matter
whole' is the objective governed by 'you have,' as all the
editors would read it; or ' matter whole' is governed by 'with,'
and ' you have ' is not the verb of possession, but the verb of
obligation. If Shakespeare meant, as I believe, to employ the
verb have in the latter sense, he could not have arranged the
words in any other way than that in which they have come
down to us, without either misleading construction or faulty
prosody.
As you have matter whole to make it with
would be misleading; for every one would make 'matter whole'
the objective to ' you have : ' and
As you have to make it with whole matter
would not be metrical. I observe that the use of the verb have
in the sense of obligation is not uncommon with Shakespeare,
Wishing Adonis had his team to guide. ( Venus and Adonis, 1. 179.)
/'. e., wishing Adonis, instead of making love, had to look after
his team.
Antony refers to former letters, and Caesar to former
excuses : so that when Antony speaks of patching the quarrel,
he means that the quarrel has been already worn out by
discussion. Caesar ought (he says) to be able to adduce a new
and entire ground of complaint : but that if he will patch up
the old quarrel he must do it with something else than the pre-
tence that Antony's wife and brother have made wars upon him.
Shakespeare : the Book. 147
It is almost impossible to anticipate and provide against
all objections. I foresee one, as to the use of the conjunction
' as ' in the second line. It is what I call the conjunction of
reminder, being employed by Shakespeare and his contempo-
raries to introduce a subsidiary statement, qualifying, or even
contradicting, what goes before, which the person addressed is
required to take for granted, e. g.,
Though you have no beauty,
As by my faith I see no more in you, etc.
As You Like It.
Admit no other way to save his life,
As I subscribe not that nor any other, etc.
Measure for Measure.
Say this becomes him,
As his composure must be rare indeed, etc.
Antony and Cleopatra.
This conclusive interpretation of the text was proposed to
me by Professor Sylvester, the world-renowned mathematician.
After this, an editor who shall reprint the text with Rowe's
emendation will only have the excuse of ignorance.
IV. — There is a passage at the end of the first act of A
Winter's Tate which has usually been regarded as the seat of
an incurable corruption, though it lias been variously tinkered
with a view to its restoration. Polixenes says :
Feare ore-shades me :
Good Expedition be my friend, and comfort
The gracious Queene, part of his Theame ; but nothing
Of his ill-ta'ne suspition.
14S Shakespeare : the Book.
So runs the text of the Folio 1623. I see no advantage in
repeating the various alterations which have been suggested.
Let it suffice to say that Steevens understood 'comfort' as a
verb governing ' nothing,' and quotes Paulina's remark as to
' comforting his evils.' Warburton read Queen's for ' Queene,'
meaning '[let] comfort [be] the gracious queen's [friend]:' and
one of the latest critics privately proposed to me to put a
point after 'comfort,' taking 'comfort' (like Warburton) as a
substantive. For myself, I will not attempt to pronounce on
the merit of such conjectures; for I labour under the disquali-
fication of not being able to see in the passage anything
whatsoever requiring alteration. I see in it a fine example of
Shakespeare's terseness, and two archaic phrases.
1. As to the terseness of the phrase
Good expedition be my friend, and comfort
The gracious Queene,
surely this means ' Let both of us make good speed.' On this,
compare the expression ' the Queen's speed ' in act iii, sc. 2.
The sentence may be thus paraphrased : ' Let me have good
speed for my friend, and the Queen have good speed for her
comfort.' Polixenes stood in pressing need of friendly help, to
enable him to escape his enemy Leontes ; and Hermione stood
in special need of eomfort to enable her in her present physical
condition to sustain the troubles consequent on her husband's
jealousy.
2. The one archaic phrase is to be part of, meaning, to
contribute to. Thus, in Posthumus' soliloquy on Death in
Cymbeline, v, 4 :
Shakespeare : the Book. 149
If of my freedom 'tis the main part,
i. e., if my death will mainly contribute to my freedom, &c.
Compare also the King's words in Cymbeline, act iv, sc. 3 :
' Imogen, the great part of my comfort, gone.' The king's
' theame ' was of the Queen and Polixenes : each contributed
to it, as he himself says in act ii, sc. 3,
part o' the cause, [/. e. , of his grief]
She, the adultress : for the harlot king
Is quite beyond mine arm.
'The harlot king' was the other part of his 'theame.'
But there yet remains the obsolete expression —
but nothing
Of his ill-ta'ne suspition.
To be something of is the same as to be part of; i. e., to con-
tribute to : and to be nothing of is not to contribute to. Thus,
in Antony and Cleopatra, ii, 2, Antony says —
Let this fellow
Be nothing of our strife :
and Malone quotes from Twelfth Night, iii, 4, these words :
Do me this courteous office, as to know of the knight, what my offence
to him is : it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.
V. — Cymbeline, act. iv, sc. 11.
Belarius, speaking of Cloten, says,
Being scarse made up,
I meane to man ; he had not apprehension
Of roaring terrors ; For defect of judgement
Is oft the cause of Feare. (Folio 1623.)
1 50 Shakespeare : the Book.
Theobald says of this, ' Cloten was defective in judgment, and
therefore did not fear. Apprehensions of fear grow from a
judgment in weighing danger : and a very easy change from
the traces of the letters gives us this sense, and reconciles the
reasoning of the whole passage.' So he proposes
For ttt effect of judgment
Is oft the cause of fear :
and this exceedingly ingenious and intelligent emendation has
met with almost universal adoption. Hanmer, however, retained
' defect ' and read ' cure of fear : ' Staunton conjectured sauce for
'cause;' Dr. B. Nicholson, loss; Dr. Cartwright, salve; Professor
Dowden, cease; and Mr. Joseph Crosby, the act for 'defect.'
Knight, adopting an anonymous conjecture made in 1814, reads
he had not apprehension
Of roaring terrors for [/. e., on account of] defect of judgment,
As [being] oft the cause of fear :
which suggests to me the strained and creaking timbers of a
vessel in a storm. Professor Sylvester was so good as to send
me his interpretation of this disputed passage; and the moment
I had read it such a flood of light burst upon my mind, that I
instantly knew he had for ever redeemed the Folio text from
emendation. I put his interpretation into form, adding to it
some corroborative notes of my own, and sent it to Mr. Crosby,
of Zanesville, the proposer of one of the above-recorded emend-
ations. He withdrew his conjecture, and published my letter
to him in The American Bibhopolist of October, 1876. The
following is reprinted from that paper, with the addition of the
two passages in Richard III and Coriolanus.
Shakespeare : the Book. 151
" The passage from Cymbeline seems to have stimulated
your ingenuity rather than approved itself to your judgment.
It is one of the most instructive in all Shakespeare, being one
in which a phrase, not in itself obsolete, has lost the special sense
it once had; and with the knowledge of that, the sense is abso-
lutely perfect. The phrase in question is ' defect of judgment,'
which all commentators have taken to mean the total absence of
judgment, whereas it means the defective use of judgment. They
were betrayed into this mistake by another; interpreting the
phrase ' scarce made up to man ' as if it referred to Cloten's
youth ('before he arrived to man's estate,' says Knight), whereas
Cloten was a middle aged man ; and almost the same phrase is
applied to Richard III (act i, sc. 1).
Deform'd, unfinisht, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up.
On the contrary, the phrase ' made up to man,' signified — in
the full possession of a man's judgment; and when it is said
that a certain person is ' scarce made up,' or ' scarce half
made up/ it means that he had not all his buttons, or had
not a man's judgment. Cloten, being scarce made up, took
no heed of terrors that roared loud enough for men with their
wits about them, and thus he braved danger; for it is the
defective use of judgment (when men have any) which is oft
the cause of fear. Compare the phrase 'defect of judgment'
in Coriolanus, iv, 7,
whether defect of judgment
To fail in the disposing of those chances
Which lie was lord of;
15- Shakespeare: the Hook.
and 'defects of judgment' in Antony and Cleopatra, ii, 2. A
man without reason is fearless in the presence of imminent
danger; a man with reason in perfection is equally fearless
if his reason shows him the means of escape, for ' fear is
nothing else but a betraying of the succours which reason
offereth,' and therefore cannot be where reason is not. I am
quoting from the Wisdom of Solomon, chap, xvii, verse 12."
I would add, there is no need for the most scrupulous
reasoner to be solicitous about the logic of Belarius' reflection.
'For' is, indeed, the illative conjunction, but need not be
strained to the full logical force. It is sufficient if the clause
it introduces should have one of the senses of as: q.d. 'as,
on the contrary, it is defect in that very faculty which Cloten's
manhood had never reached, that is often the cause of fear
in those who possess it.'
CHAPTER X.
THE SOULE ARAYED.*
He gave them their desire, and sent leanness withal into their souls.
Psalm cvi, 14.
N a golden evening in August last [187 1], for the first
time in my life, I joined the gleaners in our own corn-
fields, — nos, non nobis: for, of course, I left my little
sheaf with some of the daughters of toil who were gathering up
the ears within the boundary of staves. To glean with the
gleaners has great promise : but to glean after the gleaners has
little or none. We know, to our cost, what it is to wade through
the literature of Elizabeth and James; and also the delight of
bearing off a scanty sheaf, of passages not yet utilized, for the
elucidation or illustration of Shakespeare's text. He who gleans
after the gleaners learns to be thankful for modest gains. Think
how Lazarus would have fared if Dives had kept a dog upon
* This was a privately printed letter to Mr. Howard Staunton, in 1S72.
X
154 Shakespeare: the Book.
the crumbs which fell from his table I Well : the editor of
Shakespeare, who should depend upon the fruit of original
research, would have but little advantage over such a beggar.
In these days, of all literary insects, it is the spider, not the
bee, that makes a good thing of it.
In the fair fields of that literature the gleaning was done
with the utmost vigilance and patience by that generation of
critics who, from Steevens to Dyce, have thereby laid upon us
so heavy a debt, but hitherto have been usually repaid by
abuse. It has been the fashion to call them a herd, to dub
them criticasters, to sneer at their dulness, and laugh at their
verbosity. It is true that some of them might have done
their work with more temper, othersome with less arrogance,
and yet a few with better judgment or stricter integrity. But
the labour was incurred, and the fruits of their study and
research are our inheritance.
In the following pages I bring before you the evidences on
which I have, as I believe, restored a line in Shakespeare's
146th Sonnet. A tractate devoted to the study of a single line
will to many seem in the last degree absurd. That ingenious
man, the late Mr. N. J. Halpin, was laughed at in The Times
for having written a book on a single passage in A Midsummer
Night's Dream : and I dare say many have made themselves
merry at Mr. J. O. Phillipps' expense, for having written a
pamphlet on a single line in Cymbeline. Critics need to have
thick skins (more than one a piece, perhaps,) if they are to run
the gauntlet at a Fools' Tourney. Our consolation is this : that
we are quite capable of uniting the Artist and the Analyst,
Shakespeare : the Book. 155
just as the sculptor knows the anatomy as well as feels the
beauty of the human form. If we sometimes cannot ' see
the wood for the trees,' we know that we have only to withdraw
from the work of analysis to catch the glory of the whole. But
however able we may be to appreciate that glory, it is our
chosen walk to study the wood itself, I mean the wood which
the ordinary spectator cannot see for the bark which covers it.
It is, unfortunately, true that the timber has suffered excoria-
tion and consequent decay, and that the exposed recesses have
become the prey of an army of woodlice, who, if they had their
way (I do not say their will), would make ruin of the old trees.
It is the critic's duty to cleanse the corrupt recesses and to
heal the breaches which have been made in the integrity of
the timber. But none the less are we able to rejoice in that
majesty which only looms at a distance.
In the case to which I now call your attention the gleaning
was efficiently done nearly thirty years ago by Mr. Dyce; yet
unlike Time, in Johnson's absurd lines, I did not ' toil after
him in vain,' for I added an ear of corn to his sheaf. But
through inattention to the requirements of the text, a remissness
to which every critic is occasionally liable, it never occurred to
him to question the purity of the received reading, nor to con-
sider its relation to his own industry. The fact is that all
collections of instances, in illustration of particular words and
phrases, possess a potential virtue — an 'unknown worth,' like
Love, in Shakespeare's n 6th Sonnet.
The Sonnet to which I now wish to direct your attention
is thus given in the 4to i6oy —
156 Shakespeare: the Book.
146.
Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth,
My sinfull earth these rebbel powres that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay ?
Why so large cost having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ?
Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse
Eate up thy charge? is this thy bodies end ?
Then soule live thou upon thy servants losse
And let that pine to aggravat thy store ;
Buy tearmes divine in selling houres of drosse :
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, ther's no more dying then.
The second line of this Sonnet is allowed on all hands to
be corrupt. It is not sense, and it is too long by two syllables.
Now the repetition of the three words 'my sinful earth' naturally
suggests the source of the corruption and a simple mode of
cure. With one or two exceptions all the critics have treated
those words at the beginning of the second line as a printer's
reduplication. I wish I could say, una litura potest : but unfor-
tunately the omission of those three words does not afford
a perfect remedy, for the line is then deficient by two syl-
lables. Malone supplied these by the words FooPd by, reading
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
FooPd by those rebel powers that thee array,
by which, of course, he meant that it was the soul, not the
earth, that is so fooled. His selection of the verb was ap-
parently determined by the following considerations. It is
Shakespeare : the Book. 157
asked why the soul spends so much upon the decoration of
a mansion which she must so soon quit. Now Malone took
arraying the soul to mean adorning the body (!), and understood
that the soul herself was induced to commit this wasteful vanity
at the suggestion of certain rebel powers, to wit, the lusts of
the flesh ; for in that line it is they who are credited with the
decoration ! It is plain then that the soul is trepanned, tricked,
or fooled by them. So he chose the last word because it ade-
quately expresses this meaning, and — what is a most weighty con-
sideration in emending so rhythmical a writer as Shakespeare
— gives energy and melody to the verse. Malone's reading has
been acquiesced in by nearly all subsequent editors. Even Mr.
Dyce follows it, retaining, however, ' these ' which Malone had
altered into those. But it is founded on a foregone conclusion.
Of course, if it be clearly conveyed in the unaltered sonnet
that the rebel powers do stultify the soul in the matter of her
raiment, the reading is admissible, if not actually justified. But
so far from this being the case, apart from the second line,
those powers are not once mentioned ; but the soul herself is
said to deck and paint not herself but her tenement. Mean-
while, then, what are the rebel powers about? What is it that
usually occupies rebel powers 1 Surely not the decoration of
the enemy's fortress, but the consumption of the enemy's stores,
the siege, or the assault. It is one of those three destructive
operations which one would have looked for in Shakespeare's
line: and after all, is it not there?
These considerations preclude any such interpretation as
Malone's. Before they occurred to me I had tried to supple-
158 Shakespeare: the Book.
ment the defective line in many ways, supplying e.g., Foil' d by,
SpoiVd by, and Sport of. I afterwards found that Steevens
had proposed to read
Stan^d by the rebel powers &c,
that the author of The Sonnets of Wm. Shakspere rearranged
and divided into four parts reads
Slave of these rebel powers &c,
and that the Cambridge editors record an 'anon, conj.,' which
runs thus,
Thrall to these rebel powers &c.
I have since encountered one of my own cast-offs in the Gem
Edition of the Sonnets, where Mr. F. T. Palgrave reads,
FoiVd by the rebel powers &c.
I may add that an American critic {Remarks on the Sonnets of
Shakespeare, [by E. A. H., of Washington City] 1865, p. 60) calls
the rebel powers ' the arraigning powers ; ' by which expression
he may possibly have intended a covert allusion to ' array : "
but even he follows Malone's reading.
It was, I think, no slight gain to have perceived that Malone
had forced on the second line an incongruous metaphor; that
the rebel powers could not have been represented as putting
raiment on the soul ; for the soul's raiment is ' the muddy
vesture of decay,' and that is not wrought by them, but too
often destroyed by them : and that the supposition that they
discharge so strange an office receives no support from the
fourth line. It was, however, a far more important step to
detect the required sense in the corrupt line.
Shakespeare : the Book. 159
I will relate how I came to take the second step. Mr. Dyce
had elaborately prepared himself to make this discovery, years
before I had studied the sonnet, by the most accurate discrimi-
nation of three verbs pronounced alike, whereof two (if not
all three) have the same orthography. The word pronounced
array is an equivoke for three distinct verbs.
(1) Array, to put raiment on anyone.
(2) Array, to put in array (or in battle-array).
(3) Aray, or array, to afflict or ill-treat.
Mr. Dyce had done more : he had collected seven early
instances of the last verb; yet he failed to perceive that the
verb in the corrupt line is not the first of those three verbs,
nor yet the second, but the third !
Mr. Gerald Massey, in his big book on Shakespeare's
Sonnets, made one step in the right direction ; but unhappily
made another in a wrong direction. He saw far more than
Mr. Dyce. It was plain to him that the first array was not
the verb used in that sonnet. But having reached this conclu-
sion, he spoiled all by attempting to impose the second array
on the corrupt line. This he did by retaining the three first
words, which every critic had discarded as a reduplicative mis-
print, and the following is the text adopted by him :
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, —
My sinful earth these rebel powers array —
Thus making the second line an impertinent parenthesis, and
stultifying the demonstrative pronoun (these) by rejecting the
only words which shew who the rebel powers are. What rebel
powers'? asks the reader; and here no answer is given in the
i6o Shakespeare: the Hook.
text or by the critic. Besides this objection, every reader of
taste must feel that the speaker having addressed his (or her)
soul in the first line, preparatory to asking her, why she pines
and starves within her fading mansion, would not have arrested
the course of his (or her) thought by an interpolation having no
connection, grammatical or substantive, with the rest of the
sonnet. For my part, had the sonnet thus appeared in Thorpe's
4to, I should have marked it with an obelus: still less can
I allow such writing to be imposed upon Shakespeare, when
his publisher has not given it the sanction of print.
While thus condemning Mr. Massey's reconstruction, I
honour him for having had one true insight. He saw that the
maintenance and adornment of the soul's ' fading mansion ' is
not the direct work of the ' rebel powers ' but of the soul
herself. At the same time, I must add that his original insight
seems to have suffered from his not perceiving that the verb
array in that place cannot be an equivoke. His words are
" These ' rebel powers ' do not array the soul; they are of the
flesh; they array his sinful earth. 'Array' here does not [only]
mean dress, I think it [also] signifies that in the flesh these rebel
powers set their battle in array against the soul " (Shakespeare's
Sonnets never before interpreted: 1866, p. 379). The words I
have put in square brackets should have been omitted. Their
presence asserts that the letters a.r.r.a.y may stand for two dis-
tinct words. I take the last sentence of the extract as an
illustration, not an analysis, of the proposed reconstruction ;
for of course he never could have believed that Shakespeare,
had he written
SJiakespcare : the Book. 161
My sinful earth these i - ebel powers array,
intended array to be understood in the sense of
Set (their) battle in array in —
i. e., in the flesh or sinful earth. If he did, however, I need offer
him no apology for rescuing his reconstruction from a non-
sensical interpretation.
A German critic, D. Barnstoff (A Key to Shakespeare's
Sonnets, translated by T. J. Graham: 1862, p. 202), retaining
the two words rejected by Mr. Massey, takes the verb array
to mean
Set (themselves) in array against —
for he makes Shakespeare paraphrase the second line (as it
stands in Thorpe's 4to) in these words — 'and by the term
sinful earth I mean these human instincts, desires, passions,
which set themselves in array against the noble ambition to
excel.'
Having at length swept away all considerations supporting
the assumption, that array in the 146th Sonnet means to put
raiment on, or that it means to set in array, I proceed to
consider the third interpretation : viz., that it means to afflict
or ill-treat. In this sense to aray, or array, is an old word,
seemingly cognate with ray and beray ; and the three forms,
1. aray, 2. ray, 3. beray, mean pretty nearly the same thing,
though it is still an unsettled question what is the radical
concrete sense involved in them.
I note en passant that there are other verbs, wray and
Y
162 Shakespeare: the Book.
bewray, to disclose or manifest* These must not be confounded
with ray and beray. The latter word is common : e. g., ' but
our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge, that made him
beray his credit.' (T/ic Retinae from Pcrnassus, 1606. Act iv,
sc. 3.) ' that * * lets his sonnes be plaine Ladies puppets,
to beray a Ladies Chamber.' Ibid., act ii, sc. 5. ' he that
* * * makes a set speech to his greyhound, * * and
if the dog * * * chance to beray the rorae,' &c. Ibid.,
act ii, sc. 6. ' yet they do nothing but beray my house.'
Ibid., act iii, sc. 2.
As to aray, Mr. Dyce and Mr. Joseph Payne err, in different
directions, in assigning its radical meaning. Mr. Dyce (Edition
of Skelton's Works, 1843, v °l- l h P- l 9^) sa y s it means to dispose
of to treat. That is assuredly wrong. Mr. Payne (Studies in
English Prose, 1868, p. 51) says it means to soil with dirt.
While allowing that a physical sense is always more probable
than an emotional sense, I must say this particular sense is not
supported by any evidence. It is plain to me that the word is
used by all writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to
mean to ill-treat; and if that is only a 'second intention,' I do
not think we have yet discovered the first. Can it be to tear
* Examples of both verbs abound in the Elizabethan literature, e. g.,
' With sugred words he wraid his sutes at fill.'
G. Whetstone's Rock of Regard (The Castle of Delight).
' He not abasht the truth in wordes to wray.'
Ibid.
'And can those new Heads no new Witt bewray?'
J. Davies' Paper's Complaint.
Shakespeare : the Book. 163
(dechirer)?* Two or three of the subsequent examples suggest
this sense. Mr. Dyce founds his decision on Palsgrave's defini-
tion. 'A ray condicion or case — poynt? Mr. Payne founds his
* This conjecture implies that the radical sense of aray is to tear to
strips, or more generally to shred. In China it is the custom to aray their
worst malefactors in this radical fashion : the criminal's flesh being arayed,
i. e., slashed, or cut into strips, before he is crucified. Dr. Sebastian
Evans remonstrated with me upon a proposed etymology of this word ; and
the following remarks are extracted from his letter to me of Christmas, 1872.
"A ' ray' is a line, or streak, more particularly a line or streak described
from some centre or quasi-centre. Thus a hart ' runneth fast on his raies' —
i. e., lines of track; 'a bleeding hart the clean waves with purple gore did
ray' — i. e., streak with red rays; ' Grumio is rated' — i. e., streaked all over
with splashes, etc., etc. Rayed, in fact, came very often to mean splashed,
and if you look at a splash you will see why. Berayed accordingly means
splashed, and hence in a secondary sense defiled. Cf. in this connection to
'ray out,' rayer de sang, etc. Also, 'rayed with the yellows' as applied to
a horse: as to which see arra & ialo in Florio's New World of Words,
'applied to a horse that hath the laske.'
Now for array. It means —
1. to set in lines, rays, ranks, or rows.
2. to arrange in due order.
3. to adorn by arranging in due order.
4. (reflectively) to adorn oneself by arranging one's dress, etc., in due
order.
5. (generically) to clothe or dress any person or thing.
6. to put any person or thing into a certain state, plight or predicament.
I think this is the logical sequence of significances, but I don't exclude
others which may be given, and I feel that throughout the series there runs
a kind of under-current of meaning, conveying a sense of surrounding as
with rays."
I may add that Chaucer employs the substantive in the Prologue to his
Canterbury Tales, 11. 38 — 41, but apparently in the sense of order.
To tellen you alle the condition
Of eche of hem, so as it semed to me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degre ;
And eke in what araie that they were inne :
164 Shakespeare: the lunik.
on Palsgrave's example, ' Your govvne is foule arrayde ; ' and
adds, ' The word is rare ' — which it is not, but frequent with
writers of those centuries. It became obsolete early in the
seventeenth century. The following is Mr. Dyce's sheaf :
" WOFFUI.LY ARM I)
Is mentioned by our author [John Skelton] as one of his compositions in
the Garlande of Laurell, v, 1418, vol. i, 417.
With the opening of this piece compare Hawes's Convercyon of Swerers,
where Christ is made to exclaim,
' They newe agayne do hange me on the rode,
They tere my sydes, and are nothynge dysmayde,
My vvoundes they do open, and devoure my blode :
I, god and man, moost wofully arayde,
To you complayne, it maye not be denayde;
Ye nowe to lugge me, ye tere me at the roote,
Yet I to you am chefe refuyte and bote.'
and a little after,
' Why arte thou harde herted, &c. Sig. A iii, ed. n. d. 4to.
Barclay too has,
' Some sweareth amies, nayles, heart, and body,
Tearing our Lorde worse then the Jewes him arayde.'
The Ship of Fooles, fol. 33, ed. 1570.
IVoffully araid is, I believe, equivalent to — wofully disposed of or treated,
in a woful condition. 'Araye condicion or case — poynt.' Palsgrave's
Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr., 1530, fol. xviii. (Table of Subst.) — (and see
note, p. 164, v. 163.)
'Isaac. — What have I done, fader, what have I saide?
Abraham. — Truly, no kyns ille to me.
Isaac. — And thus gyltles shalle be arayde.'
Abraham, — Towneley Mysteries, p. 40.
' ITis [Tybert's] body was al to beten, and blynde on the one eye.
SJiakcspeare : the Book. 165
Whan the kyngewyste this, that tybert was thus arayed, he was sore angry,'
&c. — Reynard the Fox, sig. b 8, ed. 1481. Again, in the same romance,*
when Isegrym the wolf has received a kick on the head from a mare, he
says to Reynard, ' I am so foule arayed and sore hurte, that an herte of
stone might have pyte of me.' — Sig. f 4.
' Who was wyth love : more wofully arayed
Than were these twayne. '
Hawes's Pastiine of Pleasure, sig. I iiii, ed. 1555.
'I am fowle arayed with a chyne cowgh. Laceor pertussi.' — He was
sore arayed with sycknesse. Morbo atrociter conflictus est.'
Hormanni Vulgaria, sigs. H iii, I ii, ed. 1530."
To this sheaf, as I have said, I was enabled to add but one
ear (not counting the passage in Shakespeare's 146th Sonnet),
viz.,
'And on the morowe erly the ten men of armes came tofore the daulphyn
alle wounded and sore hurt. And they recounted to hym how two yonge
men onely had arayed them so and how they nedes must flee for fere of
theyrlyves.' — Par/sand Vienna, 1459, Caxton. Reprint, 1868. Roxburgh
Library, p. 47.
Richardson seems to me to go astray in giving, as the
radical meaning of aray, ' to cover, to cloak, to dress, to set in
order ; ' by which error he is naturally led to assign, as the sig-
nification of ray or beray (as Mr. Payne did, after him, of aray),
' to cover with dirt,' ' to dirty, to befoul, to bespatter with dirt.'
He quotes, however, two examples apparently in point from
Spenser's Faery Queen :
* From 'Isegrym the Wolf's Experiment in Reading.' 'Alas, Reynart !
alas ! said the wolf, I pray you to leve your mockyng. I am so foule
arayed,' Sec.
1 66 Shakespeare; the Book.
'And the cleane waves with purple gore did ray.'
B. ii, c. i.
'[Wypt] from his face the filth that did it ray?
B. vi, c. 5.
Of the form (abbreviated or radical, whichever it may turn
out to be) ray, two examples occur in the Taming of the Shrew,
iii, 2, and iv, 1, thus :
'His horse * * * rated with the yellowes.'
' Was ever man so beaten? was ever man so raideV
In these two passages Mr. Dyce interpreted the participle,
by comparing it in the former case with berayed, and in the
latter with a rayed; and he explains it as ' in evil condition,
afflicted.' With all this apparatus of learning, however, he failed
to perceive that when Shakespeare says,
' these rebel powers that thee [the soul] array,'
he is using exactly the same word; for it is just the lusts of the
flesh that (in the words of the Collect) ' assault and hurt the
soul,' i. e., array the soul by consuming that store which has
been already impoverished by her lavish expenditure on that
which profits her nothing.
I hold it therefore fully established that ' array ' in this
sonnet means ill-treat, or bring to an evil condition. This con-
clusion seems to necessitate another. Discarding the first three
words as an error of the press, it becomes evident that the use
of the pronoun ' thee ' in the defective line is conclusive against
the reflexion of the leading words to the soul. This is a matter
to be felt rather than reasoned out. If I could believe that
those words refer to the soul I should read,
Shakespeare : the Book. 167
Heart of these rebel powers that thee aray.
But even then, though I should evade the truism that Malone's
reading and others should foist into the line, the structure would
still be awkward. I most strongly feel that the leading words
must have a direct application to the proximate substantive,
1 earth,' and that the second line must be a justification of the
expression ' sinful earth,' which is otherwise out of relation with
the entire sonnet. I feel also that the second line ought to be
to the following effect :
Sinful earth, because it harbours powers that rebel against the
Soul, and are therefore sinful.
Now here I will be careful not to speak dogmatice, there
being so few data in the problem. Take the substantive seat
tentatively, and you will perfectly understand the reading I
desiderate in that line. Had Shakespeare written
Seate of these rebbel powres that thee aray
all would have been satisfactory, and the reading would have
received illustration from the 109th Sonnet, where the bard
says —
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, &c.
But it still seems that a more satisfactory sense would be
imparted to the passage if the earth were treated as the accom-
plice, than as the residence, of the rebel powers. While I was
endeavouring to restore the defective line, with a view to this
sense, Mr. A. E. Brae (who had been independently studying
the sonnet) communicated to me a correction which had at
1 68
Shakespeare: the Book.
length occurred to him, viz., Leagued with : so that the first
two lines would run thus :
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Leagued with these rebel powers that thee aray,
which reading strikes me as fulfilling every condition of the
case : it is the earth that is in league with the rebel powers,
and the earth itself is therefore called 'sinful.' Here we have
the flesh represented as leagued or compacted with its carnal
desires in the work of defrauding the soul of her rightful
nutriment, whereby she pines within and suffers dearth.
K N D.
aU.
3(iitcrcalatp |j)otc£.
-0 —
P. 36. I should have added, that Bishop Percy's interleaved copy of
Langbaine, in 4 vols., is now in the possession of Mr. A. Holt White, of
Clements Hall, Rochford.
P. 57. Note. — To the list of books on the Shakespeare and Bacon
Controversy, should be added, Shakespeare: from an American Point of View;
incltiding an Inquiry into his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law :
with the Baconian Theory considered, by George Wilkes. 1877.
P. 61. Exactly so, it is an argument against Shakespeare's authorship
of The Merry Devil of Edmonton (4:0, 1631), that there are in it passages
which resemble Shakespeare : e. g. ,
My stiffened haire stands upright on my head,
As doe the bristles of a Porcupine.
P. 105. To the references to A r otes and Queries, 5th S., given in note
on p. 59, should be added, vi, 370 ; vii, 213; vii, 316.
T. 143, line 12. 'Very foolishly.' Mr. Hugh Carleton, of New Zealand,
writes me word that, in his opinion, 'foolishly' here means stolidly. lie
may very well be right. It is also worth a note that, in the previous part of
the same scene, the ' fool i' the forest ' is represented by Jaques as having'
made some exceedingly trite remarks 'very wisely,' where the qualification
appears to mean the same as in the passage under consideration.
i"u Intercalary Notes,
P, 152. Mr. 1'. I. FurnivaU insists upon it, that the two propositions,
Being scarse made up,
1 mean to man ; he had not apprehension
Of roaring terrors :
and
Defect uf judgement
Is oft the cause of Peare :
though connected by the illative conjunction ' for,' arc not associated as
result and condition: and he challenges me to give the logical forms in
which they stand. The forms are —
All not-Ys are not-Xs,
Since, All Xs are Vs.
Belarius, however, contents himself with stating the particular converse of
the latter proposition : viz.,
Some Ys are Xs,
the particularity being marked by the word ' oft : ' a reason for which may
be found in the imperfect recognition this great psychological fact has
received from the critics of the text.
Of course Mr. FurnivaU, or anyone, may so interpret the two propositions
as to save them from these forms : but, if 'for' is to be taken in its full logical
force, into these forms they must go ; and surely it is better that they should
go into them, or that ' for ' should not be so taken, than that the text of the
Folio should be altered to suit ' the taste and fancy ' of the critic. Besides,
' what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' and Mr. FurnivaU
ought in consistency and (7 fortiori to demur to the following text in St.
John viii, 47,
He that is of God heareth God's words :
Ye ttierefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
P. 166, line 6. Observing the verb ray in John Davies' Paper's Complaint,
1620, p. 230, where Paper says,
One rates me with course Rimes ;
and seeing infra, p. 237,
But that which most my Soule excruciates, &c,
and p. 242,
This, this (U this) my vexed Soule doth kill !
Intercalary Notes.
171
I concluded that ray in the former line meant to excruciate, to vex, &c.
But on reading the intermediate part of that foolish poem, I saw that I was,
not improbably, on a false scent, and that ray — dress.
Yet, Poets love I, sith they made me weare
(What vveares out Time) my rich, and gaudiest Geare.
Yea, those I love that in too earnest Game
(or little Spleene) did me no little shame.
Sith I can witnesse to succeeding Times
They oft have me araid with royall Rimes,
That ravish Readers (though they envious bee,)
Such sacred Raptures they have put on me.
Printed by JosiAH Aim \, Birmingham.
HAKESPEARE'S CENTURIE OF PRAYSE (1592-
1693), being Materials for a History of Opinion on
Shakespeare and His Works, culled from Writers of
the first Century after his rise, collected and edited, (with
elucidations), by C. M. Ingleby, LL.D., printed on thick
hand-made paper, in old style type, large paper with fac-
simile, 4to, bound in boards, in the antique style, £2. 2s.
1874.
— small paper, in paper wrapper, uniform in style with
the Spencer Society Publications, 21s. 1874.
Triibner & Co., 57 & 59, Ludgate Hill.
(D {unions of tlje |)rcss.
Mr. W. Minto : in the Examiner, January 16, 1875.
It seems at first sight that it would be easy enough to collect all that can be
found about Shakespeare in the writings of a given period, more especially
when generations of scholars have gone over the ground and recorded their
discoveries. But any investigator who, like Dr. Ingleby, resolves to go over
the ground again, and glean references hitherto undetected, has a sufficiently
laborious task before him, and one in which the dry research is relieved and
rewarded at rare intervals. * * Dr. Ingleby remarks in his preface that he
had little conception of the difficulties of his work till he had advanced some
way towards its execution. Although he modestly disclaims absolute com-
pleteness for his collection, and expects that there are still many gleanings
to be had, there can be no doubt that his ' Centurie of Prayse' is all but
theoretically complete, and certainly complete enough to afford reasonable
satisfaction to all who aie interested in the question that he has proposed to
illustrate. * * * It is interesting in itself, and it may be made a most
fertile basis for reflection and speculation.
Opinions of the Press.
The late Mr. Richard Simpson : in the Academy, February 6, 1875.
Dr. Ingleby's very careful compilation is meant to include almost all the
passages alluding to Shakspere which occur in books or writings between
1592 and 1693. * * * The series of Shakspere Allusion-books which
Dr. Ingleby is publishing for the New Shakspere Society is nearly the same
in design as the present work, the difference being that the series professes
to give the whole or an integral portion of the books, while the Centurie of
Prayse gives only the passages in which the allusions occur. Dr. Ingleby,
in a modest preface, states the difficulty of his task, and the unlikelihood
that the first attempt to attain completeness should be entirely successful.
Indeed, when the whole literature of a hundred years has to be searched, it
is hard to see when the collection can be pronounced complete : there may
lurk so many allusions which want an CEdipus to unriddle, so many obscure
passages may have been wrongly tacked on to Shakspere ; and so many rare
books or manuscripts may still be extant which have not been read by any
one sufficiently on the look-out for such passages. * * * To know the
earlier criticism Dr. Ingleby's book is indispensable.
Notes and Queries, February 13, 1875.
Dr. Ingleby had a 'happy thought' when the idea of preparing a work like
the present first offered itself to his mind. It is one lacking which no
Shakspearian library can pretend to be perfect. Dr. Ingleby gives brief
passages from books whose authors wrote between 1592 and 1693. Fach
passage refers to Shakspeare, not invariably in praise of him, but always in
proof of the hold which the national poet had on the heart or judgment of
the nation. * * * Each passage collected by Dr. Ingleby serves as a
link in the life of the poet. A second passage is never given on the same
page, but some extracts occupy several pages. There is ' ample room and
verge enough ' for possessors of the volume to make annotations in the
margin ; and the printing is creditable to the press of Josiah Allen, of
Birmingham. * * * The danger [of Shakspeare's depreciation], indeed,
exists no longer ; and Dr. Ingleby's book will help to keep it from reviving,
for it proves (a little, perhaps, against that accomplished gentleman's own
opinion) that Shakspeare was in the hearts of the people from the very first,
and that with the restoration of the monarchy he was permanently re-
enthroned, semper floreat.
The Saturday Review, March 6, 1875.
Dr. Ingleby's collection of Shakspearian criticisms, panegyrics, and allusions
is a book of luxury ; but it is something more than a mere book of luxury.
In that character indeed it leaves nothing to desire. Some of the pieces
here collected are merely curious or odd, giving evidence of nothing beyond
the fact that particular works of Shakspeare were well enough known to the
writers to be the subject of passing mention. But the main scope of the
book is such as to take it out of the class of mere literary curiosities. The
men of Shakspeare's own time and the times next following it tell us here in
Opinions of the Pirss.
their own words what they thought of him. We have the judgments of his
fellow-poets, sometimes expressed by themselves, sometimes reported at
secondhand by collectors of anecdote, the panegyrics of friends, and the
sneers of his few enemies. The editor's notes supply concisely but sufficiently
such things as are needful for the understanding of the less obvious points.
We confess that we should have liked a little more discussion and justifica-
tion of some extracts which on the face of them are doubtful, but the fault is
on the right side. * * * Dr. Ingleby's conclusion from the evidence
is that Shakspeare's own age admired him much, but not adequately. He
says that no one during the ' Centime ' (that is, the century after Shakspeare
began to publish) had any suspicion that the genius of Shakspeare was
unique. This is in some measure true, but we think it is over-stated. That
Shakspeare had not in his own generation that sort of classical fame which
no man can have till after his death, one may of course readily admit ; that
it was not foreseen by any one then how much he would overshadow his
contemporaries in the eyes of posterity, seems also probable enough, if not
certain; but that the peculiar qualities of his genius — those, in fact, which
make it, as Dr. Ingleby says, unique — were to a considerable extent seen
and appreciated from the first, we think is fairly made out by the witnesses
here collected. Doubtless one must not be misled by the wording of their
praise, although the words are often as strong, and perhaps as apt, as any we
could find now that we are supposed to know Shakspeare so much better.
In those days the language of both praise and blame was much less guarded
than it is at present, and the sort of reserve which modern manners impose
on us, even in speaking well of living persons, did not exist. Epithets and
flowers of speech must be taken as standing in themselves for less than they
would stand for now. But, after allowing for all this, we find evidence of a
real discernment and sympathy quite incompatible with the notion of Shak-
speare's being, in the eyes of the best wits of his time, only one of a number
of more or less respectable poets and playwrights of whom for various reasons
it was desirable to speak civilly.
The Athenceum, March 20, 1875.
In a volume, on which he has bestowed the quaint title of 'Shakespeare's
Centurie of Prayse,' Dr. Ingleby has collected so many of these and other
references as occurred within a hundred years of the commencement of
Shakspeare's fame, from the close of 1592, that is, to 1693. In the dearth
of other and more exact information, these ' Materials for a History of
Opinion on Shakespeare and his Works ' are not without value. With a
few exceptions, however, the criticisms, when such are passed, are only
remarkable as evincing how far were contemporaries in general from rightly
estimating the size of the man with whom they dwelt. The praise lavished
upon him is of the kind which is bestowed upon those of his contemporaries
who were most popular with their fellows. * * * To reprint all the
slurs of which incapacity has been guilty is a whimsical task. Something
may, however, in the case of Shakspeare, concerning whom we know so
little, be urged in its favour, and the task has been thoroughly accomplished,
brush references to Shakspeare turn up as the by-paths of literature are
( opinions of the Press.
more fully explored. Dr. Ingleby's work will not, accordingly, long remain
complete. * * * It is, however, a creditable result of industry and
research.
Professor Hiram Corson : in the Cornell Review, May, 1875.
That William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gent., was the author
of these Dramas, every one who is willing to accept testimony thereunto
pertaining, equally strong and conclusive as the testimony that is requisite in
a civilized court of justice, to hang a man, can find such testimony in abund-
ance in the volume before us. He who would reject the testimony it affords,
could not consistently accept the testimony bearing upon the authorship of
the Canterbury Tales, the Faerie Queene, the Paradise Lost, the Rape of the
Lock, the Task, or any other well-known product of English Literature.
But let it not be inferred, from the above remarks, that it is a purpose
of the 'Centurie of Prayse' to furnish such testimony. There is not the
slightest allusion thereto, and such a thing doesn't appear to have been in
the editor's mind. But the work does furnish it, nevertheless. * * *
To return to the work before us. The leading purpose that the editor
had in view, in its preparation, was, as set forth in the title, to offer
'materials for a history of opinion on Shakespeare and his works, culled
from writers of the first century after his rise ; ' that is, from 1592, the 28th
year of his age, to 1693 ; and these materials are far more abundant than
any who have not made a special study of the subject, and who hold the
traditional opinion that little or nothing has been delivered of Shakespeare
by his contemporaries, would be apt to suppose. The Index to Authors
cited, contains 116 names, a large number of them being those of prominent
writers ; Anonymous Works, 25 ; List of Exclusions (I. Irrelevant Allusions,
II ; II. Spurious Allusions, 5), 16; and in a Postscript are given the titles
of 8 plays, published from 1599 to 1662, which show an influence of Shake-
speare's works. In the ' Forespeech ' the editor states that he ' has excluded
from the catena all documentary notices of Shakespeare ; for, besides being
foreign to its scope, they are sufficiently numerous and extensive to form a
considerable volume by themselves.'
TK
HAKESPEARE HERMENEUTICS, OR THE STILL
LION, being an Essay towards the Restoration of
Shakespeare's Text. By C. M. Ingleby, LL.D. Printed
in all respects to range with Shakespeare's Centurie of
Prayse, and bound in boards, in the same style, 6s. 1875.
Trubner & Co., 57 & 59, Ludgate Hill.
(Opinions of tjjc '|Jress.
Dr. Friedrich v. Bodenstedt : in the Jahrbuch of the German
Shakespeare Society for 1867. (Preface, p. viii.)
Ingleby, to whom we are indebted for the most complete view and ex-
posure of the Shakespeare Forgeries, which made so much stir in the world
at their time, gives us here, as the precursor of a larger work [Shakespeare
Hermeneutics\, contributions for the restoration of the Shakespearian text.
I have considered it unnecessary to translate his essay, because the principal
contents of it would, even in a German dress, remain unintelligible to any
one not acquainted with the English language.
The Saturday Review (on first sketch), July 20, 1867.
Under the eccentric title of Tlie Still Lion, Dr. Ingleby indites an essay on
the conjectural emendation of the Text, which abounds in robust, pithy sense,
jocose humour, and felicitous illustration. There is also enough personality
to remind us that the Shakespearian critics of this country are a quarrelsome
brood.
Mr. F. J. Furnivall's Introduction to Gervinus 1 Commentaries,
1874, p. xlvi.
Dr. Ingleby describes his just publisht Still Lion as 'indications of a"
systematic Hermeneutic [science of interpretation] of Shakspere's text.' It
is strongly against plausible emendations, and is well worth study.
A \
Opinions of the Press.
Mr. Joseph Crosby: in the American Bibliopolist, April, 1875.
As an ancillary contribution to this study, the clever essay, named at the
head of this article, deserves more than a passing notice. * * * From
the well-considered principles it lays down for the restoration, and just
interpretation, of the Text of Shakespeare ; the happy expositions of many
obscure and difficult passages brought out in the illustration of these prin-
ciples, and the charming and often harmonious style of the author, we
venture to say it will be greedily and gratefully welcomed by every earnest
student of the poet. * * * In two noteworthy respects this essay differs
from most books of criticism : the author keeps clear of any attempt to
display his own acuteness, or powers of satire, under the garb of elucidating
Shakespeare ; and albeit every page is replete with originality, sound
criticism, and learning, it is so lighted up with good sense, humor, and
frequent illustrations, that there is not a line of dry reading in the book.
* * * Every sentence bristles with good points. The pen in his hand is
a polished weapon, and he deals his blows right and left on all impertinent
correctors and blundering restorers of the Text, from Mr. Perkins-Ireland
down to Mr. Staunton in his late ' Unsuspected Corruptions,' in a style that
is at once vigorous and trenchant, and very amusing. * * * We beg,
again, heartily to thank Dr. Ingleby for his masterly little volume ; and to
express the hope that every intending editor of Shakespeare will ponder
well, and profit by, the sound doctrine it inculcates. Nothing but good —
much good — can result from a careful study of its too few pages.
The Atkenaum, October 9, 1875.
Dr. Ingleby is entitled to a prominent place in the ranks of those who have
taken up the task of the elucidation of Shakspeare, and his work is one of
the most scholarly and important contributions yet made to Shakspearean
literature. * * * Although separated from the average commentator
by gifts of perception and temper, Dr. Inyleby is still of the race. He is
unable quite to resist an inclination towards the conjecture he condemns,
or to treat with the amused indifference which they merit the framers of
absurd suggestions. If, like Narcissa, whose nature
moderately mild,
To make a wash would hardly stew a child,
he will not condemn his predecessors to the kind of fate heresy in matters of
critical opinion is supposed to merit, he will not let them pass entirely
scatheless, but will subject them to some form of comic torture. * * *
Quite incontrovertible are the canons [of emendation] Dr. Ingleby advances,
and an observance of them would winnow to a very small heap the mountain
of Shakspeare hermeneutics.
Notes and Queries, October 30, 1875.
This is the text on which Dr. Ingleby gives half-a-dozen or so of the best
Shakspeare sermons we have ever read. He certainly proves, in a variety
of cases, that- critics and commentators have often been miserably ignorant
Opinions of the Press.
of the very elements of the science which they affected to interpret or illus-
trate as so many Sir Oracles, at the opening of whose mouths no dog was to
dare to bark. Nothing, in its way, can be more amusing than Dr. Ingleby's
dealing with words in Shakspeare which are perfectly unintelligible to every-
body. He shows the various conflicting words which critics have proposed
to substitute for them, and then demonstrates beyond gainsaying that the
proposed substitutes are, in truth, incomprehensible, and that Shakspeare
used terms perfectly natural, forming current coins of speech in his time, and
pregnant with meaning when translated into the forms used in ours. In
many other respects Dr. Ingleby's boldly written and masterly book recom-
mends itself to Shakspearian (and indeed to all) readers. He does full
justice to skilled commentators ; but seldom has the crowd of incompetent
critics been more mauled, bruised, knocked down, and danced over, than by
Dr. Ingleby.
The Examiner, November 20, 1875.
Dr. Ingleby has framed a powerful defence of Shakespeare against the
extravagance of conjectural emendators under the somewhat odd and fan-
tastic title of 'The Still Lion.' * * * For years a strong feeling has
been growing up in favour of a more reverent and scholarly treatment of the
text, and Dr. Ingleby's vigorous polemic should help greatly to promote this
feeling. * * *
In his last chapter, in which he impresses us still more with the width
and accuracy of his reading, and the strength and sagacity of his critical
sense, Dr. Ingleby lays down certain restrictions under which he would
permit the reformed emendator to look for an honest living. * * *
Under these restrictions, rigorously enforced, the emendator might indeed
do comparatively little harm to anything but the temper of his reader, but
it would probably be for the advantage of all concerned if for the next fifty
years he would consent to hang his harp upon the willows, and study
Shakespeare no more.
Mr. H. H. FURNESS : in Lippincotf 's Magazine, March, 1876.
The lion's slumbers were here [/. e. , in passages in which the word Jielp has '
been superseded] of the lightest, and happy men be our dole to have escaped
with whole skins. Thus Dr. Ingleby takes up passage after passage of
Shakespeare that has been pronounced corrupt, and shows that the fault
imputed to it lies not in the text, but in the lack of requisite knowledge, be
it of language, of usage, of manners and customs, or even of Elizabethan
spelling and grammar, on the part of the critic. The mischief that ignorance
has done in the past is irrevocable, but such impressive warnings as Dr.
Ingleby gives us may help, in both senses of the word [i. e., aid and cure], in
the future. * * * Great as is the service done in particular cases, the
most valuable part of The Still Lion is the moral which it points, that
'successful emendation is the fruit of severe study and research on the one
hand, and of rare sensibility and sense on the other ; ' and in our opinion
Dr. Ingleby might have gone even farther, and demanded for it a spark of
that creative power which is genius.
Opinions of the Press.
Professor Hiram CORSON : in the Cornell Review, May, 1876.
IT must be a source of gratification to every Shakespeare scholar who has
any reverence for 'Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies, published according to the True Original! Copies,' to read the
evidence which this work affords, of an approach towards a science of
interpretation and emendation, in lieu of the arbitrary cutting and slashing
to which all the editors of the Poet's works have, for nearly two hundred
years, been more or less addicted.
Professor DoWDEN : in the Academy, September 16, 1876.
Dr. Ingleby's conservative criticism, his maintenance of the original text in
various difficult passages, is highly ingenious, and in not a few instances is
decisively successful. Even the reader who is not a special student of the
text of Shakspere cannot fail to enjoy the keen and swift coursing of the
critic's intellect after truth, which doubles but does not escape. When
the famous greyhound, Master Magrath, was anatomised it was ascertained
that the extraordinarily swift action of the limbs was due to the enormous
relative size of the heart. In like manner it is often the inner imagination
which quickens and sustains action that outwardly appears to us wholly
intellectual ; the imagination is the blood-propelling organ. And thus it is
with Dr. Ingleby. A chapter might well have been added on ' Hygiene of
the textual critic' Each occupation has its special diseases. * * * In
a similar way a textual cmx plays tricks with the eye that has stared upon it
too long. It is thus that we must account for the extraordinary follies in the
way of textual criticism perpetrated by very clever men. The mental eye
became affected somewhat as Turner's sense of sight is alleged by an eminent
oculist to have been. And besides this, there are certain diseases constitu-
tional rather than local, to which the verbal critic is exposed. Some one of
the craft should study the pathology of his peculiar guild and mystery.^ And
it would be satisfactory to know the means by which W. Sidney Walker,
and Dr. Ingleby himself, were enabled to keep their faculties all in good
form, and in a state of mutually quickening activity.
Printed by Josiah Allen, Birmingham.
>
The Trades and Crajts of Shakespeare. — It may be interesting
ko trace what Shakespeare Bays of the traders and craftsmen, his
contemporaries. And first we will take the mercer, one Master
Dumbleton, who very prudently deolines to give credit to that
reckless knight Falstaff for the satin for his " short oloak and Blop."
He requires better security than the bond of Sir John and his
deD°n<ient Bardolph ; and the fat knight is naturally indignant, and
rails at the ** smooth pates," who " wear nothing but high shoes and
bunches of keys at their girdles," and "stand upon seourity." We
may here remark, that the " bond" — a legal instrument binding the
.parties to it to the payment of a heavy penalty, generally double the
principal, as a forfeit on the non-payment of the actual debt — was a
favourite security with traders of the time of Shakespeare, and
indeed has not long become obsolete, driven out by the more handy
promissory note and bill of exohange. The haberdasher and the
tailor are dramatis personce in the " Taming of the Shrew." The
haberdasher Bhows the cap he has made for Katharina, and departs
without more words ; but the tailor has more to say. He makes
gowns and kirtles, the tailor of those days, as well as doublets and
hose, and he is just as glib with his tongue as his modern repre.
sentative. The tailor has ever been reproached with his insignifi-
cance, and Petruohio does not spare the conventional abuse : " Thou
thread, thou thimble, .... thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket,
thou !" The yard measure is the emblem of the tailor as the last is
of the shoemaker (" Romeo and Juliet," aot i. so. 2). In one of those
charming scenes between Hotspur and his wife that oocur in the
First Part of " Henry IV.," the gallant young Percy justifies her
when she refuses to sing to the company ; " 'Tia the next" (nearest)
" way to turn tailor or be red-breast teacher." The village tailor is
to this day usually the foremost in a carol or a glee ; and this might
open to us many curious speculations as to the idiosyncrasies of
p.rade ; but we forbear. Prom the tailor and shoemaker to the
obbler is no great descent, but Shakespeare marks it with his usual
,droitness : " Cobbler. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl.
meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor woman's matters, but
,rith awl." The cobbler, you will observe, is no tradesman, bnt an
rtisan, as ia the carpenter, who (" Julius Csesar," act i. so. 1) is
eproved by the tribune Flavins that, being mechanical, he walks
upon a labouring day without the sign " of his " profession ;"
namely, the leather apron and the rule. One might well conolnde,
and the bust and portraits of onr post bear out the inference, that
ShakeBpeare meddled not much with razors. No merry Figaro
appears in his dramas, and we have few allusions to the barber. We
may cite " the barber's chair that fits" everybody (" All's Well that
Ends Well," act ii. so. 2), and " the forfeits in a barber's shop," that
stand "as much in mock as mark." These forfeits are the penaltiea
frolicsomely enforced from customers who meddle with the razors or
implements of the barber that are displayed about his shop. Forby,
in his " East Anglican Vocabulary," Bays that this exaotion of forfeits
existed in his day (1830), and we have no doubt the custom might
yet be traced in out-of-the-way country districts. The barber natur-
ally brings us to the surgeon, of whom — and we may take the faot
as an indication that Shakespeare had " no regular medical
attendant" — little is said by our dramatist. Portia adjures Shylock
to have one present when he exacts the forfeiture of hia pound of
flesh from Antonio ; bnt the prudent Jew — who has had experience
of dootorb' bills, no doubt — cannot see the necessity of inourring auoh
a charge. — Belgravia.
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