lift; ilrfl l^Of l^ 1 !
1=^1 |(t^l iflffi i JUJ7
ivaam^
AWE -UNIVHW/a ^lUVANlitltf.*
^WfUNIVtR" ^lOS-AHCfl-
lilfti jJSIlt! {5®f p^J
[UNIVEUS/A 10SANCEI£J> ^OFCAllfO^ ^OFCALIFOfaj,
^I 1(2=1 S's©
3»Ji 5 v Kii
IT !±*
SHAKESPEARE
AND HIS FELLOWS
SHAKESPEARE
AND HIS FELLOWS
AN ATTEMPT TO DECIPHER
THE MAN AND HIS NATURE
BY
THE RIGHT HON. D. H. MADDEN,
M.A., HON. LL.D., HON. LITT.D.
VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
AUTHOR OF
'THE DIARY OF MASTER WILLIAM SILENCE A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE
AND OF ELIZABETHAN SPORT "
NEW
YORK
E.
p.
DUTTON
AND COMPANY
681 FIFTH
AVENUE
19
16
> \
1 * -.
\_AU rights
•
•
reserved.']
Prinlt • in Gtcat Britain
2<i//
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
EDMUND SPENSER
THE PLAYERS
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
BEN JONSON
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
INDEX
PAGE
I
12
54
9i
114
137
170
237
1
• * 1
SHAKESPEARE
AND HIS FELLOWS
' All that we know of Shakespeare is that he
was born at Stratford-on-Avon, married, and
had children there ; went to London, where he
commenced actor, and wrote plays and poems ;
returned to Stratford, made his will, and died.'
These words, written by Steevens, served for
more than a century as a fair summary of the
events in the life of Shakespeare, so far as they
were then known. But the pious labours of
succeeding generations have added so much to
our stock of knowledge that a presentment of the
life of Shakespeare is now possible, not, indeed,
complete in all respects, but far in advance
of earlier efforts. ' An investigation extending
over two centuries has brought together a mass
of detail which far exceeds that accessible in the
case of any other contemporary professional
writer.' It is not probable that any important
addition will be made in the future to our know-
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
ledge of the facts of the life of Shakespeare, or
that they will be piet-ciued with better effect
than by Sir Sidue) Lee in the great work from
which these words are taken.*
Shakespeare's life was the uneventful life of a
successful player and dramatist. His greatness,
unlike that of a commander or statesman, did
not depend on the happening of great events.
But great events are not those from which we
derive the clearest insight into character. The
object which the Father of Biography set before
him in writing the life of a great man was to
1 decipher the man and his nature,' and he thus
explains his omission to record some facts of
historical interest : ' For the noblest deeds do
not alwaies shew mens vertues and vices, but
oftentimes a light occasion, a word, or some sport,
makes mens naturall dispositions and maners
appeare more plaine than the famous battels
won, wherein are slaine ten thousand men ; or
the great armies, or cities won by siege or
assault.' f The student of Plutarch's Life of
Alexander the Great would not have been
enabled by it to give an account of the battles
of the Granicus and of Issus, or to show how these
* A Life of William Shakespeare, by Sir Sidney Lee. New
edition, 1915.
f Plutarch's Lives, Sir Thomas North's version {Life of
Alexander).
INTRODUCTION
fields were won. But he could give an answer to
this question : What manner of man was he who
did these great things ?
It was by following in the footsteps of the
master that Boswell won the first place among
his disciples. No occasion was too light, no
word too trivial, no sport too insignificant
to be recorded by him, and so it came to
pass that Johnson, in the words of Macaulay,
' is better known to us than any other man in
history.'
In Shakespeare's time biographies were not
written, and the instinct to which we owe the
modern interview was as yet undeveloped. We
have no contemporary account of Shakespeare
such as Boswell wrote of Johnson, and Lockhart
of Scott. But there were among his fellows and
contemporaries men greater than Boswell or
Lockhart, who, with others of lesser account,
wrote and spoke of Shakespeare many things
which aid us in attaining to some understanding
of the nature and character of a man who was
well known to them.
The industry of the last half century has
ransacked the plays, poems, and pamphlets of
his age in search of references to Shakespeare,
or to his work. The result is embodied in a
goodly volume published by the New Shakespere
B 2
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Society in 1874.* From Spenser's Colin Clouts
Come Home Again in 1591 to Ben Jonson's
Discoveries in 1641, the references collected in
this volume in number exceed one hundred and
twenty. They are, for the most part, notices
of the writings of Shakespeare, of no special
value. But some are of a more personal interest,
and among those from whose writings they are
collected are Shakespeare's fellow dramatists —
Nash, Dekker, Peele, Greene, Drayton, Chettle
and Fletcher.
Shakespeare became a member of a company
of players at the most interesting period of the
history of the stage. The occupation of player
was just assuming the character of a profession.
To the profession of actor Shakespeare was
loyally constant throughout his life, and his
chosen friends and associates are found among
his fellow players. It is due to the overpowering
interest which attaches itself to everything con-
nected with Shakespeare, rather than to mere
love of antiquarian or historical research, that
we are now in possession of a mass of informa-
tion, not only as to the condition of the stage
• Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse ; being materials for a history
of opinion on Shakespeare and his works. A.D. 1 59 1 — 1693, by
C. M. Ingleby, LL.D. Second edition by Lucy Toulmin Smith,
1879. ' AH is not " Prayse " that is celebrated in the ensuing
pages : but the prevailing character of the parts may fairly be allowed
to the whole.' (Forespeech to the first edition.)
INTRODUCTION
in his time, but as to the lives and characters of
the individual players with whom he was more
particularly connected. Some questions we
should gladly ask of these players, and of the
brilliant band of University wits who had pre-
pared the way for the coming of Shakespeare.
We cannot go to them, and they cannot come to
us, and many questions to be asked must remain
for ever unanswered. But from what has been
recorded of the fellow players and fellow
dramatists of Shakespeare, from their relations
with him, and from what was said and written
by them, some assistance may be gained towards
supplying an answer to the questions which we
would ask. Some things deserving of note may
also be gleaned from Shakespeare's relations with
his family, and with his neighbours at Stratford.
Spenser, Marlowe and Ben Jonson are the
greatest names in the most interesting period of
our literary history. These men were in a special
sense the fellows of Shakespeare — fellow poets
or fellow dramatists. These pages have been
written in the hope that from a study of the
lives and characters of these great men, and of
their associations with Shakespeare, some aid
may be obtained in deciphering the man and
his nature.
The word ' fellow ' in the ear of Shakespeare
5
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
had a significance which it has since then lost.
He would have understood it to mean ' one that
is associated with another in habitual or tem-
porary companionship ; a companion, associate,
comrade.' This sense of the word, usual in the
time of Shakespeare and the next succeeding
age, is noted in the New English Dictionary as
' now rare.' It is in this sense that the word
was used by Shakespeare in his will, and it is
in this sense that the word is employed in these
pages. No one of Shakespeare's contemporaries
is here accounted as his fellow, unless he is
shown to have been, in some manner, personally
associated with him. Bacon and Burleigh were
contemporaries, but no link has been discovered
associating either of them with the man Shake-
speare. According to Ben Jonson, the flights of
the swan of Avon ' did take Eliza and our
James,' and favour and patronage were extended
to Shakespeare by Southampton and by the
noblemen to whom the First Folio was dedi-
cated. But patronage is not fellowship, and to
find the fellows of Shakespeare we must mix with
the dramatists, players and poets of the age,
and with those of his family and friends among
whom his life was spent, and in finding them we
may find something of the man of whom we are
in search.
6
INTRODUCTION
For our present purpose it may be noted with
satisfaction that when his contemporaries speak
of Shakespeare what they tell us relates to the
man rather than to his writings. In their
notices of Shakespeare we find nothing of the
profound literary criticism, the work of Shake-
spearian scholars at home and abroad, by which
his works have been illuminated. For the
attainment of a knowledge of Shakespeare,
poet and dramatist, it is not necessary to ap-
peal to his fellows and contemporaries. Nothing
more is needed than a careful and intelli-
gent study of what he has written, in view
of the literature, the history, and social con-
dition of his age. But a true instinct, born not
of mere curiosity, but of gratitude, impels us to
go further, and to attempt to discover something
of the man who bestowed upon humanity this
priceless gift. And so attempts have been made
to decipher the man Shakespeare and his nature
by a study of what he has written. These
attempts have ended in uncertainty, and there-
fore in failure. It is true that an artist must
of necessity put something of himself into the
works of his art. But when his work takes the
form of drama, the difficulty of discovering
the personality of the artist is greatest. The
medium in which he works is dialogue, and
7
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
the nearer the dialogue approaches to perfection
in expressing the character of the speaker, the
more effectually the personality of the artist is
concealed.
Some things about Shakespeare may be
known with certainty from what he has written.
Bagehot, in his essay ' Shakespeare — the Man,'
quoting from Venus and Adonis the description
of the hare hunt, writes : ' It is absurd by the
way to say we know nothing about the man that
wrote that : we know that he had been after a
hare.' We may conclude from his constant
habit of attributing to the characters in his plays
thoughts of field sports and horsemanship, that
these things were dear to his heart. But men
of the most opposite natures and characters
have been fond of sport and of horses, and,
beyond the exclusion of dispositions of a certain
kind, we get no nearer to a knowledge of the man.
We may, with Professor Dowden, follow the
development of the mind and art of Shakespeare.
We may at one time rest with him in the forest
of Ardcn ; at another we may note that he had
bade farewell to mirth; and, after the tragic period,
we may realise ' the pathetic yet august serenity
of Shakespeare's final period.' It is a study of
the deepest interest, and of great assistance in
arriving at a full understanding of what was
8
INTRODUCTION
written in each of these periods. But these
were varying moods of one and the same man,
and we feel assured that if the question, What
manner of man is this your fellow, Master
Shakespeare ? had been put to Ben Jonson
or to Heming and Condell, the answer would
have been the same throughout his varying
moods, and at each stage of his intellectual
development.
But Shakespeare was not only a dramatist.
He was a poet whose thoughts found expression
in the form of the sonnet. Here again the
inquirer after the man is baffled, and from a
study of the Elizabethan sonnet he may rise
with the feeling that if Shakespeare's design in
writing his sonnets had been the mystification of
posterity, and the concealment of the identity
of the writer, he could not have chosen a more
effectual method of carrying out his purpose.
If, distrusting his judgment, he were to have
recourse to critics who by the aid of poetic in-
stinct might have power to solve the mystery
by which he has been baffled, his perplexity is
not lessened when he is told by Wordsworth :
' With this key Shakespeare unlocked his
heart.' For while he is considering which among
the many and different kinds of hearts unlocked
9
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
in the sonnets ought to be attributed to Shake-
speare, he reads in Browning
With this same key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart ' once more.'
Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare he.
In the end he may be content to accept the sober
conclusion in which Sir Sidney Lee sums up the
result of an exhaustive examination of the
sonnets of the Elizabethan age. ' Most of
Shakespeare's " sonnets " were produced under
the incitement of that freakish rage for sonnet-
eering which, taking its rise in Italy and sweep-
ing over France on its way to England, absorbed
for some half-dozen years in this country a
greater volume of literary energy than has been
applied to sonneteering within the same space
of time here or elsewhere before or since. . . .
Genuine emotion or the writer's personal experi-
ence inspired few Elizabethan sonnets, and no
literary historian can accept the claim which
has been preferred on behalf of Shakespeare's
" sonnets " to be at all points a self-evident
exception to the general rule. A personal note
may have escaped the poet involuntarily in the
sonnets in which he gives voice to a sense of
melancholy and remorse, but Shakespeare's
dramatic instinct never slept, and there is no
10
INTRODUCTION
proof that he is doing more there than produce
dramatically the illusion of a personal con-
fession.' *
The attempt to discover the man Shakespeare
in what he has written is never a fruitless search,
for the means by which it is prosecuted is a
careful study and thorough understanding of his
works. But if a definite result is to be attained,
there must be called in aid such information as
may be obtained from the men among whom
Shakespeare lived, moved and had his being.
What has been collected in these pages may be
no more than, here and there, ' a light occasion,
a word, or some sport,' but these things may
serve to make the man's ' naturall dispositions
and maners appeare more plaine than ' his most
famous achievements ; his Hamlet, his Lear, his
Othello, and his As You Like It.
* Life of Shakespeare, p. 229.
II
EDMUND SPENSER
Shakespeare left Stratford for London in
the year 1586, as is commonly supposed. The
earliest reference to him that has been brought
to light was written in the year 1 591 . It is
from the pen of Edmund Spenser.
In the autumn of 1589 Spenser left his Irish
home for London, where he stayed for about two
years. He had come to Ireland in 1580 as
secretary to Arthur Lord Grey, of Wilton. In
1588 he obtained by purchase the post of clerk
of the Munstcr Council. He had already
acquired a grant of some forfeited lands in the
county of Cork, on which was the castle of
Kilcolman, an ancient scat of the Desmonds.
Here he settled on taking up the duties of his
office.
In the autumn of 1589 Sir Walter Raleigh was
living in the same county at Youghal, where the
visitor may find his house, reverently preserved,
and the garden where the potato first grew in
Irish soil. An intimacy had sprung up between
Raleigh and Spenser. Disappointed in love, and
debarred from the society which he had enjoyed
12
EDMUND SPENSER
in London, and afterwards, as we shall see in
Dublin, Spenser was living with a sister in the
lonely castle of Kilcolman.* His relations with
his neighbours, so far as we know of them, were
not satisfactory. A dispute with a powerful
neighbour, Maurice Viscount Roche of Fermoy,
had involved him in long and harassing litigation.
Raleigh brought with him a welcome gleam of
hope and encouragement. He found Spenser
at work on the Faerie Queene, of which the first
three books were completed. Raleigh admired
the work, and sympathised with the loneliness
and desolation that had fallen to the lot of the
poet. He counselled Spenser to go with him
to London, where his work might be brought
out under the patronage of Elizabeth. In the
words of the poem in which Spenser tells the
tale of his stay in London, Raleigh
Gan to cast great lyking to my lore,
And great disliking to my luckless lot
That banisht had my selfe like wight forlore
Into that waste where I was quite forgot.
The which to leave thenceforth he counseld me,
Unmeet for man in whom was aught regarded,
And wend with him his Cynthia to see ;
Whose grace was great, and bounty most rewardfull.
* Sarah Spenser married John Travers, a member of a Lancashire
family, who held some office in Munster. Many of their descendants
are living in County Cork, and in other parts of Ireland.
13
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
The visit to London was successful. The first
three books of the Faerie Queene were brought
out under the patronage of Elizabeth, and, what
is more to our present purpose, Spenser spent
two years in the company of the most famous
wits and beauties of the day, and formed at
least one friendship which endured until it was
closed by death.
Spenser returned to Kilcolman some time
before the 27th of December, 1 591 , for on that
day he addressed to Raleigh the ' simple
pastorall,' in which he tells the story of his
visit to London. In Colin Clouts Come Home
Again, the shepherds of The Shepheards Calendar
reappear. Colin (Spenser), at the request of
Hobbinol (Gabriel Harvey), describes to them
what he saw and how he fared at the Court of
Cynthia (Elizabeth). The Shepheard of the
Ocean (Raleigh) inclined the ear of Cynthia to
Colin's oaten pipe, in which she
Gan take delight
And it desired at timely houres to heare.
Colin then tells the listeners of the Shepheards
who were ' in faithful service of faire Cynthia.'
The poem is full of the pastoral conceits then in
vogue. But there are passages of true poetic
beauty, and Spenser's estimate of the poets of
14
EDMUND SPENSER
his time is intended to be taken seriously. ' I
make you a present,' he writes in his dedication
to Raleigh, ' of this simple Pastorall, unworthie
of your higher conceipt for the meanesse of the
stile, but agreeing with the truth in the circum-
stance and matter.'
The circumstances of his journey to London
by sea and by land, and his reception by the
Queen, are truthfully told, and we may accept
as likewise truthful the matter of the poem ; his
estimate of the poets whom he had met.
«* Raleigh could have had no difficulty in dis-
cerning the poets disguised under the names of
Harpalus, Corydon, Alcyon, Palemon, and Amyn-
tas ; and we need not concern ourselves with
the less effectual efforts of commentators. Three
or four of the Shepherds are identified beyond
doubt. The 'Shepherd of the Ocean' is Raleigh.
Alabaster and Daniel are mentioned by name.
Of another he writes
And there, though last not least, is Aetion ;
A gentler shepherd may no where be found,
Whose Muse, full of high thoughts invention
Doth like himself heroically sound.
Shakespeare is not addressed by name, as
Alabaster and Daniel are. But the reference
to a name that did ' heroically sound ' is
unmistakable. To no other poet of the day is
15
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
this play upon his name applicable. That
Shakespeare is here described under the name of
Aetion, ' a familiar Greek proper name derived
from Aerog,' Sir Sidney Lee regards as ' hardly
doubtful,' and this conclusion is now generally
adopted. The temptation presented by the
martial sound of Shakespeare's name was found
irresistible by others than Spenser. ' The war-
like sound of his surname (whence some may
conjecture him of a military extraction), Hasti-
vibrans or Shakespeare,' suggests to Fuller a
comparison with Martial.* William Winstanlcy
writes : ' In Mr. Shakespeare, the glory of the
English stage, three eminent poets may seem in
some sort to be compounded. Martial, in the
warlike sound of his surname, Ovid, the most
natural and witty of all poets, and Plautus, a
very exact comedian, and yet never any scholar.'
And Ben Jonson, in his lines prefixed to the
First Folio, says that Shakespeare in his well-
turned and true-filed lines
seemes to shake a Lance
As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance. _
It was a happy inspiration that suggested to
Spenser this play on the word ' Shakespeare,'
for it enables us, without question as to the
identification of Aetion, to consider his estimate
• Worthies of England.
16
EDMUND SPENSER
of the shepherd who bore this warlike name,
than whom a gentler might nowhere be found.
That Spenser, ' the greatest of Shakespeare's
poetic contemporaries, was first drawn by the
poems into the rank of Shakespeare's admirers '
Sir Sidney Lee regards as a likelihood. Shake-
speare's poems were known to his friends in
manuscript for some years before they were
given to the world in print. This is certainly
true of his sonnets. These incomparable poems
were known to Francis Meres in 1598 as circu-
lating among Shakespeare's private friends.
They were not published until 1609, when they
were printed by an adventurous publisher named
Thorpe, dedicated to their ' onlie begotter,' one
' Mr. W. H.,' to the mystification of many gene-
rations of curious and learned Shakespearians.
Venus and Adonis was published in 1593.
But as the poet, in the dedication to South-
ampton, calls it ' the first heir of my invention,'
it must have been written before the production
of Love's Labour's Lost (1591). It was therefore
in manuscript at the time of Spenser's visit to
London. So in all probability was Lucrece,
which was not published until 1594.
For more than a century after the introduction
of printing, works differing as widely as poems,
and books of sport and horsemanship, circulated
17 c
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
in manuscript, and it was by the acceptance of
their works in this form that authors were
encouraged to appeal to a wider circle of readers
by means of print.*
Aetion was not the only one of Cynthia's
shepherds who was made known to Colin Clouts
by poems that were still in manuscript. William
Alabaster, of whom he writes by name, was the
author of a poem entitled E litis, written in
Latin hexameters in praise of Elizabeth. Of
this work Spenser writes
Who lives that can match that heroic song
Which he hath of that mightie princesse made ?
Notwithstanding this encouragement Alabaster
never completed the poem, the first book of
which is preserved in manuscript in the library
of Emmanuel College, Cambridge."]" Daniel also
was known to Spenser by a poem then in manu-
script. Of him Spenser writes
And there is a new shepheard late up sprong,
The which doth all afore him far surpasse ;
Appearing well in that well tuned song
Which late he sung unto a scornful lasse.
This is an apt description of his Delia, which
was not published until 1592.
For Daniel, as for Aetion, Spenser desires a
* See a note to Sir Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, at p. 157.
| Diet. Nat, Biography, tit. ' Alabaster.'
18
EDMUND SPENSER
stronger flight, and, less happy in his augury,
predicts for his trembling muse success in
tragedy :
Yet doth his trembling Muse but lowly flie
As daring not too rashly mount on hight.
Addressing Daniel by name, he bids him to
rouse his feathers quickly :
And to what course thou please thy selfe advance,
But most, me seemes, thy accent will excell
In tragick plaints, and passionate mischance.
Spenser may have been attracted to Shake-
speare by the melody of a love poem written
in discipleship to Ovid. With his friend Gabriel
Harvey he may have found in Lucrece a ' muse
full of high thoughts invention.' Harvey wrote
of this poem as comparable to Hamlet. ' The
younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's
Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy
of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke have it in them
to please the wiser sort.' * Although Spenser
may have been attracted by the melody of Venus
and Adonis, and may have found high thoughts
invention in Lucrece, if we could catch an echo
of the heroic sound given forth by the muse of
* Written by Harvey in a copy of Speght's Chaucer, 1598.
The volume in which this note was written passed into the collection
of Bishop Burnet, whose library was burned in a fire at Northumber-
land House. The note had been seen by Malone and Steevens, and
its authenticity has never been questioned.
19
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Aetion, we must go beyond the poems, and we
need not travel far.
The first part of King Henry VI. was pro-
duced during Spenser's stay in London. The
exact date cannot be ascertained. Malone fixes
it at 1589. In Mr. FurnivalPs Trial Table of
the Order of Shakespeare *s Plays, prefixed by
Professor Dowden to his Shakespere His Mind
and Art, the supposed date is 1 590-1. Pro-
fessor Masson {Shakespeare Personally) regards
it as 'a specimen of Shakespeare, about 1589
or 1590, first trying his hand in a Chronicle Play
from English History.'
No time could have been more favourable for
the presentation to the public of a stirring
national and heroic drama. The patriotic fer-
vour that had been kindled by the defeat and
destruction of the Armada was at its height.
The groundlings saw in Talbot, the hero of the
drama, a great English champion, the scourge
of France, who scorned to be exchanged for an
ignoble prisoner, and they hailed with delight
his heroic speech and conduct. The success of
the play was extraordinary. Thomas Nash, in
Pierce Penile ss His Supplication to the Divell
(1592), wrote thus in defence of 'our English
Chronicles wherein our forefathers' valiant
actions (that have lien long buried in rustic brasse
20
EDMUND SPENSER
and worme-eaten bookes) are revived, and they
themselves raysed from the grave of oblivion ' :
' How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the
terror of the French) to thinke that after he
had lyne two hundred years in his Toomb hee
should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have
his bones new embalmed with the teares of ten
thousand spectators at least (at severall times)
who in the Tragedian that represents his person
imagine they behold him fresh bleeding ! '
Among the tens of thousands who daily
crowded the playhouse we may surely place
Spenser. He saw beyond the shouting crowd,
and with the intuition of genius predicted an
eagle flight for the gentle poet with the warlike
name, whose muse gave forth a sound so heroical.
The enthusiastic reception accorded to this
play contrasts strongly with the comments of
modern critics who for the most part dismiss it
with the frigid remark that it must be accepted
as in some small part the work of Shakespeare,
because we find it included in the authentic
edition of his plays printed in 1623. The scene
in the Temple Gardens is the part that has been
generally accepted as justifying the inclusion of
the play. Professor Dowden writes : ' Whether
any portions of the first part of Henry VI. be
from the hand of Shakespeare, and if there be,
21
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
what those portions are, need not be here investi-
gated. The play belongs in the main to the pre-
Shakesperian school.' *
Regarded as a work of art, the play deserves the
condemnation that it has received at the hands
of these critics. It was in the main the work of
an inferior dramatist, whether Greene or Peele
it is needless to inquire. But the drama, as
revised by Shakespeare, strikes a heroic note,
and in the recognition of this strain the ground-
lings are at one with Spenser, and with the
greatest of later-day critics of Shakespeare, Swin-
burne, who by force of genius was able to catch
an echo of the heroic note which struck the ear
and stirred the heart of Spenser.
In his Study of Shakespeare Swinburne devotes
himself to this play, mainly as showing the
development of the art of Shakespeare, who,
under the influence of Marlowe, was passing
from rhyme to blank verse. He exonerates the
memory of Shakespeare from the imputation of
having perpetrated in its evil entirety the first part
of King Henry VI. He had no part or share in the
defamation of the Maid of Orleans. But to him,
as to Spenser, the heroic strain which Shakespeare
infused into a dull play, and which raised it to
the level of a work of genius, was apparent.
• Sbakespere His Mind and Art.
22
EDMUND SPENSER
' The last battle of Talbot seems to me as
undeniably the master's work as the scene in the
Temple Gardens, or the courtship of Margaret
by Suffolk.' Throughout the play he finds
' Shakespeare at work (so to speak) with both
hands — with his left hand of rhyme, and his
right hand of blank verse.' The noble scene of
parting between the old hero and his son on the
verge of desperate battle and certain death he
regards as ' the last and loftiest farewell note of
rhyming tragedy.'
Hark, countrymen ! either renew the fight
Or tear the lions out of England's coat.
He fables not ; I hear the enemy :
Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings.
O, negligent and heedless discipline !
How are we park'd and bounded in a pale,
A little herd of England's timorous deer,
Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs !
If we be English deer, be then in blood ;
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch,
But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags,
Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel
And make the cowards stand aloof at bay :
Sell every man his life as dear as mine,
And they shall find dear deer of us, my friends.
God and Saint George, Talbot and England's right
Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight ! *
* i Hen. VI., I. v. 27 ; IV. ii. 42.
23
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Here is the heroic sound ; here is the brandish-
ing of the spear of which Spenser thought, when
from his castle of Kilcolman he wrote to Raleigh
of the poets by whom Cynthia was surrounded,
of whom none was more gentle than the shepherd
whose muse did like his name heroically sound.
But what Spenser tells us of the man whom he
knew in the year 1591, and whom he chose to
call Aetion, is more to our purpose than his
estimate of the qualities of his muse, for of these
we can form our own opinion unaided. Of this
man he writes : ' No gentler Shepheard may
no where be found.'
The word ' gentle,' in the sense in which it
was used by Spenser, has disappeared from the
English language, and it has left no successor.
In this sense, which is noted as archaic, it is thus
defined in the New English Dictionary : ' Having
the character appropriate to one of good birth :
noble, generous, courteous.' In these qualities,
in the opinion of Spenser, not one of the poets
whom he met in London surpassed the young
actor, commenced poet and dramatist, who had
come from the country town of Stratford a few
years ago, to seek his fortune, in, as was reported,
a very mean condition.
There was not one of Shakespeare's fellows
whose estimate of the qualities of a gentleman is
2 4
EDMUND SPENSER
entitled to more respect than the writer of these
words. Edmund Spenser, son of a London
clothmaker, took his name from a ' house of
ancient fame.'* His relationship to the Spensers
of Althorp was acknowledged. He dedicated
poems to the daughters of Sir John Spenser,
the head of that branch of the family, and in
Colin Clouts he writes of these ladies as
The honor of the noble familie :
Of which I meanest boast myselfe to be.
And Gibbon writes : ' The nobility of the
Spensers has been illustrated and enriched by
the trophies of Marlborough ; but I exhort them
to consider the Faerie Queen as the most precious
jewel of their coronet.'
A more worthy conception of the obligations
of gentle birth — of late happily revived — held
good in Tudor times than in some later years,
and the poet's father, ' a gentleman,' brought
no discredit on his name when he became a free
journeyman in the ' art and mystery of cloth-
making.'
In this business he was not successful, for his
son Edmund received assistance as a poor
scholar of Merchant Taylors' school, when, in
1569, he entered Pembroke Hall, now Pembroke
* Epithalamium.
2 5
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
College, Cambridge, as a sizar. He took his
degree of M.A. in 1576. His lifelong friend,
Gabriel Harvey, the Hobbinol of the Shcpheards
Calendar and of Colin Clouts, obtained a fellow-
ship in this college in the following year. A man
of great ability and learning, he held a high
position in the University, and Spenser, through
his intimacy with Harvey, must have been
brought into touch with the best class of students
of his day. From his experience at the Uni-
versity, and afterwards in public life, Spenser
was well qualified to form an estimate of the
qualities which entitled a man to be regarded
as ' gentle.'
But Spenser has still stronger claims to our
attention. He was the intimate friend of Philip
Sidney and of Walter Raleigh, and his great work,
the Faerie Queene, was an allegory, of which the
general end was * to fashion a gentleman or
noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.'
Surely commendation from Spenser is praise
indeed.
It must startle a reader accustomed to the
ordinary description of the ' man from Strat-
ford,' commencing dramatist as a theatrical
fac totum, to find one like Spenser writing of him,
not only that he was ' gentle,' but that among
the poets of the day no ' gentler ' than he could
26
EDMUND SPENSER
be found. For there were those among the
Shepherds of the Court of Cynthia to whom the
term ' gentle ' could have been applied with
undoubted fitness. Astrophel we know to be
Sir Philip Sidney, for he appears under the same
title in Spenser's elegy on his death. Alabaster,
educated in Westminster School, became a
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Daniel
left Oxford without a degree, but he became
tutor to William Herbert, afterwards Earl of
Pembroke, to whom the Folio of 1623 was dedi-
cated in recognition of the favours with which
he had ' prosecuted ' the author. Amyntas
has, with probability, been identified with Ferdi-
nando, Earl of Derby. The young poet, who as a
gentleman compared favourably with men like
these, was very different from the illiterate clown
of whom we have read, the creature of the
imagination of certain later-day writers.
There was really nothing in the birth or
education of Shakespeare to render it improbable
that one of the fortunate ones
Quibus arte benigna
Et meliore luto finxit precordia Titan
should have possessed the qualities ascribed to
him by Spenser. Something more on this sub-
ject will be found in a chapter entitled ' Family
27
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
and Friends.' But antecedent improbability,
even where it exists, must yield to the testimony
of credible witnesses, a class in which Edmund
Spenser may surely be placed.
That Spenser was attracted by the personality
of Shakespeare appears from the terms of per-
sonal esteem in which he writes of Aetion. It
was not until after the death of Spenser that
Shakespeare gave expression to his feelings of
regard. But what he then wrote leaves us in
no doubt as to the reality and strength of the
friendship that had its origin in Spenser's visit
to London in 1589.
Spenser's disposition was social, and he had
the genius of friendship, qualities not always
united in the same individual. Throughout his
life he found delight in the society of men of
letters. With Philip Sidney, Sir Edward Dyer,
and some other friends, he formed a literary
club styled ' Areiopagus,' the meetings of which
appear to have been held in the years 1578 and
1 579 at Leicester House.* His correspondence
with Gabriel Harvey about the same time affords
evidence, not only of his literary activity, but
of his constancy in friendship. His lifelong
friendship with Harvey probably had its origin
in kindness shown by a senior member of the
* Diet. Nat. Biography.
28
EDMUND SPENSER
University, of established position, to a poor
and unknown sizar. Some such explanation
seems to be needed, for no characters could be
more unlike than the author of the Faerie Queene,
and the arrogant and scurrilous pamphleteer
whose paper warfare with Nash and Greene is an
unedifying chapter of Elizabethan literature.
So scandalous did it become that in 1599 it was
ordered by authority ' that all Nashe's bookes
and Dr. Harvey's bookes be taken wherever they
may be found, and that none of the same bookes
be ever printed hereafter.'* Spenser's love of
Harvey was at one time a real danger to English
literature. The ambition of Harvey's lifetime
was to be known as the inventor of the English
hexameter. He did his utmost to induce his
friend to abandon rhyme for classical methods of
versification, and it appears from their correspon-
dence that he was at one time all but successful.
But Spenser's true literary sense and ear for
the music of words saved us from this calamity,
and he found salvation in rhyme, as Shakespeare
found it in blank verse.
Friendship was a necessary of life to Spenser.
When he found himself in the position of secre-
tary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland he surrounded
himself with the best literary society that Dublin
* Cooper, Atben. Cant.
29
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
could supply, and in Lodovick Bryskctt, an
Irish official, he found an intimate and congenial
friend. Bryskett, who is said to have been of
Italian descent, had filled the office of Clerk of
the Council under Sir Henry Sidney. Becoming
an intimate friend of Philip Sidney, he was his
companion in a three years' tour through
Germany, Italy and Poland. He was a poet,
and Spenser showed his appreciation of his
friend's work by including two of his poems in a
collection which he published in 1595 under the
title of Astrophel. He also addressed to Bryskett
as ' Lodwick,' a sonnet included in his Amoretti
(Sonnet xxxiii.). But Bryskett's claim to
grateful remembrance rests on the introduction
which he prefixed to a translation of an Italian
philosophical treatise entitled A Discourse of
Civill Life containing the Ethike Part of Morall
Philosophic. The introduction to this book,
addressed to Arthur Lord Grey, of Wilton, is
described by Sir Sidney Lee as of unique interest
in English literature. In it we find ourselves
in the company of a party of friends assembled
at the author's cottage, near Dublin. They were
described as ' Dr. Long, Primate of Ardmagh ;
Sir Robert Dillon, Knight ; M. Dormer, the
Queenes Sollicitor ; Capt. Christopher Carleil ;
Capt. Thomas Norreis : Capt. Warham St.
30
EDMUND SPENSER
Leger ; Capt. Nicholas Dawtrey ; and M.
Edmond Spenser, late your Lordships Secre-
tary ; and M. Smith, apothecary.'
Bryskett, supported by the applause of the
company, appealed to Spenser as ' not onely
perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well
read in Philosophic both Morall and Naturall,'
to spend the time which they had ' destined to
familiar discourse and conversation, in declaring
to them the benefits obtained by the knowledge
of Moral Philosophy, and in expounding and
teaching them to understand it.' Spenser asks
to be excused on the ground that he had already
undertaken a work tending to the same effect,
' which is in heroical verse, under the title of a
Faerie Queene, to represent all the moral virtues ;
assigning to every Virtue a Knight, to be the patron
and, defender of the same? The company were
well satisfied, and ' shewed an extreme longing
after his worke of the Faerie Queene whereof some
parcels had bin by some of them seene,' and
pressed Bryskett to produce his translation of
which Spenser had spoken. Bryskett complied,
and delivered his translation of the work of Giraldi,
with which the company must have been well
pleased, for the discussion of the book and of some
questions proposed by Spenser on the doctrines
of Plato and Aristotle lasted for three days.
31
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
With our knowledge of Spenser's sociable dis-
position and love of literary companionship, we
can understand how he bemoaned the ' luckless
lot ' that had banished him ' like wight forlore '
to the waste in which he was forgotten, and we
can realise his enjoyment of the society of the
shepherds whom he celebrates in Colin Clouts.
We are also prepared to find in his writings, as
well as in those of Shakespeare, evidence that
he found in Action what most in life he prized — a
friend.
Spenser paid another visit to London towards
the end of the year 1595, returning to Ireland in
the beginning of 1597. Shakespeare's greatest
works had not then been produced. But the
author of Romeo and Julia, The Merchant of
Venice, Richard 11. and Richard 111. had gone
far in the eagle flight which Spenser six years
before had predicted for Aetion. During Spen-
ser's stay in London he produced the second
part of the Faerie Queene, and wrote his View
of the Present State of Ireland. There is no
record of his experiences in London, such as he
furnished to Raleigh in Colin Clouts on his
return from his former visit. Spenser was in no
fitting mood for telling a such like happy tale,
nor would it have had prosperity in the ear
of Raleigh.
3 2
EDMUND SPENSER
In Protbalamion, published in 1596, he writes
of his
Sullein care
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay-
in princes Court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes.
Raleigh, also, had learned from experience to
put no confidence in princes, and he had severed
his connection with Ireland by the sale of his
estates to the Earl of Cork.
For proof of the continuation of the friendship
which had its origin in Spenser's first visit to
London we must turn from him to what was
written by Shakespeare after the death of
Spenser. But some things happened, of no
particular significance in themselves, but worth
noting in connection with others of greater
importance. We have seen in Gabriel Harvey
not only a fierce pamphleteer, but also a critical
student of Shakespeare's work, attracted to him
in the first instance, like Spenser, by his poems,
but capable of appreciating his greatness as a
dramatist. His entry into the paper warfare
in which he engaged was by the publication of
a pamphlet entitled ' Foure Letters and Certain
Sonnets ; especially touching Robert Greene,
and other parties by him abused' (1593). The
abuse was contained in Greene's Groatsworth of
33
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Wit, of which more shall be said in another chap-
ter, and one of the parties abused by Greene and
vindicated by Harvey was William Shakespeare.
By this abuse the wrath of Harvey was kindled,
and he thus wrote of the Groatsworth of Wit :
1 If his other bookes be as holesome geere as
this, no marvaile though the gay-man conceive
trimlic of himself, and statelye scorn all besides
Greene ; vile Greene ! would thou wearest half
so honest as the worst of the foure whom thou
upbraideth, or halfe so learned as the unlearnedst
of the three.'
Among the sonnets printed in this pamphlet
is one addressed by Spenser to Harvey in praise
of his i doomeful writing ' as a critic. It is
addressed ' to the Right Worshipfull, my sin-
gular good frend Mr. Gabriel Harvey, Doctor
of the Lawes,' and it thus concludes
Like a great lord of peerelesse liberty
Lifting the good up to high Honour's seat,
And the evil damning evermore to dy,
For life and death is in thy doomeful writing
So thy renovvme lives ever by endighting.
Dublin, this 18 of July 1586
your devoted frend during life
Edmund Spenser.
This sonnet was not written in view of Harvey's
vindication of Shakespeare from the attacks of
34
EDMUND SPENSER
Greene. But he was in constant communication
with Spenser, and Harvey would not have added
the sonnet to his pamphlet if he had not been
assured of the sympathy of the writer in the
cause of which he became the champion.
In the year 1599 a piratical publisher, named
William Jaggard, brought out a poetical mis-
cellany, entitled The Passionate Pilgrim, by
TV. Shakespeare, containing twenty pieces, some
of which are undoubtedly Shakespeare's. Among
these pieces is a sonnet addressed, as Shake-
speare's sonnets were, to a private friend. The
friend is a lover of music, the sonneteer a lover
of sweet poetry ; but
One god is God of both, as poets feign.
To the friend ravished by a heavenly touch on
the lute, the poet writes
Spenser to me, whose deepe Conceit is such,
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
1 The secret of Spenser's enduring popularity
with poets and lovers of poetry lies specially in
this, that he excels in the poet's peculiar gift, the
instinct for verbal music. Shakespeare, or the
author of the sonnet usually assigned to him,
felt and expressed this when he drew the parallel
between " music and sweet poetry " '
35
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes ;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned
W'henas himself to singing he betakes.
' This is an early word in criticism of Spenser,
and it is the last word about his prime and
unquestionable excellence — a word in which all
critics must agree.' * The sonnet attributed to
Shakespeare by Jaggard had appeared in the
preceding year in a volume entitled Poems in
diverse Humours as the work of Richard Barn-
field. Whether Barnfield had included in his
Poems an unclaimed sonnet written by Shake-
speare ; or Jaggard, greatly daring, had converted
to his use a sonnet which Barnfield had printed
as his own, is a question which cannot be here
discussed. There is a possibility that Barnfield
was the private friend to whom the sonnet was
addressed, and that with or without the consent
of Shakespeare — to whom his sonnets were
unconsidered trifles — he included it in his col-
lection of Poems. ' That he had some personal
relations with Shakespeare seems almost certain,
and the disputed authorship of the particular
pieces mentioned above has attracted students
to Barnficld's name. It is no small honour to
have written poems which everyone, until our
* Encyclopedia Britannica, tit. ' Spenser.'
36
EDMUND SPENSER
own day, has been content to suppose were
Shakespeare's.' *
Spenser returned to Ireland early in 1597,
a broken and disappointed man. The short
remainder of his life was clouded in gloom, and
ended in tragedy. In the October of the fol-
lowing year his castle of Kilcolman was burned
over his head by the followers of Hugh O'Neill,
Earl of Tyrone. Spenser, with his family, fled
to Cork, whence he was sent to London on the
9th of December with a despatch by Sir Thomas
Norris, the President of Munster. A month after
his arrival in London, on the 1 6th of January,
1598-9, he died, in the words of Shakespeare,
' in beggary.'
The story was thus told by Ben Jonson to
Drummond of Hawthornden :
' The Irish having rob'd Spenser's goods, and
burnt his house and a little child new born, he
and his wyfe escaped ; and, after, he died for
lake of bread in King Street, and refused 20 pieces
sent to him by my Lord of Essex, and said, He
was sorrie he had no time to spend them.'
The exact facts of the case must have been
known to Ben Jonson and to Shakespeare, and
I prefer their testimony, as to a matter of fact
within their knowledge, to the speculations of
* Mr. Edmund Gosse in Diet. Nat. Biography, tit. ' Barnfield.'
37
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
later writers who are moved by the improbability
of Spenser, a favourite at Court, a pensioner of
the Crown, the bearer of an important despatch,
with friends in London, being allowed to die for
lack of bread. More improbable events have
in fact occurred than the death of Spenser for
lack of the nourishment necessary in his enfeebled
condition. His death, under such circumstances,
might well be described by Jonson as ' for
lake of bread,' and by Shakespeare as ' in
beggary.' *
That Spenser's friends were touched with
remorse when they realised the consequence of
their neglect adds to the pathos of the tragedy.
He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Essex,
whose failure to send timely aid may have been
due to Spenser's unwillingness to appeal for
assistance, paid the expense of the funeral.
Camden tells us that his hearse was attended by
poets ; and mournful elegies and poems, with the
pens that wrote them, were thrown into his
tomb. That Shakespeare was among the mourn-
ing poets who stood by the grave of his friend we
cannot doubt, for he was moved by the pity of
it to depart from his wont, and to introduce
• That Spenser died in poverty was generally known. It is men-
tioned by Fletcher, by John Wecvcr, and by the author of The
Returne from Pernassus.
3»
EDMUND SPENSER
into one of his plays an allusion to an event of
the day.
A Midsummer Night's, Dream was first printed
in 1600, the year following the death of Spenser.
When the strange story of the midsummer night
had been told over, and the lovers had come, full
of joy and mirth, Theseus asks
What masques, what dances shall we have
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bed-time f*
A paper is handed to him, showing how many
sports were ripe, and of these he was to make
choice. Theseus rejects ' The battle with the
Centaurs ' and ' The riot of the tipsy Bac-
chanals.' He is then tendered
The thrice three muses mourning for the death
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.
Of this he says —
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
To our endless content he then makes choice of
A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe ; very tragical mirth,
to be played by hard-handed men that work in
Athens.
* Midsummer Night's Dream, V. i. 32.
39
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
The reference to the thrice three mourning
muses has been accepted as an unmistakable
reference to Spenser's poem, entitled The Teares
of the Muses, in which each of the Nine laments
the decay of the branch of letters over which
she presides.
There was a special propriety in the tragic
death of Spenser being mourned by the thrice
three muses. He was the darling of the muses,
the ' poet's poet.' These words of Charles Lamb
describe the position in the literary world which
was held by Spenser after the publication of
the first part of the Faerie Queene. Then by the
mourning muses the scene in the Abbey is recalled
when the weeping poets cast into Spenser's grave
their elegies and the pens with which they were
written.
For the intimate friends of Spenser the words
of Shakespeare would have a special meaning.
They mourned the loss, not only of a great poet,
but of * Learning late deceased.' Lodovick
Bryskett, in his cottage near Dublin, appealed to
Spenser to favour the company with a discourse
of philosophy, ' knowing him to be not only
perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well
read in Philosophie, both morall and naturall.
For, of his love and kindness to me, he encour-
aged me long sithens to follow the reading of the
40
EDMUND SPENSER
Greeke tongue and offered me his helpe to make
me understand it.'
The variety and extent of Spenser's learning,
which was known to those who were admitted
to his friendship, has of later years been realised,
as the result of a careful study of his writings.
' Except Milton, and possibly Gray, Spenser
was the most learned of English poets, and signs
of his multifarious reading in the classics, and
modern French and Italian literature abound in
his writings.' *
What more fitting theme for a ' satire, keen
and critical,' than the death in beggary of one
like Spenser, the darling of the muses, the
favourite of the Queen, and high in office ; the
pompous funeral in Westminster Abbey ; the
broad pieces, gifts well meant but all too late ;
the poets with their elegies, deploring in good
set terms the loss of him whom they suffered to
die — from want of thought and not of heart, we
may well believe — neglected and uncared ? Well
might Theseus reject the theme as ' not sorting
with a nuptial ceremony.'
Professor Masson, in his Shakespeare Personally,
notes a certain respect in which Shakespeare
differed from his contemporaries. ' What do
* ' Life of Spenser,' in the Diet. Nat. Biography, by Professor J .W.
Hales and Sir Sidney Lee.
4 1
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
we find them, one and all, doing — Spenser,
Chapman, Drayton, Daniel, Nash, Donne, Ben
Jonson, Marston, Dekker, Chettle, and other
known poets and dramatists of rank, besides the
small fry of professed epigrammatists, like Owen
and John Davies, of Hereford ? Writing verses
to or about each other, commendatory poems on
each other's works, mutual invectives and lam-
poons, in prologues to their plays or otherwise,
epistles and dedications of compliment to eminent
noblemen and courtiers, epitaphs on noblemen or
ladies just dead, and comments in a thousand
forms on the incidents of the day. In the midst
of all this crossfire of epistles, epigrams, and
poems of occasion, stood Shakespeare ; coming
in, too, for his own share of notice in them — for
just a little of the invective and for a very great
deal of the eulogy. But he would not be brought
to return a shot. . . . From occurrence litera-
ture of any kind Shakespeare seems to have
systematically shrunk.' *
Even the death of Elizabeth, a theme wel-
comed by other poets of the day, is unmarked by
a line by him. This was noted as strange by
Chettle, who in England's Mourning Garment
(1603) wrote
• Shakespeare Personally, by David Masson. Edited and arranged
by Rosaline Masson.
4 2
EDMUND SPENSER
Nor doth the siluer-tonge'd Melicert
Drop from his honied muse one sable teare
To mourne her death that graced his desert
And to his laies opened her royal ear.
Shepheard, remember our Elizabeth
And sing her Rape, done by that Tarquin, Death.
That Shakespeare departed from his custom
when he introduced into A Midsummer Night's
Dream a reference to the death of Spenser, shows
how profoundly he was moved by the personality
of the man, the beauty of his poetry, the extent
of his learning, and the tragedy of his death.
The death of Marlowe is the occasion of one
other reference to an event of the day to be found
in his works. But Spenser exerted no such
influence on the development of the art of Shake-
speare as was due to Marlowe. There is no
passage written by Shakespeare in which we
catch the faintest echo of the poetry of Spenser.
There is indeed one speech which, but for
Spenser, would not have been written. It is a
reminiscence of Spenser ; not of the poet, but of
the Irish official.
Spenser was not only a great poet, he was also
an Irish official, with a clear and definite Irish
policy. It was the policy of his patron and
friend, Arthur Lord Grey, of Wilton. Lord
Grey was recalled in 1582, two years after his
43
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
appointment as Lord Deputy ; but Spenser
remained constant to his political creed, and
throughout his life it was his mission, with
chivalrous loyalty to defend the policy and
vindicate the memory of Grey. This he did in
immortal verse in the fifth book of his Faerie
Queene, and in indifferent prose in his View of the
Present State of Ireland, written in 1587, after
the death of Grey. This is the policy that
Shakespeare, with his marvellous power of con-
densation, has expressed in four lines, put into
the mouth of Richard, when departing for
Ireland :
Now for our Irish wars :
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns
Which live like venom where no venom else
But only they have privilege to live.*
Whence did Shakespeare derive this policy :
War, to be followed by the supplanting of the
native Irish ? And how comes he to speak of
them with contempt as ' rough, rug-headed
kerns,' and with hatred, as venom that had
escaped expulsion at the hands of St. Patrick ?
Questions to be asked — for Shakespeare is wont
to put into the mouths of characters in his
dramas an expression of his personal feelings
• King Richard II., II., i. 155.
44
EDMUND SPENSER
and experiences, and if a different explanation
of this passage can be found it would be welcome.
When Spenser came to London with Raleigh
in 1589 he brought with him three completed
books of the Faerie Queene. What he calls ' his
whole intention in the course of this worke '
had been long since thought out, and he was then
at work on the next succeeding books, the
Legends of Friendship and of Justice. Spenser
was always ready to take his friends into his
confidence as to the literary work in which he
was engaged, often far in advance of its com-
pletion. He had read the early books of his
poem to Raleigh in Kilcolman castle, and ' some
parcels ' of the Faerie Queene had been seen by
some of the company assembled in Bryskett's
cottage near Dublin — a prelate, a lawyer, four
soldiers, and ' M. Smith, apothecary.' If
Spenser was willing to expound his intention
to this assembly, he was not likely to be more
reticent in the company of the Shepherds who
served Cynthia, and when Aetion, or another,
put to him a question which has been repeated
throughout the centuries to succeeding genera-
tions of Irish officials on their visits to London,
and asked him to give the company his view of
the present state of Ireland, we know what view
he presented, and if he did not show them some
45
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
parcels of his forthcoming fifth book, what he
said was understood and treasured by at least
one of his hearers.
The view set forth in the treatise written in
1587 is presented in allegorical form in the fifth
book of the Faerie Queene. The legend of
Artegall, or of Justice, is the story of Arthur
Lord Grey's mission to Ireland, his policy and
his recall. The allegory in many parts of the
poem is obscure, and the riddle is not easily
solved. It is generally difficult, and often
impossible, to discover the counterparts in real
life of the allegorical personages of the poem.
But in regard to two we are left without doubt :
the Faerie Queen is Elizabeth, and Artegall,
Arthur Lord Grey.
A letter from the author to Sir Walter Raleigh,
' expounding his whole intention in the course
of this worke,' is prefixed to the edition of the
three books published in 1581. The Faerie
Queen by whose excellent beauty when seen in
a vision King Arthur is ravished, and awaking
sets forth to seek her, is Faerie land, is Glory.
* In that Faerie Queene I mean glory in my
generall intention, but in my particular I con-
ceive the most excellent and glorious person of
our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdome in
Faerie land.'
46
EDMUND SPENSER
The Faerie Queene was to be ' disposed into
twelve books, fashioning xn. morall vertues.'
Of each virtue a knight is the patron, whose
adventures form the legend of the book. This
is the general intention. The particular inten-
tion as to the Faerie Queen is to identify her
with Elizabeth, and as to Artegall to identify
him with Arthur Lord Grey. Artegall is sent
by the Faerie Queen (Elizabeth) to rescue Irena
(Ireland) from suffering under the power of
wrong (Grantorto). Armed with Chryseas, the
keen sword of Justice, and accompanied by Talus
and the iron flail of force, Artegall puts an end
to wrongdoing. He then abode with fair Irena,
when his study was to deal Justice.
And day and night employ'd his busie paine
How to reform that ragged common-weale
But, ere he coulde reforme it thoroughly
He through occasion called was away
To Faerie Court, that of necessity
His course of Justice he was forst to stay
And Talus to revoke from the right way
In which he was that Realme for to redresse ;
But envie's cloud still dimmeth vertue's ray.
So having freed Irena from distresse
He tooke his leave of her then left in heavinesse.
This was the doing of ' two old ill favour'd
Hags,' Envie and Detraction —
47
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Combyned in one
And linct together against Sir Artegall
• • • • •
Besides, into themselves they gotten had
A monster, which the Blatant Beast they call.
Disregarding the assaults of Envie and Detrac-
tion, and the barking and baying of the Blatant
Beast, Artegall
Still the way did hold
To Faerie Court ; when what him fell shall else
be told.
This is the story of the recall of Grey. He
died in 1593, and the rest is silence.
It is not difficult to supply the explanation of
the policy of Arthur which was given to the
listening Shepherds, when the poet, as was his
wont, explained the general and particular inten-
tion of the Legend of Justice. But for this we
must turn to the View.
Spenser's Irish policy, like that of Richard II.,
began with war, and ended in ' supplanting.'
In the View Eudoxus suggests that the reforma-
tion of the realm might be effected by ' making
of good lawes, and establishing of new statutes,
with sharpe penalties and punishments, for
amending of all that is presently amisse.'
Irenasus, by whom Spenser speaks, says —
< 48
EDMUND SPENSER
But all the realme is first to be reformed, and lawes
are afterwards to be made for keeping and continuing it
in the reformed estate.
Eudox. How then doe you think is the reformation
thereof to be begunne, if not by lawes and ordinances ?
Iren. Even by the sword ; for all these evils must
first be cut away by a strong hand, before any good can
be planted.
Later on Irenaeus develops his scheme of
supplanting. ' All the lands will I give unto
Englishmen I will haue drawne thither, who shall
haue the same with such estates as shall bee
thought meete, and for such rent as shall eft-
soones be rated ; and under every of those
Englishmen will I place some of those Irish to
be tennants for a certaine rent, according to the
quantity of such land as every man shall have
allotted unto him, and shalbe found able to
wield, wherein this speciall regard shall be had,
that in no place under any land-lord there shall
be many of them placed together, but dispersed
wide from their acquaintance, and scattered
farre abroad thorough all the country.'
Thus would the tribal system be broken up,
and the kerns could no longer ' practice or con-
spire what they will.' Rough and shag-headed
they were in the eyes of Spenser, for he wrote
of their ' long glippes, which is a thicke curled
49
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
bush of hair, hanging downe over their eyes, and
monstrously disguising them, which arc both
very bad and hurtful.'
In the View Spenser recalls how when ' that
good Lord Grey, after long travell and many
perilous assayes, had brought things almost to
this passe that the country was ready for refor-
mation,' the Queen ' being by nature full of
moving and clemency,' listened to the complaint
against Grey, that ' he was a bloodie man, and
minded not the life of her subjects no more than
dogges,' and ' all suddenly turned topside-
turvey ; the noble Lord eft-soones was blamed ;
the wretched people pitticd ; and new counsells
plotted, in which it was concluded that a general
pardon should be sent over to all that would
accept of it, upon which all former purposes
were blanked, the governor at a bay, and not
only all that great and long change which she
had before beene at quite lost and cancelled,
but also all that hope of good which was
even at the doore put back and cleane frus-
trated.'
This is a prose version of the story of Grey's
recall as it is told in the fifth book of the Faerie
Queene.
If Shakespeare did not derive from converse
with Spenser the Irish policy which he put into
50
EDMUND SPENSER
the mouth of Richard, I know not from what
contemporary source it was borrowed.
But why does Richard speak with hatred of
the native Irish, as the only venom which had
escaped expulsion by St. Patrick ? In a book
well known to Spenser — for he quotes from it
more than once in his View — Stanyhurst's
Description of Ireland, printed in Holinshed's
Chronicles (1577), tne writer, telling how ' Saint
Patricke was moved to expell all the venemous
wormes out of Ireland,' quotes from the
Dialogues of Alanus Copus these words : ' Dici
fortasse inde a nonnullis solet nihil esse in
Hibernia venenati praeter ipsos homines.'
Stanyhurst quotes these words with indignation.
But Spenser may well have treasured them with
different feelings, and repeated them to his
friend. He admired the natural beauties and
the abundant resources of Ireland, and found
' sweet wit and good invention ' in her bardic
literature, but it must be acknowledged that
his feelings towards the native Irish were such
as might have found expression in the saying
recorded by Alanus Copus. Whether Shake-
speare learned this saying from Spenser, or from
Stanyhurst, whose description, with other parts
of Holinshed, he had studied with care, matters
not. It is not to be taken as the result of his
5i
E 2
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
own experience, but as a saying that might with
dramatic propriety be attributed to Richard.
The poetic element in the character of the
second Richard was noted by Coleridge and by
Professor Dowden. To Sir Walter Raleigh,
Richard is poetry itself. ' It is difficult to
condemn Richard without taking sides against
poetry. He has a delicate and prolific fancy,
which flows into many dream-shapes in the
prison ; a wide and true imagination, which
expresses itself in his great speech on the mon-
archy of Death ; and a deep discernment of
tragic issues, which gives thrilling effect to his
bitterest outcry.' It may be deserving of a
passing note that it is to this most poetic of
kings that Shakespeare attributes the ruthless
policy of warfare and supplanting which was
that of his friend, the poet's poet, Spenser.
Spenser was attracted to Shakespeare by the
quality in his nature, to which, in his days, the
word ' gentle ' was applied, not less than by
the high thoughts invention, and heroic strain
of a muse which gave promise of an eagle flight.
It was this quality, so early apprehended by
Spenser, that won for Shakespeare throughout
his life the love of his fellows. By bearing
this fact in mind as we trace his relations with
them, strange errors and misconceptions may be
52
EDMUND SPENSER
avoided. And after his death this was the
thought uppermost in the mind of Ben Jonson,
when he wrote of the portrait prefixed to the
folio of 1623
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut.
53
THE PLAYERS
Shakespeare by his will left ' to my fcllowcs,
John Hcmyngcs, Richard Burbagc, and Henry
Cundcll xxvj's viii d a peece to buy them ringes.'
A good many years before, Burbage, with Kempe,
had gloried in the triumph of ' our fellow
Shakespeare ' over the University pens, and
over Ben Jonson too ; and some years after the
death of Shakespeare Ben Jonson told how the
players, in their devotion to the memory of their
fellow, regarded as a ' malevolent speech ' one
that Ben Jonson had intended as literary criti-
cism, when he expressed a wish that Shakespeare
had blotted a thousand lines.*
The pride of the players in the success of their
fellow Shakespeare as a dramatist, outstripping
even the great Ben Jonson, was unalloyed by any
feeling of jealousy. He had become rich and
famous in the literary world. He had been
the subject of courtly favour and of the patronage
of the great, before he retired to his native town
to end his days in affluence and repute, a gentle-
• Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter.
54
THE PLAYERS
man of coat armour. But his was not a nature
to be spoiled by success, and his last thoughts
were not for powerful patrons or literary mag-
nates, but for his fellow players, John Hem-
ing and Henry Condell, with Richard Burbage
the impersonator of his greatest characters.
The world owes much to the good fellowship
between Shakespeare and the players, which
endured throughout his life. For seven years
after his death Mr. William Shakespeare's
Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies were pub-
lished ' according to the True Originall copies '
by John Heming and Henry Condell. Richard
Burbage had died in 1 619. In dedicating them
to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, who
had ' prosequuted both them, and their Authour
living with so much favour,' the editors write :
i We have but collected them, an office to the
dead, to procure his orphanes, guardians ; with-
out ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame ;
only to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend
& Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare, by
humble offer of his player to your most noble
patronage.'
Heming and Condell were not altogether blind
to the priceless literary value of the gift that
they were presenting to the world. But the
thought uppermost in their minds was piety
55
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
towards the man whom they loved. That
piety was recognised as the motive by which
they were impelled, we learn from verses prefixed
to the First Folio, written by Leonard Digges,
a fair representative of the literary world of the
day,
Shakespeare, at length, thy pious fellowes give
The world thy workes.
- Shakespeare had been dead for seven years,
and the world of letters gave no sign. The
greatest treasures of English literature, perhaps
of all literature, were either tossing about in the
Globe theatre, or circulating in imperfect copies
surreptitiously obtained, and, for all the literary
world cared, they would have so remained. And
yet at that time the literary world of London
included Jonson, Drayton, Camden, Fletcher,
and such lesser lights as Leonard Digges and
Hugh Holland, each of whom was in some way
connected with Shakespeare or his works. It
did not occur to Shakespeare's literary fellows
that it might be worth while to edit in a collected
form the plays that had been printed in pirated
and inaccurate editions, or to make some inquiry
about the dramas in manuscript that were at the
mercy of the players at the Globe. The assist-
ance of any one of these men would have saved
56
THE PLAYERS
the pious editors of the First Folio from the
manifest and glaring errors which mar the text
of the Folio, and have blinded the eyes of many
generations of critics to the true position of that
edition, and to its claims upon their attention.
There is some foundation for the suggestion
that Shakespeare had intended to give his
dramas to the world in a collected form, brought
out with the care that he had bestowed on his
poems, and that his work was cut short by death.
The editors of the Folio in their dedication ask
for indulgence, the author ' not having the fate,
common with some, to be exequutor to his owne
writings,' and in their address to ' the great
variety of Readers ' these words occur : ' It
had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have
bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liu'd
to haue set forth, and overseen his owne writings ;
But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he
by death departed from that right, we pray you
do not envie his Friends, the office of their care,
and paine, to haue collected and publish'd them.'
These words are consistent with the supposition
that Shakespeare's death, which was sudden and
unexpected, cut short the work in which he was
engaged of the collection and revision of his
plays. But, on the other hand, there is the
fact that he never interfered to prevent the
57
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
printing of pirated and corrupt versions of his
greatest works, and permitted the manuscripts
to remain with the managers of the Globe
Theatre, to be altered from time to time, as the
exigencies of the playhouse might require ; for
it was as acting copies, and not as manuscripts
revised and corrected for the press, that the true
originals were received at the hands of the
author.
However this may be, the fact remains that
for the preservation and printing of these copies
we arc indebted to the piety of Shakespeare's
fellow players, and if to carelessness about the
preservation of his plays Shakespeare had added
the aggressive and unlovely personality of Ben
Jonson — ever ready, according to Drummond, to
sacrifice a friend to a jest — it is more than prob-
able that most, if not all of them, would have been
lost to the world. Of the thirty-six plays
included in the First Folio, sixteen had been
published in quarto from ' diverse stolne and
surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by
the frauds and stealthcs of incurious impostors
that expos'd them.' Among the twenty printed
for the first time in the Folio are The Tempest,
As Tou Like It, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale,
King Henry VIII., Coriolanus, 'Julius Ccesar,
Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. -
58
THE PLAYERS
If the literature of Shakespeare criticism could
find its way to the Elysian fields, in no part would
Shakespeare be more concerned than in what
has been written of his fellows, Heming and
Condell.
He would not quarrel with Mr. Churton
Collins's criticism of the text of the First Folio —
' words the restoration of which is obvious left
unsupplied, unfamiliar words transliterated into
gibberish ; punctuation as it pleases chance ;
sentences with the subordinate clauses higgledy-
piggledy or upside down ; lines transposed ;
verse printed as prose, and prose as verse ;
speeches belonging to one character given to
another ; stage directions incorporated in the
text ; actors' names suddenly substituted for
those of the dramatis personae ; scenes and acts
left unindicated or indicated wrongly — all this
and more makes the text of the First Folio one
of the most portentous specimens of typography
and editing in existence.' *
All this is true, for two honest players, no
literary aid being forthcoming, simply handed
over to Isaac Haggard and Edward Blount, two
honest printers, manuscripts which they knew
to have been honestly come by, to put them
into print as best they could. No one but the
* Essays and Studies.
59
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
author is blamablc for the inevitable result.
And if Shakespeare, reading this criticism of
their handiwork, chanced to be in the frame
of mind attributed to him by Pope when he
wrote
There hapless Shakespeare yet of Tibbald sore
Wish'd he had blotted for himself before,
he might well regret that he had not printed
for himself before. But he would learn with
righteous indignation that doubts had been
cast on the honesty and good faith of his pious
fellows.
' There is no doubt,' writes Mr. Spalding,*
' that they could at least have enumerated
Shakespeare's works correctly ; but their know-
ledge and design of profit did not suit each other.'
They must, he points out, be presumed to have
known perfectly what works were, and what
were not Shakespeare's. But these men were
' unscrupulous and unfair ' in their selection.
Their whole conduct ' inspires distrust,' and
justifies a critic in throwing the First Folio
entirely out of view as a * dishonest ' and, it
might be added, hypocritical ' attempt to put
down editions of about fifteen separate plays of
Shakespeare, previously printed in quarto, which,
* Letter on Authorship of Two Noble Kinsmen.
60
THE PLAYERS
though in most respects more accurate than
their successors, had evidently been taken from
stolen copies.'
The profession of the editors of the Folio that
they had done their work ' without ambition
either of selfe-profit or fame ' was pure hypocrisy,
although, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillips pointed out,*
they, * in giving unreservedly to the public
valuable literary property of which they were
sole proprietors, made a sacrifice for which the
profits on the sale of the Folio would not com-
pensate them.'
The language used by the editors of the first
edition of the Cambridge Shakespeare, Mr. W. G.
Clarke and Mr. J. Glover, is much to the same
effect. Their preface is prefixed to one of the
best editions of Shakespeare's works, the Cam-
bridge Shakespeare of 1893, edited by the late
Dr. William Aldis Wright ; but he is not respon-
sible for language used by his predecessors. The
editors are guilty of suggestio falsi in conveying
to the public the idea that the Folio was printed
from original manuscripts received by them at
the hands of the author. If the editors were
guilty of the fraudulent puffing of their own
wares, coupled with ' denunciation of editions
which they knew to be superior of their own,'
* Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.
6l
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
the plainer language used by Mr. Spalding would
be fully justified.
Criticism is foreign to these pages, but they
arc conversant with Shakespeare's relations with
his fellows, and it is satisfactory to note that he
has been acquitted by more enlightened critics
of having bestowed his love — testified, as was
then the custom, by the gift of mourning rings —
upon a pair of fraudulent knaves. The attitude
of modern editors towards the Folio is totally
different. Sir Sidney Lee writes : ' Whatever
be the First Folio's typographical and editorial
imperfections, it is the fountain-head of know-
ledge of Shakespeare's complete achievement.' *
Mr. Grant White, in his historical sketch of the
text of Shakespeare prefixed to the edition of his
works edited by him (Boston, 1865), writes :
' Indeed, such is the authority given to this
volume by the auspices under which it appeared,
that had it been thoroughly prepared for the
press and printed with care, there would have
been no appeal from its text, and editorial labour
upon Shakespeare's plays, except that of an his-
torical or exegetical nature, would have been not
only without justification, but without oppor-
tunity.' The text of the late Mr. Horace Furness's
monumental Variorum Shakespeare is the First
• Life of Shakespeare, p. 557.
62
THE PLAYERS
Folio the spelling of which he retains. An edition
of the plays by Charlotte Porter and H. A. Clarke,
with a general introduction by Mr. Churton
Collins, has been published, in which the text
of the Folio, with the original spelling, is adopted,
with no more than necessary corrections. Sir
Walter Raleigh, in a suggestive and interesting
volume on Shakespeare contributed to the
English Men of Letters series, writes : ' There
is no escape from the Folio ; for twenty of the
plays it is one sole authority ; for most of the
remainder it is the best authority that we shall
ever know.'
— Shakespeare's fellowship with the players of
his day dated from shortly after his advent to
London, and endured to the day of his death.
They had rescued him from the mean condition
to which he had fallen, and they took pride in
his success. What manner of men these players
were is an inquiry the answer to which may aid
us, in some degree, in understanding the character
of their associate and friend.
The players who were most closely associated
with Shakespeare were Heming, Burbage and
Condell. Their names are associated with his
in the licences granted to the players at the
Globe theatre, and they are all remembered by
him in his will. ~~
63
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
With Burbagc, the impersonator of his greatest
creations in tragedy — Hamlet, Lear and Othello
— he appears to have been most intimately asso-
ciated. A merry tale, of a kind that is often
current about play-actors, in which their names
are connected, is recorded in Manningham's
Diary of the date of the 13th of March, 1601.
And after Shakespeare had settled in Stratford
we find him, in one of his visits to London,
engaged with Burbage in devising for the Earl
of Portland the kind of emblematic decoration
known as impresa, for his equipment at a tourna-
ment to be held at Whitehall.
We owe it to the pious care of Malone, followed
by Sir Sidney Lee and the late Mr. Joseph
Knight, that we have been granted some insight
into the character of the men who were, in a
special sense, the fellows and friends of Shake-
speare.
Heming died in 1630 in his house in St. Mary's,
Aldenbury, where he and his wife had lived
together for thirty years, and where he served
as churchwarden in 1608. He left a large family,
for whom he made provision by his will, and that
he gave them a good education is evident, for
his ninth son, William, who is also noticed in the
Dictionary of National Biography, was educated
at Westminster School, whence in 1621 he was
64
THE PLAYERS
elected a King's scholar at Christ Church,
Oxford.
Condell also lived in the parish of St. Mary,
in good repute, as we must infer from the fact
that he was sidesman in 1606, and churchwarden
in 1 61 8. He died in his country house at
Fulham in 1627, having by his will, in which he
styles himself ' gentleman,' disposed of con-
siderable property, in addition to shares in the
Blackfriars and Globe theatres.
Of Burbage, the most famous actor of his
own, or perhaps of any age, Sir Sidney Lee has
been able to collect more full information in
his interesting biography in the Dictionary of
National Biography. The estimation in which
he was held appears from the many poems written
to his memory, and from his ' occasional intro-
duction into plays in his own person, and in no
assumed character. ... In a petition addressed
by his wife and son William to the lord Cham-
berlain in 1635, relative to the shares in the
Blackfriars and Globe playhouses, they speak of
Richard Burbage as " one who for thirty yeares'
paines, cost and labour made meanes to leave
his wife and children some estate," which implies
that he died a rich man.' He had some repu-
tation as a painter, and a tradition recorded by
Oldys attributes to him the Chandos portrait
65
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
of Shakespeare, which became the property of
Sir William Davenant.
The reader of the biographies of these players
must be struck by the respectability of their
lives, compared with the sad tale that must be
told of the University pens of the day. Shake-
speare's most intimate friends appear to have been
estimable family men, who took an interest in
Church matters, put some money together, as
he did, and provided well for their families.
The most prosperous of the players of the day
was Edward Alleyn. He was a famous actor,
and accumulated great wealth, part of which
he expended in the foundation and endowment
of the college at Dulwich. In 1600 he built, in
conjunction with Henslowe, the Fortune theatre
in Cripplegate. We do not read of him in con-
nection with any of Shakespeare's plays. Great
as he undoubtedly was as an actor, it is not
uncharitable to attribute his extraordinary finan-
cial success not so much to the legitimate drama
as to a speculation in which Shakespeare would
have taken no interest,* for in 1594 he acquired
• Shakespeare had no respect for the patrons of the bear garden.
' You'll leave your noise anon, ye rascals : do you take the Court
for Paris-garden ? ye rude slaves, leave your gaping' {Henry VIII.,
V. iv. 2). The lovers and haunters of bear-baiting and such like sports
are Autolycus {Winter's Tale, IV. iii. 108), Abraham Slender
{Merry Wives, I. i. 302), Sir Andrew Aguecheek {Twelfth Night,
I. iii. 97), Sir Toby Belch (1*., II. v. 8), Richard III. (2 Henry
66
THE PLAYERS
an interest in the baiting-house at Paris Garden,
and he and Henslowe obtained the office of
' Master of the Royal Game of bears bulls and
Mastiff dogs.' 'On special occasions he seems
to have directed the sport in person, and a graphic
but revolting account of his baiting a lion before
James I. at the Tower is given in Stovfs Chronicle,
ed. 1631, p. 835/*
It is interesting to pass from the swollen
wealth of this ungentle Master Baiter, turned
philanthropist, to the modest fortunes of one of
Shakespeare's friends, and to his kindly thought
for his fellow players.
Augustine Phillips was, with Shakespeare, an
original shareholder of the Globe theatre. He
died in 1605, leaving by his will '"to my fellowe
William Shakespeare a thirty shilling peece in
gould." . . . Phillips died in affluent circum-
stances, and remembered many of his fellow
actors in his will, leaving to his " fellow," Henry
Condell, and to his theatrical servant, Christopher
Beeston, like sums as to Shakespeare. He also
bequeathed " twenty shillings in gould " to each
of the actors Lawrence Fletcher, Robert Armin,
Richard Cowley, Alexander Cash, Nicholas
VI., V. i. 151), Thersites (Troilus and Cressida, V. vii. 12), and
Aaron (Titus Andronicus, V. i. 10 1).
* Diet. Nat. Biography.
67
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Toolcy, together with forty shillings and clothes,
or musical instruments to two theatrical appren-
tices Samuel Gilborne and James Sands. Five
pounds were further to be equally distributed
amongst " the hired men of the company." Of
four executors, three were the actors John
Heminges, Richard Burbage and William Ely,
who each received a silver bowl of the value of
five pounds.' *
The will of Augustine Phillips is an interesting
document, for by its aid we can discern in the
profession of player, from its very infancy, the
good fellowship and readiness to succour the
less successful members, by which it has been
always honourably distinguished.
The position of the players, at the time when
Shakespeare was admitted to the fellowship,
was a strange one. At law, unless he had
obtained a licence for the exercise of his functions
under a statute passed in 1572 from a peer of
the realm or other honourable personage of
greater degree, he was liable to the punishment
inflicted by magistrates on rogues, vagabonds,
or sturdy beggars. j* By a fiction of law the
licensed players were considered to be retained
as the ' household servants daylie waytors,' of
• Life of Shakespeare, p. 453, note 1.
f 14 Eliz. c. 5, re-enacted 39 Eliz. c. 4.
68
THE PLAYERS
the great nobleman. They craved no further
stipend or benefit at his hands but their liveries,
and ' also your honors Licence to certifye that
we are your household Servaunts when we shall
have occasion to travayle amongst our frendes.' *
The legal fiction by which the player escaped
whipping as a vagabond by enrolling himself as
a servant had, like most others, its origin in
historical fact. The fellowships of players may
be traced to the vast number of servants and
retainers which was, up to the early years of the
sixteenth century, attached to the house of a
great nobleman. It was part of their office to
afford entertainment on festive occasions, such
as a marriage. The servants were often called
upon to entertain their masters and his guests
by a dramatic performance of some kind.
Play-acting was in the air in the reign of
Elizabeth. The miracle plays and moralities of
the Middle Ages were becoming out of date, and
the drama was in course of development. We find
it in a rudimentary form when ' three carters, three
shepherds, three neat herds, three swine-herds,
that have made themselves all men of hair,' have
a dance ' which the wenches say is a gallimaufry
of gambols because they are not in it.' f More
* Life of Shakespeare, p. 47, note 1.
f Winters Tale, IV. iv. 331.
6 9
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
ambitious was the presentation of the Nine
Worthies^ in which the village Curate, Sir
Nathaniel, ' a foolish mild man, an honest man
look you, and soon dashed, though a marvellous
good neighbour 'faith, and a very good bowler,'
was, when cast for the part of Alexander, some-
what o'er-parted. The servants of Duke Theseus
of Athens were ready, under the master of the
revels, to provide a masque or play to wear
away a tedious hour. The Duke inquires of
Philostrate
What masques, what dances shall we have,
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bed-time ?
Where is our usual manager of mirth ?
What revels are in hand ? Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour ? *
It so happened that Philostrate, the master
of the revels, had seen rehearsed a play, as brief
as he had known a play, wherewith
Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour'd in their minds till now,
had made ready against their lord's nuptial,
Which when I saw rehearsed, I must confess
Made mine eyes water ; but more merry teares
The passion of loud laughter never shed.
* Midsummer Night's Dream, V. i. 32.
70
THE PLAYERS
To the master of the revels this was ' nothing,
nothing in the world.' But the magnanimous
Theseus would see the play :
For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Go, bring them in.
The conversion of the feudal retinue of a great
nobleman into a company of players connected
with his name was due to the action of several
causes. The nobleman was no longer able to
bear the expense of the upkeep of a great feudal
retinue, except by the sale of a portion of his
inheritance, to which some had recourse, and the
national passion for the drama afforded the means
of maintaining at the expense of the public a
company of servants with which his name was
honourably associated.
The travelling companies in the time of
Elizabeth differed widely in importance. In the
old play upon which The Taming of the Shrew is
founded, we find this stage direction : ' Enter
player with a pack.' The company that visited
Elsinore was of a different class.
Rosencrantz tells Hamlet that he and his
companion had ' coted * them on the way, and
hither are they coming to offer you service.'
* In coursing language a greyhound outstripping his competitor
is said to have coted him. The players were travelling slowly with the
wardrobes and properties.
71
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Ham. He that plays the King shall be welcome :
his majesty shall have tribute of me ; the adventurous
knight shall use his foil and target ; the lover shall not
sigh gratis; the humorous man shall end his part in
peace ; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs
are tickled o' the sere ; and the lady shall say her mind
freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. What players
are they ?
Ros. Even those you were wont to take delight in,
the tragedians of the city.
Ham. How chances it they travel ? Their residence
both in reputation and profit was better both ways.
It is then explained that since a late innova-
tion they do not hold the same estimation, and
are not so followed as when Hamlet was in the
city. It is not their fault, for ' their endeavour
keeps in the wonted pace.' But companies of
children — ' an aery of children, little eyases, that
cry out on the top of question, and are most
tyrannically clapped for't — are now the fashion.' f
Hamlet has some pertinent remarks to make on
this new fashion, which show that he was on the
side of the tragedians in whom he was wont to
take delight. The players arrive and are received
• Hamlet, II. ii. 330.
I The cyass was a hawk taken and trained as a nestling. It was
not so highly esteemed by falconers as the wild hawk or haggard,
when reclaimed, ' Eycasses are tedious and do use to cry very much
in their feedings, they are troublesome and paynfull to be entered.'
Turbervile, Booke of Faulcotine, 1575.
72
THE PLAYERS
with a friendly courtesy, removed alike from
offensive patronage and undue familiarity.
You are welcome, masters ; welcome, all. I am glad
to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. my old
friend! thy face is valanced since I saw thee last;
comest thou to beard me in Denmark ? What my
young lady and mistress ! By'r lady, your ladyship
is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the
altitude of a chopine.
The coming of the tragedians of the city to
Elsinore, and their reception by the Prince of
Denmark, are reminiscences of a visit made by
the company of which Shakespeare was a
member to a great house, such as Wilton, and
of the favour with which, in the language of the
editors of the First Folio, he was ' prosecuted '
by its owner ; and it may be that the original of
Hamlet was found in some young nobleman
capable of great things, but through lack of
decision throwing away his life and oppor-
tunities ; distinguished nevertheless from the
idlers who occupied seats on the stage of the
Globe and passed jests to the actors, by genuine
interest in the drama, and by an understanding
of the true principles of the player's art. With
suchlike visitor to the Globe theatre Shakespeare
would hold converse, such as that of the First
Player with the Prince of Denmark.
73
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
In the year 1602 a curious satirical medley-
was produced in the University of Cambridge.
Although it was an academical production, and
full of classical quotations and allusions, it
excited sufficient general interest to lead to its
publication in 1606, by the title of The Returne
from Pernassus, or the Scourge of Simony, as it
was publickly acted by the Students in St. John's
College, Cambridge. ' It is a very singular, a
very ingenious, and, as I think, a very interesting
performance. It contains criticisms on con-
temporary authors, strictures on living manners,
and the earliest denunciation (I know of) of the
miseries and unprofitableness of a scholar's life.' *
The piece has no dramatic merit. The plot is a
slender thread on which are strung a number
of good things, in prose and in verse ; satire,
literary criticism, and reference to the men and
topics of the day ; a foretaste of the society
journalism of the present day.
When we find among the men, Shakespeare,
Ben Jonson and Burbage, and among the topics,
the position and reputation of thef play-actor,
and of the university playwright, with a
critical estimate of the poets and dramatists of
the day, the relevance of the piece to the present
inquiry becomes apparent.
• Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, W. Hazlitt.
74
THE PLAYERS
The burden of the play is the little respect that
is paid to learning and worth, and the failure of
the highest academic merit to attain success in
life. It tells of the ill-fortune that befell certain
students who left the university to seek their
fortunes in the world, and who were compelled
to return from Parnassus to humbler pursuits.
The second title, the Scourge of Simony,
indicates that the piece contains a castigation of
the corrupt practices by which the deserving
Academico was deprived of presentation to a
living which was sold by a patron from whom he
had expectations to the father of an unlettered
boor. There is good comedy in the description
of the devices by which this ignoramus manages
to pass the necessary examination. But the
part of the piece in which we are interested is
that which relates to the fortunes of playwrights
and players.
The man of genius, Ingenioso, writes plays,
for which he is, somehow, prosecuted. ' To be
brief Academico,' he says, ' writts are out for
me to apprehend me for my playes, and now
I am bound for the He of Doggs.'
Two students, Philomusus and Studioso,
having tried medicine and acting, become
fiddlers. Finally leaving the ' baser fidling trade,'
they make choice of ' a shepheards poor secure
75
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
contented life ' and are content to end their
days on the Kentish downs.
True mirth we may enjoy in thacked stall
Not hoping higher rise, nor fearing lower fall.
In the fourth act we are introduced to a
travelling company of players, who have visited
Cambridge. They are represented by Burbage and
by Kempe, who filled the leading parts in tragedy
and in comedy. It is the company of which
Shakespeare was at this time a member. Burbage
had often noticed among the scholars an aptitude
for the stage, and suggests that they could
probably be engaged at a low rate. With their
experience of their fellow Shakespeare present
to his mind he suggests that they might also be
able to pen a part. Accordingly, the players
appointed to meet Philomusus and Studioso, in
order to make test of their quality. The students
keep the players waiting so long that when they
at length arrive the merry Kemp addresses
Studioso as Otioso. In the meantime the
players converse :
Bur. Now, Will Kempe, if we can intertaine these
schollers at a low rate, it will be well, they have often-
times a good conceite in a part.
Kempe. Its true indeede, honest Dick, but the slaves
are somewhat proud, and besides, it is a good sport in a
part, to see them never speake in their walke, but at the
7 6
THE PLAYERS
end of the stage, iust as though in walking with a fellow
we should never speake but at a stile, a gate, or a ditch,
where a man can go no further. I was once at a Comedie
in Cambridge, and there I saw a parasite make faces and
mouths of all sorts in this fashion.
Bur. A little teaching will mend these faults, and it
may bee beside they will be able to pen a part.
Kemp. Few of the vniversity pen plaies will, they
smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer
Metamorphosis, and talke too much of Proserpina and
luppiter. Why heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them
all downe. I and Ben Ionson too. O that Ben Ionson
is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giuing the
poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen him a
purge that made him beray his credit.
Bur. Its a shrewd fellow indeed : I wonder these
schollers stay so long, they appointed to be here presently
that we might try them ; Oh here they come.
Studioso and Philomusus enter, and after
some pleasantry, they are tried. Kempe thinks
that Studioso should belong to his tuition.
' Your face me thinkes would be good for a
foolish Mayre or a foolish justice of peace.'
Bur. {to Philomusus). I like your face, and the propor-
tion of your body for Richard the 3. I pray M. Phil, let
me see you act a little of it.
Phil. Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by the sonne of York.
Bur. Very well I assure you, well M. Phil, and
M. Stud, wee see what ability you are of ; I pray walke
with us to our fellows, and weele agree presently.
77
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Notwithstanding this promising beginning,
nothing came of the project. The terms offered
by the thrifty players were too low, for in the
next scene Phil, and Stud, appear as fiddlers,
with their consort.
Stud. Better it is mongst fidlers to be chiefe
Then at plaiers trencher beg reliefe,
But ist not strange this mimick apes should prize
Unhappy schollers at a hireling rate.
Vile word, that lifts them vp to hye degree,
And treades vs dovvne in groueling misery.
England affordes these glorious vagabonds,
That carried earst their fardels on their backes
Coursers to rid on through the gazing streetes,
Sooping it in their glaring Satten sutes,
And Pages to attend their maisterships ;
With mouthing words that better wits have made
They purchase lands, and now Esquieres are made.
About three years before the representation of
The Returne from Pernassus Shakespeare had by
the purchase of New Place, in the words of Sir
Sidney Lee, inaugurated the building up at
Stratford of a large landed estate. The owner
of the largest house in Stratford, who had
applied for a grant of arms to his father, may
well have appeared to the envious student as
having attained to the estate of esquire, and that
Shakespeare (when his means allowed of it, but
no sooner) was seen riding through the streets
78
THE PLAYERS
on a courser, on which passers by stopped to
gaze, cannot be doubted. It is the ' roan
Barbary ' which carried Henry Bolingbroke,
when he road into London
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed
Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know.*
It is the red roan courser ' of the colour of the
nutmeg and of the heat of ginger,' in whose
praise the Dauphin wrote a sonnet which began
thus : { Wonder of Nature.' f
At some time of his life the fiery courage and
elastic tread of the Eastern horse came as a
revelation to one accustomed to the somewhat
wooden paces of the thickset, straight-pasterned
home-bred English horse of the early days when
Venus and Adonis was written. And thence-
forth Shakespeare would say in the words of
Hotspur, this ' roan shall be my throne.'
Can we wonder that a prosperous player —
a glorious vagabond — seated on this throne,
honoured and wealthy, should have excited the
envy of Studioso, at his wits' end to turn to
profitable use the learning of St. John's College ?
Or that he should have consoled himself with
the reflection that after all the players did no
* Richard 77., V. ii. 8.
f Henry V., III. vii. 20.
79
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
more than speak ' words that better wits had
made ' ?
A curious tractate of about the year 1605, of
which there was an unique copy in the Althorpe
library, was reprinted by the New Shakespere
Society.* A player is advised to betake himself
to London. ' There thou shalt learne to be
frugall (for players were never so thriftie as they
are now about London) & to feed upon all men,
to let none feede upon thee ; to make thy hand
a stranger to thy pocket, thy hart slow to per-
forme thy tongues promise : and when thou
feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place
of Lordship in the Country, that growing weary
of playing, thy mony may there bring thee to
dignitie and reputation. . . . Sir, I thanke thee
(quoth the player) for this good counsell, I
promise you I will make use of it, for, I have
heard indeede of some that have gone to London
very meanly, and have come in time to be
exceeding wealthy.'
From The Returne from Pernassus we can
understand the envy that was excited in the
university wits by the wealth and prosperity of
the successful players, but fully to realise the
feelings of the university pen, put down, in the
words of Kempc, by one of these players,
• Rat sets Ghost.
80
THE PLAYERS
commencing dramatist, we must look else-
where.
It may be that Shakespeare at the height of
his prosperity was regarded as the type of the
thrifty and successful player, and there are
allusions in the speech of Studioso and in
Ratseis Ghost which may well be applied to him.
But the players about London were noted as
generally thrifty, and some of Shakespeare's
fellows, as we have seen, acquired substantial
property.
The precise date at which Shakespeare was
admitted to the fellowship of players is unknown.
It is generally believed that he left Stratford for
London in the year 1586, and, according to
Rowe, ' he was received into the company
then in being, at first in a very mean rank.'
According to Davenant, his earliest connection
with the theatre was of a still humbler kind.
It was that of holding the horses of visitors to
the theatres. The story is thus told by Dr.
Johnson. When Shakespeare fled to London
' his first expedient was to wait at the door of
the playhouse, and hold the horses of those that
had no servants, that they might be ready again
after the performance. In this office he became
so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that
in a short time every man as he alighted called
81
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
for Will. Shakespeare, and scarcely any other
waiter was trusted with a horse while Will.
Shakespeare could be had. This was the first
dawn of better fortune. Shakespeare finding
more horses put into his hand than he could
hold, hired boys to wait under his inspection,
who, when Will. Shakespeare was summoned,
were immediately to present themselves, " I am
Shakespeare's boy, Sir." In time Shakespeare
found higher employment, but as long as the
practice of riding to the playhouse continued,
the waiters that held the horses retained the
appellation of Shakespeare's boys.' Malone,
though he discredits the story, writes : ' The
genealogy of this story it must be acknowledged
is very correctly deduced.' It first appeared in
print in The Lives of the English Poets, published
in 1753 by Cibber, according to whom Sir
William Davenant told it to Betterton, who told
it to Rowe. Although Rowe told the story to
Pope, he did not include it in his Life. The
reason why it was discredited by Rowe was
probably that which was thus stated, a few
years later, by Steevens : ' the most popular
of the Theatres were on the Bankside ; and we
are told by the satirical writers of the time that
the usual mode of conveyance to these places
was by water ; but not a single writer so much
82
THE PLAYERS
hints at the custom of riding to them, or at the
practice of having horses held during the time of
the exhibition.' To Rowe, as to Steevens, the
idea of riding to theatres on the Bankside
naturally seemed absurd. That Rowe discarded
a story which seemed to him to be so improbable
shows the carefulness with which he sifted the
information which was supplied to him. But by
a plain tale the criticism of Steevens and the
scepticism of Rowe and Malone are put down.
When Shakespeare came to London there
were only two theatres, the ' Theatre ' and the
1 Curtain,' to one of which he must have been
attached. These theatres were in the fields
within half a mile of the city wall, and we now
know that it was the custom to approach them
on horseback. Sir John Davies, in an epigram
written before 1599, wrote
Faustus, nor lord, nor knight, nor wise, nor old
To every place about the town doth ride ;
He rides into the fields, plays to behold ;
He rides to take boat at the waterside.
Later on, the Globe, and the Rose, the
popular theatres, were on Bankside, and
approached by water, and for more than one
hundred years before Rowe wrote no one had
spoken of riding to the play. Recent research
shows that there is no reason why Davenant's
83
a 2
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
story should be discredited. It must have had
its origin in the days of riding to the theatre.
It is accepted by Mr. Elton, and Sir Sidney Lee
sees no improbability of the main drift of the
strange tale.
The tradition that Shakespeare in extremity
of need turned to horses as a means of earning
his bread, and in some employment connected
with their care made a name which others
thought worth pirating, gains some confirmation
from the constant and needless occurrence in his
plays of the language of the groom, the farrier
and the horse master ; and still more from his
use of familiar corruptions and cant phrases
current in the stable and in the blacksmith's
shop.*
The story is interesting, not only as an incident
in the life of Shakespeare, but because it brings
into strong relief one side of his character. In
it we find the beginning of the qualities by the
use of which, in the words of Professor Dowden,
he came at the age of thirty-three ' posessor
• Over one hundred and fifty phrases and terms of art connected
with horses and horsemanship have been collected from the works
of Shakespeare. Among them arc the following corruptions current
in the stable : " The fives " for " vives " ; " springhalt " for
" stringhalt " ; " mosing " for " mourning " of the chine. " Farcy "
is, according to Gervase Markham (Maister-peece) " of our ignorant
smiths called the fashions." The word " fashions " used by Shake-
speare must have been picked up by him in some ignorant black-
smith's forge in Stratford.
8 4
THE PLAYERS
of New Place at Stratford, and from year to
year added to his worldly dignity and wealth.
Such material advancement, argues a power of
understanding, and adapting oneself to the facts
of the material world.'
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to the wise man ports and happy havens.
In this spirit Shakespeare, fallen on evil days,
turned to practical use his love of horses, and the
practical knowledge of their care which he had
somehow acquired. Realising with Cassius that
' men at some time are masters of their fate,'
and that the fault is not ' in our stars but in our-
selves that we are underlings,' he applied him-
self to the work that came to hand with an
understanding of the facts of the material world,
and a determination to be master of his fate,
which ensured success.
Some of the most interesting accounts of the
early years of Shakespeare's life have been
traced, through a respectable pedigree, to Sir
William Davenant. It is therefore important
to consider how far he ought to be regarded as a
trustworthy authority. Davenant was the son
of a well-known citizen of Oxford, Mr. John
D'Avenant (so the name was written), the
owner of a tavern afterwards known as the
85
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
1 Crown.' He was, according to Anthony a
Wood, a grave and discreet man, ' yet an
admirer and lover of plays and play writers,
especially Shakespeare, who frequented his house
in his journeys between Warwickshire and
London.' * Mrs. D'Avenant was ' a very
beautiful woman of good wit and understanding.'
Shakespeare was on terms of intimacy with the
family. William, the second son, was his god-
child. Another son, Robert, became a Fellow
of St. John's College, and a Doctor of Divinity.
Aubrey may be believed, when in his account of
Shakespeare he writes : ' I have heard parson
Robert say that Mr. Wm. Shakespeare having
given him a hundred kisses.' An ancient scandal
retailed by Aubrey is only to our present pur-
pose inasmuch as it is founded on the well-
known intimacy of Shakespeare with the
D'Avenant family. Shakespeare manifested a
special affection for his godchild which was
certainly returned. William was only ten years
of age when his godfather died, but from an
early age he was devoted to his memory, for at
the age of twelve he composed an ' Ode in
remembrance of Master Shakespeare,' which
was published in the year 1638.
Davenant's devotion to the memory of Shake-
• A then. Oxon.
86
THE PLAYERS
speare continued throughout his life. At his
death he was the owner of a portrait which, from
its subsequent history, became known as the
Chandos portrait, and which became the
property of the actor Betterton.
.^■-Dryden, in his preface to The Tempest, altered
by him in collaboration with Davenant, writes :
' I do not set any value on anything in this
play, but out of gratitude to the memory of
Sir William Davenant, who did me the honour
to join me with him in the alteration of it. It
was originally Shakespeare's, a poet for whom he
had particularly a high veneration, and whom he
first taught me to admire.'
Mr. Elton writes : ' If we could evoke some
shadow of the living Shakespeare, it could only
be with the help of Davenant's recollections.
We shall find little help from painting or sculp-
ture ; but we can compare what was said by
those who knew the poet, or had talked with his
friends.' Aubrey and Betterton had talked
with Davenant. Rowe received the story of the
organising of the brigade of ' Shakespeare's
Boys ' from Betterton, who had it directly from
Sir William Davenant. The leading facts of the
early life of an intimate friend who had become
so famous must have been treasured in the
memories of the D'Avenant family ; and the
87
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
struggles of his younger days were recalled with
pride, in the light of the success that he had
attained. Sir William's devotion to the memory
of his godfather would have led him to collect
the facts with pious care. A story that descends
from Davenant through a respectable pedigree
ought to be received with respect, and we now
know that men did in fact ride from town to the
theatre at the time when Shakespeare took
refuge in London.
We do not know how it came to be found out
by the players that Shakespeare's wits could be
turned to better account than in holding the
horses of the playgoers, and speculation on this
subject is idle. His admission to a company of
players was the first step of the ladder which
led him to the summit of his fame as a dramatist,
and the success of his plays, when presented on
the stage, is in great measure due to the prac-
tical acquaintance with stagecraft which he had
acquired when working in the theatre. ' Poet
as he was and philosopher and psychologist,
Shakespeare was first of all a playwright, com-
posing plays to be performed by actors in a
theatre, before his audience.' * "~ m *'
Shakespeare was successful as an actor,
although he did not attain to the highest emi-
• Shakespeare as a Playwright, by Brander Matthew (Preface).
88
THE PLAYERS
nence. Five or six years after his advent to
London Chettle writes of him as ' exelent in the
qualitie he professes.'* And the prominent place
occupied by his name in the licences granted to
the companies with which he was connected is
evidence of the position which he held in the
theatre. Tradition assigns to him the parts of
the Ghost in his Hamlet, the top of his perform-
ance according to Rowe, and of Adam in As Tou
Like It. His name is not associated with any
great part. His heart was not in his profession.^
' His highest ambitions lay, it is true, elsewhere
than in acting or theatrical management, and
at an early period of his histrionic career he
undertook, with triumphant success, the labours
of a playwright. It was in dramatic poetry that
his genius found its goal. But he pursued the
profession of an actor, and fulfilled all the
obligations of a theatrical shareholder loyally
and uninterruptedly until very near the date of
his death. 'J
From Shakespeare's relations with the players
we learn that he was a man who inspired his
* Kind Harts Dream (Preface). " Quality, in Elizabethan English,
was the technical term for the actor's profession " {Life of Shake-
speare, p. 86, note 3). Hamlet used the word in this technical
meaning when he said to the players, " Come, give us a taste of
your quality."
f See Sonnets, ex. and cxi.
% Life of Shakespeare, p. 89.
89
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
fellows with feelings of affection as well as respect.
His was a sympathetic nature. The players
were proud of his success, and indignant when
they thought that his reputation was malevo-
lently attacked. They collected and published
his plays to keep alive the memory of ' so worthy
a friend.' Shakespeare was a worthy friend.
In his prosperity he was loyal to players by
whom he had been raised from the mean rank
to which he had fallen, and in his last hours,
when making his will, his thoughts turned, not
to powerful patrons or literary magnates, but
to his fellows, Heming and Condell. It is to
his rare i gentleness ' towards his fellows, and
to their appreciation of it, that we owe the gift
that they bestowed upon humanity.
90
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
Among the tens of thousands who daily heard
brave Talbot ' triumph again on the stage,'
there was one in whose ears the heroic strain
sounded as a death knell. He was the author
of the dull and lifeless historical drama which
had been redeemed from failure by an upstart
player, who dared to suppose that he could
' bombast out ' a blank verse with the best of
the university pens.
The first part of Henry VI. in its original
form has not survived, and no record of its
production has been found. Whether it was in
fact presented to the public before the revision
of the piece by Shakespeare, and the introduction
of the Talbot scenes had ensured its enthusiastical
reception by a patriotic audience, is a matter of
uncertainty. The second and third parts of
Henry VI., as they stood before the final revision
by Shakespeare, are extant.* The theory that
* In The first part of the contention betwixt the two famous bouses
of Tork and Lancaster, published in 1594, and The True Tragedy of
Richard, Duke of Torke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt,
as it was sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke, his servants,
published in the following year.
9 1
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Greene and Peele, possibly with the assistance
of Marlowe, produced the original draft of the
three parts of Henry VI. may be accepted. That
they were finally revised by Shakespeare, that
they assumed the form in which they were printed
in the First Folio, is certain. The authorship, in
whole or in part, of Greene is supported by
stronger evidence than similarity of workmanship.
Robert Greene may be taken as representative
of a class with whom Shakespeare was brought
into literary fellowship when he commenced
dramatist. They were known as the uni-
versity pens.
In the early part of the reign of Elizabeth the
spread of the New Learning, and a wider outlook
on life, inspired the youth of the nation with
a desire to seek out new fields for the exercise
of the powers of which they were conscious.
' Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits,'
was a modern instance from the lips of one of
the ' two gentlemen of Verona.'
It was a time in which
Men of slender reputation
Put forth their sons to seek preferment out ;
Some to the wars, to try their fortune there ;
Some to discover islands far away ;
Some to the studious Universities.*
* Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. iii. 6.
9 2
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
But the university is not the end of life, and
the studious youth who had been sent thither
by his father to seek out preferment had no
sooner attained his degree than he found him
confronted with the problem of how he was to
earn his bread. The study of university life
from which we have quoted enables us to realise
the struggle for existence which awaited those
students who had made the best use of their time
at the university ; for the names under which
we know Studioso, Philomusus, and Ingenioso
indicate that they are intended to represent
this class.*
The Civil Service, the various branches of
which at home and abroad offer such a wide
field of useful and profitable employment, had
not come into existence.
According to the author of The Returne from
Pernassus, the Church was suffering under the
scourge of simony, and it is apparent that he
regarded the law as suitable only to a student
of ample means, for the student who is intended
for the law is the son of a man of property, the
owner of the advowson of the living that was the
victim of the scourge of simony.
Ingenioso, if he had lived at the present day,
would have found an exercise for his powers, and
* The Returne from Pernassus, ante, p. 74.
93
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
an immediate source of income, in writing for
the press. Failing any other resource, he joins
the fellowship of the university pens.
Robert Greene, born about 1560, matriculated
at St. John's College, Cambridge, and obtained
the degree of M.A. in 1588. If, as is stated, he
was incorporated at Oxford in 1588, he was
closely connected with university life. In the
course of a short and miserable life, as dramatist,
poet and pamphleteer, he produced works suf-
ficiently voluminous to be published in fifteen
volumes in the Huth Library (188 1-6). He was
a protagonist in the war of pamphleteers, in
which Gabriel Harvey and Nash took part, a
curious feature of the Elizabethan age, which
has been already noticed. It is, however, as a
dramatist that he is brought into relationship
with Shakespeare. His position among the
university playwrights is thus estimated by Sir
A. W. Ward : ' Greene's dramatic genius has
nothing in it of the intensity of Marlowe's tragic
muse ; nor perhaps does he ever equal Peele at
his best. On the other hand, his dramatic
poetry is occasionally animated with the breezy
freshness which no artifice can simulate. He
had considerable constructive skill, but he has
created no character of commanding power —
unless Ateukin be excepted ; but his personages
94
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
are living men and women, and marked out from
one another with a vigorous, but far from rude,
hand. His comic humour is undeniable, and
he had the gift of light and graceful dialogue.
His diction is overloaded with classical orna-
ment, but his versification is easy and fluent, and
its cadence is at times singularly sweet. He
creates his best effects by the simplest means,
and he is indisputably one of the most attractive
of early English dramatic authors.'*
His dramas have now no interest for any but
professed students of English literature. But
the story of his life may be profitably studied,
for it throws some light upon his relations with
Shakespeare, and in it we find, in an exaggerated
form, the character and experiences of many
members of the fellowship of dramatists at the
time when they were joined by Shakespeare.
Greene died in the year 1582, and on his
deathbed wrote the one of the thirty-five
prose tracts ascribed to his pen which has
secured for him an unenviable immortality. It
is one of three pamphlets which were published
after the author's death. They are all more or
less autobiographical in their character, but
that which is of special interest was edited by
Henry Chettle, and published in 1582 under the
* Encyclopedia Britannica, nth ed.
95
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
title of ' Greens Groats-worth of Wit, bought
with a Million of Repentance, describing the
follic of youth, the falshoode of makeshift
flatterers, the miserie of the negligent, and mis-
chiefes of deceiuing courtizans, written before
his death, and published at his dying request.'
Greene having come to a pass at which
' sicknesse, riot, incontinence, have at once
shown their extremitie,' sends a message to his
readers ; ' the last I have writ ; and I fear me
the last I shall write.' Greene was, indeed, in
sore distress. He was dependent for his support
on a poor shoemaker and his wife. He gave a
bond for ten pounds to his host, and wrote on
the day before his death these pitiful lines to his
deserted wife : ' Doll, I charge thee by the love
of our youth and by my soules rest that thou
wilt see this man paide for if hce and his wife
had not succoured me I had died in the streetes.'*
In this tractate the story is told of a young
man named Roberto. The part which deals with
the parentage and early history of Roberto and
his wealthy brother is a moral tale which has no
relation to the life history of Greene. The
autobiographical part of the tract is easily
separable from the moral talc. Roberto, as he
lay on the ground in distress, is accosted by a
• " Life," by A. H. Bullen, in Diet. Nat. Biography.
96
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
stranger who has overheard his lamentation.
He offers to ' endeauour to doe the best, that
either may procure your profit or bring you
pleasure ; the rather for that I suppose you are
a scholar, and pittie it is men of learning should
Hue in lacke.' Employment may easily be
obtained, ' for men of my profession get by
scholars their whole living. What is your pro-
fession sayd Roberto ? Truely sir, said he,
" I am a player." " A player," quoth Roberto,
" I took you rather for a gentleman of great
liuing ; for if by outward habit men should
be censured, I tell you, you would be taken for
a substantiall man. So am I where I dwell
(quoth the player) reputed able at my proper
cost to build a Windmill, what though the
worlde once went hard with mee, when I was
faine to carrie my playing Fardle a footebacke ;
Tempora mutantur ; I know you know the mean-
ing of it better than I, but I thus conster it, it
is otherwise now ; for my very share in playing
apparrell will not be solde for two hundred
pounds." Roberto asks : ' How meane you to
use mee ? Why, sir, in making playes, said the
other, for which you shall be well paied if you
will take the paines.' Roberto went with the
player, and became ' famozed for an Arch-
plaimaking poet, his prose like the sea somtime
97
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
sweled, anon like the same sea fell to a low ebbe,
yet seldom he wanted, his labors were so well
esteemed.' The story of the bad company into
which Roberto fell, and the ill treatment of his
wife, is unhappily true of Greene, for a pathetic
letter was found among his papers after his death
addressed to his wife from ' thy repentent
husband for his disloyaltie Robert Greene.'
It is at this point in the narrative that Greene
intervenes in his proper person. ' Heere
(Gentlemen) breake I off Roberto's speech ;
whose life in most part agreeing with mine,
found one selfe punished as I haue doone. Here-
after suppose me the said Roberto, and I will
goe on with that hee promised : Greene will
send you new his groatsworth of wit, that never
showed a mites-worth in his life ; and though
no man now be by, to doe me good, yet ere I
die, I will by my repentance indeuour to doe all
men good.'
Greene in some fine verses bids farewell
to the
Deceiuing world, that with alluring toyes,
Hast made my life the subject of thy scorne.
Having delivered himself of some moral maxims,
he directs a few lines to his ' fellowe schollers
about this cittie ' addressed ' to those gentle-
9 8
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
men, his Quondam acquaintance, that spend
their wits in making Plaies, R. G. wisheth a
better exercise, and wisdome to preuent his
extremities.'
To the playwrights generally, Greene offers
the advice that they should be employed in
more profitable courses than in writing plays for
the benefit of the actors, of whom he writes with
contempt as ' those Puppits that speake from
our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our
colours, . . . for it is pitie men of such rare wits,
should be subject to the pleasures of such rude
groomes.' This is the point of view of the
students of Greene's old college, St. John's.
According to Studioso, the wealth by which the
players are enabled to purchase lands and
attain to dignity are ' mouthing words that
better wits have framed.' Trust not these men,
is his advice, for the playwright to whom they
are beholden for the words by the speaking of
which they attain to wealth and fame will be
allowed by them to perish for want of comfort.
' Is it not strange that I to whom they al haue
been beholding ; is it not like that you to whom
they all haue been beholding, shall (were ye in
that case that I am now) be both at once of them
forsaken ? '
To each of three players, his quondam
99
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
acquaintance, Greene addresses a special warn-
ing. One, the ' famous gracer of Tragedians,'
who has said in his heart there is no God, should
now ' give glorie vnto his greatness.' That
Marlowe is here intended has never been doubted.
Another, ' Young Juuenall, that byting satyrist,
that lastlie with mce together writ a Comedie,'
is advised not to get many enemies by bitter
words. As to a third who is ' no lesse deseruing
than the other two, in some things rarer, in
nothing inferiour ; driuen (as my selfe) to
extreme shifts ; a little have I to say to thee.'
That little seems to be not to depend ' on so
meane a stay ' as playwriting. The ' byting
satyrist ' has been identified as Nash, and the
third playwright as Peele.
Greene then goes on to write : ' Yes, trust
them not ; for there is an vpstart Crow, beauti-
fied 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 ; and being an absolute lohannes fac
totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-
scene in a Countrie.'
That this outburst of spleen refers to Shake-
speare cannot be doubted, the line ' O tiger's
heart wrapt in a woman's hide ' is found in
the third part of Henry VI. (I. iv. 137), and
100
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
also in the older version The True Trazedie 9
and the play on Shakespeare's name is unmis-
takable.
When we remember that these words were
written by Greene on his deathbed, forsaken of
all but a kindly and devoted hostess who after
his death crowned his head with a garland of
bays, we can understand the bitterness of heart
with which he thought of the prosperity of the
players for whom he had written, whose fortunes
he had made, and who had forgotten him in his
necessity ; and his jealousy of one who, a mere
literary fac totum, had suddenly sprung into fame
as the most popular playwright of the day. It
was hard for Greene to think that the drama
which daily filled the playhouse with tens of
thousands, and made the fortunes of the mana-
gers, was his Henry VI. ; and he may be forgiven
if the heroic strain to which it owed its vitality
and success presented itself to his mind as mere
' shake-scene ' bombast.
The Groatezuorth of Wit was among the
papers left by Robert Greene in the hands of
sundry booksellers. The manuscript was copied
by Henry Chettle, who some years afterwards
became a dramatist. He was at that time what
would now be called a publisher. c Greene's
hand was none of the best ; licensed it must be,
IOI
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
ere it could be printed, which could ncuer be if
it might not be read.'
Chcttl'j-in the preface to Kind Harts Dream,
a kind of social satire published by him shortly
after the death of Greene, explains the part that
he had taken in regard to the Groatsworth of Wit.
He exonerates Nash from having any share in the
production. For himself, he says : ' I put some-
thing out, but in the whole booke not a worde in.'
Some such explanation was called for. The
' Groatsworth of wit, in which a letter written
to diuers play-makers is offensiuely by one or
two of them taken ; and because on the dead
they cannot be auenged, they wilfully forge in
their conceites a liuing Author ; and after
tossing it to and fro, no remedy, but it must
light on me.' As Chettle had during all the
time of his ' conuersing in printing hindred the
bitter inueying against schollers,' he is naturally
hurt by the supposition that he was party to so
scandalous a production.
' With neither of them that take offence was
I acquainted and with one of them I care not if I
neuer be.'
Those who took offence were Marlowe and
Shakespeare — one had been accused of a
capital offence, and the other had been lam-
pooned — for to no others was offence offered.
102
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
It is easy to understand why Chettle should
have dissociated himself from Marlowe, for he
was regarded as an atheist, and shortly before his
death in the following year a warrant was issued
from the Star Chamber for his arrest to answer
the charge of atheism. In a subsequent part of
the preface he recurs to the ' first whose learning
I reverence,' and states that in the perusing of
Greene's book, he ' stroke out what then in
conscience I thought he in some displeasure
writ ; or had it beene true, yet to publish it, was
intolerable.'
Of Shakespeare he writes : ' The other,
whome at that time I did not so much spare, as
since I wish I had, for that as I haue moderated
the heate of liuing writers, and might haue used
my owne discretion (especially in such a case)
the Author being dead, that I did not, I am as
sory as if the originall fault had beene my fault,
because my selfe haue seene his demeanor no
less ciuill than he excelent in the qualitie he
professes ; Besides diuers of jvorship have re-
ported his uprightness of dealing, which argues
his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting,
that approoves his Art.'
The earliest in date of the references to
Shakespeare that have been discovered is by
Spenser. The next is by Greene, followed by the
103
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
explanation and apology of Chcttlc. Spencer
and Chcttle both speak of Shakespeare from
personal knowledge and each of them affords to
us a glimpse of the personality of the man whom
they knew. It is but a glimpse, but the aspect
of his nature revealed in poetic phrase by
Spenser, and in plain prose by Chettle, is one and
the same. To Spenser it appeared that ' no
gentler shepherd could no where be found.'
When Chettle came to know Shakespeare he
found his demeanour so civil, that he was as
sorry for having published Greene's attack, as
if the original fault had been his own. More-
over, Shakespeare had become known to
gentlemen of position by the uprightness of
his dealing as a man of honour, and they
were ready to testify to the character that he
bore ; that is to say, he was possessed of the
essential qualities which were implied in the
word ' gentle ' in the sense in which it was used
by Spenser.
When Shakespeare commenced dramatist the
university pens held the field. ' Midway between
Lyly and his successful practice of the drama,
which for the most cultivated men and women
of his day, maintained and developed standards
supplied to him, at least in part, by his univer-
sity, and Thomas Lodge, who put the drama
104
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
aside as beneath a cultivated man of manifold
activities, stand Nashe, Peele and Greene. Nashe
feeling the attraction of a popular and finan-
cially alluring form, shows no special fitness for
it, and gives it relatively little attention. Peele,
properly endowed for his best expression in
another field, spends his strength in the drama,
because, at the time, it is the easiest source of
revenue, and turns from the drama of the culti-
vated to the drama of the less cultivated or the
uncultivated. Greene from the first, is the
facile, adaptive purveyor of wares to which he
is helped by his university experience, but to
which he gives a highly popular presentation.
Through Nashe and Lodge the drama gains
nothing. Passing through the hands of Lyly,
Greene, and even Peele, it comes to Shakespeare
something quite different from what it was
before they wrote.
' University-bred, one and all, these five men
were proud of their breeding. However severe
from time to time might be their censures of
their intellectual mother, they were always ready
to take arms against the unwarranted assump-
tion, as it seemed to them, of certain dramatists
who lacked their university training, and
to confuse them by the sallies of their wit.
One and all, they demonstrated their right
105
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
to the title bestowed on them — " University
wits." ' *
The debt which literature owes to these men
is best realised by comparing the drama in the
form in which they presented it with the work
of their predecessors, lifeless dramas in the
manner of Seneca, bloody tragedies, and rude
comedies like Ralph Roister Doistcr. They had
prepared the way for the advent of Shakespeare.
Greene and the three specially addressed by
him, Marlowe, Nash and Peele, were in the fore-
most rank of the university pens. The greatness
of Marlowe and his influence on the life work of
Shakespeare place him in a class by himself, and
his relations with Shakespeare form the subject
of a separate chapter. Passing him by for the
present, it may be noted that no trace can be
found of cordial relations between Shakespeare
and the university pens, such as existed through-
out his life with his fellow players.
The lives and characters of such representative
players as Burbage, Hcming and Condcll stand
out in strong contrast to those of Greene, Peele
and Nash. George Peele, like Robert Greene,
was a typical representative of the class. He
was a student at Christ Church, Oxford, and
• Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. V., Ch. VI.
(Professor G. P. Baker).
106
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
graduated M. A. in 1579. While at the university-
he was noted as a poet, and the performance of
his translation of a play of Euripides was cele-
brated in two Latin poems, in one of which the
social gaieties as well as the academical success
of his Oxford career are mentioned. Like Greene
he was a successful playwright, and he also
resembled him in the course of dissipation in
which his great powers were wasted. We have
seen how Greene, in the Groats worth of Wit,
appealed to him, as one who had been, like the
writer, driven to ' extreme shifts,' to mend his
way. He died at about the age of thirty-
nine, and after his death a tract appeared,
entitled Merry conceited jests of George Peele,
some time a Student in Oxford, a collection of
facetice, which had no doubt a foundation
in fact.*
Thomas Nash matriculated as a sizar at St.
John's College, Cambridge, of which he writes
as the ' sweetest nurse of knowledge in all that
University.' He graduated B.A., and wrote :
' It is well known I might have been a fellow
if I had would.' He also died at an early age —
thirty-four. * Till his death he suffered the
keenest pangs of poverty, and was (he confesses)
often so reduced as to pen unedifying " toyes for
* Diet. Nat. Biography.
IO7
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
gentlemen," by which he probably meant licen-
tious songs.' *
There was little in common between these
erratic men of genius and the thrifty players who
were the lifelong fellows and friends of Shake-
speare. Besides their reckless Bohemianism,
there was another characteristic of these uni-
versity pens which did not commend itself to
Shakespeare. It has been said that England in
the time of Elizabeth was a nest of singing birds.
Unhappily the inmates of this nest, so far from
agreeing, wasted their time and talents in libel-
lous recrimination and ungentle pamphleteering.
' The bitter inueying against schollers ' was not
to the taste of the publisher Chettlc ; and Shake-
speare's concurrence in his opinion may well
have been part of the civil demeanour by which
he was impressed. Certain it is that Shakespeare
stood outside the wordy warfare in which Lodge
and Nash, and at a later time Jonson, Dekker
and Marston, delighted.
Chettle began to write for the stage some time
before the year 1598, for in that year he is men-
tioned by Meres in Palladis lamia as one of ' the
best for Comedy among us.' He did not attain
the success which these words seem to imply.
That he was highly regarded is shown by the
• Diet. Nat. Biography (Sir Sidney Lee).
108
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
readiness of Henslow, as appears by his Diary, to
assist him in his pecuniary troubles. His
England's Mourning Garland, published in 1603,
after the death of Elizabeth, was well received.
It contains an interesting passage which sug-
gests the possibility that his acquaintance with
Shakespeare, beginning in 1592, may have
ripened into friendship. Chettle addresses him-
self ' to all true Louers of the right gratious
Queene Elizabeth in her life,' and in particular,
to the poets of the day, complaining that they
had not celebrated in verse the memory of
the great Queen. Amongst those appealed to
are Sidney, Spenser and Chapman. Chettle's
appeal to Shakespeare, ' the siluer tonged Meli-
cert,' is printed elsewhere (p. 43). It met with
no response.
Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton have been
brought into close personal relations with Shake-
speare by trustworthy testimony. At the time
when Shakespeare contracted the fever of which
he died Drayton and Jonson were with him in
Stratford. This we have on the authority of the
Rev. John Ward, who became Vicar of Stratford
in 1662. The character and history of Drayton
are well known, and when they are studied in
connection with the pitiful story of the uni-
versity pens, we can understand why Drayton,
109
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
and not they, is found among the associates and
friends of Shakespeare.
Drayton was a native of Warwickshire. In
after life he was a constant visitor at Clifford
Chambers, a manor-house in the neighbourhood
of Stratford, the residence of Sir Henry and
Lady Rainsford. ' Their lifelong patronage of
Michael Drayton, another Warwickshire poet
and Shakespeare's friend, gives them an hon-
oured place in literary history. . . .' * Lady
Rainsford before her marriage was the adored
mistress of Drayton's youthful muse, and in the
days of his maturity Drayton, who was always
an enthusiastic lover of his native country, was
the guest for many months each year of her
husband and herself at Clifford Chambers, which,
as he wrote in his Polyolbion, had been many a
time the Muses' quiet port.
1 Drayton's host found at Stratford and its
environment his closest friends, and several of
his intimacies were freely shared by Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's son-in-law, John Hall, a medical
practitioner of Stratford, reckoned Lady Rains-
ford among his early patients from the first
years of the century, and Drayton himself, while
a guest at Clifford Chambers, came under
Hall's professional care. The dramatist's son-
• Life of Shakespeare, p. 468.
no
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
in-law cured Drayton of a " tertian " by the
administration of " syrup of violets," and
described him in his casebook as an " excellent
poet." '
Drayton had written in his Legend of Mathilda,
published in 1594,
Lucrece, of whom proude Rome hath boasted long,
Lately reviv'd to live another age ;
and some years after the death of Shakespeare
he thus wrote in his Elegies :
Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a Comicke vaine
Fitting the socke, and in thy natural braine
As strong conception and as cleere a rage
As any one that trafiqu'd with the stage.
Drayton in his life and character presents a
marked contrast to Greene and to the ' quondam
acquaintances ' whom he addresses. Sir Sidney
Lee truly says : ' Bohemian ideals and modes
of life had no dominant attraction for Shake-
speare.' His chosen associates are the thrifty
players, and among the playwrights, Ben Jonson
and Drayton. Ben Jonson, on his own showing,
was not morally perfect, but his errors did not
lead him into Bohemia, and for many years he
held a position in the literary world of London
comparable to that held in after ages by Dryden
in
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
and by another Johnson. Of Drayton it was
written : ' His moral character was unassailable,
and he was regarded by his contemporaries as a
model of virtue.' * ' As Aulus Persius,' writes
Mercs, ' is reputed among all writers to be of
an honest life and upright conversation, so
Michael Drayton {quern toties honoris et amoris
causa nomino) among schollers, souldiers, poets,
and all sorts of people is heldc for a man of
vertuous disposition, honest conversation, and
well-governed carriage.' f Izaak Walton, in his
Compleat Angler, quotes a passage from the
Polyolbion ' of Michael Drayton, my honest old
friend.' Such was the character of Shake-
speare's friend.
Like Shakespeare, Drayton attached more
importance to his poems than to his plays ; but
unlike Shakespeare, he did not attain to eminence
as a dramatist, and the book by which he is best
known is his Polyolbion. It is what he calls a
chorographical description of the rivers, moun-
tains, forests, and other geographical features of
Great Britain. It was published in 1613, and is
a really great work, containing many passages of
true poetical beauty, among which may be noted
his description of the forest of Arden. This is
• Diet. Nat. Biography (A. H. Bullcn).
t Palladis 1 anna, 1598.
112
THE UNIVERSITY PENS
the man whom we find associated with Ben
Jonson in the last days of the life of Shakespeare,
but Jonson's relations with Shakespeare were so
intimate and so instructive that they must form
the subject of a separate chapter.
113
BEN JONSON
If Ben Jonson was not the greatest of the
fellow poets and dramatists of Shakespeare — a
place which is Marlowe's of right — he held the
foremost position in the eyes of the public of his
day. This was inevitable. He was, in the words
of Swinburne, a giant, but not of the gods, and
giants are more easily discerned by unaided
vision than gods. ' If poets may be divided
into two exhaustive but not exclusive classes —
the gods of harmony and creation, the giants of
energy and invention — the supremacy of Shake-
speare among the gods of English verse is not
more unquestionable than the supremacy of
Jonson among its giants.'
If Scotland had furnished this earlier and
greater Johnson with another Boswell, the world
would have had a richer entertainment than the
scanty crumbs picked up by Drummond of
Hawthornden, when Jonson visited him in his
home near Edinburgh, and conversed with him
for many days. Drummond preserved a record
of Jonson's conversation in a paper entitled
114
BEN JONSON.
' Certain Informations and Maners of Ben
Johnson to W. Drummond,' printed by the
Shakespeare Society in the year 1842. The
' conversations,' with footnotes, fill forty-one
pages of the volume published by the Society.
In all these pages the name of Shakespeare
appears twice. Jonson said of him that ' in a
play, he brought in a number of men saying they
had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, wher ther is
no sea neer by some 100 miles.' Jonson's
' censure ' of Shakespeare is comprised in four
words : ' that Shakspeer wanted arte.' This
was probably conclusive with Drummond, who
is described by Sir Sidney Lee as a ' learned
poet.'* Happily we are not dependent for our
knowledge of Jonson's appreciation of the genius
of Shakespeare, and his affection for the man,
to Drummond's notes of his conversations.
Drummond felt no interest in Shakespeare, but
he has at the end of the ' conversations ' given
an estimate of the character of Jonson which is
of value in considering his relations with Shake-
speare. ' He is a great lover and praiser of him-
self ; a contemnor and scorner of others ; given
rather to losse a friend than a jest : jealous of
every word and action of those about him
(especiallie after drink, which is one of the
* Diet. Nat. Biography.
115
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
elements in which he liveth) ; a dissembler of
ill parts which raignc in him, a braggcr of some
good that he wantcth ; thinkcth nothing well
but what either he himself or some of his friends
and countrymen hath said or done ; he is pas-
sionately kynde and angry ; careless either to
gaine or keep ; vindictive, but if he be well
answered, at himself. For any religion, as being
versed in both. Interpreteth best sayings and
deeds often to the worst.'
This is a picture drawn in bold outline and
with striking contrasts of light and shade.
' Passionately kynde and angry ' — in these four
words we have a key to the understanding of
what was written by Jonson of a successful
rival whom he regarded with mingled feelings of
jealousy and affection.
Jonson was born, probably, in the year 1573.
He laid the foundation of his vast classical
learning in Westminster Grammar School. He
was ' taken from school and put to a trade,' and
the degrees which he held in Oxford and in
Cambridge were ' by their favour, not his studie.'
So he told Drummond. His experiences during
the next few years include a campaign in
Flanders ; a duel with a fellow actor, whom he
killed, escaping the gallows by claiming benefit
of clergy ; and a change of religion, an experience
116
BEN JONSON
which he repeated in later years. He began to
write for the stage about the year 1595. His
earliest efforts were in tragedy, and in 1598 we
find him included by Francis Meres * with Shake-
speare among the poets who are best for
tragedy.
His first extant comedy, Every Man in his
Humour, was successfully produced at the Globe
in 1598, Shakespeare taking a part. Accord-
ing to a tradition of respectable antiquity
recorded by Rowe, the play when presented for
acceptance to the Lord Chamberlain's servants
was at first rejected, and was afterwards accepted
on the recommendation of Shakespeare. A
tradition of the stage accepted by Rowe should
not be lightly regarded, for, as we shall see here-
after, he had trustworthy sources of information
at his command, and he exercised a wise dis-
cretion in making use of them. In a man of
Jonson's temperament a sense of obligation due
to the kindness of a successful rival goes far to
account for the conflict between jealousy of a
rival, love of the man, and admiration of his
genius, to which this extraordinary man gave
varying expression during his lifetime. It was
not until after the death of Shakespeare that
feelings of love and admiration finally prevailed.
* Palladis lamia.
117
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Such evidence as we have of the relations of
Jonson with Shakespeare during his lifetime
suggest that they were friendly. A story which
was current not many years after the death of
Shakespeare was included by Sir Nicholas
L'Estrange, an industrious collector of anecdotes,
among Merry Passages and Jests, a compilation
from which a selection were printed by the
Camden Society. Sir Nicholas had the story
from ' Mr. Dun,' and if he was, as is supposed,
the poet Dr. John Donne, a contemporary of
Shakespeare, there could be no better authority.
At all events the story bears the impress of truth.
It is as follows : ' Shake-speare was Godfather
to one of Ben : Johnson's children and after the
christning being in a deepe study, Johnson came
to cheere him up, and askt him why he was so
Melancholy ? " No faith Ben ; (sayes he) not
I, but I have beene considering a great while
what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow
upon my God-child, and I have resolv'd at last ;
I pry' the what, sayes he ? I faith Ben : I'll
e'en give him a douzen good Lattin* Spoones
and thou shalt translate them." If Dr. Donne
had preserved for us the ponderous jest at the
expense of Shakespeare's small Latin to which this
• Latten was composition, something like brass, cf. Merry
Wives, I. i. 165.
Il8
BEN JONSON
was the retort courteous we could, in some sort,
realise the wit-combats of which Fuller writes —
' Many were the wit-combates betwixt him and
Ben Johnson ; which two I behold like a Spanish
great Gallion and an English man of War :
Master Johnson (like the former) was built far
higher in Learning : solid, but slow in his per-
formances. Shake-spear, with the English man
of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could
turn with all tides, tack about, and take advan-
tage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and
Invention.' *
Fuller was born in the lifetime of Shakespeare,
and he must have received an account of these
wit-combats from those who were actually
present, for there was present to his mind's eye
such a living image that he writes of them as if
he himself had been the eyewitness.
These were the merry meetings of which
Francis Beaumont wrote,
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid ? Heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.
* Worthies of England, 1662."
119
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
The friendship which had its origin in an act
of kindness on the part of Shakespeare con-
tinued to the end, notwithstanding their rivalry
as popular playwrights. This rivalry is reflected
in the literature of the day, and of the next
succeeding age. It is the eternal rivalry between
what are commonly known as Nature and Art.
So it was regarded by Milton when he wrote,
Then to the well-trod stage anon
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood notes wild.
Comedy, not tragedy, was present to the mind of
Shakespeare when, in U Allegro, he wrote thus
of Shakespeare : not Hamlet, but As You Like It,
and the forest of Arden. In // Penseroso he
writes in a different strain :
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy,
In sceptred pall, come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine ;
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage.
The noble Epitaph on the admirable dramaticke
poet, W . Shakespeare, prefixed to the second folio
edition, published in 1632, leaves us in no
doubt as to the tragedies by which the buskined
120
BEN JONSON
stage had been of later age, all too rarely,
ennobled.
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What needst thou such dull witnesse of thy Name ?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy selfe a lasting Monument :
For whil'st to th' shame of slow-endeavouring Art
Thy easie numbers flow.
( Milton, a strict Puritan, when he wrote these
words of a dramatic poet, and allowed his verse
to be prefixed to a collection of his plays, showed
how profoundly he had been affected by the
work of Shakespeare. The study of his poetry
created in the mind of Milton a sense of personal
attachment to Shakespeare. He is ' My Shake-
speare,' ' Sweetest Shakespeare,' and ' dear
Sonne of Memory.' His ' wood notes wild '
are contrasted with the ' learned sock ' of
Jonson, and in tragedy his easy numbers flow
to the shame of slow-endeavouring Art.
Milton wrote thus of Shakespeare in the life-
time of Jonson, at a time when the rivalry
between the works of the two great dramatists
was at its height .'-^rThat this rivalry continued
to be the talk of the town, and that the verdict
of the ordinary playgoer, like Milton's, was for
Shakespeare and Nature, may be learned from
verses by Leonard Digges, prefixed to the Folio
121
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
of 1640. Digges was a member of a family dis-
tinguished in science as well as in literature.
His father was a celebrated mathematician,
who had a seat in the Parliament of 1572. Other
members of the family were sufficiently dis-
tinguished to find places in the Dictionary of
National Biography. Leonard Digges was a
good classical scholar, well acquainted with
Spanish and French. He was a poet, and pub-
lished in 1 61 7 a verse translation from Claudian.
He may be accepted as a representative of the
intelligent literary criticisms of the day. Verses
by Digges were prefixed to the Folio of 1623,
and a more elaborate composition to the edition
of 1640. Of him Sir Sidney Lee writes : ' Few
contemporaries wrote more sympathetically of
Shakespeare's greatness.'
Digges and Kempe are of one mind in holding
that Shakespeare had outstripped the ' needy
Poetasters of the age ' — the university pens —
and even such a competitor as Ben Jonson.
Tis the fate
Of richer veines, prime judgements that have far'd
The worse, with this deceased man compar'd
So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were,
Brutus and Cassius : oh how the Audience
Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence,
122
BEN JONSON
When some new day they would not brooke a line,
Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline ;
Sejanus too was irkesome, they priz'de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore.
And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist,
Long intermitted could not quite be mist,
Though these have sham'd all the Ancients, and night
raise,
Their Authours merit with a crowne of Bayes.
Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire
Acted, have scarce defrai'd the Seacoale fire
And doore-keepers ; when let but Falstaffe come,
Hall, Poines, the rest, you scarce shall have a roome.
All is so pester'd ; let but Beatrice
And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice
The Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes, all are full
To hear Malvoglio that crosse gartered gull.
This was the drastic purge administered by
Shakespeare, of which Kempe spoke in The
Returne from Pernassus ; houses so badly filled
that, even when a favourite play was bespoken,
the money would scarce defray the cost of sea-
coal fire and doorkeepers, while Henry IV.,
Much Ado and Twelfth Night drew such crowds
that a seat might hardly be found, and the
reason assigned by Digges is the same as that
noted by Milton ; Catiline is tedious, though
well laboured, while Shakespeare's work is
The patterne of all wit
Art without Art, unparalel'd as yet.
123
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
So drastic was the purge that, according to
Kempe, it made Ben Jonson ' beray his credit,'
that is to say, ' show the true nature of the
character with which he was credited.' This is
the nearest approach that can be made, with the
aid of the New English Dictionary, to this
phrase. Jonson, in the opinion of the players,
bewrayed his credit, and showed himself in his
true character of an envious detractor when he
expressed a wish that Shakespeare had blotted
a thousand lines.
Much allowance should be made for Jonson,
when, suffering under the effects of Shakespeare's
purge, he, now and then, indulged in a sneer at a
successful rival, who was so far without art as
to ignore the unities of time, place and action.
In such a mood he tells the audience in the
Prologue to Every Man in his Humour that he
will not purchase their delight
At such a rate
As, for it, he himself must justly hate :
To make a child, now swadled, to proceede
Man, and then shoote up, in one beard and
weede,
Past threescore years : or, with three rustie swords,
And helpe of some foot-and-halfe-foote words,
Fight over Torke, and Lancaster's long jarres ;
And in the tyring-house, bring wounds, to scarres.
124
BEN JONSON
Here and there traces can be found of the inter-
mittent action of this purge. The New Inn pro-
duced in 1629 failed to fill the playhouses, and
Jonson wrote in some lines prefixed to the play-
when published in 1631,
No doubt some mouldy tale,
Like Pericles, and stale
As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish
scraps, out of every dish
Throwne forth, and rak't into the common tub,
May keepe up the Play-club.
In the Induction to Bartholomew Fair the
Stagekeeper, introducing the piece, says : * If
there be never a servant-monster in the Fayre,
who can helpe it, he says ; nor a nest of
Antiques?' He is loth to make Nature afraid
in his Playes, ' like those that beget Tales,
Tempests and such like Drolleries, to mixe his
head with other mens heeles.' And through-
out his life a line which he attributes to Julius
Caesar, but which, as he quotes it, is not to
be found in any printed copy of the play, was
to him a source of genuine delight. In the
Prologue to the Staple of News this passage
occurs :
Expectation. I can doe that too if I have cause.
Prologue. Cry you mercy, you never did wrong but
with just cause.
125
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
That Jonson could be ' angry ' is true ; but
that, at the bottom of his heart, in his feelings
towards Shakespeare he was ' passionately
kynde ' will presently appear.
Many were the quarrels of Ben Jonson, in
which he bore himself like a giant. We are only
concerned with one ; the famous literary war-
fare carried on for years by Marston, Dckkcr and
Jonson. Shakespeare took no part in this
rather unseemly conflict. He cared for none of
those things. But as his name was introduced
into a play in which the fight is mentioned, and
as an attempt has been made by some critics
to implicate him in the quarrel, it ought not to
be overlooked.
The origin of the quarrel was described by
Jonson in his conversations with Drummond.
He had many quarrels with Marston, ' beat
him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his
■poetaster on him ; the beginning of them were
that Marston represented him on the stage in
his youth given to venery.' The origin of his
quarrel with Dekker is obscure. In 1629 Jonson
told Drummond that Dekker was a knave.
This was a reminiscence of the old quarrel
which took a literary form in Cynthia's Revels
produced in 1600, in which Dekker and Marston
were satirised in the characters of Hedon and
126
BEN JONSON
Anaides. Marston and Dekker were engaged in
the preparation of a joint attack on Jonson-
Meanwhile, Jonson forestalled them by the
Poetaster (1601), in which he demolished with
his giant's club not only Marston and Dekker,
but lawyers, soldiers and actors. The quarrels
and reconciliation of the rival dramatists is a
curious, and not edifying, chapter in the literary
history of the Elizabethan age. Some Shake-
spearian commentators have exercised their in-
genuity in interpreting certain passages in the
works of Shakespeare as references to this
quarrel, but happily without success. It would
have been more to the purpose to note with
satisfaction that Shakespeare stood outside the
wordy strife.
Two of the plays which had their origin in this
contest are deserving of attention. The Poetaster
is possessed of literary merit. There is a fine
passage in praise of Virgil, who is exalted as the
chief of the Latin poets. It is supposed by some
that by Virgil Shakespeare has been intended,
and that he was introduced into the piece by
way of contrast to Marston and Dekker. If this
were so, the play would, indeed, be deserving of
note as regards the relations of Jonson and
Shakespeare.
The central idea of the Poetaster is the arraign-
127
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
mcnt on the prosecution of Horace, of Crispinus,
' my brisk Poetaster ' and Demetrius, ' his
poor Journeyman.' Marston is Crispinus ;
Dekker, Demetrius ; and Horace, of course,
Ben Jonson. The indictment, drawn by Tibullus,
is under the Statute of Calumny, Lex Ruminia.
The offence is, that the prisoners, not having
the fear of Phoebus, or his shafts, before their
eyes, contrary to the peace of their liege lord,
Augustus Caesar, maliciously went about to de-
prave and calumniate the person and writings
of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, poet and priest to
the Muses, who is Ben Jonson. The prisoners
are convicted on the evidence of their own
writings, and sentenced by Virgil to suitable
punishment.
In the first scene Ovid is caught by his father,
Ovid, senior, in the act of composing a poem
which we know as El. 15, Jmor., Lib. 1, of which
Jonson gives his version in English. He is
warned of the approach of his father, Ovid,
senior, and hastily puts on the gown and cap
of a student. His father intends him to be a
lawyer, and is indignant to find him a poet and
playmaker. ' Name me a profest poet,' he says
to his son, * that his poetry did ever afford him
so much as a competency.' He leaves, telling
his son to keep his chamber and fall to his
128
BEN JONSON
studies. Ovid, junior, is at work when Tibullus
comes in, but at ' law cases in verse.'
Troth if I live I will new dress the law
In sprightly Poesy's habiliments.
The whole of this act is excellent comedy, with
amusing attacks on the law and lawyers. The
succeeding acts do not, regarded from this point
of view, come up to the same level. Jonson's
objects were twofold. To cover Marston and
Dekker with ridicule, in the characters of
Crispinus and Demetrius, and to associate him-
self, in the character of Horace, with the great
poets of the Augustan age, and in particular
with Ovid, Tibullus and Virgil.
The kind of classical medley which was
adopted had the incidental advantage that it
admitted of the introduction of translations in
verse of well-known passages from these poets.
Jonson valued himself specially on his transla-
tions : ' As for his translations he was perfectly
incorrigible there ; for he maintained to the last
that they were the best part of his works.' *
He succeeded in impressing this view on Drum-
mond, who writes in Conversations : i above all
he excelleth in a Translation.' Virgil was to
Jonson the King of Latin poets. He writes of
* Works, Ed. Gifford, Vol. II., p. 474.
s I29 K
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
him as ' the incomparable Virgil.' He is placed
at the right hand of Caesar. His address con-
sists of a rhyming translation of some lines from
the fourth book of the Aeneid. Jonson was justly
proud of his version of the lines beginning
Farna malum, quo non aliud vclocius ullum, for it
compares favourably with Dryden's. To suggest
that Shakespeare is presented in the character of
Virgil is not in accordance with the purpose of the
drama. There is no reason to suppose that the
Poetaster was written in praise of any of Jonson's
contemporaries. The primary object was the
castigation of Marston and Dekker ; a subordi-
nate one, the glorification of Virgil, and of Jonson,
his translator. In the acutest phase of the rivalry
between Jonson and Shakespeare, it is not
likely that he would have taken occasion to
exalt his rival above all his contemporaries.
The lines spoken by Horace in praise of Virgil
might have been written of Shakespeare, and
also of other great poets. But if Jonson were to
write in praise of Shakespeare, he would hardly
have selected his learning for special com-
mendation.
Hor. His learning savours not the school-like
gloss,
That most consists in echoing words and terms
And soonest wins a man an empty name ;
130
BEN JONSON
Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance
Wrap'd in the curious generalities of arts ;
But a direct and analytic sum
Of all the worth and first effects of arts.
The Returne from Pernassus was produced
while the Poetaster was the talk of the town. His
Poetaster was the pill which Ben Jonson ' brought
up Horace giving the poets,' according to Kempe.
The significance of the piece was thoroughly
understood at the time. The intelligent author
of the Returne, so far from interpreting the
Poetaster as a glorification of Shakespeare, repre-
sents the players as taking part in the rivalry
between Shakespeare and Jonson. They were,
of course, on the side of Shakespeare, and gloried
in the purge of empty houses, by the administra-
tion of which the pestilent Jonson met with his
desert at the hands of their fellow Shakespeare ;
a shrewd fellow, indeed.
It was not until after the death of Shakespeare
that Jonson revealed the side of his nature
which Drummond noted as 'passionately kynde.'
In the year of Shakespeare's death he had pub-
lished in a folio volume a collection of his plays,
under the title of his Works, a title which
brought upon him a certain amount of ridicule,
as plays were not then regarded as literature
deserving of so pretentious a name. These plays
131
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
were carefully edited. It may not have occurred
to Jonson that the work of collecting and editing
the works of Shakespeare would have been
better done by a man of letters than by his
fellow players. At all events, the task was not
undertaken by him, and a volume published in
1623 under the modest title of Mr. William
Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies,
presents a marked contrast in pretension, as well
as in editing, to the Works of 1616. But when
Jonson took up his pen at the request of the
players and wrote some lines ' to the memory
of my beloued, the Avthor, Mr. William Shake-
speare and what he has left us,' all feelings of
rivalry and jealousy disappeared, and the better
side of his nature found expression in words
which share the immortality of him of whom
they were written :
Soule of the Age
The Applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage !
In these lines and in the following where he
would tell
how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line,
we have his true estimate of the greatness of
Shakespeare.
132
BEN JONSON
He was not of an age, but for all time.
This noble line will be quoted at each recurring
centenary so long as the English language is
spoken.
Then his thoughts turn from contemplation
of the poet to the constant friend, and perhaps
with a regretful remembrance of some things
that he had said of Shakespeare's neglect of the
unities and of certain other artificial canons of
dramatic art, he adds
Yet must I not giue Nature all : Thy Art
My gentle Shakespeare, must enioy a part,
and in the address to the reader prefixed to the
Folio, recurring to the personal characteristics
expressed by the word ' gentle ' he writes
This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut.
Five-and-twenty years after the death of
Shakespeare, a collection of essays, which had
been written by Jonson, was published under the
title Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and
Matter, in which some of the finest examples of the
prose of the age are to be found. What he writes
of his relations with Shakespeare is intended as
an apologia, addressed to posterity :
' I remember the Players have often men-
tioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his
133
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
writing (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted
out line. My answer hath becne, 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 justifie mine owne
candor (for I loved 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 he flow'd with
that facility, that sometimes it was necessary
that he should be stop'd ; Sujflaminandus erat ;
as Augustus said of Hatcrius. His wit was in his
owne power ; would the rule of it had beene so.
Many times hee fell into those things, could not
escape laughter. As when hee said in the person
of Caesar, one speaking to him ; Caesar thou
dost me wrong. Hee replyed, Caesar never did
wrong but with just cause ; and such like ; which
were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with
his vertues. There was even more in him to be
praysed, than to be pardoned.'*
The concluding words, in which he finds in
Shakespeare more to be praised than to be
• Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter. Works,
1641.
!34
BEN JONSON
pardoned, read strangely. They were perhaps
prompted by memory of the ' purge,' and they
should be overlooked for the sake of the noble
words in which Jonson does honour to the
memory of the man.
' Honest and of an open and free nature,'
these are the qualities which Henry Chettle
found in the man who had been traduced by
Greene, and they are essential parts of the
character and nature which Spenser had, many
years before, discerned in Aetion. The influence
which Shakespeare had obtained over an intellect
of the giant force of Jonson's reveals to us a
different aspect of his nature from that which is
suggested by his relations with Spenser or with
the players. The indomitable force of will by
which Shakespeare gained mastery over a fate
which at one time seemed to be invincible
accords with the character which compelled the
honour, on this side idolatry, paid to him by a
man so great, and little given to worship as
Jonson, ' a great lover and praiser of himself ;
a contemnor and scorner of others.'
We have no evidence of affectionate regard
for Jonson, such as is afforded by his gift of
mourning rings to his fellow players, and his
tributes to the memory of Spenser and of
Marlowe. If Drummond's sketch of the character
135
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
of Jonson approaches the truth, his nature and
Shakespeare's were not sympathetic. But they
lived on terms of friendship. They took part
in the witcombats at the Mermaid tavern,
and in family gatherings, and Jonson, with
Drayton, was with Shakespeare at the time
when he contracted the fever of which he died.
136
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Marlowe stands by himself among the fel-
lows and contemporaries of Shakespeare, for of
him alone can it be said that he was the Master
of Shakespeare. ' He first, and he alone,
guided Shakespeare into the right way of work ;
his music, in which there is no echo of any man's
before him, found its own echo in the more pro-
longed, but hardly more exalted, harmony of
Milton. He is the greatest discoverer, the most
daring and inspired pioneer in all our poetic
literature. Before him there was neither genuine
blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language.
After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths
made straight, for Shakespeare.' *
Christopher, or Kit, Marlowe as he was
familiarly known, is one of whose life and
character trustworthy information is to be
desired, not only on account of his greatness as a
poet, but by reason of the influence which he
exerted on one whose name is among the greatest,
if not the greatest in all literature.
He was born in Canterbury in 1564. He
* A. C. Swinburne, Encyclopedia Britannica.
137
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
matriculated as a pensioner in Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, and graduated as B.A. in
1583, and M.A. in 1587. His earliest play,
Tamburlaine, was licensed on the 14th of August,
1 590, and published in the same year. Of the early
years of his life we have no certain knowledge.
It has been suggested that on leaving the
university he joined a company of players, and
also that he saw some military service in the
Low Countries. But there is no contemporary
evidence in support of either suggestion. In a
book entitled The Theatre of God's 'Judgments,
published in 1597, four years after the death of
Marlowe, he is described as ' by profession a
scholler, brought up from his youth in the uni-
versitie of Cambridge, but by practice a play-
maker and a poet of scurrilitie.' The author,
Thomas Beard, a Puritan divine, was the school-
master of Oliver Cromwell at Huntingdon. He
was educated at Cambridge, and held the degree
of D.D. This book contains the earliest account
of the tragical death of Marlowe, which the
author regarded as a judgment brought upon
him by his atheistical opinions. The account
here given of the death of Marlowe is utterly
untrustworthy, but what is said by Beard to
the credit of Marlowe may be accepted as prob-
ably true. What is meant by the words ' by
138
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
profession a scholler ' is uncertain. It may mean
that, like Beard, he lived by teaching, and in this
way made a profession of his scholarship. More
probably, it was a statement of the reputation
as a scholar which he had in the University of
Cambridge, of which Beard was a graduate.
' While a student Marlowe mainly confined him-
self to the Latin classics, and probably before
leaving Cambridge he translated Ovid's Amores
into English heroic verse. His rendering, which
was not published until after his death, does
full justice to the sensuous warmth of the
original. He is also credited at the same period
with a translation of Colathon's Rape of Helen,
but this is no longer extant.' His unfinished
paraphrase of the ' Hero and Leander of Musaeus,
when completed by George Chapman, had a
popularity comparable to the first heir of Shake-
speare's invention. Marlowe's translation of The
First Book of Lucan's Pharsalia into epic blank
verse was published in 1600, and reprinted by
Percy in his specimens of blank verse before
Milton.'* After his arrival in London we find
him among the men of letters of all classes and
tastes who were associated with Sir Walter
Raleigh, and it was probably in this society that
he became a freethinker in regard to religion.
* Diet. Nat. Biography (Sir Sidney Lee).
139
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
4 Although he [Raleigh] did not personally
adopt the scepticism in matters of religion
which was avowed by many Elizabethan authors,
it attracted his speculative cast of mind, and he
sought among the sceptics his closest com-
panions. . . . With Christopher Marlowe, whose
religious views were equally heterodox, he was
in equally confidential relations. Izaak Walton
testifies that he wrote the well-known answer to
Marlowe's familiar lyric, Come live with me and be
my love.''*
Marlowe was on terms of intimate friendship
with George Chapman, one of the most inter-
esting characters of the Elizabethan age. Chap-
man did not hold the degree of either of the
universities, and his life and character differed
widely from those of the university pens. Wood
(Athen. Oxon.) describes Chapman as ' a person
of most revered aspect, religious and temperate,
qualities rarely meeting in a poet.' Of all the
English dramatists, Charles Lamb thought that
Chapman approached nearest to Shakespeare in
descriptive and didactic passages. His trans-
lation of Homer, with many defects, has some-
what of the spirit of the original, and among the
admirers of this fine old version are Dryden,
Pope, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb. But Chap-
• Diet. Nat. Biography, tit. ' Raleigh.'
I4O
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
man's name is best known to the present genera-
tion by Keat's fine sonnet written ' on first
looking into Chapman's Homer ' :
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne ;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.
Marlowe's beautiful poem, Hero and Leander,
unfinished at his death, was published in 1598.
It was afterwards completed by Chapman, and
published in this form in the same year. Chap-
man says that Marlowe ' drunk to me half this
Musaean story,' which implies that he had been
shown the unfinished tale. From some words
in Chapman's addition it appears to have been
completed at the ' late desires ' of Marlowe.
A career so full of promise and of early per-
formance had a tragical ending. The burial
register of the church of St. Nicholas, Deptford,
contains this entry : ' Christopher Marlow,
slain by ffrancis Archer the 1 of June 1593.'
Marlowe was then in the thirtieth year of his age.
Nothing more is known with certainty.
Cut in the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough. *
* The Tragical History of Doctor Eaustus, Sc. XVI.
141
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
The earliest notice of the death of Marlowe is
in the book already referred to by Thomas Beard,
published in 1597. The Puritan divine, in his
desire to improve the occasion, gives an account
of dying blasphemies of Marlowe, leading to the
conclusion that his death was ' not only a
manifest signe of God's Judgment, but also a
horrible and fcarefull to all that beheld him.'
This account would be read with pain by every
lover of Marlowe, if it were not obviously a tissue
of lies. Marlowe ' not onely in word blasphemed
the Trinitie, but also (as is credibly reported)
wrote bookes against it, affirming our Saviour
to be but a deceiver.' Other things were said
which need not be recorded, as the existence of
any such book is a pure fabrication. Beard's
account of the occurrence is equally devoid of
truth. According to him it took place in
' London streets,' Marlowe dying from a wound
inflicted by himself. That Marlowe died on the
spot with an oath on his lips to the terror of the
beholders is a palpable falsehood, for he sur-
vived the fatal blow long enough to convey to
Chapman his ' late desires,' which were carried
out by the completion of his Hero and Leandcr.
The respectable author of Palladis lamia
(1598), Francis Meres, had received a different
version of the occurrence, and, yielding to his
142
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
love of antithesis, wrote : ' As the poet Lyco-
phron was shot to death by a certain rival of his ?
so Christopher Marlowe was stabd to death by
a bawdy serving man, a rival of his in his lewde
love.' A few years later Vaughan, in his Golden
Grove (1600), gave another account, according
to which Marlowe meant to stab a man named
Ingram, with whom he was playing at tables,
but Ingram avoided the thrust, and, drawing his
dagger, stabbed Marlowe into the brain through
the eye, so that he shortly after died. This is
noted as the execution of Divine justice upon
Marlowe, ' who as is reported about 14 yeres
agoe wrote a Booke against the Trinitie.'
Marlowe had written no such book, and the
man's name as recorded in the Church register
was Archer, not Ingram.
The occurrence in which Marlowe lost his life
has been described by some recent writers as a
1 drunken brawl.' It may have had its origin
in a quarrel or brawl, although the only account
of the event which is entitled to respect as a
historical document — the entry in the parish
register — records nothing but violence at the
hands of Archer. Drunkenness is not hinted at
as the origin of the quarrel in any one of the
contemporary accounts. It forms no part of
the lurid picture which we owe to the imagination
143
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
of the Puritan divine, Thomas Beard. The
statement that Marlowe lived an irregular and
vicious life is a not unnatural conclusion from
the manner in which he met his death. But
against this conclusion should be set the purity
of his writings ; the exemplary character of
Chapman, his intimate friend ; and his asso-
ciation with men like Raleigh and Sir Thomas
Walsingham. Edward Blount, the publisher, in
dedicating Hero and Leander to Sir Thomas
Walsingham, writes of Marlowe as a man that
had been dear to them. The book is dedicated to
Walsingham in these words : ' Knowing that
in his lifetime you bestowed many kind favours,
entertaining the parts of reckoning and worth
which you found in him with good countenance
and liberal affection.' To these names may be
added that of Shakespeare.
An event had occurred shortly before the death
of Marlowe which made a certain class of writers
ready to accept any story to the discredit of
Marlowe, without inquiry as to its truth, and to
draw from the unfortunate circumstances of his
death the most unfavourable inferences as to his
life and character.
On the 1 8th of May, 1593, the Privy Council
had issued ' a warrant to Henry Mander, one of
the messengers of Her Majesties Chamber, to
144
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
repair to the house of Mr. Thomas Walsingham,
in Kent, or to anie other place where he shall
understand Christopher Marlow to be remayning,
and by virtue hereof to apprehend and bring
him to the Court in his companie, and in case of
need to require ayd. . . . Some weeks earlier
(19th March) similar proceedings had been taken
by the council against Richard Cholmley and
Richard Strange : the former is known to have
been concerned with Marlowe in disseminating
irreligious doctrines {Privy Council Reg., p. 288).' *
A document entitled ' a note,' and headed as
' Contayninge the opinion of one Christofer
Marly concernynge his damnable opinions and
judgment of relygion and scorne of Gods worde,'
is printed, in so far as this could be done with
propriety, in the edition of Marlowe's works
edited by Mr. Bullen (Vol. III., App. III.). The
substance of the charge is that Marlowe was not
only an atheist himself, ' but almost in every
company he commeth persuadest man to
Athiesme.' It is alleged ' that one Richard
Cholmelei hath confessed that he was persuaded
by Marloes reason to become an Athieste,' and a
warrant was issued from the Star Chamber for
the arrest of Cholmeley.
The charge against Marlowe was not supported
* Diet. Nat. Biography, tit. ' Marlowe.'
H5
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
by sworn testimony. The informant by whom
the note was signed was a man of infamous
character, and it is not possible to avoid sympa-
thising with Mr. Bullen when he writes : ' It is
a comfort to know that the ruffian who drew up
the charges, a certain " Rychard Bame," was
hanged at Tyburn on 6th December 1594-'
One of the charges in the note signed by this
malefactor is that Marlowe, having learned the
art of coining from one Poole, a prisoner in
Newgate, ' ment through help of a connynge
stampe-maker, to coyne french crownes pisto-
lettes and english shillinges.' The manifest
absurdity of this statement and the infamous
character of the informant would justify us in
discrediting the scandalous part of the charges
in the note. The substance of the accusation
which Marlowe had to meet was that he was an
avowed atheist, of an aggressive character. The
proceedings were cut short by the death of
Marlowe, but the general acceptance of the
charge of atheism by the writers of the day leaves
no doubt that it was well founded.
Marlowe's views on religious matters had been
for some time known to his fellows. Greene, in
his Groatsivorth of JFit, appeals to Marlowe with
evident sincerity, as one who, with himself, had
said, ' like the foole in his heart, There is no
146
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
God,' to ' now give glorie unto his greatnesse.'
He warns him, addressing him as a friend, not
to follow his example in deferring ' till this last
point of extremitie ; for little knowest thou
how in the end thou shalt be visited.' These
words were ' offensively taken ' by Marlowe, for
profession of atheism was an offence punishable
by death. In the year 1589 a clergyman named
Kett had been executed for heresy, which did
not merit so strong a name. Chettle, dissociating
himself from Marlowe probably on this ground,
simply expresses regret that he had been the
means of making the charge public {ante, p. 103).
A charge of this kind made against one so
beloved as Marlowe would not have been readily
accepted if it were not well founded. The con-
temporary notices of Marlowe's fall are written
more in sorrow than in anger. In a poem in
manuscript written in 1600, signed S.M., quoted
by Halli well- Phillips in his Life of Shakespeare,
the writer speaks of ' Kynde Kit Marloe.' The
' biting satirist ' Nash in the epistle to the
reader prefixed to the second edition of Christes
Teares over Jerusalem writes of ' poore deceased
Kit Marlowe.' He was still called ' Kit ' when
his success as a poet seemed to call for a more
respectful address. So thought Heywood when,
in his Hier archie of the Blessed, (1635), he wrote
H7
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Mario renowned for his rare art and wit
Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit,
Although his Hero and Leander did
Merit addition rather.
He was ' Kit ' to Izaak Walton when, years
afterwards, he wrote lovingly of a ditty fitted for
a voice like the note of a nightingale : ' twas
that smooth song, which was made by Kit.
Marlow now at least fifty years ago ; and the
Milk-maid's mother sung an answer to it, which
was made by Walter Raleigh in his younger days.
They were old fashioned poetry, but choicely
good. I think much better than the strong lines
that are now in fashion in this critical age.'
Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd Muse —
Alas, unhappy in his life and end.
Thus in sorrow wrote the author of The Returne
from Pernassus, and Peele, shortly after the
death of Marlowe, thus gave expression to his
admiration and regret :
Unhappy in thine end
Marley, the Muses' darling, for thy verse,
Fit to write passions for the souls below
If any wretched souls in passion speak.*
Greene's dying appeal to the ' famous gracer
of Tragedians ' to abandon his atheism was
prompted by affection for a friend. Drayton,
• Prologue to Honour of the Garter, 1593.
I48
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
the friend of Shakespeare, bestowed on him
worthy praise when he wrote —
Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had ; his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear ;
For that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.
But the noblest tribute of affectionate regard
to the memory of Marlowe was that paid by
Shakespeare. It has been noted that he was
moved by the tragedy of Spenser, ' late deceased
in beggary,' to depart from his wont, and to
introduce into one of his plays a reference to an
event of the day. The pitiful death of a still
nearer friend, his master, led him to break
silence, and he wrote these words :
Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ? *
The line quoted by Shakespeare occurs in
Hero and Leander. There is an unmistakable
note of affectionate regret in these words.
' Shepherd ' was in those days a not unusual
word to denote a poet. Cynthia's Shepherds in
Colin Clouts were the poets by whom Elizabeth
was surrounded. But there was a special signifi-
cance in the word ' Shepherd ' as applied by
* As Ton Like It, III. v. 82.
149
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Shakespeare to Marlowe. Dramatists were often
known among their friends by the name of one
of their characters, and we know that Marlowe
was known to his friends as Tamburlaine, the
Shepherd King, the hero of the drama by which
he was best known.
Fragments of the poetry of Marlowe, and
reminiscences of his work, are to be found here
and there throughout the writings of Shake-
speare. Sir Hugh Evans trolled snatches from
the smooth song beloved by Izaak Walton,
''Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am,
and trempling of mind,' says Sir Hugh Evans,
and he relieves his mind by singing
To shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sings madrigals ;
There will we make our peds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
To shallow —
Mercy on me ! I have a great dispositions to cry
[sings]
Melodious birds sing madrigals —
When as I sat in Pabylon —
And a thousand vagram posies.
To shallow, &c*
When Helen was presented to Doctor Faustus
by Mephistophilcs, in obedience to his demand, he
exclaims —
• Merry JFivesf III. i. II.
150
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Iliam ?
These matchless lines were present to the mind of
Shakespeare when he wrote of Helen
Why, she is a pearl
Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships.*
And there is an echo of the music when the
Countess's call for Helena, by the name of Helen,
provokes the clown's song —
Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,
Why the Grecians sacked Troy ? f
and a fainter echo, when Richard, beholding his
features in a glass, exclaims —
Was this face the face
That every day under his household roof
Did keep ten thousand men ? was this the face
That, like the sun, did make beholders wink ? J
The greatness of Marlowe's influence on the
work and character of Shakespeare cannot be
measured by quotations from their works, or by
a consideration of the extent to which they may
have worked in collaboration. There is no more
interesting chapter in the history of literature
than that which tells of the work done by Shake-
* Troilus and Cressida, II. ii. 81.
t All's Well, I. in. 75.
% King Richard II., IV. i. 281.
151
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
spcarc in disciplcship to Marlowe. To what
extent they worked together is uncertain, and to
discuss the question would transcend the purpose
with which these pages have been written. It
may be profitably studied with Sir Sidney Lee
in his Life of Shakespeare and with Dr. Brandcs
in William Shakespeare, a Critical Study. It is
sufficient here to note that collaboration, to the
extent which is admitted by all critics, involves
personal relations between the workers, and an
intimacy which may be expected to exert an
influence on character and opinions other than
those which are merely literary.
The abiding influence of Marlowe on the
work of Shakespeare, and his strongest claim to
our gratitude, is due to his discovery that the
resources of the English language were equal to
the creation of a mighty line, an unrhymed
measure, comparable in strength and beauty to
the finest metres of Greece or Rome, and adapted
alike to the uses of the noblest tragic and epic
poetry.
' When Christopher Marlowe came up to
London from Cambridge, a boy in years, a man
in genius, and a god in ambition, he found the
stage, which he was born to transfigure and
re-create by the might and masterdom of his
genius, encumbered with a litter of rude rhyming
152
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
farces and tragedies which the first wave of his
imperial hand swept so utterly out of sight and
hearing that hardly by piecing together such
fragments of that buried rubbish as it is now
possible to unearth can we rebuild in imagination
so much of the rough and crumbling wall that
fell before the trumpet-blast of Tamburlaine,
as may give us some conception of the rabble of
dynasty of rhymers whom he overthrew — of the
citadel of dramatic barbarism which was stormed
and sacked at the first charge of the young
conqueror who came to lead English audiences
and to deliver English poetry
From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,'*
The trumpet-blast was blown in the prologue
to Tamburlaine from which these lines are taken.
Of this play, Swinburne writes : ' It is the first
poem ever written in English blank verse, as
distinguished from mere rhymeless decasyllables ;
and it contains one of the noblest passages,
perhaps indeed the noblest, in the literature of
the world ever written by one of the greatest
masters of poetry in loving praise of the glorious
delights and sublime submission to the ever-
lasting limits of his art ' : "j"
* A Study of Shakespeare.
f Encyclopedia Britannica.
153
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
If all the pens that ever poets held
Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts,
And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
Their minds, and muses on admired themes ;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit ;
If these had made one poem's period,
And all combined in beauty's worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least
Which into words no virtue can digest.*
Tamburlaine has many and obvious faults. In
some parts it descends to the level of mere
bombast. | But of the character of Tamburlaine,
the Shepherd King, we may say, as Goethe said
of Doctor Faustus, ' How grandly it is all
planned ! ' and in many passages, in this his
earliest drama, we find Marlowe's mighty line at
its best.
It was no part of Marlowe's design to banish
rhyme from lyrical or descriptive poetry. It had
• First part, V. i. 161.
f For example, in Tamburlaine's address to the captured Kings :
' Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia.'
Shakespeare's love of Marlowe did not restrain him from joining in
the chorus of laughter which this line evoked, for Pistol speaks of
pack-horses
' and hollow pampered jades of Asia
Which cannot go but thirty mile a-day.'
2 Hen. IV.y II. iv. 177.
154
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
no place in the measure which he created for
tragedy or epic poetry. He was indeed a master
of rhyme, as unrivalled as of blank verse. His
Passionate Pilgrim contains the lyric beloved by
Izaak Walton and by Sir Hugh Evans, and a
fragment of descriptive poetry of extraordinary
beauty. Of these, writes one who has brought to
perfection the charm of rhyme : ' One of the
most faultless lyrics, and one of the loveliest
fragments in the whole range of descriptive and
fanciful poetry would have secured a place for
Marlowe among the memorable men of his epoch,
even if his plays had perished with himself. His
Passionate Pilgrim remains ever since unrivalled
in its way — a way of pure fancy and radiant
melody without break or lapse ' ; and of Hero
and Leander Swinburne writes : ' It is doubtful
whether the heroic couplet has ever been more
finely handled.'
Shakespeare, in discipleship to Marlowe, aban-
doned the use of rhyming couplets which is to be
found in his earlier plays, and he also followed
the example of his master in retaining the melody
of rhyme in his lyrics, of which, perhaps the
most beautiful are those in his latest plays.
When Swinburne's glorious description of the
advent of Marlowe has been reduced to pedestrian
prose, it tells of the coming into the life of
155
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Shakespeare of a personality by which it was
profoundly affected. The manner in which his
work as an artist was affected was the infusion
into it of the spirit of the classical Renaissance,
or of the New Learning, as it was more accurately
termed in its relation to England. The outward
and visible sign of the infusion of this new spirit
was the gradual abandonment by Shakespeare
of rhyme in the composition of his plays. The
story of Shakespeare's conversion from rhyme
to blank verse can best be studied in the glowing
pages of Swinburne.* Shakespeare * was natu-
rally addicted to rhyme. . . . But in his very
first plays, comic or tragic or historic, we can
see the collision and conflict of the two influences ;
his evil angel rhyme, yielding step by step to the
strong advance of that better genius who came
to lead him into the loftier path of Marlowe.'
Rhyme in King Richard 11. and Romeo and Juliet,
' struggles for awhile to keep its footing, but
now more visibly in vain. The rhymed scenes
in these plays are too plainly the survivals of a
ruder and feebler stage of work. ... In two
scenes we may say that the whole heart or spirit
of Romeo and Juliet is summed up and distilled
into perfect and pure expression ; and these two
are written in blank verse of equable and blamc-
• A Study of Shakespeare.
156
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
less melody.' A passage in Richard II. ' must be
regarded as the last hysterical struggle of rhyme
to maintain its place in tragedy.'
The effect of the New Learning upon the work
of Shakespeare, under the influence of Marlowe,
cannot be fully appreciated without a glance at
the condition of the vernacular literature of
England at the beginning of the century in
which he was born^^Jiallam fixes the year 1400
as the beginning of a national literature written
in English, a language that was then growing
into literary existence. This was the year of the
death of Chaucer. The vernacular literature
which showed such promise in Chaucer, made no
progress in the century and a half between his
death and the accession of Elizabeth. The only
book written in England in those years which
holds a first-class position in literature, More's
Utopia, was written in Latin. Then had come
the great intellectual movement known as the
Classical Renaissance, which reached England
in the early years of the sixteenth century.
St. Paul's School was founded by Dean Colet,
and William Lily, a famous grammarian, who
had studied Greek and Latin in Italy, was
appointed High Master in 15 12. The grammar
school at Stratford held a high position, and was
one of the first in which Greek was taught, and
"57
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
by the teaching of that school Shakespeare was
made ready for discipleship to Marlowe. Dull
and long-forgotten plays after the manner of
Seneca had no effect on the development of the
national drama. Ralph Roister Doister, written
in 1550, may be taken as the precursor of the
Elizabethan national drama, the first fruit of
the Classical Renaissance. The author, Nicholas
Udall, was headmaster at Eton, and a famous
classical scholar. The play is founded on the
Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, and is in the form of
a Latin comedy. But it is written in rhyming
doggerel verse. Only thirty-seven years inter-
vened between the writing of this play and the
production of Tamburlaine. The greatness of the
revolution worked by the genius of Marlowe can
best be realised by a comparison of his line with
the jigging vein of the rhyming mother wit which
found expression in Ralph Roister Doister.
It was by the spirit and not the letter of the
ancient learning that Marlowe was inspired.
The difference between the letter and the spirit
of this influence is illustrated by a comparison of
the work of Marlowe with the efforts of a school
of pedants who with Gabriel Harvey and William
Webbe * were engaged in a fruitless endeavour
to i reform ' English versification by forcing it
• A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586).
158
CHRISTOPHER {MARLOWE
into the metres of Latin poetry. It is also seen
by a comparison of Shakespeare's Roman plays
with Jonson's. Jonson's plays are ' well
laboured.' His characters ' are made to speak
according to the very words of Tacitus and
Suetonius ; but they are not living men ' ; and
we know from Leonard Digges how the audience
was ravished when Shakespeare's Caesar would
appear on the stage. Such was the mighty in-
fluence which, mainly through the instrumen-
tality of Marlowe, was brought to bear upon
Shakespeare's work as a dramatist.
Professor Dowden, in writing of Shakespeare,
devotes himself to a ' critical study of his mind
and art.' It is in regard to the art of Shake-
speare that the influence of Marlowe has been,
for the most part, considered. But no less real
was his influence upon the mind of Shakespeare,
upon his outlook on life, upon the character of
the man, and upon his office as teacher.
While Marlowe was engaged in his great work
of literary pioneer and discoverer he had under-
taken a mission of a different kind. The charge
of atheism which Marlowe was called upon to
answer was never tried, or, indeed, exactly
formulated. The word was, in those days,
applied to deviations from orthodoxy of different
degrees. It was applied to the freethinking of
159
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Raleigh and his literary circle. It is evident
from Greene's friendly expostulation that he
used the term, in its application to Marlowe,
in its literal sense. It is impossible to avoid the
conclusion that Marlowe towards the end of his
life had become the apostle of a kind of un-
orthodoxy, to which the word ' atheism ' was
regarded as applicable by friends as well as foes.
Marlowe had an influential friend and patron
in Sir Thomas Walsingham, who is said to have
been nearly related to Elizabeth's famous minis-
ter. Chapman was his intimate friend, and, as
we have seen, he was beloved as well as admired
by his literary brethren, who would have been
moved by the tragedy of his death to clear his
memory of so odious a charge, if it had been
possible so to do.
Association with Marlowe had not the influence
on the mind of Shakespeare which it was said,
probably with truth, to have exerted on weaker
intellects. Shakespeare remained unshaken in
his hold of the great truths of religion, and three
centuries having elapsed, the anniversary of his
death will be celebrated, with gratitude for his
teaching, in services of the church of which he
was a member.
But although Shakespeare emerged unscathed
from the fiery trial of his faith to which intimate
160
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
association with one like Marlowe must have
exposed him, the influence of Marlowe on his
religious belief, as well as on his work as an artist,
is clearly discernible. No question has been
oftener asked in regard to Shakespeare than this :
What was his creed ? It is a question that can
be easily answered with regard to other great
men of the Elizabethan age. But as to Shake-
speare it has not been answered yet ; or, rather,
it has been answered so differently by various
earnest students of his work as to lead to the con-
clusion that the problem is insoluble. Charles
Butler, in Historical Memoirs of English Catholics,
claims him as a Roman Catholic ; and a French
man of letters, A. J. Rio, in his Shakespeare,
arrives without doubt at the same conclusion.
He has been described as an atheist, and as a
deist, and Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St.
Andrews, claims him as a faithful son of the
English Church of the Reformation.
Many of us in our passage through life have
come across a young man of exceptionally
brilliant intellect, who, under the influence of a
friend of a masterful personality, was led to
abandon for agnosticism the religion in which
he was brought up. After a time such a one
' like him who travels ' may return again. But
he returns a different man. Should he become
161
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
a divine, his theological teaching will be cha-
racterised by a spirit of tolerance, and by an
understanding of forms of belief and unbelief to
which he would otherwise have been a stranger.
If he should become a dramatist or novelist,
there will be found in his work the characteristics
which have baffled inquirers after the creed of
Shakespeare ; a firm grasp of eternal verities,
with an indifference to the forms and dogmas of
any particular Church.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.*
With words like these he may close a dis-
cussion on religious subjects, relegating, with
Milton, reasoning high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute
to spirits of another sort, in another place.
A firm religious faith is consistent in a man like
Shakespeare, with easy-going toleration, and
even with occasional indulgence in an unseemly
jest. Some such thought was present to his
mind when he put these words into the mouth
of Don Pedro :
• Hamlet, I. v. 167. The ' our ' of the Folio has been need-
lessly altered to ' your.' Hamlet and Horatio had been fellow
b tudents in Wittenberg.
l62
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
The man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in
him by some large jests he will make.*
Large jests were in vogue in Shakespeare's day,
and even his Beatrice indulged in a kind of
pleasantry that has been long since banished
from the servants' hall. But there is no irrever-
ence in Shakespeare's jests. He never calls evil
good, or good, evil. He did not love a Puritan,
and he had no taste for frequent churchgoing.
' An honest, willing, kind fellow,' says Mistress
Quickly of Rugby, ' as ever servant shall come
in house withal, and, I warrant you, no tell-
tale nor no breed-bate ; his worst fault is that
he is given to prayer ; he is something peevish
that way ; but nobody but has his fault ; but
let that pass.'f At times, under special provo-
cation, he might be of the mind of Sir Andrew
Aguecheek :
Mar. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.
Sir And. O, if I thought that Fid beat him like a dog !
Sir To. What, for being a puritan ? Thy exquisite
reason, dear knight ?
Sir And. I have no exquisite reason for't, but I have
reason good enough. |
But more often his mood would be that of the
good-humoured indifference underlying the cha-
* Much Ado, II. iii. 204.
f Merry Wives, I. iv. 10.
% Twelfth Night, II. iii. 151.
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
racteristic language of a certain clown : ' Young
Charbon the puritan and old Poysam the papist,
hovvsome'er their hearts arc severed in religion,
their heads are both one ; they may joul horns
together, like any deer i' the herd.' *
We are certain that he received with ' gentle '
courtesy the preacher whose entertainment at
New Place has been recorded. If another such
visit had been paid when Shakespeare was
writing Cymbriine, we can understand how when
the worthy man departed his host could con-
tain himself no longer, and relieved his feelings
by writing some things of which Sir Sidney Lee
says : l Although most of the scenes of Cymbeline
are laid in Britain in the first century before the
Christian era, there is no pretence of historical
vraisemblance. With an almost ludicrous inap-
propriateness the British King's courtiers make
merry with technical terms peculiar to Calvin-
istic theology, like " grace ' and " election."
In I. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as " past
grace " in the theological sense. In I. ii. 30-31
the Second Lord remarks : " If it be a sin to
make a true election, she is damned."
A report regarding Shakespeare that ' he dyed
a papist ' reached the Rev. Richard Davies,
• All's Well, I. iii. 55.
f Life of Shakespeare, p. 424, and note 1 .
164
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Rector of Sapperton, who inserted it in some
brief notes respecting Shakespeare which are in
the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Davies died in 1708, and the report probably had
its origin towards the end of the seventeenth
century. Although it was not founded in fact,
it is easy to understand how it came to be said of
Shakespeare by the Puritans among whom his
lot was cast. He had heard in his youth from
old people of the beauty of the old services, and
the sweet singing of the monks. With this in
his mind, when he thought of the fair proportions
of some abbey church, dismantled and going to
ruin, he wrote these words :
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.*
If the passages in his writings by which learned
and thoughtful readers have been led to con-
clude that he was a Roman Catholic had a
counterpart in his daily converse at Stratford,
his Protestantism would certainly have been
called in question by the good folk of that town,
and the story would go abroad that he was
reconciled to the old faith before his death.
' Bishop Charles Wordsworth, in his Shake-
* Sonnet lxxiii.
165
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
speare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible (fourth
edition, 1892), gives a long list of passages for
which Shakespeare may have been indebted to
the Bible. But the Bishop's deductions as to
the strength of Shakespeare's adult piety seem
strained. The Rev. Thomas Carter's Shake-
speare and Holy Scripture (1905) is open to the
same exceptions as the Bishop's volume, but no
Shakespearean student will fail to derive profit
from examining his exhaustive collection of
parallel passages.' * It may be, as Sir Sidney
Lee thinks, that Shakespeare's ' scriptural remi-
niscences bear trace of the assimilative or recep-
tive tendency of an alert youthful mind,' and it
may be a mistake ' to urge that his knowledge
of the Bible was mainly the fruit of close and
continuous application in adult life.' But his
knowledge of the Bible, however acquired, was
a fact, and in it he found a safeguard against the
missionary efforts of Marlowe, all the more
dangerous by reason of the admiration and
affection with which he was regarded by his friend
and disciple.
An interesting feature of the annual celebra-
tion at Stratford of the birthday of Shakespeare
is the preaching of a memorial sermon in the
parish church. In one of these the late Canon
# Life of Shakespeare, p. 23, note 2.
166
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Ainger, having spoken of the discipline ' under
which he grew to be a prophet and a teacher to
his kind,' says ' wherever men do congregate,
or wherever they muse in solitude, there abides
this great cause of thankfulness to Almighty God
that the greatest name in our literature should
be also our wisest and profoundest teacher.' *
Coleridge expressed his confidence ' that
Shakespeare was a writer of all others the most
calculated to make his readers better as well as
wiser,' f and Professor Dowden writes : ' Is
Shakespeare a religious poet ? An answer
has been given to this question by Mr. Walter
Bagehot, which contains the essential truth :
" If this world is not all evil, he who has under-
stood and painted it best, must probably have
some good. If the underlying and almighty
essence of this world be good, then it is likely
that the writer who most deeply approached to
that essence will be himself good. There is a
religion of weekdays as well as of Sundays, a
religion of ' cakes and ale,' as well as of pews
and altar cloths. This England lay before
Shakespeare as it lies before us all, with its green
fields, and its long hedgerows, and its many
trees, and its great towns, and its endless ham-
* Shakespeare Sermons, preached in the Collegiate Church of Strat-
ford-on-Avon (1900).
f Lecture on Shakespeare and Milton.
167
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
lets, and its motley society, and its long history,
and its bold exploits, and its gathering power ;
and he saw that they were good. To him per-
haps more than to anyone else has it been given
to see that they were a great unity, a great
religious object ; that if you could only descend
to the inner life, to the deep things, to the secret
principles of its noble vigour, to the essence of
character ... we might, so far as we are capable
of so doing, understand the nature which God
has made. Let us then think of him, not as a
teacher of dry dogmas, or a sayer of hard
sayings, but as
A priest to us all
Of the wonder and bloom of the world,
a teacher of the hearts of men and women."
From Shakespeare's fellowship with Marlowe
we learn something of the strength and sanity
of his character, and also of his constancy in
friendship. He was ready to learn from Marlowe
what he had to teach, and to follow him where
he ought to tread, but no further. He was loyal
to the memory of a fallen and discredited friend.
Deaf to Chettle's entreaty that he would drop a
tear on the sable hearse of Elizabeth, he was
moved to depart from his use by the tragic death
• Shakespeare, his Mind and Art, quoting from Estimates of Some
Englishmen and Scotchmen.
1 68
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
of Marlowe, as he was by the circumstances of the
last days of Spenser :
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
Loyalty such as Shakespeare's to his fellows and
friends is a sure token of the genuineness of the
character which Spenser was the first to discover
in Shakespeare.
169
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Towards the end of the century in which
Shakespeare died an attempt was made to
collect and record what was then remembered
of the facts of his life. Nicholas Rowe, Poet
Laureate, the earliest critical editor of the plays
of Shakespeare, was also his earliest biographer,
for none of the scanty notes of former writers
deserve the name of biography. Rowe was a
man of note, as a poet and as a dramatist.
The popularity of his best-known drama, The
Fair Penitent, is attested by the survival from
it of the phrase ' gallant gay Lothario,' de-
scriptive of the villain of the piece. Of this
play, Dr. Johnson writes : ' There is scarcely
any work of any poet at once so interesting by
the fable, and so delightful in the language.'
Rowc's work as editor was of considerable value
at the time, but his edition of the plays which
appeared in 1709 was before long superseded by
that of Pope (1725) and by the far superior work
of Theobald, ' the Porson of Shakespearian
criticism.' *
• Essays and Studies (Churton Collins).
I70
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Rowe's poems and plays are now forgotten.
But he has a claim to our undying gratitude,
second only to that which is due to the players
to whom we owe the Folio of 1623. It is founded
on the pains that he took, by careful inquiries
at Stratford, to preserve from oblivion such
knowledge of Shakespeare's life as had then sur-
vived, and on the discrimination and restraint
with which he made use of the material which
was supplied to him.
In this pious labour he had the assistance of
the famous actor Thomas Betterton. Born about
the year 1635, Betterton in 1661 joined a com-
pany of players formed by Sir William Davenant
at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre. He was thus
brought into contact with one who was closely
connected with Shakespeare. Shakespeare's
intimacy with the D'Avenant family has been
noted in an earlier chapter. With William the
connection was closest, for he was Shakespeare's
godchild, and devoted to the memory of his
godfather. Betterton was not only an actor,
but a dramatist, many of whose plays were
produced, and in the words of Pepys, ' well
liked.'
Betterton was known to Rowe not only as
a great actor, but as an earnest student of
Shakespeare. ' No man,' he writes, ' is better
I7 1
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
acquainted with Shakespeare's manner of expres-
sion, and, indeed, he has studied him so well,
and is so much a master of him, that whatever
part of his he performs, he does it as if it had
been written on purpose for him, and that the
author had exactly conceived it.'
Betterton was the first to make a serious
attempt to collect material for a biography of
Shakespeare : ' his veneration for the memory
of Shakespeare having engaged him to make a
journey into Warwickshire on purpose to gather
up what remains he could of a name for which
he had so great a veneration.'
At what time Betterton's veneration engaged
him to journey to Stratford we do not know.
No time is more probable than shortly after the
death of Davenant in 1668. The strong per-
sonal interest in Shakespeare which prompted
this undertaking can be traced back to this date,
when Betterton purchased the Chandos portrait,
which had been in the possession of Davenant.
In his later years Betterton was in straitened
circumstances and a martyr to gout, and in
those days a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon
was a serious undertaking. Rowe, when he
published his Life in 1709, made use of the infor-
mation which had been collected by Betterton,
but there is no reason to suppose that Betterton's
172
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
visit to Stratford was made in contemplation of
Rowe's work.
Fifty-two years after the death of Shakespeare
there must have been men and women living at
Stratford who had not reached the extreme limit
of life, and who had spoken with Shakespeare
when he was resident at Stratford during his
later years.
Nothing can be more commonplace than the
story as told by Rowe. He tells us of the birth
of Shakespeare in April, 1564. * His family, as
appears by the register and public writings
relating to that town, were of good figure and
fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen.
His father, who was a considerable dealer in
wool, had a large family, ten children in all, and
could give his eldest son no better education
than one to fit him for his own employment.'
He was educated for some time at a free school,
' but the narrowness of his circumstances, and
the want of his assistance at home, forced his
father to withdraw him from thence. . . . Upon
his leaving school he seems to have given entirely
into that way of living which his father proposed
to him ; and in order to settle in the world after
a family manner, he thought fit to marry while
he was yet very young. His wife was the
daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a
173
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of
Stratford. In this kind of settlement he con-
tinued for some time till an extravagance that
he was guilty of forced him both out of the
country and that way of living which he had
taken up.'
Rowe tells the tale of the stealing of the deer
of Sir Thomas Lucy, for which he was prose-
cuted, as he thought too severely ; of Shake-
speare's revenge for the ill-usage in the form of
a ballad, ' the first essay of his poetry,' then
lost, which ' redoubled the prosecution against
him to that degree that he was obliged to leave
his business and family in Warwickshire for
some time, and shelter himself in London. . . .
The latter part of his life was spent, as all
men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in
ease, retirement, and the conversation of his
friends. He had the good fortune to gather an
estate equal to his occasion, and, in that to his
wish, and is said to have spent some years before
his death at his native Stratford. His pleasur-
able wit and good nature engaged him in the
acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship
of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood.'
This commonplace record, the result of the
inquiries of Betterton and Rowe, may be taken
as representing the impression made on the good
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
folk of Stratford by the life of Shakespeare, in
so far as it was spent among them, and of this
record no part is more commonplace than the
reference to his marriage. His early marriage
to the daughter of a substantial yeoman is
attributed to a desire to settle in the world in a
family manner, in the way of living which his
father proposed to him ; that is to say, as an
assistant in his business as a considerable dealer
in wool. It never occurred to Betterton's
informants, or to the seventeenth-century col-
lectors of Stratford gossip and scandal, that
there was anything out of the common, or worthy
of note, about the circumstances of Shakespeare's
marriage. Not a hint at unhappy relations
between husband and wife can be found in the
local gossip collected by Aubrey, Ward, Davies,
Hall, and Oldys.
With the revival of interest in the facts of
Shakespeare's life came the searching of ancient
records, and the discovery of certain facts which,
read in the light of nineteenth-century ideas,
seemed to have a significance that had not been
attached to them by the sixteenth-century folk
among whom they took place. On Monday,
the 28th of November, 1582, Shakespeare
obtained at the Bishop's Registry at Worcester
a licence to be married to Anne Hathaway, after
I7S
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
publication of banns. In what church the
celebration of the marriage took place is unknown.
The eldest child of the marriage, Susanna, was
baptized in the parish church of Stratford on
the 26th of May, 1583.
A marriage in November, followed by the
birth of a child in the following May, if these
facts were to occur in our day, would naturally
lead to the conclusion that prenuptial inter-
course had been followed by a forced marriage,
at the instance of the wife's relations, and this
is the conclusion from which most biographers
have started in their accounts of the domestic
life of Shakespeare.
It is always dangerous to draw inferences
from facts which have a relation to conduct
without a complete knowledge of the laws and
customs of the period at which they took place,
and this peril is especially imminent when the
facts and inferences are conversant with the
relations between the sexes, as governed by the
law of marriage, and the ecclesiastical and social
customs which had grown up around the law,
and which disappeared when the law ceased to
exist.
Mr. Charles Elton has earned the gratitude of
all who seek to attain to a real knowledge of the
life and character of Shakespeare by the care
176
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
with which he has investigated the circumstances
of his marriage in the light of contemporary
customs and ecclesiastical regulations.
Mr. Elton had rare qualifications for the task.
A fine scholar, and a lawyer of real learning,
especially in the branches of law which are
akin to history and archaeology, he would have
attained to a high position in his profession had
not his accession early in life to an ample estate
made it possible for him to devote his powers to
historical and literary research, while he was at
the same time engaged in such practical work
as the discharge of his duties as Member of
Parliament, and the collection and cataloguing
of an interesting library. As the result we have
the Origins of English History, and William
Shakespeare His Family and Friends, published
in the year 1904, after the death of the author,
with a memoir by Andrew Lang. In this work,
which is a storehouse of information indus-
triously collected from all quarters, and sifted
with critical care, he thus sums up the result of
his investigations :
6 We may say at once that there is no reason
to suppose that Shakespeare and his wife had
made an irregular or clandestine marriage,
though they appear to have been united by a
civil marriage some time before the ceremony
*77
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
was performed in the face of the Church. We
should distinguish between regular and irregular
contracts. A contract of future espousals was
regular, but it did not amount to marriage,
being nothing more in reality than a mutual
covenant to be married at a future time. A
contract of present espousals, on the contrary,
was a legal marriage. . . .
1 The congregation was frequently warned
that such civil marriages ought to be contracted
publicly, and before several witnesses. If these
rules were broken the offenders were liable to
the punishments for clandestine marriage, such as
fine, imprisonment, or excommunication, and
the victim might be compelled to walk, like the
Duchess of Gloucester, in a white sheet, with
bare feet and a taper alight :
Methinks I should not thus be led along,
Mail'd up in shame, with papers on my back ;
And follow'd with a rabble that rejoice
To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.
The civil marriage required the religious
solemnity to give the parties their legal status
as to property, but otherwise it was both valid
and regular. The clandestine marriage was
valid, but all parties could be punished for their
offences against the law.'
This is an accurate statement of the - " Canon
178
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Law as it was in force in England in the year
1582. But it leaves unanswered this question :
If Anne Hathaway had become the lawful wife
of William Shakespeare at some time before the
month of November, 1582, why was not their
marriage solemnised in church, after publishing
of banns, in the usual way ? The fact that the
marriage was not so solemnised has led writers
who approached the subject with nineteenth-
century prepossessions (including the writer of
these pages) to conclude that there must have
been something clandestine or irregular about
this civil marriage, although it was, by the laws
then in force, valid and binding.
Mr. Elton was an antiquary as well as a lawyer,
and his research has supplied an answer to the
question, which he puts in these words : ' Why
marriages were not always solemnised in church
after banns published, or special licence obtained.
. . . The answer is that it was difficult to
get married [in church] especially with due
publication of banns, except in the latter half
of the year, between Trinity and Advent. The
ancient prohibitions had been relaxed by the
Council of Trent ; but the decrees of that
assembly were not accepted in England. In our
own country the ancient rules prevailed. The
banns could not be published, nor marriages
179
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
solemnised, although they might certainly be
legally contracted during any of the periods of
prohibition, unless, indeed, a special licence were
obtained. The periods extended from Advent
to the octave of the Epiphany, or January
the 13th inclusive; from Septuagesima to the
end of Easter week ; and from the first Rogation
day, three days before the feast of the Ascension,
to Trinity Sunday, inclusive.' Attempts were
made after the Reformation, without success,
in Parliament and in Convocation to remove
these disabilities. Ultimately ' these distinctions
being invented only at first as a fund (among
many others) for dispensations and being built
upon no rational foundation, nor upon any law
of the Church of England, have vanished of
themselves.'*
But in the year 1582 they were in force.
Shakespeare was one who believed that
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow,
if heed be not taken that
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd.
And so he took the necessary steps, at a time
when the law of his Church permitted, to have
• William Shakespeare His Family and Friends.
180
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
the marriage solemnised in Church, after due
publishing of banns.* But neither at the time
of his marriage, nor when, many years after-
wards, he put these words into the mouth of
Prospero, would it have occurred to him to be a
necessary condition of a happy married life that
the holy rite and the indissoluble civil contract
should have taken place at one and the same
time. Indeed this would not have been possible
in the case of a marriage contracted during any
of the prohibited periods. There is a principle
of our jurisprudence, not founded on legal
technicality, but the result of the garnered
experience of centuries, which tells us that the
best way of arriving at truth, in the absence
of direct testimony, is to refer events to a
legal origin, when it is possible so to do, and
to presume, in the language of the law, omnia
rite esse acta.
Shakespeare was born in the month of April,
1564. He was thus about eighteen years of age
at the time of his marriage in 1582. Anne, his
widow, died on the 8th of August, 1623, at
the age of sixty-seven. She was therefore
twenty-six years of age at the time of the
* The banns were to be published once. But from the researches
in ancient registers of Mr. Elton and Mr. Gray {Shakespeare's
Marriage, etc.) it appears that a licence in this form was not unusual.
l8l
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
marriage. After about eighteen years Shakespeare
wrote these words :
Duke. Let still the woman take
An elder than herself : so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart :
For boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm.
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn
Than women's are.
Vio. I think it well, my lord.
Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.*
When Shakespeare wrote these words he could
look back on eighteen years of married life, and
no one has doubted that in the speech of Orsino,
which is devoid of dramatic significance, we have
the result of this retrospection : Eighteen years
before, a boy of eighteen, he had married a woman
of the mature age of twenty-six. Then followed
a few years of married life at Stratford, and the
birth of three children. There is no reason why
we should import into these years the idea of
unhappiness or discord. Shakespeare left his
wife and family, not of choice, but of necessity.
The trouble in which his reckless love of sport
involved him is not suggestive of domestic
trouble. Then followed long years of separa-
• Twelfth Night, II. iv. 29.
182
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
tion, of solitary struggles in London ; it may
be of error and estrangement. Looking back
on these years, Shakespeare may well have
thought that it would have been better for his
wife had she taken an elder than herself, for so
might she have swayed ' level in her husband's
heart,' and have exerted more influence on his
life and character. But his thoughts and sympa-
thies were for the older wife, not for the younger
husband, whose giddy and infirm fancies brought
on her trouble and disappointment.
Aubrey's statement that Shakespeare was
wont to go to his country once a year was
probably not true of the earlier years of his stay
in London. But with his improving fortunes
his thoughts turned towards home, and the
homing instinct that was part of his nature
asserted itself. When Twelfth Night was written
the tide in his affairs had turned, and had set in
the direction of the return to domestic life and
permanent reunion, which was fully consum-
mated when some ten years later he came to live
in New Place. Towards this consummation,
devoutly wished, his efforts during many years
had consistently tended. He had already
obtained from the Heralds' College a grant of
arms to his father, by virtue of which he came
to be described in the deed conveying to him a
183
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
share in the tithes of Stratford as ' of Stratford-
upon-Avon, gentleman.' He had in 1597, in
the words of Sir Sidney Lee, ' taken openly in
his own person a more effective step in the way
of rehabilitating himself and his family in the
eyes of his fellow-townsmen.' On the 4th of May
he purchased the largest house in the town,
known as ' New Place,' and at the time when
Twelfth Night was produced in the Hall of the
Middle Temple he must have been in treaty for
the purchase of a substantial real estate, the
conveyance of which was executed shortly
afterwards. According to the careful estimate
of Sir Sidney Lee, ' a sum approaching 150/.
(equal to 750/. of to-day) would be the poet's
average annual revenue before 1599. Such a
sum would be regarded as a very large income
in a country town.'* In the full splendour of
his fame as a poet and successful dramatist, and
in the receipt of an ample income, at an age at
which he might reasonably have looked forward
to the enjoyment of many years in the life of
London, ' like him that travels he returned
again,' to spend the remaining years of his life
in a dull country town, for no other reason that
can be assigned except that it was his native
place and the home of his wife and children.
• Life of Shakespeare, p. 300.
184
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
One would have thought that the fact that
Shakespeare was not kept by the attractions of
life in London from visiting once in every year
the country town in which he had left his wife
and family, and that when he had made an ample
fortune he came home to end his life in their
company, in the house which he had made ready
for them some years before, would have led to
the conclusion that their relations were, at all
events, fairly satisfactory. But against all this
is the unforgettable fact that he left his wife
his second-best bed.
The truth is that Shakespeare, when making
his will, failed to realise that he was writing, not
for his executors and legatees, but for all time.
It has been a source of disappointment and
serious concern to many that he made no mention
of Drayton, Ben Jonson, Fletcher, or other of
his literary friends, and that his will contains
no mention of his own writings. Memorial rings
might have been bequeathed to them, and to the
" incomparable pair " to whom the First Folio was
dedicated, who, in the words of the editors, prose-
cuted the author when alive with so much favour.
They were provided for some fellow players and
a few obscure neighbours. The master of the
Grammar School at Stratford, who made a
transcript of the will in 1747 when interest began
185
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
to be taken in the subject, was sorely dis-
appointed when he read it, and could not help
observing that it was ' absolutely void of the
least particle of that spirit which animated our
great poet.' On which Mr. Halliwell-Phillips
pertinently remarks, ' It might be thought
from this impeachment that this worthy pre-
ceptor expected to find it written in blank-verse,'
adding, ' The preponderance of Shakespeare's
domestic over his literary sympathies is strikingly
exhibited in this final record.'
Shakespeare's will might well be left to rest
in the obscurity of a registry were it not for the
extravagant ideas to which this very common-
place document has given rise. Not only did
he leave his wife entirely unprovided for, but to
this injury a deliberate insult was added by the
introduction of an interlineation into the original
draft by which his second-best bed was given to
his wife, showing that this trifling and insulting
notice of her existence was a mere afterthought.
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in the notes to his
Outlines, has printed the will in a convenient
manner, which enables the reader to understand
the process by which it attained its ultimate
form. The portions of the print included in
square brackets represent erasures, and those
in italics, interlineations. The erasures are of
186
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
no significance, and the only interlineations
with which we need concern ourselves are those
which relate to the provision for the wife of the
testator.
By the original draft, New Place, with practi-
cally the whole of Shakespeare's property in land,
was settled on his eldest daughter, Susanna Hall,
for her life, with remainder to her issue male, in
strict settlement. In the draft, the gift was
without qualification, but before the will was
executed the following words had been intro-
duced by interlineation, immediately after the
gift to Susanna Hall : ' for better enabling of
her to performe this my will and towardes the
performance thereof.' By these words, the sig-
nificance of which has been overlooked, Susanna
was constituted a trustee of the property which
was devised to her, in order to enable her to per-
form and give effect to what the testator calls
' this my will.' What was the will which
Susanna was to perform by means of her owner-
ship of New Place ? It was not anything
expressed on the face of the will, which contains
no indication of any trust or obligation imposed
on her. The words ' this my will,' if taken
literally, would refer to something contained in
the document in which they occur. Shake-
speare's will was composed neither in the blank
i8 7
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
verse of a poet nor with the technical exactness
of a conveyancing draftsman, but the meaning is
quite clear. The testator must be taken to have
meant something by the words ' this my will,'
and if they are to be given any significance
they must be taken as meaning ' the whole of
my testamentary disposition now declared.'
Directions given to his daughter by word of
mouth as to the use that she was to make of the
property given to her by the will would be
legally binding, if she accepted the gift, and the
testator's entire disposition might fairly be
spoken of as ' this my will.'
From what was done before and after the
making of the will there can be no doubt as to
the nature of the trust that was imposed on the
owner of New Place or as to the loyalty with
which it was carried into effect. For some reason
or other Shakespeare had for some time made up
his mind to provide for his wife otherwise than
by putting her into the possession and manage-
ment of property of any kind. When he
acquired by purchase the Blackfriars estate he
was at pains to take the conveyance in such a
form as to bar his wife's title to dower. We
must assume that there was some good reason
why Shakespeare did not make his wife the
mistress of New Place for her life, and why he
1 88
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
did not put in writing the entire of his testa-
mentary disposition. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, with
the sanity by which his speculations are charac-
terised, suggests an explanation which is accepted
by Mr. Elton and in substance approved by
Sir Sidney Lee. ' Perhaps the only theory that
would be consistent with the terms of the will,
and with the deep affection which she is tra-
ditionally recorded to have entertained for him
to the end of his life, is the possibility of her
having been afflicted with some chronic infir-
mity of a nature that precluded all hope of
recovery. In such a case to relieve her from
household anxieties and select a comfortable
apartment at New Place, where she would be
under the care of an affectionate daughter and
an experienced physician, would have been the
wisest and kindest measure which could have
been adopted.' * Susanna had married in 1607
a physician of great local eminence, named John
Hall, resident in Stratford. He was a gentleman
by birth, bearing two talbots on his crest.
' He was well educated, travelled abroad, and
acquired a good knowledge of French.' f A
Master of Arts, of what university is not known,
he was a good Latin scholar. In 1657 a volume
* Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.
t Sir Sidney Lee in Diet. Nat. Biography.
189
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
was published entitled ' Select Observations on
English Bodies, and Cures both Empericall and
Historicall performed upon very eminent persons
in desperate diseases, first written in Latin by
Mr. John Hall, physician, living at Stratford-
upon-Avon in Warwickshire, where he was very
famous, as also in the counties adjacent.' A
second edition was published in 1679, which was
reissued in 1683. The confidence placed in Hall
and in his wife, of whom something will be said
hereafter, was fully justified. Shakespeare's
widow lived with them at New Place until her
death in 1623. Her position, living under these
circumstances in a house of which she had been
the mistress, was a trying one, both to her and
to her successor, and after her death Mr. Hall
paid a tribute to the memory of his mother-in-
law in a copy of Latin elegiacs which was
inscribed on her monument, a striking testimony
to her virtues and also to the harmony that
reigned in New Place.
But why the second-best bed ? It would be
contrary to all received ideas of the relations of
Shakespeare with his wife to suggest that he
left her this bed because she wished to have it.
The best bed was in the guest chamber, the
second best in the room which she and her hus-
band'occupied If Shakespeare had only realised
190
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
his duty to posterity, and, after the residuary
gift to his son-in-law, John Hall, and his daughter
Susanna, his wife, of his goods, chattels, and
household stuff, had by interlineation inserted
the words ' except the bed which my wife and
I have occupied together, which is to be her
property,' much searching of heart would have
been saved, and justice might have been done
to the affectionate forethought which prompted
Shakespeare, when he read over the first draft
of his will, to secure to his wife, as a matter of
right, such maintenance as he thought most
suitable to her condition, and also to gratify
what we may well believe to have been a wish
expressed by her, by excepting from the general
bequest of household stuff one article, that
known in the family as the second-best bed.
Nature will out, even in an epitaph, and the
pilgrim to Stratford in search of stray glimpses
of the life that was lived in New Place three
centuries ago may learn something of the
occupants of the house from a study of the
inscriptions on their monuments in the parish
church.
The ' Stratford Monument ' was a public
testimonial to an eminent fellow townsman, and
nothing of a personal character was to be looked
for in the verses inscribed on it. In^the Latin
I 9 I
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
lines at the head of the inscription Shakespeare
is compared, with a disregard of quantity par-
donable in the case of a proper noun, and with
still less regard to aptness, to Nestor in wisdom,
to Socrates in genius, and to Virgil in art ; by
which last words Ben Jonson is absolved from
all suspicion of complicity in the composition.
Halliwell-Phillipps notes the absence from the
verses which follow of any allusion to personal
character, and also of the local knowledge which
would have forbidden the author to describe the
subject of the verse as lying within the monu-
ment. The whole thing was probably imported
from London, where the bust was certainly
executed by Gerard Johnson, or Janssen, a
Dutch sculptor, or tombmaker, settled in South-
ward From it, the pilgrim turns to some
homely words inscribed on a stone covering the
grave, which, according to an early tradition,
' were ordered to be cutt by Mr. Shakespeare,'
who had a horror of his bones being dug up and
removed from the church to the adjoining
charnel-house to make room for the reception, in
accordance with ancient right, of another tithe-
owner. With the reflection that Shakespeare
was a man of like passions with ourselves, he
passes from the conventionality of the monument
and tomb to memorials of domestic affection,
192
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
and here he is not disappointed. e Mrs. Hall,'
Mr. Elton writes, ' placed a strange inscription
over her mother's grave a few years afterwards :
" Here lieth interred the body of Anne, wife of
William Shakespeare, who departed this life the
6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of
67 years." ' The inscription proceeds with six
lines of Latin verse,* to the effect that the
spirit as well as the body was held in the
sepulchre : —
* " Ubera tu mater," it commences. " A mother's
bosom thou gavest, and milk, and life ; for such
bounty, alas ! can I only render stones ! Rather
would I pray the good angel to roll away the
stone from the mouth of the tomb, that thy
spirit, even as the body of Christ, should go
forth," and the hope is expressed that Christ
may quickly come, so that the imprisoned soul
may be able to " seek the stars." After noting
that * the mother's care for the infant is treated
as a matter of high importance, but nothing is
said about the rest of her life,' Mr. Elton adds :
' But the exclusive reference to the earliest cares
*
Ubera tu mater, tu lac, vitamque dedisti
Vae mihi, pro tanto munere saxa dabo ?
Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem, bonus angelus ore
Exeat ut, Christi corpus, imago tua
Sed nil vota valent, venias cito Christe ; resurget
Clausa licet tumulo mater et astra petet.
193
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
of motherhood may very well point to a subse-
quent incapacity from later duties as the mother
of a household.'
In these words the memory of a woman
lovable and loving, noted rather for piety than
for intellectual gifts or strength of character, is
piously embalmed. And if she were physically
infirm, we can understand the thoughtful care
that provided for her maintenance in a way that
would not involve her in the management of
property or the duties of housekeeping.
Of such a woman it is natural that tradition
should tell us little. But what it has recorded
is in accordance with the testimony of her monu-
ment. A man named Dowdall, who wrote in the
year 1693, visited Stratford Church. He read
the inscription on the tombstone, and had a talk
with the gossiping clerk, who was above eighty
years old. ' Not one,' he writes, ' for fear of
the curse aforesaid, dare touch his gravestone,
tho' his wife and daughters did earnestly desire
to be layd in the same grave with him/
It is at least possible that the expression of a
similar affectionate desire to be associated in
memory with her husband may have prompted
to Shakespeare the addition to the original draft
of his will which made her the owner of the bed
which they had occupied together.
194
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
To such a woman, affectionate and pious, the
wife of his youth, we may well believe that Shake-
speare, though in his
Nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
would, like one who travels, return again, with
real love, and memories of happy days at
Shottery and years of early married life.
Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a yeoman,
and twenty-six years of age, was not the wife
that we should have chosen for Shakespeare
with an expectation that she would sway level
in her husband's heart. But she was Shake-
speare's choice. According to Jane Austen, it
sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer
at twenty-nine than she was ten years before. At
twenty-seven Anne Elliott had ' every beauty
excepting bloom.' Anne Hathaway at twenty-
six was capable of fascinating a poetical and
impressionable youth of eighteen. It is at all
events certain that she retained sufficient attrac-
tion to induce Shakespeare, when his prospects
improved, to visit Stratford every autumn. It
is true that he did not bring his wife and family
to London, and live with them in suburban com-
fort and respectability, like his fellows Heming
and Condell. But if Halliwell-Phillipps' specu-
195 °*
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
lation is well founded, the infirmity which
induced Shakespeare to provide for his wife
by imposing on his daughter a trust for her
maintenance will equally explain why he
considered her unfit for the strenuous life of
London.
It is at all events certain that Shakespeare did
return to Stratford to spend with his wife a life
that might reasonably have been expected to
continue for many years. It is also certain that
some years before his settlement in Stratford
he had written this sonnet :
O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie ;
That is my home of love : if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain'd
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good ;
For nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my rose ; in it thou art my all.
It is probably an accident that this sonnet (cix.)
was printed by Mr. Thorpe with two sonnets
(ex. and cxi.) which have been generally
196
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
accepted as autobiographical, in. the sense that
they express ideas and feelings present to the
mind of the writer which can be referred to
known facts in his experience. Those who favour
the autobiographical reading of the sonnets have
taken infinite pains to discover a foundation in
the experiences of the writer for sonnets relating
to a rival poet, and to a dark and sinful woman,
who obtained, for a time, a strange influence on
the poet's life. The searchers after the dark
woman would be the first to allow that at some
time of Shakespeare's life he was the victim of
' all frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,'
and they cannot deny that in the end he returned
again to end his days with the wife of his youth.
And yet I do not find that any one of these
writers has attempted to support the auto-
biographical theory by a reference to Son-
net cix.
Susanna Hall survived her father, her mother,
and her husband, dying at the age of sixty-six
on the nth of July, 1649. On her tombstone in
the chancel of Stratford Church the following
lines were inscribed :
Witty above her sexe, but that's not all :
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall ;
Something of Shakespere was in that, but this
Wholly of Him with whom she's now in blisse.
197
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Then, passenger, hast ne'er a teare
To weepe with her, that wept with all ?
That wept, yet set herself to chere
Them up with comforts cordiall ?
Her love shall live, 1; :r memory spread,
When thou hast ne'er a tear to shed.
Reading these simple lines, the pilgrim felt
that he had been well repaid for his pains. They
bear the impress of truth, and owe nothing to
the partiality of a husband's love, for Hall had
died in the year 1635. They tell us what was
thought and said of Shakespeare's daughter
Susanna by the people among whom she had
spent her life. They tell us that thirty-three
years after the death of Shakespeare it was said
in Stratford that Mistress Hall had wits above
her sex, but that was not to be marvelled at in
the daughter of Shakespeare, of whom they were
often put in mind when they spoke to her. Then
a precisian of the straiter sect would say that
this was the least of her virtues, and would tell
of her Christlikc charity, how she would weep
with those that wept. Another would add that
Mistress Hall did more than weep with the
sorrowful ; that while she wept she set herself
to cheer up the sufferer with ' comforts cordiall,'
not of words only, spoken in her merry, cheerful
way within the limits of becoming mirth — some-
198
"*&
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
thing of Shakespeare was in that — but by deeds
of mercy, the memory of which would long
survive.
To such a daughter, keen-witted, and Christ-
like in practical charity, a fond father might well
give the name ' Miranda.'
^ JSir Walter Raleigh writes of The Tempest :
' The thought which occurs at once to almost
every reader of the play, that Prospero resembles
Shakespeare himself, can hardly have been absent
from the mind of the author.' In Shakespere,
his Mind and Art, Professor Dowden has given
the fullest expression to a reading of the cha-
racter of Shakespeare that has found general
acceptance. ' It is not chiefly,' he writes,
' because Prospero is a great enchanter, now
about to break his magic staff, to drown his
book deeper than ever plummet sounded, to
dismiss his airy spirits, and to return to the
practical service of his dukedom, that we identify
Prospero in some measure with Shakespeare
himself. It is rather because of the temper of
Prospero, the grave harmony of his character,
his self-mastery, his calm validity of will, his
sensitiveness to wrong, his unfaltering justice,
and with these a certain abandonment, a remote-
ness from the common joys and sorrows of the
world, are characteristics of Shakespeare as
199
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
discovered to us in all his latest plays.' ' It is
Shakespeare's own nature which overflows into
Prospero,' writes Dr. Brandes, and from that
source may have flowed the love of daughter
and the love of books which are the most striking
characteristics of Prospero, as revealed to us by
Shakespeare. :£==*
Of Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith,
we know little. About two months before the
death of her father she married Thomas Quiney,
whose father, Richard Quiney, had been High
Bailiff of Stratford. Quiney, who was a vintner,
had received a good education. This is shown
by his use of a French motto in one of his
accounts, the penmanship of which is par-
ticularly good. He was unsuccessful in business,
and the marriage was an unfortunate one.
Judith died in Stratford in the year 1662, at the
age of seventy-six. Her husband, in education
and position, was far inferior to Hall, and it is
no violent assumption to conclude that there
was a corresponding difference between Susanna
and Judith, and that a truthful epitaph might
have recorded that, as Susanna had inherited
the wits of her father, the virtues of her mother
had descended on Judith.
' In the latest plays the country life of Strat-
ford reasserts itself. After all our martial and
200
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
political adventures, our long-drawn passions and
deadly sorrows, we are back in Perdita's flower-
garden, and join in the festivities of a sheep-
shearing. A new type of character meets us in
these plays : a girl innocent, frank, dutiful, and
wise, cherished and watched over by her devoted
father, or restored to him after long separation.
It is impossible to escape the thought that we are
indebted to Judith Shakespeare for something
of the beauty and simplicity which appear in
[Miranda and] Perdita, and in the earlier sketch
of Marina. In his will Shakespeare bequeathes
to Judith a " broad silver-gilt bowl " — doubtless
the bride-cup that was used at her wedding.
There were many other girls within reach of his
observation, but (such are the limitations of
humanity) there were few so likely as his own
daughter to exercise him in disinterested sym-
pathy and insight, or to touch him with a sense
of the pathos of youth ' {Shakespeare, Raleigh).
This delightful picture of Judith Shakespeare
has no monumental inscription to vouch for its
truthfulness. It has a deeper and a sounder
foundation, an appreciation of the nature of
Shakespeare, and an understanding of the kind
of domestic life for the sake of which he was
ready to abandon the intellectual society and the
fuller life of London. It has a relation to fact
201
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
widely different from the gloomy fancies about
the family life of Shakespeare with which we are
familiar, for it is at all events consistent with
fact.
The most distressing of these nightmares
results from the inability of certain critics
inwardly to digest a speech into which Shake-
speare, irrelevantly after his manner, intro-
duced certain ideas borrowed from a book that
lay open before him as he wrote.
The book was a copy of Florio's English
version of Montaigne's Essayes. Whether it
was the very copy which may be seen in the
British Museum is an interesting inquiry, but it
is nothing to our present purpose.
Gonzalo. V the commonwealth I would by
contraries
Execute all things ; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit ; no name of magistrate ;
Letters should not be known ; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none ; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none ;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil ;
No occupation ; all men idle, all ;
And women too, but innocent and pure ;
No sovereignty.*
In these words a passage is reproduced with
literal accuracy from Montaigne.
• Tempest, II. i. 150.
202
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
In another page of the same volume he had
read these words :
1 Few men have wedded their sweet hartes,
their paramours or Mistrises, but have come
home by weeping crosse, and erelong repented
their bargain. And even in the other world
what an unquiet life leads Jupiter with his wife,
whom before he had secretly knowen and
lovingly enjoyed ? '
Shakespeare was a dramatist, ever ready to
adapt to his purpose whatever he might have
seen or read which was capable of artistic treat-
ment. There is no particular reason apparent
why he should have worked Montaigne's descrip-
tion of an ideal commonwealth into a speech put
into the mouth of Gonzalo. But having done
so, it is natural that the passage should be repro-
duced with the faithful and prosaic accuracy that
was suitable to his character.
For some reason, equally inscrutable, he puts
into the mouth of Prospero Montaigne's warning
against the destruction of happiness in married
life consequent on marrying a paramour or
mistress ; attracted, possibly, by the quaintness
of the appeal to Jupiter's experience of the un-
quiet life which he led with his wife. Shake-
speare was not a copyist. If such a warning
were to be given by Prospero, Shakespeare's
203
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
dramatic instinct taught him that it should be
expressed with poetic fervour, inspired by the
love of a precious daughter, which was part of
the nature which he had poured into Prospero.
And so he wrote
Take my daughter : but
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow ; but barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both ; therefore take heed
As Hymens lamps shall light you.*
Two thoughts are involved in this address.
Lovers should take heed as Hymen's lamps shall
light them, for the consequences of anticipating
marriage will be fatal to the happiness of their
married life. And, moreover if they would
have the blessing of heaven upon the marriage
contract, the blessing should be invoked by all
sanctimonious ceremonies, with full and holy
rite. These ideas which arc easily separable in
prose, arc somewhat involved, in a manner
characteristic of Shakespeare, and Prospero spoke
of the contract and of the holy rite as one and
• Tempest, IV. i. 15.
204
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
the same thing. But the offence to which a
terrible punishment is attached in these words
barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both,
is not that of separating the civil contract from
the holy rite, but that of breaking the virgin
knot heedless of Hymen's lamps : in plain prose,
before marriage. To those who are obsessed
with the idea that Shakespeare, when he wrote
of barren hate, sour-eyed disdain, discord, and
loathing, had in his mind the torture to which
he had yielded himself up when he returned to
Stratford, it would be idle to prescribe a remedy
in the form of reasoning, even if argumentation
or controversy could be admitted to pages which
deal simply with ascertained fact. But those
who suffer under this affliction — and they are,
happily, a decreasing number — may find some
relief in reading what has been written by some
whose minds were unclouded by theories and
prepossessions which have no foundation in
fact.
' No writer of any time — and his own time was
certainly not one of special respect for marriage
— has represented it so constantly as not only
" good," but " delightful," to retort La Roche-
205
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
foucauld's injurious distinction. Except Goneril
and Regan, who designedly are monsters, there
is hardly a bad wife in Shakespeare — there are
no unloving, few unloved, ones. It is not
merely in his objects of courtship — Juliet, Viola,
Rosalind, Portia, Miranda — that he is a woman-
worshipper. Even Gertrude — a questionable
widow — seems not to have been an unsatis-
factory wife to Hamlet the elder, as she certainly
was not to his brother. One might hesitate a
little as to Lady Macbeth as a hostess — certainly
not as a wife. From the novice sketch of
Adriana in the Errors to the unmatchable triumph
of Imogen, from the buxom honesty of Mistress
Ford to the wronged innocence and queenly
grace of Hermione, Shakespeare has nothing but
the beau role for wives. And if in this invariable
gynasolatry he was actuated by disappointment
in his own wife or repentance for his own mar-
riage, he must either have been the best good
Christian, or the most pigeon-livered philosopher,
or the most cryptic and incomprehensible ironist
that the world has ever seen. Indeed, he might
be all these things, and feel nothing of the
kind.' *
1 In the plays of Shakespeare's closing years
* Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. V., p. 168 (George
Saintsbury).
206
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
there is a pervading sense of quiet and happi-
ness,' Sir Walter Raleigh writes, ' which seems
to bear witness to a change in the mind of their
author. . . . An all-embracing tolerance and
kindliness inspires these last plays.'
And of the last of his plays Professor Dowden
writes : ' The sympathetic reader can discern
unmistakably a certain abandoning of the com-
mon joy of the world, a certain remoteness from
the usual pleasures and sadness of life, and at
the same time, all the more, this tender bending
over those who are like children still absorbed
in their individual joys and sorrows.'
By the homely words ' ease and retirement,'
the tradition of Stratford, as recorded by Rowe,
expressed the idea that critics have extracted
from the plays written in the later years of
Shakespeare's life
Me, poor fool, my library
Was dukedom large enough.
Shakespeare wrote these touching words as
one who was bidding farewell to public life, in
which he had taken an active and successful
part, and by none other could they have been
written. In them Shakespeare, through Pros-
pero, reveals to us his inner self ; his love of
his books and of the library by the narrow
207
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
limits of which his dukedom was henceforth
to be bounded. And we find Prospero-Shake-
speare recurring to the thought of his library
when he tells Miranda how a noble Neapolitan,
Gonzalo, out of his charity, supplied them with
' rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries,'
adding —
So, of his gentleness,
Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.*
It is in modern times, according to the New
English Dictionary, that the word ' library ' has
come to denote a room above a certain level of
size and pretensions. To Shakespeare the word
meant no more than a collection or ' study '
of books in some unpretending room, or closet,
in New Place. It is not to be believed that
Shakespeare, when at the age of forty-seven he
passed, in the words of Professor Dowden,
' from his service as artist to his service as
English gentleman,' and from companionship
with the world of letters to the society of a
country town, did not better for his life provide
than to divorce it from fellowship, through his
books, with the mighty minds of old.
• Tempest, I. ii. 162.
208
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
My days among the Dead are past ;
Around me I behold
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old ;
My never failing friends are they
With whom I converse day by day.
It would, be a grave omission from pages in
which it is sought to learn something from the
fellowship wherein we find Shakespeare engaged
throughout his life, to leave unconsidered such
beloved and constant companions as his books,
and here we can tread with certainty, without
encroaching on the forbidden ground of specu-
lation. Shakespeare's library, like other libraries
of the time, has been long since scattered to the
winds. But unlike many more important col-
lections, it has left certain traces behind. Walter
Bagehot, in his essay on Shakespeare — the Man,
writes : ' On few subjects has more nonsense
been written than on the learning of Shake-
speare.' I do not propose to make any contri-
bution to the accumulated mass, for I am satis-
fied with the testimony of Ben Jonson, rightly
understood. When he said of Shakespeare that
he had ' small Latin and less Greek,' he criti-
cised him as classical scholar, who had proceeded
so far as to have some knowledge of Greek — a
rare acquisition in those days — but who, in this
s - 209 p
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
particular, was vastly his inferior. Jonson's
testimony, in the lines in which these words arc
found, to the surpassing greatness of Shake-
speare is so generous and so nobly expressed
that we need not grudge him this small satis-
faction.*
An examination of the traces that may be
found of Shakespeare's library involves no
inquiry into the extent of his learning. Shake-
speare makes no mention of books in his will.
He gave his ' broad silver-gilt bole ' to his
daughter Judith, and with the disregard which
has been already noted of the testamentary
obligations to posterity which devolved on him
as a famous poet and dramatist, he allowed his
books to become the property of his son-in-law,
John Hall, by the gift to him and to his daughter
Susanna of all the rest of his ' goodes, chattels,
leases, and household stuffe whatsoever.'
Their daughter, Elizabeth Hall, the last lineal
descendant of Shakespeare, married Thomas
Nash in 1626. Hall, in 1635, made what is
known as a nuncupative will, in which the
following words occur : ' Item concerning my
* Those who desire to pursue the subject of the learning of Shake-
speare cannot do better than study Professor Baynes' essay, entitled
What Shakespeare learned at School, published in his Shakespeare
Studies, where the question is discussed in a judicial spirit, removed
from the extremes of Farmer on the one hand, and Churton Collins
on the other.
210
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
study of books, I leave them, said he, to you my
son Nash, to dispose of them as you see good.'
And here again we owe an obligation to Mr.
Elton and to his studies as an antiquary, through
which we have made known to us the meaning,
in the seventeenth century, of the words ' study
of books.' ' We know hardly anything about
Shakespeare's books, except that they must
have passed to Mr. Nash and afterwards to his
widow, as his residuary legatee. . . . There is
no list of the " study of books," but it appears
by several authorities that the phrase means a
collection or library.' *
Elizabeth, after the death of her first husband,
married a Mr. John Barnard, who was created
a baronet by Charles II. in 1661. She died in
1669. Malone records an old tradition men-
tioned by Sir Hugh Clopton to Mr. Macklin
in 1742, that Elizabeth ' carried away with
her from Stratford many of her grandfather's
papers.'
However this may be, all attempts to trace the
' study of books ' have failed, and that it was
dispersed is evident from the fact of the dis-
covery in the course of the eighteenth century
of two books that it had contained.
* William Shakespeare, his Family and Friends. An authority
referred to by Mr. Elton is of the year 1667.
211 P2
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
There is in the Bodleian library a copy of the
Aldine edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1502),
on the title of which is the signature ' Wm. Sh e ,'
and a note : ' This little Booke of Ovid was
given to me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once
Will. Shakespere's.' The opinions of the experts
in favour of its authenticity will be found in the
Annals of the Bodleian Library 1890 (Macray).
But belief in the presence of a copy of Ovid in
Shakespeare's library rests on what is to some
minds a firmer foundation, for the book brings
us into certain touch with the earliest period of
Shakespeare's literary work.
Venus and Adonis was published in 1593, but
as the poet calls it, in the dedication to the Earl
of Southampton, the first heir of his invention,
it must have been written some years before its
publication. It is a love poem written in the
manner of Ovid, founded on a story told in the
Metamorphoses. Two lines from the Amores are
printed on the title page :
Vilia miretur vulgus : mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula castalia plena ministret aqua.
The poem had an extraordinary success, and
the poet was acclaimed as a second Ovid.
Francis Meres writes in Palladis Tamia (1598) :
' As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live
212
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid
lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake-
speare, witnes his Venus and Adonis his Lucrece
his sugred Sonnets among his private friends.'
Shakespeare's love of Ovid is shown not only by
imitation, but, characteristically, by making him
the subject of a pun : ' Ovidus Naso was the man ;
and why, indeed, Naso, but for smelling out the
odoriferous flowers of fancy.' * For many years
Shakespeare's literary position was estimated by
his poems rather than by his dramas. This was
in accordance with the ideas of the time, for
poems were literature, plays were not. Ben
Jonson was ridiculed when in 1616 he published
a collection of plays under the title of his Works.
In The Returne from Pernassus Judicio, in his
censure of Shakespeare, says
Who loves Adonis love or Lucre 's rape
His sweeter verse containes hart robbing life
Could but a graver subject him content
Without love's foolish lazy languishment.
And yet when this play was presented (1602)
Shakespeare had given to the world Henry IV .,
King John and Henry V . A critic of the
day, writing after the production of Hamlet,
says —
* Love's Labour's Lost, IV. ii. 130.
213
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing vein
(Pleasing the world) thy praises doth obtain.
\\ hose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweet and chaste)
Thy name in fame's immortal book have placed.
It is remarkable that the claim to immortality
of the creator of Hamlet should have been rested
on the authorship of Venus and Adonis and
Lucrece. It is still more strange that Shake-
speare would have it so, for his poems were
given by him to the world edited with care.
As to his plays, he was satisfied with the applause
of the playgoers and the profits of the Globe
theatre. We owe their preservation, as we have
seen, to the piety of his fellow-playgoers, and the
sonnets which in literary merit far exceed these
poems, remained tossing about among his private
friends, and but for the adventure of Thomas
Thorpe, would have been lost to the world.
An analogy may be found in the instance of
another great creative genius, worthy of being
named with Shakespeare. Scott, for many years
after his immortal novels had been given to the
world, preferred to be known as a poet rather than
as a novelist, and if a serious illness, contracted
when he was of about the age at which Shakes-
peare died, had proved fatal, the world would have
been bequeathed a true mystery for solution.
We can replace Shakespeare's Aldine Ovid in
214
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
his study of books with the satisfactory reflection
that Shakespeare's interest in his poems was
rewarded by success. Six editions of Venus and
Adonis and of Lucrece were published in his
lifetime, and the eagerness with which they were
devoured appears from the fact that but few
copies have survived the wear and tear of
generations of admiring readers. ' The strangest
fact to be noticed in regard to the bibliography
of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is that,
though there were at least six editions issued in
the poet's lifetime, and seven in the two genera-
tions following his death, in the case of only two
— the second and the sixth — of these thirteen
editions do so many as three copies survive.
In regard to the twelve other editions, the
surviving copies of each are fewer.' *
In the year 1844 John Payne Collier pub-
lished under the name of Shakespeare'' s Library
a collection of the plays, romances, novels and
histories employed by Shakespeare in the com-
position of his works. In the preface he writes :
' We have ventured to call the work Shake-
speare's Library, since our great dramatist in all
probability must have possessed the books to
which he was indebted, and some of which he
* Sir Sidney Lee. Note to Venus and Adonis, Oxford facsimile
reprint.
215
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
applied so directly and minutely to his own
purposes.' *
Shakespeare may have had these books in his
possession for a time as part of his professional
outfit. But that they were admitted to intel-
lectual fellowship is doubtful. He probably
looked on them as a lawyer regards his law books :
biblia abiblia, necessary but unwelcome occu-
pants of his bookshelves. And it is to be noted
that the two books of his library that have sur-
vived were admitted to the ' study ' purely on
account of their literary quality.
Notice has been already taken of the copy of
Florio's Montaigne bearing the signature of
Shakespeare, which is preserved in the library of
the British Museum. That Shakespeare added
to his library a book of essays published in 1603
suggests that he was a student and purchaser of
what might be called current literature. Mon-
taigne did not serve him, like his Holinshed or
Plutarch, as a storehouse of useful plots for
histories or tragedies. Much has been written
on the subject of Shakespeare and Montaigne,
and it has been suggested that Montaigne exer-
cised an influence on the mind of Shakespeare in
later life comparable to that of Ovid when he was
• A new and improved edition of this collection was brought out
in 1875 by William Hazlitt the younger.
2l6
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
in the Venus and Adonis stage of existence.
These speculations are interesting, as suggesting
a special literary fellowship, with the two volumes
included in his study of books which have sur-
vived the ruin of time. But they are foreign to
pages which are conversant, not with literary
criticism, but with matters of fact.
With two, indeed, of the books which supplied
him with plots for his dramas, he had a relation-
ship so close as to justify their inclusion in his
study of books. His Holinshed must have been
near at hand from about the year 1591, for from
it he derived the plots of the series of historical
plays, in which he followed the Chronicle in
greater or less degree of exactness. Of
Henry VIII. Sir Sidney Lee writes : ' The
Shakespearean dramas followed Holinshed with
exceptional closeness. . . . One of the finest
speeches in the Shakespearean play, Queen
Katharine's opening appeal on her trial, is in
great part the chronicler's prose rendered into
blank verse, without change of a word.' *
The second edition of Holinshed's Chronicles,
published in 1586, lay open before Shakespeare
when, in about the year 1593, he took from it the
plot of Richard III., and copied a misprint, or
slip of the pen, which does not occur in the
* Life of Shakespeare, p. 443.
217
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
earlier edition of 1577. It was in Holinshed that
he found the plot of Macbeth, and there also he
found the story of Lear. And the well worn
folio followed him in his retirement to New Place,
for it was in this, his great storehouse of English
history, that he found some account of a British
king, Kimbeline or Cimbeline, and interweaving
with this fragment a story from Boccacio's
Decameron, gave us Cymbeline.
The two volumes of Holinshed contain, in
addition to his Chronicles, descriptions of England
and Ireland ; the latter, the work of Richard
Stanyhurst, an accomplished scholar educated at
the famous school of Kilkenny — in after years the
school of Berkeley, Swift and Congreve — whom
Gabriel Harvey ranked as a poet with Spenser.
His reputation would have been higher if he had
not been misled by Harvey into the folly of
translating the Aeneid of Virgil into English
hexameter, a fate from which Spenser was
happily rescued. It is impossible to read this
interesting Description without having the know-
ledge borne in on one that Shakespeare had been
over the same ground ; no doubt in search of the
plot that he failed to find.
But although Shakespeare failed to find in
Holinshed a plot to his mind, for History or
Tragedy, he found many things that excited an
218
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
interest, of which traces may be found through-
out his writings. He found his stage Irishman,
Captain Macmorris, ' An Irishman, a very
valiant gentleman i' faith,' who is made to dis-
play a number of national characteristics, every
one of which was noted by Stanyhurst in his
description. The stage Irishman of Ben Jonson
and of Dekker was a comic footboy. It is owing
to his habit of ' turning over the pages ' of his
Holinshed, even in the most unpromising chap-
ters, that Shakespeare's stage Irishman is a
soldier and a gentleman. Holinshed's Chronicles
were in his hands for so many years, and were
at times copied with such exactitude, that they
have gained a title to be placed in his study of
books.
If Holinshed must be admitted to literary
fellowship with Shakespeare, the claims of Sir
Thomas North's version of Plutarch from the
French translation by Amyot are far stronger.
The claim of North's Plutarch to admission to
Shakespeare's study of books could not be put
better than it has been by my lamented friend,
Robert Tyrrell. ' The Master Mind of all time,
the Artist of Artists, not only drew from him the
materials for his amazing pictures of the ancient
world, but sometimes transferred to his plays
whole scenes from the Lives, with scarcely a
219
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
phrase or a word altered or modified. Had
Plutarch never written his Lives, or had they not
been translated by some sympathetic mind like
Sir Thomas North's, it is very unlikely that the
world would ever have had Coriolanus, Julius
Caesar, or Antony and Cleopatra.'' The final scene
in Cleopatra's life is ' one perfect example of the
confidence with which the " myriad-minded '
Englishman was content to put himself into the
hands of the simple Boeotion, borrowing from
him every artistic touch, and adding only the
dramatic framework. Greece took captive her
proud Roman conqueror, but never had she a
greater triumph over posterity than when a Greek
wrote a scene on which not even a Shakespeare
could make an improvement.' *
In addition to his Ovid, two works in the
Latin language may be traced to this library
with a reasonable degree of probability, founded
not only on what he has written of them, but of
an ancient and trustworthy tradition. They are
deserving of attention, for they aid in the attempt
to supply an answer to a question that has been
often asked : How did Shakespeare employ
himself after he left school, and before he married
• Essays on Greek Literature, by Robert Yclverton Tyrrell
Litt.D., etc., etc., Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of Trinity
College and formerly Professor of Greek in the University of Dublin.
2 20
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
and settled down, according to Rowe, to assist
in his father's business ? His frequent and
accurate use of legal phraseology led Lord
Campbell to conclude that Shakespeare, like
another great creative genius, Charles Dickens,
had been employed in his early years in an
attorney's office, of which there were at that
time several in Stratford. A good deal can be
said in support of this supposition, but there
is no hint of it in any contemporary writing, and
no suggestion of any such employment can be
found in the traditions that were current in
Stratford shortly after his death. It follows that
no law-book can make good a claim to be
admitted to Shakespeare's library.
Some of the gossip retailed in the notice of
Shakespeare in Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Men
is undeserving of serious attention. But state-
ments made by him on the authority of Sir
William Davenant stand in a different position,
for reasons which have been stated in an earlier
chapter {ante, pp. 85 — 88).
' I have heard Sr. Wm. Davenant and Mr.
Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best
comcedian we have now) say that he had a most
prodigious witt, and did admire his naturall
parts beyond all other Dramaticall writing. He
was wont to say that he " never blotted out a
221
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
line in his life," sayd Ben: Johnson " I wish he
had blotted out a thousand." His Comoedics
will rcmaine witt as long as the English tongue is
understood ; for that he handles mores hominum ;
now our present writers reflect so much upon
particular persons and coxcombeities that 20
yeares hence they will not be understood.
Though, as Ben Johnson sayes of him, that he had
but little Latine and lesse Greek, he understood
Latinc pretty well ; for he had been in his
younger yeares a Schoolmaster in the Countrey.'
If the responsibility for this account is to be
apportioned between Davcnant and Shadwell,
the story about the players should be assigned
to Shadwell, and Davenant should be held
responsible for an account of an incident in the
early life of Shakespeare with which the
D'Avenant family were more likely to be ac-
quainted than an actor who flourished so lately
as the time of Aubrey, and who merely retailed
the tradition of the theatre. Shadwell's story
we know to be true, and there is no reason to
discredit what was said by Davenant, even if it
did not receive confirmation from what has been
written by Shakespeare.
It has often been noted that Shakespeare's
earliest play is full of reminiscences of school
life. ' In the mouth of his schoolmaster Holo-
222
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
femes, in Love's Labour's Lost,' Sir Sidney Lee
writes, ' and Sir Hugh Evans in the Merry Wives
of Windsor, Shakespeare places Latin phrases
drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from the
Sentential puereles and from the " good old
Mantuan." '
In Love's Labour's Lost the following speech is
put into the mouth of the pedant Holofernes :
' Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub
umbra Ruminat — and so forth. Ah, good old
Mantuan ! I may say of thee, as the traveller
doth of Venice ;
Venetia, Venetia,
Chi non ti vede non ti pretia.
Old Mantuan, Old Mantuan ! who understandeth thee
not loves thee not.' *
Baptista Spagnolus, surnamed Mantuanus from
the place of his birth, was a writer of poems in
Latin, who lived in the fourteenth century. The
words quoted by Holofernes form the first line
of the first of his Eclogues. This quotation is
referred to by Nash in his Pierce Peniless, pub-
lished in 1592, as the learning of a 'grammar
school boy.' A French writer, quoted by War-
burton, said that the pedants of his day preferred
Fauste precor gelida to arma virumque cano —
* Love's Labour's Lost, IV. ii. 95.
223
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
that is to say, the Eclogues of Mantuan to the
Aencid of Virgil.
The late Mr. Horace Furness, in his Variorum
edition of Love's Labour s Lost, thus explains the
extraordinary popularity of Mantuanus in the
sixteenth century as a school book, of which he
has collected much evidence : ' I think it is
not utterly incomprehensible. His verse is very
smooth, and being a poet, his ideas are common-
place, and expressed in lucid language quite
suited to teachers of moderate intelligence and
latinity.' One phrase, he points out, has
become one of our hackneyed quotations —
' Semel insanivimus omnes.'' *
Such a teacher was Holofernes. We may hope
that it was as a dramatist that Shakespeare
wrote in praise of Mantuan, attributing to
Holofernes the opinion which as a pedant he was
likely to entertain. At the same time it must be
admitted that there is a note of affectionate
reminiscence in Shakespeare's quotation of
Fauste precor, and a genuine ring about his
praise of ' good old Mantuan.'
Another reminiscence of school days is found
in the words addressed by Holofernes to Natha-
niel : ' Bone ? bone for bene. Priscian a little
• Sec also Sir Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 16,
note 3.
224
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
scratched, 't will serve.' * This was a school-
master's phrase. Priscianus, who taught gram-
mar at Constantinople about a.d. 525 was the
great grammarian of the middle ages. ' Diminuis
Prisciani caput'' was a common phrase applied to
those who spoke false Latin, and as Mr. Clark,
one of the Cambridge editors, writes, ' a little
scratched ' is a phrase familiar to the school-
master, from his daily task of correcting his
pupils' ' latines.'
How many classical authors in the original
were to be found in this study of books, and how
many in the translations in prose and in verse —
a long list of which is to be found in the Prole-
gomena to the Variorum edition of 1821 — is a
question that cannot be discussed without
treading on forbidden ground. But it is worth
noting that three writers in the Latin language,
mentioned by name in Shakespeare's writings,
are associated with his early days : Ovid
inspired the first heir of his invention, and
Mantuan with Priscian were part of the stock-in-
trade of the occupation in which he is said to
have been engaged when young. The grammar
school at Stratford was one of the first in which
Greek was taught. A fair acquaintance with the
* Theobald's emendation of the text of the Folio, which is here
hopelessly corrupt.
22S Q
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
ancient classics would be required in a young
man promoted from student to teacher ; a kind
of scholarship which might be described by a
great scholar, when in an envious mood, as small
Latin and less Greek.
The Book of Sport of the sixteenth century has
no place in treatises on English literature. It had
nevertheless a very real existence. Allusions
to the Book of Sport are to be found here and
there in the literature of the period, but none
more definite than Shakespeare's.
Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy marvels
at the ' world of Bookes — not alone on arts and
sciences, but on riding of horses, fencing,
swimming, gardening, planting, great tomes of
husbandry, cookery, falconry, hunting, fishing,
fowling, and with exquisite pictures of all sports
games and what not ? ' ' Nothing is now so
frequent,' he says, ' as hawking, a great art, and
manv books written of it.' Fourteen books on
horses and horsemanship were published during
the lifetime of Shakespeare, one of which went
through four editions in this period. The books
on hunting and falconry were nearly as numerous,
some of them famous in their time, but now
forgotten by all but book collectors, or an
occasional wanderer in the bypaths of Eliza-
bethan literature. These books were studied
226
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
not only by genuine sportsmen for love and
understanding of the subject, but by the would-be
gentlemen of the Tudor age, who afford a constant
topic to the dramatist and satirist ; for correct
use of the language of sport was expected of a
gentleman. Bishop Earle says of his upstart
knight ' a hawke, hee esteemes the true burden
of Nobilitie' (Micro - cosmographie). Master
Stephen, in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his
Humour, asks his uncle Knowell, ' Can you tell
me can we have e'er a book of the sciences of
hawking and hunting ? I would fain borrow it.'
To his uncle, who regards this as most ridiculous,
he says, ' Why you know if a man have not skill
in the hawking and hunting languages nowadays
I'll not give a rush for him ; they are more
studied than the Greek or the Latin ' ; and this
was natural, for they were compulsory studies
for every one who pretended to be a gentleman.
There was a term of art for every action or
incident of sport, with an endless array of
appropriate verbs, nouns and adjectives, the
misapplication of any one of which would have
been fatal to any such pretension. The earliest
attempt to teach the hunting and hawking
language by means of a printed book is to be
found in the Book of St. Albans, published in
1476. Dame Juliana Barnes or Berners was the
227 Q2
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
first English authoress to find her way into print.
In the part of the Book which is attributed to
her with probability, she addresses herself to
' gentill men ' as well as to c honest persones,'
and attributes to them a desire to ' know the
gentill termys in comuning of their hawkys.'
The greater your accuracy in the use of this
language ' the moore worshipp may ye have
among all menne.' The Book of St. Albans was
reprinted in whole or in part no fewer than
fourteen times before the death of Shakespeare.
An ancient English treatise on falconry bears
the significant title of The Institute of a Gentleman.
' There is a saying among hunters,' says the
author, ' that he cannot be a gentleman whyche
loveth not hawking and hunting.'
Shakespeare's vocabulary of sport is as copious
and accurate as that of the books of sport.
There have been collected from his works one
hundred and thirty-two terms and phrases of art
relating to woodcraft, and eighty-two relating to
falconry. The minute accuracy with which these
terms are employed could not have been attained
by a practical sportsman without the aid of his
Book of Sport, even if he had been engaged
in the task for many more years than Shakespeare
could have devoted to it.
We might therefore have been justified in
822
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
placing the Book of Sport in Shakespeare's
library, even if he had not let us into the secret
of his knowledge and appreciation of it.
In the passage in Troilus and Cressida, in
which Hector, unarmed, visits the tents of the
Greeks, Achilles says to him —
Now, Hector, I have fed my eyes on thee. I have
with exact view perused thee, Hector, and quoted
joint by joint.
This dialogue follows :
Hect. Is this Achilles ?
Achil. I am Achilles.
Hect. Stand fair, I pray thee ; let me look on thee.
Achil. Behold thy fill.
Hect. Nay I have done already.
Achil. Thou art too brief : I will the second time,
As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.
Hect. 0, like a book of sport, thou'ld read me o'er.
But there's more in me than thou understand'st.*
When Shakespeare attributes to one of the
characters in his play the expression of a thought
which is an irrelevance, unconnected with the
action of the drama, or the character of the
speaker — especially when it is an anachronism —
we may be pretty certain that he is giving
expression, in characteristic fashion, to an idea
that was present to his mind at the moment.
• Troilus and Cressida, IV. v. 231.
229
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
In the words of Hector we find an expression of
the contempt which a genuine English sportsman
would feel for the would-be gentleman who reads
over his book of sport to get a smattering of the
hunting and hawking language, without any real
understanding of the ' more ' that is to be
found in it.
It is to the Book of Sport, in which the Book of
Horsemanship may be included, that we owe the
following passage —
Ner. What warmth is there in your affection
towards any of these princely suitors that are already
come ?
Por. I pray thee over-name them ; and as thou
namest them, I will describe them ; and according to
my description, level at my affection.
Ner. First, there is the Neapolitan prince.
Por. Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing
but talk of his horse ; and he makes it a great appro-
priation to his own good parts, that he can shoe him
himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother
played false with a smith.*
How did it come to the knowledge of Shake-
speare that the words of Portia were a charac-
teristic description of a Neapolitan prince ?
Quite easily, if we may place on his shelves a
treatise on riding by one Astley, Master of the
Jewel House, published in 1 584, in which he would
• Merchant of I'enice, I. ii. 36.
23O
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
have read of ' wel-neere a hundred as well
Princes as Noblemen and gentlemen : among the
which Noblemen of that cetie (Naples) that were
descended of the senators ' who brought the
art of riding to its highest perfection. The
classic work of Grisone, ' a noble gentleman of
the citie of Naples,' translated under the
auspices of Burleigh, was the foundation of
Blundevill' swell-known treatise on horsemanship,
and Neapolitan riding-masters had been im-
ported into England. But that a Neapolitan
prince could be best described as a practical
horseman proud of shoeing his horse himself,
could hardly have been a matter of common
knowledge.
The most interesting of the additions to Sir
Sidney Lee's Life which are to be found in the
latest edition are contained in the chapter
entitled ' The Close of Life.' By the aid of the
information which he has succeeded in collecting,
we can realise the truth of the account recorded
by Rowe that the latter part of Shakespeare's
life was spent in * ease, retirement, and the
conversation of his friends.' We find in the
immediate neighbourhood some who were worthy
of his friendship. The poet and politician, Sir
Fulke Greville, chosen in 1606 to the office of
Recorder of the Borough of Stratford, lived at
231
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
Alcester, nine miles distant. Sir Henry and Lady
Rainsford, whose residence, Clifford Chambers,
was at a short distance from Stratford, were
the friends and patrons of Michael Drayton, a
Warwickshire poet who is brought into fellow-
ship with Shakespeare, for he is found, with Ben
Jonson, at New Place at the time of his last
illness.
It is pleasant to read in these pages an account
of Shakespeare's relations with the Combe
family, and the interest that he took in the
attempt, which proved unsuccessful in the end, to
enclose the common fields at Welcombe. But
among these friends and neighbours we find
none who can be admitted to the degree of
fellowship.
Sir Thomas Lucy had been dead for some years
when Shakespeare settled in Stratford. The
story of the trouble about deer had not been
forgotten, but it would be told to the credit of
Shakespeare. It showed him to have been a
young man of spirit and a sportsman. Coney-
catching, as a gentleman's recreation, did not
rank so high as deer-stealing, and yet Simple says
with pride of his master, Slender : ' He is as tall
a man of his hands as any is between this and
his head ; he hath fought with a warrener.'*
• Merry fVives, I. iv. 26.
232
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
No offence, but rather the reverse, was intended
to Aaron the Moor when he was asked
What, hast thou not full often struck a doe,
And borne her cleanly by the keeper's nose ? *
Deer-stealing was the recognised extravagance
of young gentlemen of spirit. Fosbroke, in his
History of Gloucestershire ', writes : ' The last
anecdote I have to record of this chase [Michael-
wood] shows that some of the principal persons
in this country (whose names I suppress when
the family is still in existence) were not ashamed
of the practice of deer-stealing.'
Shakespeare's popularity among the lesser
gentry about Stratford would be rather enhanced
by the ridicule which he cast upon the great Sir
Thomas Lucy, if, as seems probable, the proto-
type of the Master Robert Shallow of the amended
edition of the Merry Wives — a very different
person from the immortal Justice of King
Henry IV. — was a pompous and self-asserting
man, dwelling on his dignities and posing as a
personage.
On the whole, there is every reason to believe
that Shakespeare's expectations of happiness
were realised, when, attaining the end towards
which he had been tending for many years, he
* Titus Andronicus, II. i. 93.
233
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
came back to end his days in Stratford. But
however happy he may have been in the fellow-
ship of domestic life and in his relations with the
townsfolk of Stratford and the surrounding
gentry, he was not forgetful of his fellows, the
players, and of his chosen friends among the
playwrights. We have found him engaged, in
one of his visits to London, in co-operating with
Burbage in devising an Impresa for the Earl of
Rutland, and in the diary of the Rev. John
Ward, who became Vicar of Stratford in the year
1662, there is this note : ' Shakespeare, Drayton
and Ben Jhonson had a merry meeting, and it
seems drunk too hard, for Shakespeare died of a
feavour there contracted.'
The meeting of these men, united to Shake-
speare in the fellowship of letters, we may accept
as a fact, and also that their meeting was a merry
one. That they drank too hard is not a recorded
fact, but an inference drawn by the worthy rector
from the fact that Shakespeare contracted a
fever, from the effects of which he died. This is
the meaning of the words ' it seems.' There
was no reason why such an inference should have
been drawn. There can be no doubt that the
fever by which Shakespeare was carried off was
the epidemic of fever which was then raging.
' The first quarter of the seventeenth century
234
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
was marked by the appearance of epidemic
fevers more malignant in type than the old-
fashioned tertian and ague.' To this should be
added the insanitary condition of the sur-
roundings of New Place.*
" The cause of Shakespeare's death is unde-
termined. Chapel Lane, which ran beside his
house, was known as a noisome resort of straying
pigs, and the insanitary atmosphere is likely to
have prejudiced the failing health of a neigh-
bouring resident. "f
The design which the writer of this chapter
kept in view was to present Shakespeare as he
may be seen in his relations with his family and
friends, leaving it to the reader to draw any
inferences as to the character of the man which
the recorded facts may seem to suggest.
It sometimes happens that a painter can be
found with skill to collect from casual sketches
and stray hints an understanding of a man
whom he has not seen, and to give expression to
his conception in a portrait which bears a fair
resemblance to life. In the future it may fall to
* See Shakespeare, his Family and Friends (Elton), where
interesting information on this subject is collected,
f Life of Shakespeare, p. 484 (Sir Sidney Lee).
235
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FELLOWS
the lot of some Artist, from a study of Shake-
speare in his works, aided by the testimony of his
fellows, and by such scattered hints as are here
collected, to give to the world a portrait in words
which will be accepted as an adequate present-
ment of the Master. If what has been here
written should in any degree tend to this result,
and if it should, in the meantime, assist a student
who desires to form for himself a conception of
the man and his nature, in an endeavour to hold
by what is true, and to reject what is false, the
purpose of the writer will have been fulfilled.
236
INDEX
BAGEH0T
Bagehot, Walter, 8, 209
Baker, Professor G. P., 106
Barnfield, Richard, 36
Better ton, 82, 172
Beaumont, 1 19
Books. See Library.
Brandes, Dr. George, 152, 200
Browning on the Sonnets, 10
Bryskett, Lodovick, friend of
Spenser, 30-2, 40, 45
Bullen, A. //., 96, 145, 146
Carter, Rev. Thomas, 166
Chettle, Henry, publishes Greene's
Groatswortb of Wit, 10 1 ;
expresses regret, 103 ; his
estimate of Shakespeare, 89,
103 ; wrote for the stage, 108 ;
appeals to Shakespeare to sing
the praises of Elizabeth, 42,
109, 168
Colin Clouts Come Home Again, 4,
*4> 2 5> 32, H9
Collins, Churton, 59, 63
Davenant, Sir William, 81,
85-8, 171, 221
Deer-stealing, how esteemed, 232
Digges, Leonard, 56, 12 1-2
Dowden, Edward, 8, 21, 84, 167,
199, 207, 208
Drayton, Michael, his character,
112; friend of Izaak Walton,
FAMILY
112; friend of Shakespeare,
109, 113; connection with
Stratford, no
Drummond of Hawtbornden, 37,
1 14-16
Elton, Charles, 84, 87, 176-80,
193,211,235
Family and Friends, Shake-
speare's relations with, 170-
236 ; life of, by Rowe, 170-5 ;
assisted by Betterton, 171 ; no
hint of unhappy relations with
wife, 175 ; inferences recently
drawn from circumstances of
marriage, 176 ; result of Mr.
Elton's investigations, 176-80;
ecclesiastical law then in force,
179-81 ; his wife eight years
his senior, 181 ; speech of
Orsino, 182 ; Shakespeare's
homing instinct, 183 ; pur-
chases property at Stratford,
184 ; explanation of his will,
186-91 ; his widow main-
tained by daughter and her
husband, 187 ; reason sug-
gested for this provision, 188 ;
draft of will altered by im-
posing a trust, 187 ; and by
gift of bed to wife, 190 ; her
237
INDEX
FELLOW
character, 195 ; his daughter
Susanna, 197-9
Fellow, sense in which the word is
used, 6
Fuller, T., 119
Furness, Horace, 62, 224
Gosse, Edmund, 37
Greene, Robert, authorship of the
first part of Henry VI., 91 ;
representative of the univer-
sity pens, 92 ; estimate of his
genius, 94 ; his Groatsworth
of Wit, 96-102 ; miserable
condition of the author, 96 ;
how far autobiographical,96-9;
his address to the playwrights,
99-101 ; reference to Shake-
speare, 100 ; apology for
Greene's bitterness, 101 ; pub-
lished after his death by
Chettle, 101 ; who expresses
his regret, 103
Hall, Susanna (daughter of
Shakespeare), married to Dr.
John Hall, 189; inscription on
her monument, 197; descrip-
tive of her character, 197
Halliwell-Phillipps, 61, 186, 189,
192, 195
Harvey, Gabriel, 14, 19, 26, 28,
33-4, 94, 218
Holinsbed's Chronicles, 217, 219
Horses, story as to Shakespeare's
holding, 81-5 ; his knowledge
of, 84
Ireland, Shakespeare's refer-
ences to, 51
Jonson, Ben, a ' fellow ' of
Shakespeare's, 5 ; regarded as
MARLOWE
malevolent by the players, 54 ;
Shakespeare preferred to, by
the players, 77 ; his fellowship
with Shakespeare, 114-36;
described by Drummond,
115; friendly relations with
Shakespeare, 118; rivalry as
a dramatist, 121-5 ; Shake-
speare's ' purge,' 123 ; quar-
rels with fellow dramatists,
1 26-30; his Poetaster, 127-31 ;
did he intend Shakespeare by
Virgil ? 129-31 ; greatness of
his tributes to the memory
of Shakespeare, 1 3 1—5 ; with
Shakespeare before his death,
234
Kempe, William, 122
Knight, Joseph, 64
Lee, Sir Sidney, 2, 10, 16, 62,
64, 84, 122, 139, 152, 184, 189
Library, Prospero's love of his,
207 ; meaning of the word
in Shakespeare's time, 208 ;
Shakespeare's library, 210-31 ;
his ' study of books ' disposed
of by Dr. Hall, 210 ; his
'Montaigne,' 202, 216; his
'Ovid,' 212; Holinshed's
Chronicles, 217-19 ; North's
Plutarch, 219 ; Mantuan, 223 ;
Priscian, 225 ; the Book of
Sport, 226 ; evidences of in
library, 226-31 ; books on
horsemanship, 230
Malone, Edmund, 64, 82
Mantuan, 223, 224
Marlowe, Christopher, Swin-
burne's estimate of, 137, 153 ;
prepared the way for Shake-
238
INDEX
MASSON
speare, 137 ; 'by profession a
scholler,' 138 ; uncertainty as
to early life of, 138 5 friend of
Raleigh, 139 ; tragedy of his
death, 141 ; misrepresentations
of certain writers, 142-4 ;
prosecution for atheism, 144-7;
how far charge well founded,
146-7 ; beloved by his fellows,
147 ; Shakespeare's tribute to
his memory, 149 ; and re-
ferences to his works, 150, 151 ;
Tamburlaine, 153; Hero and
Leander, 141, 144, 149, 155 5
influence on Shakespeare, 151,
155 ; the creator of English
blank verse, 152 ; effect of the
Classical Renaissance, 157; his
aggressive atheism, 159, 161 ;
its effect on the mind of Shake-
speare, 160, 166 ; what was
Shakespeare's creed ? 161 ;
Shakespeare's attitude to-
wards religious questions, 162-
8 5 attributed to the influence
of Marlowe, 161 ; firm grasp
of realities, with indifference
to lesser matters, 162; his
attitude towards Puritans,
163, 164 ; statement that he
'dyed a papist,' 164; ac-
counted for, 165 ; his know-
ledge of the Bible, 165, 166
Masson, Professor, 20, 41, 42
Mathews, Brander, 88
Meres, Francis {Palladis Tamia),
17, 108, 117, 142
Midsummer Night's Dream, refer-
ence to Shakespeare, 39
Milton, 120, 162
Montaigne, 202, 216
Nash, Thomas, distinction at St.
John's College, Cambridge,
PLAYERS
107 ; dissipation and early
death, 107, 108 5 his Pierce
Peniless quoted, 20
Ovid, 212, 213, 225
Passionate Pilgrim, The, 35
Peele, George, representative of
university pens, 106 ; suc-
cessful career at Oxford, 107 ;
powers wasted in dissipation,
107 ; early death, 107
Phillips, Augustine, 67
Pierce Peniless, 20
Players, The, their pride in
Shakespeare, 54-6 ; publish
his plays, 55 ; neglected by
the literary world, 56 ; pre-
servation due to fellow players,
58 ; text of the First Folio,
59-62 ; value of this edition,
62, 63 ; players closely asso-
ciated with Shakespeare :
Heming, 63-5 ; Burbage, 64-6,
Condell, 65 ; Phillips, 67, 68 ;
great wealth of Edward Alleyn,
66 ; due in part to bear-bait-
ing, 66, 67 ; position of
players when joined by Shake-
speare, 68, 69 ; origin of the
companies of players, 69-71 ;
servants of Duke Theseus, 70 ;
companies of different classes,
71 ; the company at Elsinore,
71-3 ; Hamlet's converse with
them, 72, 73 ; The Returne
jromPernassus, 74-9 ; Kempe's
praise of Shakespeare, jj ;
the scholars' estimate of
players, 78 ; suggested re-
ference to Shakespeare, 78 ;
players envied by university
239
INDEX
PLUTARCH
wits, 80 ; Shakespeare's intro-
duction to the players, 81 ;
story of his holding horses, its
authenticity considered, 81-85;
value of the incident, 84;
traced to Sir William Dave-
nant, 85 ; his authority as a
witness, 85-8 ; Shakespeare as
an actor, 88, 89 ; his loyalty
to his profession, and to his
fellows, 4
Plutarch, his idea of biography,
2 ; Shakespeare's indebted-
ness to, 216
Priscian, 224
Quiney, Judith (daughter of
Shakespeare), little known of,
200 5 Sir Walter Raleigh's
estimate of, 200
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 12-15, 2 ^»
Raleigh, Sir Walter (Professor),
52, 63, 199, 200
Ratseis Ghost, 80
Returne jrom Pernassus, The,
value of the play, 74 ; refer-
ence to Shakespeare, 77 ; esti-
mate by the players, 78-80 ;
referred to, 93, 123, 131, 148,
213
Rowe, Nicholas, 82, 170-175
Saintsbury, George, 205
Shakespeare, Anne (see Family
and Friends), inscription on
her monument, 193 ; her
character, 194-6
Shakespeare, William, studied
SPENSER
in his plays, 7-9 ; in his
sonnets, 9-1 1; contempo-
rary references, 3, 4 ; testi-
mony of his ' fellows,' 3-7 ;
meaning of the word, 6 ;
earliest reference to, 12 ; rela-
tions with Spenser, 12-53 (see
Spenser, Edmund) ; with fellow
players, 54-90 (see Players);
with university pens, 91-113
(see University Pens) ; with
Ben Jonson, 1 14-136 (see Ben
Jonson); with Marlowe, 137-
64 (see Marlowe, Christopher) ;
with family and friends, 170-
236 (see Family and Friends) ;
compared to Prospero, 199;
his daughter Judith, 200 ;
borrows ideas from Montaigne,
202-206 ; Gonzalo's speech,
202 ; Prospero's, 204 ; cha-
racter of his last plays, 206 ;
Prospero's love of his library,
207 ; Shakespeare's books (see
Library) ; last years of life,
232 ; his will, 185-9 > death, 234
Shakespeare's Centurie of Pray se,
4
Sidney, Sir Philip, 28
Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 9-1 1, 196,
214
Spenser, Edmund, visited at
Rilcolman by Raleigh who
brings him to London, 13 ;
Spenser returns in 1591, 14;
account of his visit in Colin
Clouts Come Home Again,
14-18 ; reference to poets of
the day, 14-18 ; to Shake-
speare as Aetion, 15 ; this
reference explained, 19, 24 ;
the word ' gentle ' applied to
Shakespeare, 24 ; significance
as used by Spenser, 24-7; his
24O
INDEX
SWINBURNE
need of friendship, 28 ; friend-
ship with Lodovick Bryskett,
30, 31 ; reads to his friends
parcels of the Faerie Queene,
31 ; his visit to London in
1595, 32; evidence of friend-
ship with Shakespeare, 33-6 ;
castle of Kilcolman burned, 37;
return to London and death,
37 ; Shakespeare's reference
to his death, 37-43 ; his learn-
ing, 40 ; his Irish policy, 43-
51 ; attributed by Shake-
speare to Richard II., 44
Swinburne, A. C., 22, 137, 152-5
Tyrrell, Robert, Y. 219
WORD9WORTH
University Pens, The, the result
of the new learning, 92 ; debt
due to them by literature,
IC4-6 : prepared the way for
Shakespeare, 106; their lives
contrasted with representative
players, ic6 : not found among
Shakespeare's friends, 108, III.
See Greene, Robert; Peele,
George ; Nash, Thomas.
Venus and Adonis, 8, 17, 19
Ward, Sir A. W., 94
Wordsworth on the Sonnets, 9
Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, 161,
165
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGK.
S. *
I/H
r°
tf
30
«<%
3>Mi
w
u
ifK mm r«
3»)i
UNviAir*
^OFCAIIFCMV
'owan#
gyn
]\W
S 5
'U8IH
Lin
«V«8I1#
»lOS-AMCflfj>
shainim
<r* a
crtfjv
^n
w
^HIBRARYtf/
SfOJITVD-JO^ VOJIIVDJO^
SO
5?
^ AjclOS-ANCflfju
^0FCAIIF(%. ^OFCAIIFO^
k: ta
L 006 862 278 6
AA 000 369 463 5