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JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
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 BEN JONSON 
 
 AND 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 By SIR GEORGE GREENWOOD 
 
 Author of 
 
 " Shakespeare's Law," 
 
 " The Shakespeare Problem Restated," 
 
 " Is there a Shakespeare Problem ? " 
 
 *' The Vindicators of Shakespeare," 
 
 " Shakspere's Handwriting," 
 
 etc. 
 
 EDWIN VALENTINE MITCHELL 
 
 27, LEWIS STREET, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 
 
FIRST 
 EDITION 
 COPYRIGHT 
 IN GREAT 
 BRITAIN 
 I 9 2 I 
 
 Printed by Ben Johnson & Co., Ltd., York and London. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 Foreword ........ vii-ix 
 
 Jonson's testimony not " irrefragable " . . . 11 
 
 Jonson's closely associated with the publication of the 
 
 Shakespeare Folio of 1623 12 
 
 Jonson wrote the Folio Prefaces . . . . .13-17 
 
 Dr. Felix Schelling on the undoubted Jonsonian author- 
 ship ........ 15 
 
 Jonson's responsibility for a siiggestio falsi . . . 18 
 
 Plays not by " Shakespeare " published under his name. 18-19 
 
 Henry VIII . not by " Shakespeare " . . . . 19 
 
 Heminge and Condell and the " unblotted manuscripts " 20 
 
 Mr. Dugdale Sykes on the " standard of honesty " among 
 
 publishers in Shakespearean times ... 20 
 
 The " True Originalls " of Shakespeare's plays , \ln, 21-23 
 
 " Shakespeare " a pen name ..... 23 
 
 Why " Shake-speare " ? 23n 
 
 The work of many pens, and of one transcendent genius 
 
 in the Folio ....... 25 
 
 Dangers for playwrights in the time of the Tudors . 25 
 
 Jonson's eulogy prefixed to the Folio .... 26 
 
 Was Jonson " a liar ? " . . . . . .27 
 
 Jonson's Discoveries ....... 28-31 
 
 The " unblotted manuscripts " were fair copies . . 30 
 
 Jonson and " Poet Ape " . . . . . .31 
 
 Jonson's Poetaster ....... 32 
 
 Players were " i' the statute " . . . . . 32-33 
 
 ^70157 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Everyman out of his Humour and Shakspere's Arms. . 33-34 
 
 Were Love's Labour's Lost and Venus and Adonis written 
 
 by the " Stratford rustic ? " (Garnett & Gosse) . 35 
 
 Professor Abel Lefranc on the " Stratfordian " belief . 35 
 
 " Shakespeare " a mask-name ..... 35 
 
 *• Small Latin and less Greek " 35w 
 
 Jonson's lines under the Droeshout engraving . . 36-37 
 
 The Petition of the Burbages to the Earl of Pembroke in 
 
 1635. Shakespeare a " deserving man " ! . . 38-41 
 
 Two Notes in Manningham's Journal . . . . 41 w 
 
 NOTE A— Jonson and Bacon 42-44 
 
 Opinion of Henry James .... 44 
 
 NOTE B — Was Shakspere an actor-manager ? 
 Had he a residence in London ? 
 Did he ever act in a '* Shakespearean " play ? 
 What parts did he play } . . . . 45-55 
 
 NOTE C — Jonson's Discoveries ..... 56 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Sir Sidney Lee some twenty years ago committed 
 himself to the following statement concerning William 
 Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon : — *' Patient investi- 
 gation which has been in progress for more than two 
 hundred years has brought together a mass of bio- 
 graphical detail which far exceeds that accessible in the 
 case of any poet contemporary with Shakespeare." 
 (Times, Jan. 8, 1902). 
 
 Now if this statement is intended to mean (and I can 
 assign no other reasonable significance to the words) 
 that we know more about the life of Shakspere of Strat- 
 ford than we know about that of any poet contemporary 
 with him, there is an audacity about it which is really 
 quite subUme ; indeed the proverbial *' one step " 
 between the sublime and the ridiculous seems here to 
 have entirely disappeared. 
 
 It is quite true that around the name of ** Shake- 
 speare " there has grown up a mountainous mass of 
 literature — of criticism, of illustration, of theory, of 
 conjecture, of dogmatism, of assertion, of allusions, 
 real or supposed, etc., etc. — which is perfectly appalling 
 in its extent and variety ; but notwithstanding that the 
 whole world has been ransacked for evidence, and 
 notwithstanding that lives have been devoted to the 
 subject and an incredible amount of labour bestowed 
 upon it, we find it as true to-day as it was when the late 
 J. R. Green published his History of the English People y 
 that *' of hardly any great poet do we know so Httle." 
 
 In marked contrast with Sir Sidney's flamboyant 
 assertion are the more sober, and quite veracious, words 
 with which Mr. Gregory Smith commences his recently 
 pubUshed study of Ben Jonson in the ** EngHshmen of 
 Letters " series (1919) : — " We know more of Jonson 
 than of any of the greater writers of his age. There 
 are no mysteries, or at least great mysteries, in his 
 literary career, and the biographer is not driven, with 
 
viii . FOREWORD 
 
 the Shakespearians, to conjectural reconstruction from 
 the shards of record and anecdote. Even his personahty 
 stands forth fresh and convincing beside the blurred 
 portrait of Marlowe, or Shakespeare, or Fletcher. For 
 this fuller knowledge we are indebted to Jonson himself." 
 
 Here I cannot do better than quote the words of a 
 correspondent who has given much thought and study 
 to this question. *' It is the very fulness and precision 
 of the information we possess respecting Jonson's 
 literary and dramatic relationships, particularly during 
 the eventful years of the * Shakespeare ' period, which 
 prove that Jonson had little or nothing to do with 
 Shakspere. His aggressive self-assertion not only 
 kept him in the lime-light, but dragged into public 
 view every one that had anything to do with him, either 
 as friend or foe. We have his correspondence, his 
 conversation, his personal dealings with — even compli- 
 mentary poems addressed to — everybody but Shakspere." 
 There is, indeed, nothing whatever to show that there 
 was any real intimacy, nay, any friendship, or any 
 " love lost," between Jonson and William Shakspere 
 of Stratford. The alleged " merry meeting " between 
 these two and Drayton, at which Shakspere is reported 
 to have drunk so hard that he died from the effects of 
 it, is so obviously a fable that it demands no considera- 
 tion, and as to Jonson's remarks in his Discoveries, made 
 many years after Shakspere's death, and not published 
 till some six years after Jonson's own death, it appears 
 to me that these later utterances must be taken with 
 many *' grains of salt," for they bear no relation to, 
 and have no correspondence with, the known facts 
 of Jonson's life. As I have endeavoured to show in 
 the following pages Jonson was closely associated with 
 the preparation and publication of the Folio of 1623 
 (as a '' send-off " for which he wrote his famous 
 panegyric), and was fully cognisant of the true authorship 
 of the plays therein given to the world ; and it was, 
 as I am convinced, this association and this knowledge 
 which coloured the cryptic utterances of his old age. 
 
 As to the idea that Jonson was too uncompromisingly 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 honest to lend himself to any Hterary deception even 
 in those days when literary deceptions were so extremely 
 common as to be generally regarded as but venial 
 offences, if not altogether justifiable, it may, perhaps, 
 be of use to quote the judgment of a deceased wTiter 
 and critic of no small distinction. ** James," says 
 Hepworth Dixon, *' had made him [Jonson] laureate, 
 and he had to earn his hundred marks. If flattery 
 were wanted he was rich in phrases ; if abuse were 
 wanted he was no less rank in venom. Both were 
 needed by the King : flattery the most fulsome, abuse 
 the most scurrilous that poet had ever penned. He was 
 extremely fond of drink ; he was inordinately foul of 
 tongue ; in sycophancy he knew no depth ; no sense 
 
 of religion guided his erratic steps Born a 
 
 Calvinist he became a Catholic. After the Powder 
 Plot he joined the court religion and helped in hunting 
 down his colleagues." {Royal Windsor, vol. iv., p. 92). 
 
 This, it may be said, is an unduly harsh judgment. 
 Possibly it may be so, but it is at any rate much nearer 
 to the truth than the assertions of some critics and 
 controversialists, who, in the supposed interest of the 
 traditional " Stratfordian " faith, apparently think it 
 necessary to put " honest Ben," as they love to style 
 him, in the same category with George Washington — 
 ** the man who never told a lie ! " 
 
 But what a thousand pities it is that — so far as we 
 know, and as we are fully justified in concluding — ■ 
 William Shakespere never addressed a letter or a poem 
 to Jonson ; never received a letter or a poem from 
 Jonson ; never received one of those gift-books which 
 Jonson was so fond of presenting to his friends with 
 his well-known and excellently-written autograph on 
 the front page ! What a thousand pities that Ben's 
 ** love," almost amounting to *' idolatry " — and what 
 is ** idolatry " but the worship of a graven image ? — 
 never appears to have found utterance or expression 
 till many years after William Shakspere's death ! 
 
 G. G. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 THE sheet anchor of the traditional belief 
 with regard to the authorship of the plays 
 and poems of Shakespeare is undoubtedly 
 Ben Jonson. It is to the Jonsonian utterances 
 that the apostles of the Stratfordian faith always 
 make their appeal. That faith we are told is based 
 on the " irrefragable rock " of Ben Jonson's 
 testimony.^ 
 
 Well, it was not so very long ago that we used 
 to be told that the truth of a universal deluge and 
 the preservation of mankind and animals of every 
 kind and species, in Noah's Ark, was established 
 on the *' impregnable rock " of Holy Scripture, 
 and yet to-day we find even high Church digni- 
 taries — with whom Mr. J. M. Robertson would 
 certainly be in entire agreement here — disavowing 
 any belief in this interesting mythological tradition. 
 Is it not, then, possible that the Jonsonian testi- 
 mony may prove no more " irrefragable " or 
 " impregnable " than that of those old chronicles, 
 which age-long tradition has ascribed to the 
 authorship of '* Moses " } 
 
 As a distinguished writer, well-known both in 
 the political and the literary world, has written to 
 me, the difficulties in the way of the orthodox 
 " Shakespearian " belief seem to be insuperable. 
 Are the Jonsonian utterances of such weight as 
 to outweigh them all } I reply, put Jonson in 
 one scale and all the difficulties and improbabilities 
 
 ^ " The testimony of Jonson is monumental and irrefragable." — 
 The Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson in The Observer, of March 2nd, 
 1919. 
 
,12,, JONSON AMD SHAKESPEARE 
 
 — if not impossibilities — of the " Stratfordian " 
 hypothesis in the other, and old Ben will kick 
 the beam. 
 
 Now let us briefly consider this Jonsonian 
 testimony. There are two utterances to which 
 the orthodox appeal as conclusive evidence, viz. : 
 the lines bearing Jonson's signature prefixed to 
 the Folio of 1623, and the much-quoted passage 
 De Shakespeare nostrati in his Timber or Discoveries. 
 Let us first consider the evidence of the Folio. 
 
 Seven years after the death of William Shakspere 
 of Stratford-upon-Avon, it entered into the mind 
 of somebody to publish a collected edition of 
 *' Mr. WilHam Shakespeare's " plays. Who that 
 somebody was we do not know, but we do know 
 that Ben Jonson was very closely associated with 
 the undertaking. It cannot reasonably be doubted 
 that Jonson was the *' literary m.an " v/ho, as the 
 Cambridge Editors long ago suggested, was called 
 in to write the Preface *' To the Great Variety of 
 Readers " signed by the players Heminge and 
 Condell.^ That he did, indeed, write this Preface 
 was, in my opinion, proved by that very able 
 critic, George Steevens, in a masterly critical 
 analysis. *' After the publication of my first 
 edition of Shakespeare's works," writes Steevens, 
 " a notion struck me that the preface prefixed by 
 the players in 1623 to their edition of his plays 
 had much of the manner of Ben Jonson, and an 
 attentive comparison of that preface with various 
 passages in Jonson's writings having abundantly 
 supported and confirmed my conjecture, / do not 
 hesitate'^ now to assert that the greatest part of it 
 
 1 See Preface to the Cambridge Shakespeare (1863), p. 24. 
 
 2 Original italics. Steevens's first edition of Shakespeare was 
 published in 1773. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 13 
 
 was written by him. Heminge and Condell 
 being themselves wholly unused to composition, 
 and having been furnished by Jonson, whose 
 reputation was then at its height, with a copy of 
 verses in praise of Shakespeare, and with others 
 on the engraved portrait prefixed to his plays, 
 w^ould naturally apply to him for assistance in that 
 part of the work in which they wxre, for the first 
 time, to address the publick in their own names. . . . 
 I think I can show the w-hole of the first member 
 of this address, comprising eighteen lines out of 
 forty, to be entirely his ; . . . a minute comparison 
 of the first half of this preface with various passages 
 in Jonson's works will, I conceive, establish my 
 hypothesis beyond a doubt. "^ 
 
 It will be noticed that Steevens here speaks 
 without doubt as to part of this Preface only as 
 having been written by Jonson, but we need have 
 no hesitation in saying that if Jonson is proved to 
 have written part he undoubtedly wrote the whole 
 of the Preface. It seems to me absurd to suppose 
 that, having been called in to write in the names 
 of the players, he would have contented himself 
 with composing a fragment of a preface, and have 
 left the rest to others. Least of all would he have 
 left what he had writtep to be completed by those 
 
 deserving men," Heminge and Condell, who 
 were, as Steevens justly remarks, " wholly unused 
 to composition." That was not the way in which 
 old Ben, of all men, was in the habit of doing things. 
 I entertain no doubt, therefore, that the Preface 
 
 1 See Boszveirs Malone (The " Third Variorum, ' 1821), Vol. 2, 
 p. 663, where Steevens's masterly proof will be found. See also 
 my Shakespeare Problem Restated at p. 264 et seq. : where, how- 
 ever, by an unfortunate slip, the demonstration is ascribed to 
 Malone instead of to Steevens. See further Is there a Shakespeare 
 Problem ? p. 382 et seq. 
 
14 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ** To the Great Variety of Readers " was wholly 
 written by Ben Jonson. 
 
 But, further, there can be, in my judgment, no 
 reasonable doubt that Jonson wrote the " Epistle 
 Dedicatory " also. He was, doubtless (I use that 
 often misused adverb with confidence here), 
 employed as the ** literary man " to write the pre- 
 faces to the Folio, as, also, the poetical eulogium 
 of the author prefixed to it. The ** Epistle 
 Dedicatory " contains many classical allusions, 
 quite in the Jonsonian style. Some of it is taken 
 direct from the dedication of Pliny*s Natural 
 History, and there is an obvious allusion to a well- 
 known ode of Horace.^ Mr. James Boaden, 
 amongst others, had no doubts about the matter. 
 *' Ben," he says, '' it is now ascertained, wrote 
 for the Player-Editors the Dedication and Preface 
 to his [Shakespeare's] works. "^ 
 
 The Cambridge Editors — and the names of 
 Messrs. W. G. Clark, John Glover, and Aldis 
 Wright must always command respect — are at 
 least so far in agreement that they tell us *' the 
 Preface (to the Great Variety of Readers) may have 
 been written by some literary man in the employment 
 of the publishers, and merely sigtied by the two 
 
 1 Odes, Bk. III., 23, The reader will note the expression, 
 " absolute in their numbers," in the Preface " To the Great 
 Variety of Readers " — a classical expression to be found in Pliny 
 and Val. Maximus — and other similar expressions taken from 
 the classics quite in the Jonsonian manner. 
 
 ' On the Portraits of Shakespeare, 1824, p. 13. Mr. Furness, 
 also, commenting upon a remark of Pope's, writes that he " could 
 hardly have been so unfamiliar with the Folios as not to have 
 known that Jonson was the author of both the Address to the 
 Reader and some commendatory lines in the First Folio." 
 (Julius Ccesar, by Furness, Act HI., Sc. 1, p. 137 note). Mr. 
 Andrew Lang writes, " Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben 
 was the penman." (Shakespeare, Bacon and The Great Unknozvn, 
 p. 207 note). 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 15 
 
 players.^' Nor would this be at all an unusual 
 thing to do. For example, when the folio edition 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher's Plays was brought 
 out in 1647, by the publisher Moseley, there was 
 a dedicatory epistle, similar to that of the Shake- 
 speare Folio, prefixed to it, and addressed to the 
 survivor of the ** Incomparable Paire," viz. : 
 Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who 
 was then Lord Chamberlain. This was signed 
 by ten of the players of the King's Company, but 
 nobody, I imagine, supposes that they wTote it, 
 or any one of them. " The actors who aided the 
 scheme," says Sir Sidney Lee, in his Introduction 
 to the Facsimile Edition of the Shakespeare Folio, 
 ** played a very subordinate part in its execution. 
 They did nothing beyond seconding Moseley's 
 efforts in securing the ' copy ' and signing their 
 names — to the number of ten — to the dedicatory 
 epistle." From this I conclude that, in Sir Sidney 
 Lee's opinion, the actors in this case, at any rate, 
 did not write the epistle to which they so signed 
 their names. 
 
 Now in the case of the Shakespeare Folio we 
 know that Jonson wrote the lines facing the 
 Droeshout engraving, subscribed with his initials, 
 and the eulogistic verses signed with his name in 
 full. Is it not reasonable, then, to conclude that 
 he was the *' Hterary man in the employment of 
 the publishers," as suggested by the Cambridge 
 Editors, and that he wrote the prefaces, which 
 are entirely in his style ? May we not go further 
 and say that it is certain that he was the author of 
 these prefaces ? Let us see what the Professor 
 of English Literature in the University of Penn- 
 sylvania has to say on the subject. Dr. Felix 
 Schelling, who holds this position, is recognised 
 
16 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 as a high Shakespearean authority. He is, more- 
 over, a man to whom any doubt as to the ** Strat- 
 fordian " authorship of the plays is anathema. 
 And this is what he tells us with regard to the 
 preparation for publication of the Folio of 1623 : — 
 " Neither Heminge nor Condell was a writer, and 
 such a book ought to be properly introduced. In 
 such a juncture there could be no choice. The 
 best book of the hour demanded sponsorship by 
 the greatest contemporary man of letters. Ben 
 Jonson was the King's poet, the Laureate, the 
 literary dictator of the age ; and Jonson rose 
 nobly to the task, penning not only the epigram 
 * To the Reader,' and his noble personal eulogium, 
 but both the prose addresses of dedication. Of 
 this matter there can be no question whatever^ and if 
 anyone is troubled by the signatures of Heminge 
 and Condell appended to two addresses which 
 neither of them actually wrote, let him examine 
 into his own conduct in the matter of circulars, 
 resolutions, and other papers which he has had 
 written by skilled competence for the appendage 
 of his signature."^ 
 
 ^ See report of an address delivered at Houston Hall, Penn- 
 sylvania, by Dr. Felix Schelling, in The Pennsylvania Gazette^ 
 Jan. 16, 1920. My italics. The Jonsonian authorship has been 
 again forcibly advocated by Professor W. Dinsmore Briggs. 
 See The Times Literary Supplement, Nov, 12, 1914, April 22, 
 and Nov. 18, 1915. See further, Appleton Morgan's Intro- 
 duction to Hamlet and the Ur-Hamlet (Bankside Shakespeare, 
 1908, p. xxvii). Sir Sidney Lee appears to suppose that Heminge 
 and Condell were imitating Jonson in these prefaces. Certain 
 phrases therein he says " crudely echo passages " in Jonson's 
 works {Life [1915], p. 558). This appears to me a ridiculous 
 suggestion. The prefaces are Jonsonian to the core, and if the 
 two " deserving men," or either of them, had been able to write 
 in this style it is pretty certain that we should have heard of other 
 writings from their pen. But, as the Cambridge Editors remark, 
 they had no " practice in composition," these editors being thus 
 in agreement with George Steevens who, as already mentioned, 
 says of the two players that they were " wholly unused to com- 
 position " [Dr. Schelling has now re-published the above 
 mentioned address under title ** The Seedpod of Shakespeare 
 Criticism."] 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 17 
 
 But, as every student of Shakespeare knows, 
 the players, in the Preface ** to the Great Variety 
 of Readers," which bore their signatures, say, or 
 rather, are made to say, that the readers of the 
 plays who were *' before .... abus'd with diverse 
 stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and 
 deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious 
 imposters," are now presented with correct ver- 
 sions, '* cur'd, and perfect of their limbes ; and 
 all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he 
 [Shakespeare] conceived them." Whereupon the 
 Cambridge Editors justly remark, " The natural 
 inference to be drawn from this statement is that 
 all the separate editions of Shakespeare's plays 
 were * stolen,' * surreptitious,' and * imperfect,' 
 and that all those published in the Folio were 
 printed from the author's own manuscripts. But 
 it can be proved to demonstration that several of 
 the plays in the Folio were printed from earlier 
 quarto editions, and that in other cases the quarto 
 is more correctly printed, or from a better manu- 
 script, than the Folio text, and therefore of higher 
 authority. . . . As the ' setters forth ' are thus con- 
 victed of a * siiggestio falsi ' in one point it is not 
 improbable that they may have been guilty of the 
 like in another. ^^^ 
 
 1 I have dealt at some length with this matter in Is there a 
 Shakespeare Problem ? ch. XI. As Mr. J. Dover Wilson writes, 
 " The title-page (of the Folio) is inscribed * Published according 
 to the True Originall Copies,' while the sub-title on a later page 
 is still more explicit : — ' The Workes of William Shakespeare, 
 containing all his Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies : Truely 
 set forth, according to their first ORIGINALL,' The phrase ' first 
 original ' can mean only one thing — author's manuscript. Mr. 
 Dugdale Sykes is, therefore, perfectly correct in his statement 
 that those responsible for the Folio claimed to be printing all the 
 plays in the volume from Shakespeare's autograph." (Times 
 Literary Supplement, Jan. 22, 1920.) And this claim we know 
 to be false. 
 
18 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Jon&on then, as writer of the prefaces, and 
 closely associated with the preparation and pub- 
 lication of the Folio, was guilty of the suggestio 
 falsi concerning the '' stolne and surreptitious 
 copies," with which the Cambridge Editors justly 
 charge the '' setters forth," or the " literary man " 
 who, as they suggest, wrote the prefaces for them. 
 And even if it may be contended, as Mr. A. W. 
 Pollard contends, that, speaking strictly by the 
 card, the statement was true, inasmuch as " not 
 all but only some of the quartos ought to be treated 
 as " stolne and surreptitious," that cannot acquit 
 the author of the preface, seeing that, as this 
 learned writer admits, '* zvith the sale of the First 
 Folio in view it was doubtless intended to be 
 interpreted " as it has, in fact, been interpreted 
 ever since, viz. : that the plays were all now for 
 the first time published from perfect author's 
 manuscripts, which certainly is very far from the 
 truth.' 
 
 Jonson must have known also that a large 
 quantity of work was included in the Folio which 
 was not "' Shakespearean " at all, i.e,^ which was 
 not the work of the real *' Shakespeare," whoever 
 he was, the one supremely great man who has 
 given us such plays as Hajnlet, Lear^ and Othello^ 
 to take but three examples. Many plays had been 
 published in the convenient name of ** Shakes- 
 peare," or as by '' W.S.," such as the Tragedy of 
 Locrine (1595), Sir John Oldcastle (1600), Thomas 
 Lord Cromwell (1602), The London Prodigal (1605), 
 The Puritan (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608)' 
 
 1 See Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, by A. W. Pollard (1909), 
 pp. 1. 2. 
 
 2 Both A Yorkshire Tragedy and The Tivo Noble Kinsmen were 
 licensed as by Shakespeare. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 19 
 
 and Pericles (1609). All these were rejected by 
 the editor, or editors, of the First Folio, although 
 they were included by the editors of the Third 
 Folio (1664) and retained by the editors of the 
 Fourth FoHo (1685). 
 
 On the other hand, there were included in the 
 First Folio such plays as Henry F/., Part /., 
 which all are agreed is not Shakespearean, although 
 it is possible that it contains some few items of 
 Shakespeare's work ; Henry VI., Parts II. and 
 ///., a very large part of which is certainly 
 not Shakespearean ; Titus Andronicus, which, 
 according to the overwhelming balance of authority, 
 is not Shakespearean ; The Taming of the Shrew, 
 as to which it is unanimously agreed that Act I. 
 is not Shakespeare's, and which is considered by 
 many, and I think with reason, not to be Shake- 
 spearean at all ; Timon of Athens generally believed 
 to be very largely non-Shakespearean ; and other 
 plays, such as Troilus and Cressida, in which the 
 work of one or two other pens is, probably, to be 
 found. Nevertheless, all these plays were pub- 
 lished as by " Shakespeare." 
 
 Again, take the case of Henry VIII. James 
 Spedding long ago proved that the greater part 
 of this play, including Wolsey's famous soliloquy, 
 and Buckingham's beautiful and pathetic speech 
 on his way to execution, is the work of Fletcher ; 
 and now Mr. H. Dugdale Sykes, in an excellent 
 little book published at the Shakespeare Head 
 Press at Stratford-on-Avon, with the blessing of 
 that strictly orthodox Shakespearean, the late 
 Mr. A. H. BuUen, entitled Sidelights on Shake- 
 speare, has contended — and I think there can be 
 no doubt he is right — that all of this magnificent 
 drama that was not written by Fletcher is the work 
 
20 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of Massinger. In fact, as Mr. Sykes writes, ** the 
 editor of the foHo foisted upon the pubUc as a 
 Shakespearean drama an early work of Massinger 
 and Fletcher's." 
 
 What, then, becomes of the supposed guarantee 
 of " those deserving men " Heminge and Condell ? 
 What becomes of the dismal farce of the " unblotted 
 manuscripts ? " 
 
 Let us' listen to what Mr. Dugdale Sykes, 
 himself, I believe, a quite orthodox *' Stratfordian," 
 has to say on these points. In reply to the question 
 how it was that Heminge and Condell came to 
 include Henry VIII. in the First Folio Shakespeare, 
 and how it was that Waterson came to put Shake- 
 speare's name with Fletcher's on the title-page of 
 The Two Noble Kinsmen, he writes, " I suggest as 
 a possible answer to this question that neither 
 Heminge and Condell nor Waterson possessed a 
 higher standard of honesty than seems to have 
 been prevalent among the publishers of their 
 day : that in this respect there may have been 
 little to choose between them and Humphrey 
 Moseley, who in 1647 printed as Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's (from * the author's original copies ') 
 thirty-five plays of which a large number were 
 written by Massinger and Fletcher, while three 
 (The Laws of Candy, The Fair Maid of the Inn, 
 and Love's Cure) contain no recognizable trace 
 either of Beaumont or Fletcher. When we find 
 that two publishers issued spurious plays as 
 Shakespeare's during his lifetime, and that a third 
 put Shakespeare's name on the title-page of the 
 early play of King John in 1623, there appears to 
 me to be no reason why we should accept Heminge 
 and Condell's attribution of Henry VIIL to 
 Shakespeare as decisive. And I submit that we 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 21 
 
 have a solid reason for doubting their honesty, 
 inasmuch as their assertion that all the plays in 
 the Folio were printed from the author's manu- 
 scripts is known to be untrue."^ 
 
 So much then for the '* deserving men," and 
 the " True Originalls " and the " unblotted 
 manuscripts," And what becomes of Jonson's 
 testimony ? Jonson was '' in the swim." He 
 was concerned '' up to the hilt " in the publication 
 of the Folio, and all these facts must have been 
 within his knowledge. 
 
 The orthodox were wont to appeal to Messrs. 
 Heminge and Condell as though it were blas- 
 phemous to doubt the truth of any word they have 
 said. Now this bubble has been pricked, and 
 soon, perhaps, it may dawn upon the critics that 
 " Jonson's testimony " with regard to the Shake- 
 spearean Folio and its supposed author is not of 
 much greater value. He knew that not all the 
 plays included in the Folio were written by 
 
 1 The Tzco Noble Kinsmen was attributed on the title-page of 
 the first Edition (163-1) to " the memorable worthies of their 
 time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare." It is 
 now, as I apprehend, established by Mr. Dugdale Sykes, following 
 " Mr. Robert Boyle's extremely able advocacy of Massinger's 
 claims to the authorship of the scenes attributed to Shakespeare " 
 (Transactions of the New Shakespeare Society for 1882), that 
 the play is the joint work of Massinger and Fletcher. See Mr. 
 A. H. Bullen's Prefatory note to Sidelights on Shakespeare, p. viii. 
 With regard to Waterson's ascription of the play to Shakespeare 
 and Fletcher in 1634, Mr. Sykes writes, " The omission of the 
 play from the later Shakespeare Folios and its inclusion in the 
 second Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, after it had been issued 
 with Shakespeare's name on the title-page, deprives this of any 
 value." (See Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 1, 1920). Mr. 
 Sykes, by the way, warns us that " the inclusion of the play in 
 the second Beaumont and Fletcher folios is of no more value as 
 evidence for Beaumont than for Massinger, as it has been estab- 
 lished beyond doubt that Massinger and not Beaumont was 
 Fletcher's partner in a large number of the so-called Beaumont 
 and Fletcher plays." Work cited, p. 1 note. 
 
22 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 " Shakespeare " ; he knew well enough that they 
 were not printed from the ** true originals " ; he 
 knew that the statement about the " unblotted 
 manuscripts " was mere fudge. ^ It is not necessary 
 to condemn him and the players as guilty of 
 dishonesty in the same measure as we should do 
 if we tried them by the standard of the present 
 day, for we should remember that such aberration 
 from the path of strict veracity was, as Mr. Dugdale 
 Sykes truly says, looked upon as a more or less 
 venial offence in those times when Hterary 
 mystifications of this sort were of common 
 occurrence, and when plays, and other works, 
 were frequently published in the names of writers 
 who were not really the authors thereof. 
 
 And now, in 1623, all *' Shakespeare's " plays 
 were to be published in collected form, " Truely 
 set forth, according to their first ORIGINALL," 
 
 1 Very much the same thing was said about Fletcher by Moseley 
 in his introduction to the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, viz. : 
 that what he wrote was " free from interlining " and that he 
 " never writ any one thing twice." The saying appears to have 
 become a cliche. Moreover, what of Jonson's statement in his 
 eulogium prefixed to the Folio to the effect that Shakespeare was 
 wont to " strike the second heat upon the Muses anvil," in order 
 to fashion his " well-turned and true-filed lines " ? This means, 
 of course, that, instead of writing currente calamo and leaving 
 ** scarse a blot " on his papers (an absurd idea on the face of it), 
 he carefully revised his plays. It follows, therefore, that when 
 these plays were handed to the players (if ever they were so 
 handed) either the manuscripts must have shown many a blotted 
 line, or the players received " fair copies." If we adopt the first 
 alternative the statement of the writer of the Folio preface was 
 untrue ; if we adopt the second the hypothesis of the fair copies 
 is vindicated. Some critics, however, who cling tenaciously 
 to the idea of the " unblotted manuscripts " would have us reject 
 Jonson's testimony as to Shakespeare's patient revising. Jonson, 
 in fact, is to be taken as an unimpeachable witness of truth when 
 it suits these critics so to take him, but to be summarily dismissed 
 as untrustworthy when his testimony does not square with their 
 theories. In any case, then, Jonson's evidence is discredited. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 23 
 
 as the second title-page of the Folio informs the 
 reader. But alas, they were far from being all 
 Shakespearean work, and many of them far from 
 being ** set forth according to their first original.'* 
 Jonson, however, was employed to give the volume 
 a good send-off, not only by writing the prefaces, 
 and making himself responsible for the statements 
 therein contained, together with those on the two 
 title-pages, but also by the exercise of his poetical 
 genius. He accordingly wrote the very remarkable 
 lines which face the paralysing Droeshout engraving 
 and also the long eulogy signed by his name 
 prefixed to the Folio. 
 
 Now, what was the state of the case, as I conceive 
 it to have been ? I conceive that the name of 
 ** Shakespeare," first given to the public on the 
 dedicatory page of Venus and Adonis^ in 1593, had 
 been adopted as a convenient mask-name.^ That 
 many subsequently wrote under that name besides 
 the real '' Shakespeare," whoever he was, is a 
 simple matter of fact, and also that they did so 
 unrebuked and unrestrained, without let or 
 hindrance. I conceive that several men of high 
 position, but, more especially one man of high 
 position and of supreme genius, wrote plays 
 under that name. I conceive that Shakspere, 
 
 ^ In its hyphenated form the name ' Shake-speare," which so 
 often appears, was an excellent pseudonym. But why on earth 
 should player Shakspere wish to appear as " Shake-speare ? " 
 A man of the name of Northcliffe {e.g.) does not usually desire 
 to publish under the name of " North-Cliffe." Nor if his name 
 happens to be Sheepshanks does he give his writings to the 
 pubHc in the name of ' Sheep-Shanks." Nor does Mr. 
 Ramsbottom feel any call to write in the name of " Rams-Bottom." 
 * Shake-speare " was a good " mask-name," et voild tout. As old 
 Thomas Fuller says, the name has a warlike sound, " Hasti- 
 vibrans" or ** Shake-speare," and as Jonson writes, it is a name 
 under which the author 
 
 * Seems to shake a lance 
 As brandish 'd in the eyes of ignorance." 
 
24 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the actor- manager, who was probably himself 
 able to ** bumbast out a blank verse," acted as 
 " honest broker " for these plays. ^ He received 
 them, and put them on the stage if he thought fit 
 to do so, and they became, presumably, the 
 property of the Company. They became 
 " Shakespeare's " plays, and the authorship, about 
 which there was no questioning — for who cared 
 a twopenny button-top about the authorship at 
 that date ?^ — was, I take it, generally attributed 
 to him, though, as a fact, it must have been known 
 that, whether he or somebody else were the real 
 " Shakespeare," many of these plays were not 
 *' Shakespearean " at all. But this was a matter 
 in which but few people took any interest in those 
 days. 
 
 Now, some six-and-twenty years ago Frances E. 
 Willard wrote in the Arena Magazine (Boston, 
 Mass., 1893) : " It seems perfectly reasonable to 
 me that Lord Bacon and a number of other 
 brilliant thinkers of the Elizabethan era, who were 
 nobles, and who, owing to the position of the 
 stage, would not care to have their names associated 
 with the drama, composed or moulded the plays." 
 This fairly well expresses my own view, with the 
 qualification that I make no assumption whatever 
 
 1 If Jonson in his Poet- Ape Epigram referred to Shakspere, as 
 seems to be almost certain, he considered him as, at that time, 
 concerned in the " brokage " of other men's writings. See below, 
 at p. 27. As to the term " actor-manager," see Note B at p. 45. 
 
 ^ *' In earlier times, no doubt, people didn't trouble at all 
 about the author of a play. It was the play ' presented by the 
 Earle of Leicester's servantes,' ' by the children of Pawles,' ' by 
 the children of the chapell,' ' by the Lord Admiral's servantes,' 
 " by the Lord Chamberleynes' servantes,' or by ' Her Majesties ' 
 servantes.' We have much the same thing nowadays, when a 
 producer ' advertises his new pieces as if they were his own 
 invention ; and when we have phrases like ' the new Gaiety 
 piece,' ' the new Kingsway play,' etc." — Mr. Ernest Law in the 
 Times Literary Supplement, Dec. 30 1920. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 25 
 
 with regard to the '' Baconian " hypothesis. 
 I would rather say, *' it seems perfectly reasonable 
 to me " that some men of high position, and 
 especially one great man of transcendant ability, 
 wrote dramas under the mask-name of " Shake- 
 speare " — a name which had been already adopted 
 by the author of Venus and Adonis — which were 
 confided to the actor-manager to be put upon the 
 stage. If anybody asks why they should think 
 it necessary to conceal their identity, I need do 
 no more than advise him to study the social history 
 of the Elizabethan age. *' The period of the 
 Tudors," writes E. A. Petherick, in his preface to 
 Edwin Johnson's Rise of English Culture, '* was 
 not only a time of severe repression and of harsh 
 government, but also a time when free speech was 
 impossible. Able men could only dissemble and 
 speak in allegory. The plays of Shakespeare and 
 of other writers are doubtless a reflection of the 
 period ; the names but a disguise — the play- 
 writers merely the spokesmen of those who would 
 have been sent to the Tower and the Block if they 
 had expressed their opinions openly." This 
 may be an exaggerated statement, but quite 
 apart from any fear of punishment, to write 
 dramas for the players was considered altogether 
 below the dignity of a noble, or any man of high 
 position in the community. However innocent 
 might be the work, it brought him into ridicule 
 and contempt, and might prove an insuperable 
 obstacle to his advancement in the State. Even 
 to publish poetry in his own name was unworthy 
 of a man of high position.^ In these circumstances 
 
 1 This was so even at a much later time. The learned Selden 
 {e.g.) writes, " 'Tis ridiculous for a Lord to print verses ; 'tis well 
 enough to make them to please himself, hut to make them publick 
 is foolish." — Table Talk, under title " Poetrv." 
 
26 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 it was but natural that men in high place, who had 
 in mind, it might be, to instruct and improve, as 
 well as to entertain, the pubHc, through the medium 
 of the drama, should do so under the disguise of a 
 pen-name ; and '' Shakespeare," or, as it was so 
 often written on title-pages, '' Shake-speare," 
 formed an excellent pen-name. 
 
 But now the time had come when these 
 ** Shakespearean " plays — those of them which 
 appeared to the editor, or editors, of the Folio to 
 be most worthy of publication — were to be 
 collected and republished (such as had already 
 been published), and with them were to be given 
 to the world sixteen dramas which had never seen 
 the light in print before, including such master- 
 pieces of literature as Twelfth Night, As You Like 
 It, A Winter's Tale, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and 
 Cymheline. These now, seven years after William 
 Shakspere's death, were to be rescued from that 
 oblivion to which the actor-author (if, indeed, he 
 was the author of them) was, apparently, quite 
 content that they should be consigned. 
 
 And now Jonson was to write a poetical panegyric 
 which should commend the Folio to the reading 
 public, and give it a good send-off. And right 
 well he did it, and fully does the world now 
 recognise that he did not exaggerate by one jot or 
 tittle the eulogy of that '' Shakespeare " whose 
 writings he held up to the admiration of all readers, 
 as such 
 
 " As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too 
 much." 
 
 The plays, I repeat, were the plays of the actor- 
 manager ; they were, it would seem, the property 
 of his Company ; they were '* Shakespeare's " plays, 
 and the authorship was, we may suppose, generally 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 27 
 
 ascribed to him, so far as anyone ever concerned 
 himself about the authorship. It was, then, for 
 Jonson to eulogize " Shakespeare," and for the 
 general public " Shakespeare " would, I imagine, 
 be Shakspere of Stratford, the actor-manager.^ 
 The true Shakespeare's real name could not be 
 revealed, but some ostensible author there must be. 
 Why, then, disturb the accepted legend ? So 
 Shakespeare would for the general public be the 
 ** Swan of Avon," as he appears in Jonson's poem. 
 
 But here the indignant critic will doubtless 
 interpose. '* What ! Jonson wrote thus, though 
 knowing all the facts. Then, according to you, 
 Jonson was a liar ! " Whereat we of the 
 ** heretical " persuasion can afford to smile. For 
 we see no reason to suppose that Jonson might not 
 have taken the course we attribute to him, and 
 considered himself quite justified in so doing. 
 
 Nearly three hundred years sever us from the 
 publication of the Folio, and, as I have already 
 said, we know that at that date very much less 
 strict views were commonly held as to the obliga- 
 tions of literary integrity. Literary deceptions — 
 ** frauds " w^e might perhaps call them at the 
 present day — were constantly perpetrated. Works 
 were not infrequently attributed by their authors 
 to other writers, who were, in fact, guiltless of any 
 responsibility for them. Moreover, nobody at 
 that date could foresee that the authorship of the 
 Shakespearean plays would be a matter of such 
 transcendant importance as it has now become. 
 Not having met Jonson in the flesh, and not 
 knowing what his view^s may have been with 
 regard to these literary deceptions, or by what 
 constraining influences his action may have been 
 1 But see Note B at p. 45. 
 
28 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 governed, but knowing something concerning 
 the practice of the times in this connexion, I see 
 nothing unreasonable in beheving that he acted 
 as I have suggested, and I should no more think 
 of calling him '' a liar " on that account than I 
 should think of branding Sir Walter Scott with 
 that opprobrious epithet because he denied point- 
 blank the authorship of the Waver ley Novels. 
 We know that he considered himself justified in 
 so doing, and we doubt not that Jonson also con- 
 sidered himself justified in what he did. 
 
 So much, then, for Jonson's famous panegyric, 
 which probably did more for the sale of the Folio 
 than even his equally famous suggestio falsi (in 
 the Preface " To the Great Variety of Readers "), 
 to the effect that all the plays therein included 
 were now published " perfect of their limbes " 
 and '' absolute in their numbers,"^ as the poet 
 conceived them. What now of the allusion to 
 Shakespeare in his Discoveries ? Here Jonson, 
 writing late in life, apparently some time between 
 1630 and 1637, records in glowing terms the high 
 personal regard in which he held Shakespeare the 
 man. *' I loved the man and do honour his 
 memory on this side idolatry as much as any." 
 But he goes on to say of him that he was such a 
 voluble talker that at times it was necessary to 
 *' closure " him. He had to be " stopped." Like 
 Haterius, who had such a deplorable rapidity of 
 utterance, " sufflaminandus erat,"^ i.e., the brake 
 had to be applied. " His wit was in his own 
 
 1 As already mentioned, this is a classical, and quite Jonsonian 
 expression. Like certain other expressions in the Epistle Dedi- 
 catory, evidential of the Jonsonian authorship, it is taken from 
 Pliny ; " liber numeris omnibus absolutus " (Ep. 9, 38). Not 
 much like poor Heminge and Condell, I apprehend 1 
 
 2 The word sufflaminare means to check or repress in speaking. 
 See Is there a Shakespeare Prob/e?n ? p. 387, and the passages 
 from Seneca and Menage there cited. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 29 
 
 power, would that the rule of it had been so too," 
 says Jonson. " Nevertheless," adds Ben, *' he 
 redeemed his vices with his virtues." 
 
 Now, is it credible that Jonson was here speaking 
 of the man whom he had so eulogized some ten 
 or twelve years before ; the " soul of the age," the 
 man whom he believed to have been the author 
 of Hamlet y Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and all those 
 wondrous plays of which he had spoken with such 
 glowing admiration some thirteen years before ? 
 If he was speaking of the player only, knowing 
 that the author — who was " not of an age but 
 for all time " — was a different person, there is 
 nothing extraordinary in this carping, though, as 
 we may believe, quite just criticism which has so 
 much perturbed and astonished those who assume 
 that he is alluding in such shabby and disparaging 
 terms to the '' sweet Swan of Avon." Or must 
 we assume that he was in his dotage when he so 
 wrote .^^ 
 
 1 Jonson says, " Many times he fell into those things could not 
 escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one 
 speaking to him, ' Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied, 
 ' Caesar did never wrong but v.ith just cause,' and such like, 
 which were ridiculous." Can this be a reference to Shakespeare 
 the dramatist ? " He said iii the perso7i of Caesar'' in answer to 
 " one speaking to him ! " He said something in perso?ia Caesaris ! 
 Would one so speak of a dramatist with reference to something 
 he had zvritten ? Does it not rather indicate something said on 
 the stage by an actor, as Pope long ago suggested ? And " he 
 fell " into things which excited laughter. Does this suggest that 
 Jonson was criticising the considered writing of a dramatist ? 
 Surely it rather suggests the actor. It is true that Jonson, in the 
 Induction to his Staple of Nezcs (1625), makes " Pi-ologus," say, 
 " Cry you mercy, you never did wrong but with just cause," but- 
 this does not prove that the words were in Shakespeare's play. 
 It is more likely that Jonson onlv heard them at the theatre (or 
 heard of them as spoken at the theatre), as Gifford thought. Can 
 this be Jonson 's deliberate criticism of the immortal bard whom 
 he had lauded to the skies in 1623 ? Or is he speaking of the 
 actor, and not the author ? (As to Jonson's quotation, " Caesar 
 did never wrong," etc., I would refer the reader to Is there a 
 Shakespeare Problem ? p. 390 and following). As to Jonson's 
 borrowing from Seneca, see p. 59. 
 
30 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 But, it will be objected, Jonson speaks of the 
 players as saying of Shakespeare that *' he never 
 blotted out a line," and writes of them as com- 
 mending '' their friend " by that " wherein he 
 most faulted." Jonson, therefore, identifies 
 player and poet. And this, no doubt, will be 
 conclusive for those who find it impossible to 
 believe that Jonson knew all the facts of the case, 
 but felt bound in 1630-6, as he had been in 1623, 
 not to reveal them to the world. But what of 
 the ** unblotted manuscripts } " Are we really 
 to believe that player Shakspere wrote Hamlet 
 (e.g.) currente calamo^ and '* never blotted out a 
 line ? " No more preposterous suggestion was 
 ever made, even in Shakespearean controversy. 
 No ; if the players really said of Shakespeare that 
 he ** never blotted out a line " (or that they had 
 ** scarse received from him a blot in his papers ") 
 and if the statement was true, so far as their 
 experience went, it shows that the players had 
 received from the author fair copies only, and here 
 is a piece of evidence which the sceptics may well 
 pray in aid. For if the real *' Shakespeare " was 
 " a concealed poet " he would, naturally, have 
 had fair copies of his dramas made for him, and 
 these would have been set before the players. As 
 R. L. Stevenson wrote long ago, " We hear of 
 Shakespeare and his clean manuscript ; but in 
 the face of the evidence of the style itself and of 
 the various editions of Hamlet this merely proves 
 that Messrs. Heminge and Condell were un- 
 acquainted with the common enough phenomenon 
 called a fair copy. He who would recast a tragedy 
 already given to the world, must frequently and 
 earnestly have revised details in the study." (Men 
 and Books, p. 149). But let the reader glance at 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 31 
 
 Shakspere's signatures, and ask himself if it is 
 possible to conceive that the Shakespearean dramas 
 were not only written by the man who so wrote, 
 but written without a blot ! No ; if the anti- 
 Stratfordian case seems improbable here, surely 
 the " orthodox " case is more improbable still, 
 so improbable indeed, as to be incredible. And of 
 two improbabilities, if such there be, it is wise to 
 choose the less.^ 
 
 But there are some earlier Jonsonian utterances 
 upon which we have not yet touched, but which 
 must by no means be left out of the account. In 
 1616, the year of player Shakspere's death, Jonson 
 published a book of Epigrams. The volume was 
 dedicated to William Earl of Pembroke, Lord 
 Chamberlain, the elder brother of the '' Incom- 
 parable Pair " of the Shakespeare Folio, and 
 Jonson writes, '' I here offer to your lordship the 
 ripest of my studies, my Epigrams." Now among 
 these Epigrams appears one which must have 
 been written a good many years earlier, '' On 
 Poet-Ape," and there can be little doubt that by 
 ** Poet-Ape " Jonson intended to make reference 
 to player Shakspere. This Epigram runs as 
 follows : — 
 
 Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief, 
 
 Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, 
 From brokage is become so bold a thief, 
 
 As we, the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it. 
 At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean, 
 
 Buy the reversion of old plays, now grown 
 To a little wealth and credit in the scene, 
 
 He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own, 
 And told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes 
 
 The sluggish, gaping auditor devours ; 
 He marks not whose 'twas first, and after times 
 
 May judge it to be his as well as ours. 
 Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece 
 
 From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece. 
 1 See further on Jonson 's Discoveries, Note C at p. 56. 
 
32 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Jonson, then, it seems looked upon Shakspere 
 very much as Greene looked upon " the only 
 Shakescene," viz., as '* an upstart crow '* 
 beautified with stolen feathers/ '' Poet-Ape '* 
 is the player-poet, arrayed in garments stolen from 
 others, whose works are *' the frippery of wit '^ 
 (i.e.^ the cast-off garments of others) ; who lives 
 by '* brokage " (was Shakspere then, perchance, 
 a broker of plays ?), and *' makes each man's wit 
 his own." Here we may compare the Prologue 
 to Jonson's Poetaster where the figure of Envy is 
 brought on the stage and asks, 
 
 " Are there no playera here ? No poet-apes ? " 
 
 and where we read further 
 
 " And apes are apes though clothed in scarlet," 
 
 which reminds us that players belonging to the 
 royal household were clothed in scarlet cloth. 
 
 We remark also the words *' he takes up all," 
 an expression which brings to our mind Pantalabus 
 of the Poetaster (Act. iii., sc. i.). This Pantalabus 
 was a player and " parcel-poet "^ who had the repu- 
 tation of writing *' high, lofty, in a new stalking 
 strain," and against whom Jonson is bitterly 
 sarcastic. His name is, obviously, derived from 
 the Greek ndvra XaiA^dveiv to *' take all," or 
 to *' take up all," as " Poet-Ape " is said to do. 
 
 In this play also (Act I., sc. 1) we find Tiicca^ the 
 braggart Captain saying, with reference to the 
 players, ** They forget they are i' the statute, the 
 rascals, they are blazoned there, there they are 
 
 ^ cf. Horace Epist., 1, 3, 18. 
 
 " Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olim 
 Grex avium plumas, inoveat cornicula risum 
 Furtivis nudata coloribus." 
 2 i.e., like a parcel-gilt goblet, a poet on the surface only, but 
 inwardly and truly only base metal. Herrick has written two 
 lines headed " Parcel-gilt Poetry " 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 33 
 
 tricked, they and their pedigrees ; they need no 
 other heralds I wiss/' The statute is, of course, 
 the statute of EHzabeth (see 14 EHz., c. 5, and 39 
 Eliz., c. 4) under which players were classed with 
 " Rogues and Vagabonds " unless duly licensed 
 to play under the hand and seal of any Baron of 
 the Realm or other Personage of greater Degree, 
 and one can hardly doubt that the words, " they 
 are blazoned there," etc., are a hit at Shakspere's 
 prolonged but ultimately successful efforts to 
 obtain a Coat of Arms, to which Jonson makes 
 another and still more obvious allusion in Every 
 Man out of his Humour. I refer to the conversation 
 between Sogliardo^ Sir PuntarvolOy and Carlo 
 Buffone, the Jester, in Act III., sc. 1. Here we 
 find Sogliardo saying, 
 
 " By this parchment, gentlemen, I have been so toiled 
 among the harrots [i.e., heralds] yonder you will not believe ; 
 they do speak i' the strangest language and give a man the 
 hardest terms for his money, that ever you knew." 
 
 *' But," asks Carlo Buffone, '' ha* you arms ? 
 ha' you arms ? " To which Sogliardo replies : 
 "I' faith I thank God, / ca7i write myself a gentle- 
 man now ; here's my patent, it cost me thirty 
 pound by this breath." 
 
 Then, after more talk about this newly-granted 
 " coat " and the " crest," during which Puntarvolo 
 says (" aside ") *' It is the most vile, foolish, 
 absurd, palpable, and ridiculous escutcheon that 
 ever these eyes survised," the same character, 
 asked by Sogliardo, " How Hke you 'hem, 
 signior .? " replies, " Let the word [i.e., the Motto] 
 be, * Not without mustard.' Your crest is very 
 rare, sir." 
 
 Now these words, *' not without mustard," are, 
 I think undoubtedly a parody of the Motto 
 
34 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 assigned to Shakspere, when he and his father, 
 after much " toiUng among the harrots," obtained 
 from them a grant of arms with the challenging 
 Motto ** Non sans Droits This they finally did 
 in 1599, though they had previously obtained a 
 draft, and a "tricking " {cf. " there they are 
 tricked '* of the Poetaster) in October, 1596, and 
 another later in the same year, neither of which 
 drafts, says Sir Sidney Lee, was fully executed.^ 
 Every Man out of his Humour was produced in 
 1599, and it may be noted that Sogliardo, who is 
 laughed at as " a boor '* by Sir Puntarvoloy is the 
 younger brother of Sordido^ a farmer (Shakspere's 
 father was also a farmer amongst other things) and 
 is described as " so enamoured of the name of 
 gentleman that he will have it though he buys it." 
 The Poetaster was entered on the stationers* 
 registers in December, 1601.^ 
 
 Now is it possible to believe that when Jonson 
 composed that splendid eulogium of *' Shake- 
 speare " which was prefixed to the Folio of 1623, 
 he was really addressing the man whom he had 
 satirized as " Poet-Ape," and whose proceedings 
 in obtaining a coat of arms, in order that he might 
 " write himself a gentleman," he had held up to 
 public contempt and ridicule ? It appears to me 
 impossible so to believe.^ 
 
 1 See A Life of Shakespeare (1915), p. 282 ^eg. 
 
 2 I have dealt with these matters at some length in The Shake- 
 speare Problem Restated (1903). See p. 454 et seq. 
 
 ' If he had come to look upon the man whom he had satirized 
 under the name of *' Poet-Ape " as having become the " Soul of 
 the Age " would he have repubhshed the Epigram among " the 
 ripest of his studies " in 1616, and in a volume dedicated to the 
 Earl of Pembroke ? And would he have continued the con- 
 temptuous passage concerning Shakspere's coat of arms in 
 Every Man out of his Humour, when he published that play in 
 1601 and again in 1616 ? 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 35 
 
 We, therefore, who find ourselves unable to 
 believe that the young man who came from 
 Stratford to London in 1587 as ''a Stratford 
 rustic" (as Messrs. Garnett and Gosse very truly 
 describe him in their Illustrated History of English 
 Literature, p. 200), composed " Lovers Labour's 
 Lost " in, say, 1590, and Venus and Adonis in, say, 
 1592 ; we to whom the arguments against the 
 " Stratfordian " authorship appear insuperable ; 
 we who are in agreement with Professor Lefranc 
 when he writes : '* J'ai la conviction que toute 
 personne dont le jugement est reste libre en ce 
 qui concerne le probleme shakespearien, recon- 
 naitra que les anciennes positions de la doctrine 
 traditionelle ne sauraient etre maintenues "^ ; we 
 " heretics " are convinced that when Ben Jonson 
 wrote his panegyric of '* Shakespeare " as a send- 
 off for the Folio, in the publication of which he 
 was so closely associated, he was perfectly well 
 aware that " Shakespeare " — speak of him as the 
 " Swan of Avon " though he might, and depreciate 
 his learning though he might^ — was, in truth and in 
 fact, but a mask-name for other writers, and more 
 particularly for one man of transcendent genius 
 who was, indeed, '' not of an age but for all time." 
 
 1 Sous de Masque de " William Shakespeare," by Abel Lefrane, 
 Professor au College de France (1919), Preface p. xiii. 
 
 2 " And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek " wrote 
 Jonson. '* Here," says the learned Dr. Ingleby, " hadst is the 
 subjunctive. The passage may be thus paraphrased : ' Even 
 if thou hadst little scholarship, I would not seek to honour thee 
 by calling thee as others have done, Ovid, Plautus, Terence, etc., 
 i.e., by the names of the classical poets, but would rather invite 
 them to witness how far thou dost outshine them.' Ben does 
 not assert that Shakespeare had ' little Latin and less Greek,' as 
 several understand him." {Centurie of Prayse, 2nd Edit., p. 151). 
 This may be correct, but others contend that Ben's words are to 
 be taken not in the subjunctive but in the indicative mood. It 
 may be so, since Ben was writing on the hypothesis that the 
 player would be generally taken as the poet, and, naturally, had 
 to adapt his language to that hypothesis. Either interpretation 
 will equally well suit the sceptical case. 
 
36 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And here it seems right that I should say a word 
 concerning Jonson's ten Hnes *' To the Reader,'* 
 introducing him to the Droeshout Engraving of 
 " Gentle Shakespeare." 
 
 Now as to this famous engraving, I can never 
 understand how any unprejudiced person, endowed 
 with a sense of humour, can look upon it without 
 being tempted to irreverent laughter. Not only 
 is it, as many have pointed out, and as is apparent 
 even to the untrained eye, altogether out of 
 drawing ; not only is the head preternaturally 
 large for the body ; not only is it quaintly sug- 
 gestive of an unduly deferred razor ; but it looks 
 at one with a peculiar expression of sheepish 
 oafishness which is irresistibly comic. As George 
 Steevens long ago remarked, " Shakespeare's 
 countenance deformed by Droeshout resembles 
 the sign of Sir Roger de Coverley when it had 
 been changed into a Saracen's head, on which 
 occasion the Spectator observes that the features 
 of the gentle knight were still apparent through 
 the lineaments of the ferocious Mussulman." 
 Even Mr. Pollard writes : "If his [Jonson's] lines 
 on Droeshout's portrait are compared with their 
 subject, we may well be inclined to wonder whether 
 he had seen that very doubtful masterpiece at the 
 time that he wrote them " — a suggestion which 
 certainly does not say much for the value of 
 Jonson's testimony. 
 
 And it is of this ridiculous caricature that 
 Jonson writes : 
 
 This Figure that thou seest put 
 It was for gentle Shakespeare cut 
 Wherein the graver had a strife 
 With nature to out-doo the hfe. 
 
 Now Jonson was an enthusiast concerning the 
 pictorial art. " Whoever loves not picture," he 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 37 
 
 writes, *' is injurious to truth and all the wisdom 
 of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the 
 most ancient and most akin to Nature."^ How 
 then could he have thus written concerning the 
 Droeshout signboard ? When one looks at this 
 graven image of the Folio frontispiece, the sugges- 
 tion that the Graver had here a strife with nature 
 to " out-doo the life " appears to be so absurd 
 that, surely, it can hardly be taken as seriously 
 intended. 
 
 And what interpretation are we to put upon the 
 following lines ? 
 
 O, could he but have drawn his wit 
 As well in brass as he hath hit 
 His face, the Print would then surpasse 
 All that was ever writ in brasse. 
 
 Sir Sidney Lee's comment is : '' Jonson's 
 testimony does no credit to his artistic discern- 
 ment." But is it possible to believe that old Ben 
 was not only so lacking in " artistic discernment " 
 but also so deficient in the sense of humour and 
 the perception of the grotesque as to write these 
 lines with the Droeshout engraving before him, if, 
 indeed, he wrote them seriously ? I think, on 
 the contrary, it is reasonable to believe that Jonson 
 was aware when he so wrote that this portentous 
 caricature was not, in truth and in fact, a portrait 
 of the true Shakespeare ; that the lines above 
 quoted are capable of a meaning other than that 
 which the ordinary reader would put upon 
 them ; that, as that '* orthodox " writer, Mr. John 
 Corbin, says, Ben does well to advise the reader, 
 " if he wants to find the real Shakespeare, to turn 
 to the plays " and to look " not on his picture, but 
 his book," which is certainly very excellent advice. 
 
 1 Discoveries CIX. and CX., Poesis et pictura and De Pictura. 
 
38 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Here, then, the sceptic can find no strengthening 
 of the orthodox tradition concerning the Shake- 
 spearean authorship. He rather prays in aid the 
 portentous Droeshout portrait, and the Jonsonian 
 lines, as lending themselves to a cryptic inter- 
 pretation which, as it appears to him, may quite 
 reasonably be put upon them, and which is, to 
 say the least of it, quite consistent with the 
 " heretical " case.^ 
 
 But did those who were intimate with Shakspere 
 of Stratford really believe that he was the man whom 
 Jonson intended to eulogise as the author of the 
 plays of *' Shakespeare " ? Did they themselves 
 believe that he was, in truth and in fact, the author 
 of those plays ? 
 
 Now but twelve years after Jonson's magnificent 
 panegyric was published, viz., in 1635, we find 
 that the Burbages, to wit, Cuthbert Burbage, and 
 Winifred, the widow of Richard Burbage, and 
 William his son, presented a petition to the Earl 
 of Pembroke and Montgomery, the survivor of 
 the " Incomparable Pair " to whom the Folio 
 was dedicated in such eulogistic terms, and then 
 Lord Chamberlain, praying that their rights and 
 interests in the Globe Theatre, which they say 
 they built at great expense, and the Blackfriars, 
 which was their inheritance from their father — 
 those theatres where " Shakespeare's " dramas 
 were presented — should be recognized and re- 
 spected. The petitioners are naturally anxious to 
 say all they possibly can for themselves and the 
 company of players with whom they were 
 associated, and they seek to enforce their claim by 
 a reference to the past history of those theatres, 
 
 1 I have dealt with this matter at greater length in Is there a 
 Shakespeare Problem ? at p. 395 et seq. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 39 
 
 and those connected with them, both as players and 
 profit-sharers. One of those players, one of the 
 " partners in the profits of that they call the 
 House " (viz., the Globe) was William Shakspere. 
 
 And how^ do they speak of him ? Surely here 
 was a great opportunity to remind the Earl that 
 one of their company had been that man of 
 transcendent genius, '* Shakespeare," the great 
 dramatist, the renowned poet, the " sweet swan 
 of Avon," whom no less a man than Ben Jonson 
 had eulogised but twelve years before — viz., in 
 that great work containing his collected plays 
 which was dedicated to the Earl himself and his 
 brother — as the " Soul of the age, the applause, 
 delight, the w^onder of the stage " ; that man whom, 
 and whose works, the two Earls had " prosecuted 
 with so much favour " during his lifetime ! 
 Surely they ought to have done this ! Surely, as 
 shrewd men of business, wishing to recommend 
 their case to the Lord Chamberlain, they could 
 not fail to recite these facts, so much in their 
 favour, if facts they were ! Surely they must have 
 appealed to Jonson's splendid panegyric of their 
 fellow, it they really believed that the Earl believed 
 that it was their fellow whom Jonson had in mind 
 as the author of the plays and the object of his 
 eulogy ! Yet what do they actually say ? *' To 
 ourselves we joined those deserving men, Shakespere, 
 Heminge, Condall, Phillips, and others, partners 
 in the profits, etc.," and, as to the Blackfriars, 
 there they say they ' placed men players which 
 were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, etc." 
 
 Those of the orthodox faith, who refuse to admit 
 that there is a Shakespeare Problem at all, of 
 course make light of this. They affect to think 
 it the most natural thing in the world. Yet, 
 
40 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 surely, to the impartial man it must seem incredible 
 that the Burbages should have thus written about 
 Shakspere, calling him just a *' man-player," and 
 speaking of him in the same terms as of the other 
 players, viz., as a " deserving man," and nothing 
 more, if indeed both they and the Lord Chamberlain 
 knew, and all the world knew, that he was the 
 immortal poet who was *' not of an age but for all 
 time," whose collected works, dedicated to the 
 two Earls, to their everlasting honour, had been 
 for twelve years before the public, and whose 
 poems, dedicated to another great Earl, were 
 ** familiar as household words " to every man of 
 the time who had the slightest pretension to literary 
 taste or knowledge ! The author of Venus and 
 Adonis^ and LucrecCy of Hamlet^ Lear^ and Othello^ 
 of As You Like It^ The Merchant^ and Twelfth 
 Nighty and all the other immortal works, but a 
 " man-player " and " a deserving man " ! Is it 
 not incredible that he should be so described ? 
 
 But it was as a fellow-player — a '* man-player " 
 and a '* deserving man " — that the Burbages knew 
 Shakspere. It was in these capacities that the 
 Earl of Pembroke knew him ; and it was in these 
 capacities, as I am convinced, that Ben Jonson 
 knew him, however much it may have suited his 
 purpose and the purpose of those who were 
 associated with him in the publication of the Folio, 
 that he should " camouflage " the immortal poet 
 under the semblance of the player. 
 
 The truth is, as I cannot doubt, that the Burbages 
 were writing as plain men dealing with facts, while 
 Jonson*s ambiguous poem has to be interpreted 
 in an esoteric sense. If then, the real truth were 
 known, I have no doubt that the '* irrefragable 
 rock " would turn out to be but scenic canvas 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 41 
 
 after all. There was ** camouflage " even in 
 those days, and plenty of it, although the name 
 was then unknown.^ 
 
 1 Another instance in point is the case of John Manningham, 
 barrister of the Middle Temple, a cultured and well-educated 
 man, who saw Tzvelfth Night acted in the Hall of that Inn, and was 
 so struck by it that he makes an appreciative note in his diary 
 concerning it, under date Feb. 2, 1601, yet had no idea that 
 player Shakspere was the author of the play, for on March 13 of 
 the same year he makes a note of a scandalous story concerning 
 Burbage and Shakspere while acting in Richard III., and instead 
 of recording that Shakspere was the author either of that play 
 or of the play that pleased them so much on the occasion of their 
 Grand Night at the Middle Temple, he appends the laconic 
 remark, " Shakespeare's name William ! " How differently did 
 he speak of Ben Jonson ! Would he write " Jonson's name 
 Benjamin ? " Hardly. He well knew the literary and the 
 theatrical world, and he tells us of " Ben Jonson, the poet," 
 though " Shakespeare the poet " was unknown to him ! See 
 the Diary under date Feb. 12, 1603. 
 
NOTE A 
 JONSON AND BACON 
 
 Although I have no intention of appearing as an 
 advocate of the " Baconian " hypothesis, it seems 
 desirable to say a word here concerning the 
 relations between Bacon and Jonson. 
 
 There is, I think, good warrant for saying that 
 in some of his dramas Jonson made satirical 
 allusions to Bacon, but, however this may be, it is 
 certain that in later years the two were on very 
 intimate terms, and that Jonson entertained feelings 
 of the highest respect and esteem towards *' the 
 large-browed Verulam."^ I do not know that 
 there is evidence to show just how it was that such 
 intimacy commenced, but we learn from his 
 conversation with Drummond that when Ben was 
 setting forth, in the summer of 1618, on his walk 
 to Scotland, Bacon laughingly told him that '* he 
 loved not to see Poesy go on other feet than 
 poetical Dactylus and Spondaeus." We know, 
 too, that Bacon wrote in 1623, the very year of the 
 publication of the Shakespeare Folio, *' My labours 
 are now most set to have those works which I had 
 formerly published. . . . well translated into Latin 
 by the help of some good pens that forsake me 
 not "^; and that Jonson was one of these " good 
 pens " we know, because, in " Remains now set 
 forth by him under the title of Baconiana," Arch- 
 bishop Tenison relates that the Latin translation 
 of Bacon's Essays " was a work performed by 
 diverse hands ; by those of Dr. Hackett (late 
 Bishop of Lichfield), Mr. Benjamin Johnson (the 
 learned and judicious poet), and others whose 
 
 1 It seems somewhat remarkable that Jonson's feelings con- 
 cerning both Bacon and " Shakespeare " appear to have changed 
 at just about the same time. 
 
 2 Spedding. Letters and Life, Vol. VIL, p. 428. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 43 
 
 names I once heard from Dr. Rawley, but I cannot 
 now recall them." 
 
 But there is evidence that Jonson was working 
 for Bacon some years before 1623. We find, for 
 example, Thomas Meautys writing to Lord St. 
 Alban in 1621-2, " Your books are ready and 
 passing well bound up. Mr. Johnson will be 
 with your lordship to-morrow."^ But, further, 
 we know that on January 22, 1621, Bacon had kept 
 his sixtieth birthday at York House, and that 
 Jonson had been with him, and had composed his 
 well-known Ode in honour of that event. ^ 
 
 We find, then, Jonson a frequent visitor, if not 
 also a resident, at York House, on intimate terms 
 with Bacon, writing a highly complimentary ode 
 to him on his birthday, and translating his works 
 into Latin in 1623, the date when the Shakespeare 
 Folio first saw the light. 
 
 We find, further, that Jonson is if not actually 
 editing that work, at any rate taking great and 
 responsible part in its publication. Nor can we 
 omit to notice that if Jonson challenges " com- 
 parison " of Shakespeare's works with " all that 
 insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome sent forth, or 
 since did from their ashes come," he writes of 
 Bacon in exactly the same terms, viz. : that he 
 has *' performed that in our tongue which may be 
 compared or preferred either to insolent Greece 
 or haughty Rome " — truly a most extraordinary 
 coincidence, however much the " Stratfordians " 
 may endeavour to make light of it. 
 
 Now that Bacon, whether or not he wrote any 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 354. 
 
 ^ It has been further said that Jonson was for a considerable 
 time a resident member of Bacon's household, but I do not know 
 whether there is sufficient evidence in support of this statement. 
 
44 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of the plays, was concerned in their collection and 
 publication in 1623, although he himself was, as 
 usual, working ** behind the scenes," appears to 
 me eminently probable, and it is, to say the least 
 of it, very possible that if we only knew the real 
 circumstances in which that precious volume was 
 given to the world a flood of light might be thrown 
 on the Jonsonian utterances. 
 
 A powerful writer, and highly distinguished 
 literary man, thus writes concerning the " Shake- 
 speare Problem " ; "I am * a sort of ' haunted 
 by the conviction that the divine William is the 
 biggest and most successful fraud ever practised 
 on a patient world. The more I turn him round 
 and round the more he so affects me. But that 
 is all — I am not pretending to treat the question 
 or to carry it any further. It bristles with diffi- 
 culties and I can only express my general sense 
 by saying that I find it almost as impossible to 
 conceive that Bacon wrote the plays as to conceive 
 that the man from Stratford, as we know the man 
 from Stratford, did." So wrote Henry James to 
 Miss Violet Hunt in August, 1903. {Letters^ 
 Macmillan, 1920, Vol. I., p. 432). Henry James, 
 therefore, found it almost impossible to conceive 
 that Bacon wrote the plays, but quite impossible 
 to conceive that '' the man from Stratford " wrote 
 them. But this was written nearly twenty years 
 ago, and much critical water has flowed beneath 
 the Stratford bridge since that date, and it is but 
 truth to say that all recent criticism and investi- 
 gation have enormously strengthened the " anti- 
 Stratfordian " case. The belief that the plays 
 and poems of Shakespeare were written by '' the 
 man from Stratford " is one of the greatest of the 
 many delusions which have afflicted " a patient 
 world." 
 
NOTE B. (see p. 24.) 
 
 In speaking of William Shakspere as " actor-manager *' 
 I have followed the *' orthodox " hypothesis, but there 
 appears to be very little evidence to show that he really 
 occupied that position ; in fact there seems to be no 
 little doubt with regard to his position on the stage 
 generally. In the spring of 1597 he purchased New 
 Place at Stratford-on-Avon, and, says Halliv/ell- 
 Phillipps, " there is no doubt that New Place was hence- 
 forward to be accepted as his established residence.'' Early 
 in the following year, on February 4th, 1598, corn being 
 then at an unprecedented and almost famine price at 
 Stratford-on-Avon, he is returned as the holder of ten 
 quarters in the Chapel Street Ward, that in which the 
 newly acquired property was situated, and in none of 
 the indentures is he described as a Londoner, but always 
 as " William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, in the 
 County of Warwick, gentleman." (H.P. Vol. I., p. 122, 
 6th Edn.) There is evidence, as HalHw^ell-Phillipps 
 also tells us, that at this time he was taking great interest 
 in the maintenance and improvement of his grounds, 
 orchards, etc. " Thenceforward his land, property and 
 tithes purchases, along with the fact that in 1604 he 
 takes legal action to enforce payment of a debt for malt 
 which he had been supplying for some months past, 
 are circumstances much more suggestive of permanent 
 residence in Stratford, with an occasional visit may be 
 to London, than of permanent residence in London, 
 with occasional trips to Stratford. . . . From the 
 time when he was described as William Shakspere of 
 Stratford-upon-Avon (1597) there is no proof that he 
 was anywhere domiciled in London, whilst the proofs 
 of his domiciliation in Stratford from this time forward 
 are irrefutable and continuous. Clearly our conceptions 
 of his residency in London are in need of complete 
 revision."^ 
 
 ** Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke," adds Mr. 
 Looney, " in the Life of Shakspere, published along with 
 their edition of his plays, date his retirement to Stratford 
 
 ^^^ Shakespeare^^ Identified, bv J. Thomas Looney (Cecil 
 Palmer, 1920) p. 56. 
 
46 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in the year 1604 precisely. After pointing out that in 
 1605 he is described as * WilUam Shakspere, gentleman, 
 of Stratford-on-Avon,' they continued : ' Several things 
 conduced to make him resolve upon ceasing to be an 
 actor, and 1604 has generally been considered the date 
 when he did so.' Several other writers, less Avell- 
 known, repeat this date ; and works of reference, 
 written for the most part some years ago, place his 
 retirement in the same year. ' There is no doubt he 
 never meant to return to London, except for business 
 visits, after 1604 ' {National Encyclopedia)'' {Ibid., 
 p. 424.) 
 
 We are told that Shakspere lodged at one time in 
 Bishopgate, and, later on, in Southwark, *' because he 
 was a defaultant taxpayer (for two amounts of 5s. and 
 13s. 4d. respectively) for whom the authorities were 
 searching in 1598, ignorant of the fact that he had moved, 
 some years before, from Bishopsgate to Southwark. 
 Evidently, then, he was not at that time living in the 
 public eye and mixing freely in dramatic and literary 
 circles." {Ibid., p. 58). According to Sir Sidney Lee, 
 Shakspere became liable for an aggregate sum of 
 {^2 13s. 4d. for each of three subsidies, but *' the col- 
 lectors of taxes in the City of London worked sluggishly. 
 For three years they put no pressure on the [alleged] 
 dramatist, and Shakespeare left Bishopsgate without 
 discharging the debt. Soon afterwards, however, the 
 Bishopsgate officials traced him to his new Southwark 
 lodging." {Life, 1915, p. 274). But here we are met 
 by the assertion of another eminent Shakespearean 
 authority, viz. : Professor C. W. Wallace, of the " New- 
 Shakespeare Discoveries," who tells us " there is ample 
 evidence of a negative sort, that Shakespeare never had 
 residence in Southwark ! " {Harper's Magazine, 
 March, 1910, p. 505). *' Who shall decide when 
 doctors disagree } " This conflict of opinion but 
 further illustrates the fact of the mystery which sur- 
 rounds the question of Shakspere's residences while in 
 London. 
 
 And now we are confronted with the dates of the 
 Shakespearean drama. " It was not till the year 1597," 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 47 
 
 says Halliwell-Phillipps, " that Shakespeare's public 
 reputation as a dramatist was sufficiently established 
 for the booksellers to be anxious to secure the copyright 
 of his plays." (Vol. I., p. 134). In 1598 his name 
 appears for the first time on the title page of a play, viz. : 
 Love's Labour's Lost, where the author's name is given — 
 for that one occasion only— as " W. Shakespere," and 
 subsequently in the same year, on the title pages of 
 Richard II. and Richard III., the author appears as 
 *' William Shake-speare." '* We are consequently 
 faced," writes Mr. J. T. Looney, ** with this peculiar 
 situation that what has been regarded as the period of 
 his highest fame in London began at the same time as 
 his formal retirement to Stratford ; and whilst there is 
 undoubted mystery connected with his place or places 
 of abode in London, there is none connected with his 
 residence in Stratford. A curious fact in this con- 
 nection is that the only letter that is known to have been 
 addressed to him in the whole course of his life was from 
 a native of Stratford addressed to him in London, 
 which appears amongst the records of the Stratford 
 Corporation, and which ' was no doubt forwarded by 
 hand [to Shakspere whilst in London] otherwise the 
 locality of residence would have been added ' (Halliwell- 
 Phillipps). Evidently his fellow townsmen who wished 
 to communicate with him in London were unaware of 
 his residence there ; and the fact that this letter was 
 discovered amongst the archives of the Stratford Cor- 
 poration suggests that it had never reached the 
 addressee " (p. 59). " In 1597 the publication of the 
 plays begins in real earnest. In 1598 they begin to 
 appear with ' Shakespeare's ' name attached. From 
 then till 1604 was the period of full flood of publication 
 during William Shakspere's life time : and this great 
 period of * Shakespearean ' publication (1597-1604) 
 corresponds exactly with William Shakspere's busiest 
 period in Stratford. In 1597 he began the business 
 connected with the purchase of New Place. Compli- 
 cations ensued, and the purchase was not completed 
 till 1602. * In 1598 he procured stone for the repair of 
 the house, and before 1602 had olanted a fruit orchard.' 
 
48 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 (S.L.) In 1597 his father and mother * doubtless under 
 their son's guidance ' began a law-suit for the recovery 
 of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilmcote, which 
 
 * dragged on for some years.' (S.L.) ' Between 1597 
 and 1599 (he was) rebuilding the house, stocking the 
 barns with grain, and conducting various legal pro- 
 ceedings.' (S.L.) In 1601 his father died and he took 
 over his father's property. On May 1, 1602, he pur- 
 chased 107 acres of arable land. In Septem.ber, 1602, 
 
 * one Walter Gatley transferred to the poet a cottage and 
 garden which were situated at Chapel Lane opposite 
 the lower grounds of New Place.' ' As early as 1598 
 Abraham Sturley had suggested that Shakespeare 
 [William Shakspere] should purchase the tithes of 
 Stratford.' In 1605 he completed the purchase of * an 
 unexpired term of these tithes.' * In July, 1604, in 
 the local court at Stratford he sued Philip Rogers, whom 
 he had supplied since the preceding March with malt 
 to the value of £1 19s. lOd., and on June 25 lent 2s. in 
 cash.' In a personal record from which so much is 
 missing we may justly assume that what we know of his 
 dealings in Stratford forms only a small part of his 
 activities there. Consequently, to the contention that 
 this man was the author and directing genius of the 
 magnificent stream of dramatic literature which in those 
 very years was bursting upon London, the business 
 record we have just presented would in almost any 
 court in the land be deemed to have proved an alibi. 
 The general character of these business transactions, 
 even to such touches as lending the trifling sum of 2s. 
 to a person to whom he was selling malt, is all suggestive 
 of his own continuous day to day contact with the details 
 of his Stratford business affairs." So writes Mr. 
 Looney, with more to the same effect, and, in connexion 
 with his argument, we must remember that a journey 
 from London to Stratford and back was a very difterent 
 thing in Shakspere's time than what it is now, and, 
 indeed, from what it was some hundred years later than 
 Shakspere's time, when roads and means of communi- 
 cation had been somewhat improved. 
 
 There is, however, evidence that in the year 1604 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 49 
 
 Shakspere was lodging with one Montjoy, a ** tire- 
 maker " {i.e., wig-maker) in *' Muggle Streete " {i.e., 
 Monkw^ell Street) near Wood Street, Cheapside, for in 
 the case of Bellott v. Montjoy, which was heard in the 
 Court of Requests in 1612, there is a deposition signed, 
 according to Professor Wallace, who discovered the 
 documents at the Record Office, *' Willm Shaks," but 
 according to Sir E. Maude Thompson, " Willm Shakp,"^ 
 wherein the witness is described as " William Shakes- 
 peare," (not of London, be it remarked, but) *' of 
 Stratford-upon-Avon in the Countye of Warwicke, 
 gentleman " (but not either as actor or dramatist !) 
 from which, and other depositions, it appears that 
 '* Will " was, in fact, lodging at that time with the worthy 
 " tire-maker," and lent his good offices to persuade 
 Montjoy's apprentice Bellott to solicit the hand of the 
 said Montjoy's daughter Mary in holy matrimony ; 
 whereupon the enthusiastic Professor W^allace at once 
 jumps to the conclusion that " here at the corner of 
 Muggell and Silver Streets Shakespeare was living when 
 he wrote some of his greatest plays — Henry F., Much 
 Ado, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Julius 
 Ccesar, Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth, Measure for 
 Measure, Othello " / About this he tells us there can 
 be no possible doubt W'hatever ! But as this is the same 
 Professor who also informed us that Shakspere " honors 
 his host by raising him in the play [Henry V.] to the 
 dignity of a French Herald under his own name of 
 Montjoy," in blissful ignorance of the fact that *' Mont- 
 joy, King-at-Arms " was the official name of a French 
 Herald, who, as Holinshed (whose history the Professor 
 had apparently either not read or forgotten) tells us, 
 was conspicuous at the time of the battle of Agincourt, 
 and as, moreover, there is no evidence whatever for the 
 above wild assertion, we may be content to dismiss 
 such futilities with a smile, and pass on to more serious 
 considerations.^ 
 
 1 will here leave this vexed question of Shakspere's 
 residence in London. Much more might be said, but 
 
 * See my Shakspere's Handwriting (John Lane, 1920). 
 
 2 See Note at p. 55. 
 
50 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I think enough has already been said to give us pause 
 when we are asked to accept the statement that at one 
 and the same period he was transacting all this business 
 at Stratford, and composing all these marvellous plays, 
 and performing the duties of " actor-manager " at a 
 London theatre. To us, however, who entertain no 
 doubt whatever that player Shakspere of Stratford was 
 not the author of the plays and poems of ** Shakespeare," 
 there appears to be no impossibility in the hypothesis 
 that the player occupied the position of manager of the 
 theatre with which he was connected, more especially 
 in view of the fact that there is no evidence whatever to 
 show that any important roles were at any time assigned 
 to him in the Shakespearean, or any other plays. 
 
 '* There was not a single company of actors in 
 Shakespeare's time," says Halliwell-Phillipps, ** which 
 did not make professional visits through nearly all the 
 English counties, and in the hope of discovering traces 
 of his footsteps during his provincial tours " this writer 
 tells us that he has personally examined the records of 
 no less than forty-six important towns in all parts of 
 the country, ** but in no single instance," says he, " have 
 I found in any municipal record a notice of the poet 
 himself."^ Later investigations, including the archives 
 of some five and twenty additional cities, have proved 
 equally fruitless, yet, writes Sir Sidney Lee, indulging 
 once more in his favourite adverb, " Shakespeare may 
 be credited with faithfully fulfilling all his professional 
 functions, and some of the references to travel in his 
 sonnets were doubtless reminiscences of early acting 
 tours " ! The records of Edinburgh have been searched 
 but again with negative results. There is no evidence 
 whatever that Shakspere was ever north of the Tweed. 
 With regard to performances in London, the accounts 
 of the Treasurer of the Chamber, showing payments 
 made for performances of The Burbage Company for 
 the years 1597-1616 (except for the year 1602 the record 
 of which is missing) have been scrutinized. Here we 
 find mention of Heminge, Burbage, Cowley, Bryan, 
 Pope and Augustine Phillipps, but not once does the 
 
 i Outlines, Second Edition (1882) pp. xiv., xv. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 51 
 
 name of William Shakspere occur in all these accounts. 
 As to the Lord Chamberlain's books, which, as Mrs. 
 Slopes writes, '* supply much information concerning 
 plays and players," the documents, as she adds, 
 ** unfortunately are missing for the most important years 
 of Shakespearean history." ** In the light of all the 
 other mysterious silences regarding William Shakspere," 
 says Mr. Looney, '* and the total disappearance of the 
 * Shakespeare * manuscripts, so carefully guarded during 
 the years preceding the publication of the First Folio 
 [viz. : the seven years which elapsed between Shak- 
 spere's death and that publication], the disappearance 
 of the Lord Chamberlain's books, recording the trans- 
 actions of his department for the greatest period in its 
 history, hardly looks like pure accident." Be this as 
 it may, the loss is certainly very remarkable and most 
 unfortunate. An entry has, however, been discovered 
 in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber to the 
 following effect ; — " To William Kempe, WiUiam 
 Shakespeare, and Richarde Burbage, servaunts to the 
 Lord Chamberleyne, upon the Councelles warrant 
 dated at Whitehall XV. to Marcij, 1594, for twoeseverall 
 comedies or enterludes shewed by them before her 
 Majestie in Christmas tyme laste paste, viz. : upon St. 
 Stephen's dave and Innocentes dave ... in all 
 XX. li." (H.P. Vol. L, p. 109). A foolish attempt has 
 been made to make " Stratfordian " capital out of this, 
 because the entry in question is said to have been pre- 
 pared by the Countess of Southam.pton, to v/hose son 
 " Shakespeare " had dedicated his two poems. As a 
 fact, however, the entry referred to occurs in a roll of 
 the Pipe Office " declared accounts," which contains 
 the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber from 
 September, 1579, to July, 1596. These accounts were 
 engrossed year by year by one of the Clerks in the Pipe 
 Office, and signed by the Accountant in each year, or 
 period of years. Now in 1594 Sir Thomas Heneage 
 was Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber, and in May of 
 that year he married Mary, widow of Henry Wriothesley, 
 Earl of Southampton, but he died in October of the 
 following year, and it seems that no ** declared accounts " 
 
52 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 had at that date been rendered since September, 1592. 
 The Queen, therefore, issued her warrant to the Countess 
 as widow and executrix of the late Treasurer, com- 
 manding her to render the account, which she duly did 
 from September 29th, 1592, to November 30th, 1595. 
 The entry in question therefore had no doubt, been 
 prepared by one of the clerks in the office of the Trea- 
 surer of the Chamber, and was thus sent in to the Pipe 
 Office by the Countess, according to the Queen's 
 command. She was thus only formally connected with 
 the account, and further than this there appears to have 
 been no connexion whatever between her and Shakspere 
 of Stratford. In all probability she never even saw 
 the entry in question.^ All that appears, therefore, from 
 this entry, is that *' William Shakespeare," with Kempe 
 and Burbage, about March, 1594, received payment of 
 fJlO in all for two comedies or interludes *' showed " 
 by them " at the preceding Christmas, though what 
 these comedies or interludes were, and what part in 
 them was assigned to *' William Shakespeare " we are 
 not informed. He might have acted as prompter or 
 stage-manager for all we know. ** And this," writes 
 Mr. Looney, ** although occurring three years before the 
 opening of the period of his [i.e., * Shakespeare's '] 
 fame, is the only thing that can be called an official 
 record of active participation in the performances of 
 the Lord Chamberlain's Company, afterwards called 
 the King's Players, and erroneously spoken of as 
 Shakespeare's Company : the company of which he 
 is supposed to have been one of the leading lights." 
 
 Jonson inserts the name of Shakespeare in the castes 
 of his plays. Every Man in his Humour, and Sejanus, but 
 no mention is made of the parts played by him. ** We 
 know," says Mr. Looney, ** neither what parts he played 
 nor how^ he played them ; but the one thing we do know 
 is that they had nothing to do with the great * Shakes- 
 peare ' plays. There is not a single record during the 
 whole of his life of his ever appearing in a play of 
 ' Shakespeare's.* . . . It is worth while noticing that 
 although Jonson gives a foremost place to the name of 
 
 ^ See my Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 28. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 53 
 
 * Shakespeare ' in these Hsts [viz. : of his plays above- 
 mentioned] when Jonson's ' Every Man out of his 
 Humour ' was played by the Lord Chamberlain's 
 Company, the whole of the company, with one notable 
 exception, had parts assigned to them. That one 
 exception was Shakspere, who does not appear at all 
 in the cast."^ 
 
 All that Sir Sidney Lee can say, after mentioning a 
 number of plays which Shakspere and his colleagues 
 are said to have produced before the sovereign in 
 Shakspere's life-time, is '' It may be presumed that in 
 all these dramas some role was allotted to him 1 " In 
 the list of actors prefixed to the Folio of 1623, in the 
 preparation and publication of which Jonson took such 
 a large part, the name of " William Shakespeare " 
 stands first, as in the circumstances, we should expect 
 that it w'ould. But what parts did he play ? Rowe 
 in his " Life of William Shakspear," published some 
 ninety-three years after Shakspere's death, says, "though 
 I have inquired I could never meet with any further 
 account of him this way [viz. : as an actor] than that 
 the top of his Performance was the Ghost in his own 
 Hamlet " .' 
 
 All w'e can say, then, is that Shakspere was one of 
 ** those deserving men," whom the Burbages, in their 
 petition to the Lord Chamberlain, in 1635, say they 
 joined to themselves as " partners in the profits " of 
 the Globe ; those ** men players " w^hom they placed 
 at the Black Friars. (Ante, p. 34.) Whether or not 
 he acted as '* Manager " of either theatre we really 
 do not know. W^e only know that his name in its 
 literary form of " Shakespeare," or " Shake-Speare " 
 was lent or appropriated to cover the authorship of a 
 great number of plays which were published under that 
 name. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that he 
 acted as a " broker of plays " — as I have already sug- 
 gested — on behalf of the theatres with which he was 
 connected. It is curious that we find him in 1613, 
 but three years before his death, after all the great 
 
 ^ See Shakespeare Identified, pp. 73-89. The reference is to 
 the Folio Edition of Jonson's plays published by him in 1616, 
 the year of Shakspere's death. 
 
54 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Shakespearean works had been written, and when, if 
 he were in truth '* the great dramatist '* he must have 
 been at the zenith of his fame, employed with Dick 
 Burbage at Belvoir to work at the Earl of Rutland's 
 new ** device," or *' impreso," for which each of them 
 received the sum of 44s. ! 
 
 Mr. Looney has summarized the results of his exam- 
 ination of the middle or London period of William 
 Shakspere's career, which, omitting three or four of 
 them, are as follows : — 
 
 He was purely passive in respect to all the publications 
 which took place under his name. 
 
 There is the greatest uncertainty respecting the 
 duration of his sojourn in London and the strongest 
 probability that he was actually resident at Stratford 
 whilst the plays were being published. [For *' pub- 
 lished " we might, perhaps, substitute *' performed."] 
 
 Nothing is known of his doings in London, and there 
 is much mystery concerning his place of residence there. 
 
 Only after 1598, the date when plays were first 
 printed with " Shakespeare's " name, are there any 
 contemporary references to him as a dramatist. 
 
 The public knew *' Shakespeare " in print, but knew 
 nothing of the personality of William Shakspere. 
 
 He has left no letter or trace of personal intercourse 
 with any London contemporary or public man. The 
 only letter known to have been sent to him was con- 
 cerned solely with the borrowing of money. 
 
 Although the company with which his name is asso- 
 ciated toured frequently and widely in the provinces, 
 and much has been recorded of their doings, no muni- 
 cipal archive, so far as is known, contains a single refer- 
 ence to him. 
 
 There is no contemporary record of his ever appearing 
 in a " Shakespeare " play. The only plays with which 
 as an actor his name was associated during his life-time 
 are two of Ben Jonson's plays. 
 
 The accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber show 
 only one irregular reference to him, three years before 
 the period of his [i.e., of ** Shakespeare's "] greatest 
 fame, and none at all during or after that period. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 55 
 
 The Lord Chamberlain's Books, which would have 
 [i.e.^ which ought to have] furnished the fullest records 
 of his doings during these years, are, like the " Shake- 
 speare " manuscripts, missing. 
 
 His name is missing from the following records of 
 the Lord Chamberlain's company in which other 
 actor's names appear. 
 
 (1) The cast of Jonson's '* Every Man out of his 
 Humour," in which all the other members of the 
 Company appear. 
 
 (2) The record of proceedings respecting the Essex 
 Rebellion and the Company, [i.e., with regard to the 
 performance of Richard II.] 
 
 (3) The Company's attendance on the Spanish 
 Ambassador in 1604. [See mv Is there a Shakespeare 
 Problem? p. 483.] 
 
 (4) The Company's litigation in 1612. [See Mrs. 
 Stope's *' Burbage and the Shakespeare Stage." pp. 
 106-107.] 
 
 (5) The Company's participation in the installation 
 of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 (6) References to the burning of the Globe Theatre. 
 Further, even rumour and tradition assign him only 
 
 an insignificant role as an actor. 
 
 Note to p. 49. — Dr. Wallace says that " upon his own testimony 
 Shakespeare lived at Mountjoy's during all the time of Bellott's 
 apprenticeship, that is six years from 1598 to 1604 " (Harper's 
 Magazine, March, 1910, p. 505) ; but if Shakespeare's answer to 
 Interrogatories in the case of Bellott v. Mountjoy be examined it 
 will be found that he says nothing of the kind. A recent writer 
 in America, however, has gone one better, and says that Shake- 
 speare lodged with the tire-maker from 1598 to 1612, of which, 
 so far as I know, there is not a scintilla of evidence. The supposed 
 fact, however, is cited in support of the hypothesis that Bacon 
 befriended Shakspere, who thus came under Bacon's influence, 
 because Bacon had a house in Noble Street, close to the junction 
 of " Muggle Str." and " Sylver St." where Mountjoy lived. — 
 Law Sports at Gray's Inn, by Basil Brown, New York, 1921. 
 
NOTE C. (Jonson's Discoveries.) 
 (Referred to at p. 31.) 
 
 Ben Jonson's Timber or Discoveries was published 
 in 1641, and, therefore, some six years after Jonson's 
 death. The work apparently consists of notes written 
 from time to time during the later years of his life. 
 Into whose hands the manuscript notes fell and who 
 edited them, and what became of them, and whether 
 we now have them as Jonson wrote them, is, I appre- 
 hend, unknown. On the title-page we read, " Timber 
 or Discoveries, Made upon Men and Matter : As They 
 have flow'd out of his daily Readings ; or had their 
 refluxe to his peculiar Notion of the Times," with the 
 date MDCXLi. It seems clear that the notes were written 
 during the last years of Jonson's life.^ Sir Israel 
 GoUancz, who edited the work, in the Temple Classics 
 series (1902), writes, with reference to the note De 
 Shakespeare Nostrati (No. lxiv.), *' the impression it 
 leaves is that it must have preceded that noblest of all 
 eulogies on Shakespeare prefixed to the First Folio of 
 1623." But this appears to be an erroneous inference. 
 Dr. Ingleby gives the limits of date as 1630-37 {Centurie 
 of Prayse. Second Edition, p. 174). In an early note 
 (No. XLV.) Jonson speaks of an event which happened 
 in 1630. In note No. LVi. he tells us that his memory 
 was good till he was past forty, but had since much 
 decayed. If, therefore, we assume, as seems reasonable, 
 that he was upwards of fifty when he so wrote, we arrive 
 at a date certainly subsequent to 1623. Moreover in 
 note No. lxxiii.'* he speaks of *' the late Lord Saint 
 Alban," so that this note must have been written 
 ^subsequently to Bacon's death in 1626. 
 
 1 Of that opinion also is Professor Felix Schelling. See his 
 edition of the work (1892), Introduction, p. xvii. See also the 
 edition by Maurice Castelain (Paris, 1906), Introduction, p. xi., 
 M. Castelain suggests that the book may have been begun after 
 the burning of Jonson's library in 1623, 
 
 * The numbers are conveniently prefixed to the notes by Sir 
 I. Gollancz. 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 57 
 
 It appears, therefore, that the note De Shakespeare 
 Nostrati must be taken as representing Jonson's opinion 
 of " the man " Shakspere some seven or more years 
 after the pubUcation of " that noblest of all eulogies."* 
 But some four years before the appearance of the Folio 
 of 1623, viz. : in January, 1619, Jonson was staying 
 with Drummond of Hawthornden, and Drummond 
 made notes of his conversation, and, under the title, 
 or heading, " His Acquaintance and Behaviour with 
 poets living with him," we have recorded remarks made 
 by Ben concerning Daniel, Drayton, Beaumont, Sir 
 John Roe, Marston, Markham, Day, Middleton, 
 Chapman, Fletcher, and others. What do we find 
 concerning Shakspere ? *' That Shakspere wanted 
 arte. . . . Shakspeer in a play, brought in a number 
 of men saying they had suffered shipwrack in Bohemia, 
 where there is no sea neer by some 100 miles." Here, 
 then, we have Jonson unbosoming himself in private 
 conversation with his host and friend, and this, appar- 
 ently, is all he has to say about the great bard who, 
 only four years afterwards, he was to laud to the skies 
 as the " Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the 
 wonder of our stage." We would have expected to 
 find whole pages of eulogy, in Drummond's notes, of 
 the poet who ** was not of an age but for all time," 
 instead of which we have only these two carping little 
 bits of criticism : " That Shakspeer wanted {i.e.y 
 lacked) arte " — a curious remark to have proceeded 
 from the mouth of him who wrote, in the Folio lines, 
 that a poet must be " made as well as born " ; that 
 Nature must be supplemented by art ; and that in 
 Shakespeare's case such art was not lacking, but, on 
 the contrary, was conspicuous '* in his well-turned 
 and true-filed lines." And then that niggling bit of 
 criticism concerning the coast of Bohemia in the 
 Winter's Tale, taken straight from the learned Greene's 
 
 1 " In the remarks de Shakespeare Nostrati we have, doubtless, 
 Ben's closet-opinion of his friend, opposed as it seems to be to 
 that in his address to Britain," prefixed to the Folio of 1623. 
 (Ingleby). 
 
58 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 novel of Dorastus and Fawnia, which may be compared 
 with the depreciatory allusion to Julius Ccesar in the 
 Discoveries. As Professor Herford remarks, "It is 
 significant that both in the * Conversations ' and the 
 * Discoveries,' where high praise is given to others, 
 Jonson only notes in the case of Shakespeare his defi- 
 ciency in qualities on which he himself set a very high 
 value." (Article on Jonson in Diet : Nat : Biog : ). 
 
 With regard to Jonson's allusion to the play oi Julius 
 Ccesar^ some critics have suggested that the lines he 
 has cited are merely misquotation. Thus Mr Andrew 
 Lang asks, *' of whom is Ben writing ? " and answers, 
 ** of the author of Julius Ccesar, certainly, from which, 
 his memor}?^ failing, he misquotes a line." {Shakespeare, 
 Bacotiy and The Great Unknown, p. 257). But if Ben 
 here misquotes, owing to failing memory, it follows that 
 the whole story is a myth. The basis of the story, if 
 Jonson is alluding to the play, is that Julius Ccesar 
 originally contained the words quoted by him, ** Csesar, 
 thou dost me wrong," and Caesar's answer as quoted. 
 But in the play as we now have it there are no words 
 such as ** Caesar, thou dost me wrong," uttered by 
 Metellus Cimber (Act III., sc. 1., 33), so that, on Mr. 
 Lang's hypothesis, Ben not only misquoted two lines, 
 but invented the whole story. GifFord, on the other 
 hand, says that Jonson must have heard the words he 
 has quoted at the theatre. 
 
 Finally, it may be noted that although Jonson, 
 writing in the late years of his life, says of Shakespeare 
 (or Shakspere) that he ** lov'd the man'^ and honours 
 his memory, yet the often-quoted Nicholas Rowe 
 (Shakespeare's first biographer — so-called — ) tells us 
 that " he was not very cordial in his friendship," nor 
 have we, in fact, any evidence whatever that he and 
 William Shakspere of Stratford were close friends. 
 Shakspere's friends were men such as his fellow- 
 players, Heminge, Burbage, and Condell, to whom he 
 left by his Will 26s. 8d. apiece to buy them rings. 
 He makes no mention whatever of Ben Jonson, who, 
 (if, indeed, he was really the author of the note de 
 
JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 59 
 
 Shakespeare Nostrati, in the posthumously pubHshed 
 DiscoveriesY would have us believe that he so " lov'd 
 the man," while as to the tradition chronicled by John 
 Ward upwards of fifty years after Shakspere's death 
 (he became Vicar of Stratford in 1662) that Shakspere, 
 Drayton, and Ben Jonson had " a merie meeting, 
 and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a 
 feavour there contracted," it is so obviously a myth 
 that it is unworthy of serious consideration. There 
 is no shred of evidence that Shakspere was on intimate 
 terms of friendship with either Jonson or Drayton, and 
 Ben's remarks both in the " Discoveries," and in his 
 conversation with Drummond, do but strengthen the 
 hypothesis that the main object which Ben had in view* 
 in wTiting his poetical eulogy of " Shake-speare " 
 prefixed to the First Folio, was to provide a good " send 
 oflf," and to give " bold advertisement," for that volume, 
 in the publication of which his services had been enlisted, 
 and in which he was so intimately concerned. More- 
 over, as already mentioned, he must have written well 
 knowing that several of the plays, and large portions of 
 plays, therein ascribed to " Shake-speare " were not, 
 in truth and in fact, by him, that is to say not by the 
 true Shake-speare, whoever the true Shake-speare 
 may have been. 
 
 It is remarkable that many passages in the Discoveries 
 which have all the appearance of being Jonson's original 
 observations are, in fact, literal translations from well- 
 known Latin writers, such as Quintilian and the two 
 Senecas. This is well seen in his remarks De Shake- 
 speare Nostrati. " His wit was in his own power ; 
 would the rule of it had been so too ! Many times 
 he fell into those things could not escape laughter. . . . 
 But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There 
 was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." 
 This is just taken from the elder Seneca's Controversia 
 (Bk. iv.. Preface), '* In sua potestate habebat ingenium, 
 in aliena modum. . . . Saepe incidebat in ea quae 
 
 ^ M. Castelain thinks that the Latin marginal titles of the various 
 notes were *' added by the editor " (p. ix.). 
 
60 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 
 
 derisum effugere non possent. . . . redimebat 
 tamen vitia virtutibus et persaepe plus habebat quod 
 laudares quam cui ignosceres." There seems, however, 
 nothing to be concluded from this except that Jonson 
 thought Seneca's observations applicable to " Shake- 
 speare," and adopted them as his own pro hac vice ; 
 just as when he said of Bacon that he had ** performed 
 that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred 
 either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome " — words 
 which he had previously used with reference to 
 " Shakespeare," in his lines prefixed to the Folio of 
 1623 — he was again quoting from Seneca : " Deinde 
 ut possitis aestimare in quantum cotidie ingenia descres- 
 cant et nescio qua iniquitate naturae eloquentia se retro 
 tulerit : quidquid Romana facundia habet, quod 
 insolenti Graeciae aut opponat aut praeferat, circa 
 Ciceronem effloruit," etc. (Coniroversia, Bk. I, Preface, 
 cf. the passage in the Discoveries , No. lxxii., Scriptorum 
 Catalogus, which, by the way, makes no mention of 
 Shakespeare). 
 
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