SHAKESPEARE AND THE SCHOLARS
1588-1594
In considering the conditions of Shakespeare's life at the beginning of
his career in London, and his application to the College of Heralds for
a grant of arms in 1596, it must be borne in mind that social
distinctions and class gradations at that time still retained much of
their feudal significance. At that period an actor, unless protected by
the licence of a nobleman or gentleman, was virtually a vagrant before
the law, while felonies committed by scholars were still clergyable.
When Ben Jonson was indicted for killing Gabriel Spencer in 1598, he
pleaded and received benefit of clergy, his only legal punishment
consisting in having the inside of his thumb branded with the Tyburn
"T," and it is unlikely that even this was inflicted.
While a university degree thus enhanced both the social and legal status
of sons of yeomen and tradesmen, the sons of equally reputable people
who became actors were correspondingly debased both socially and
legally.
Though the established status which the actors' profession attained
during Shakespeare's connection with the stage--and largely through his
elevating influence--made these legal disabilities of an actor a dead
letter, it still continued to militate against the social standing of
its members. John Davies leaves record that at the accession of James
I. it was gossiped that Shakespeare, had he not formerly been an actor,
instead of being appointed Groom of the Privy Chamber, might have
received the higher appointment of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. This
idea owed its birth to Shakespeare's friendship with the Earl of
Southampton, whose influence in the early days of the new Court--when he
himself stood high in favour--secured the office for his other protégé,
John Florio, one of the gentlemen by the grace of a university degree
who joined issue with the "university pens" against Shakespeare, and who
in consequence--as I shall later demonstrate--shall be pilloried to
far-distant ages in the character of Sir John Falstaff. Though
Shakespeare had acquired a legal badge of gentility with his coat of
arms in 1599, the histrionic taint--according to Davies--proved a bar to
his official promotion.
"Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion to a King
And been a King among the meaner sort."
Arrogance towards social inferiors, as well as servility to superiors,
is always manifested most offensively in the manners of those who are
themselves conscious of equivocal social standing. I shall adduce
evidence to prove that from the time we first begin dimly to apprehend
Shakespeare in his London environment, in 1588-89, until his final
return to Stratford in about 1610, he was continuously and spitefully
attacked and vilified by a coterie of jealous scholars who, while lifted
above him socially by the arbitrary value attaching to a university
degree, were in no other sense his superiors either in birth or
breeding. It was evidently, then, the contemptuous attitude of his
jealous scholastic rivals, as well as the accruing material advantages
involved, that impelled Shakespeare in 1596 to apply, through his
father, to the College of Heralds for official confirmation of a grant
of arms alleged to have been made to his forebears.
Shakespeare's earliest scholastic detractor was Robert Greene, who
evidently set much store by his acquired gentility, as he usually signed
his publications as "By Robert Greene, Master of Arts in Cambridge," and
who, withal, was a most licentious and unprincipled libertine, going,
through his ill-regulated course of life, dishonoured and unwept to a
pauper's grave at the age of thirty-two. After the death of Greene, when
his memory was assailed by Gabriel Harvey and others whom he had
offended, his friend Nashe, who attempted to defend him, finding it
difficult to do so, makes up for the lameness of his defence by the
bitterness of his attack on Harvey. Nashe, in fact, resents being
regarded as an intimate of Greene's, yet his, and Greene's, spiteful and
ill-bred reflections upon Shakespeare's social quality, education, and
personal appearance, between 1589 and 1592, were received
sympathetically by the remainder of the "gentlemen poets,"--as they
styled themselves in contradistinction to the stage poets,--and used
thereafter for years as a keynote to their own jealous abuse of him.
John Florio, in his _First Fruites_, published in 1591, and after he had
entered the service of the Earl of Southampton, though not yet assailing
Shakespeare personally, as did these other scholars, appears as a critic
of his historical dramatic work.
In 1593 George Peele, in his _Honour of the Garter_, re-echoes the slurs
against Shakespeare voiced by Greene in the previous year. In the same
year George Chapman, who thereafterwards proved to be Shakespeare's
arch-enemy among the "gentlemen scholars," caricatures him and his
affairs in a new play, which he revised, in conjunction with John
Marston, six years later, under the title of _Histriomastix, or The
Player Whipt_. Neither the authorship, date of production, nor satirical
intention of the early form of the play has previously been known.
In 1594 Chapman again attacks Shakespeare in _The Hymns to the Shadow of
Night_, as well as in the prose dedication written to his colleague,
Matthew Roydon. In the same year Roydon enters the lists against
Shakespeare by publishing a satirical and scandalous poem reflecting
upon, and distorting, his private affairs, entitled _Willobie his
Avisa_. From this time onward until the year 1609-10, Chapman, Roydon,
and John Florio--who in the meantime had joined issue with
them--continue to attack and vilify Shakespeare. Every reissue, or
attempted reissue, of _Willobie his Avisa_ was intended as an attack
upon Shakespeare. Such reissues were made or attempted in 1596-1599-1605
and 1609, though some of them were prevented by the action of the public
censor who, we have record, condemned the issue of 1596 and prevented
the issue of 1599. As no copies of the 1605 or 1609 issues are now
extant, it is probable that they also were estopped by the authorities.
In 1598-99 these partisans (Chapman, Roydon, and Florio) are joined by
John Marston, and a year later, also by Ben Jonson, when, for three or
four years, Chapman, Jonson, and Marston collaborate in scurrilous plays
against Shakespeare and friends who had now rallied to his side. In
about 1598 Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle joined sides with Shakespeare
and answered his opponents' attacks by satirising them in plays. John
Florio, while not participating in the dramatic warfare, attacks
Shakespeare viciously in the dedication to his _Worlde of Wordes_, in
1598, and comes in for his share of the satirical chastisement which
Shakespeare, Dekker, and Chettle administer to them in acted, as well as
in published, plays.
As Ben Jonson's dramatic reputation became assured the heat of his
rivalry against Shakespeare died down; his vision cleared and broadened
and he, more plainly than any writer of his time, or possibly since his
time, realised Shakespeare in his true proportions. Jonson, in time,
tires of Chapman's everlasting envy and misanthropy, and quarrels with
him and in turn becomes the object of Chapman's invectives. After
Shakespeare's death Jonson made amends for his past ill-usage by
defending his memory against Chapman, who, even then, continued to
belittle his reputation.
While various critics have from time to time apprehended a critical
attitude upon the part of certain contemporary writers towards
Shakespeare, they have usually regarded such indications as they may
have noticed, merely as passing and temporary ebullitions, but no
conception of the bitterness and continuity of the hostility which
actually existed has previously been realised. Much of the evidence of
the early antagonism of Greene and Nashe to Shakespeare has been
entirely misunderstood, while their reflections against other dramatists
and actors are supposed to have been directed against him. Past critics
have been utterly oblivious of the fact that Florio, Roydon, and Chapman
and others colluded for many years in active hostility to Shakespeare.
In publications issued between 1585 and 1592 Robert Greene vents his
displeasure against various dramatic writers whose plays had proved
more popular than his, as well as against the companies of actors, their
managers, and the theatre that favoured his rivals. The writers and
actor-managers whom he attacks have been variously identified by past
writers. Mr. Richard Simpson, one of the most acute, ingenious, and
painstaking pioneers in Shakespearean research, whose _School of
Shakespeare_ was issued after his death in 1878, supposed that all of
Greene's attacks in these years, including those in which his friend,
Thomas Nashe, collaborated with him, were directed against Shakespeare
and Marlowe. Since Mr. Simpson wrote, however, now over forty years ago,
some new light has been thrown upon the theatrical companies, and their
connection with the writers of the period with which he dealt, which
negatives many of his conclusions. While it is evident that Greene was
jealous of, and casts reflections upon, Marlowe, to whom he refers as
"Merlin" and "the athiest Tamburlaine," Mr. Fleay has since proved that
several of Greene's veiled reflections were directed against others. Mr.
Fleay's suggestion that Robert Wilson was the Roscius so frequently
referred to by Greene and Nashe is, however, based upon incorrect
inference, though he proves by several characteristic parallels, which
he adduces between lines in _The Three Ladies of London_, _The Three
Lords and Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_,--the last of which is
satirically alluded to by Greene in his _Farewell to Folly_, in
1591,--that they were all three either written, or revised, by the same
hand. While his ascription of the composition of the first two of these
plays to Wilson is probably also correct, his assumption that Wilson was
a writer and an actor for Lord Strange's company in 1591 was due to lack
of collected and compiled records concerning the Elizabethan companies
of players at the time he wrote, which have since been made
available.[20]
There is nothing whatever known of Robert Wilson after 1583, when he is
mentioned, along with Tarleton, as being selected by Tilney, the Master
of the Revels, for the Queen's company. In an appended note I analyse
the literary evidence upon which Mr. Fleay associates Robert Wilson with
Strange's company in 1589-91.[21]
Robert Wilson must have been passé as an actor in 1589, if indeed he was
then living, while Strange's company was composed of younger and rising
men, all recently selected for their histrionic abilities from several
companies, amongst which, it appears evident, the Queen's company was
not then included, though it is likely that in 1591 some Queen's men
joined Strange's company. That Robert Wilson was not the Roscius
referred to by Greene and Nashe in 1589 and 1590 a further examination
of the evidence will fully verify.
The person indicated as Roscius by Nashe in his Address to Greene's
_Menaphon_ in 1589, and in Greene's _Never Too Late_ in 1590, was the
leading actor of a new company that was then gaining great reputation,
which, however, was largely due--according to Nashe--to the pre-eminent
excellence of this Roscius' acting. The pride and conceit of this actor
had risen to such a pitch, Nashe informs us in his _Anatomy of
Absurdity_ (1589), that he had the "temerity to encounter with those on
whose shoulders all arts do lean." This last is a plain reference to
George Peele, whom he had recently described in his _Menaphon_ "Address"
as "The Atlas of Poetry." In the following year Greene refers to the
same encounter in the first part of his _Never Too Late_. Pretending to
describe theatrical conditions in Rome, he again attacks the London
players and brings in Roscius--_who without doubt was Edward Alleyn_--as
contending with Tully, who is Peele. "Among whom," he writes, "in the
days of Tully, one Roscius grew to be of such exquisite perfection in
his faculty that _he offered to contend with the orators of that time in
gesture as they did in eloquence, boasting that he would express a
passion in as many sundry actions as Tully could discourse it in a
variety of phrases_. Yet so proud he grew by the daily applause of the
people that he looked for honour or reverence to be done him in the
streets, which conceit when Tully entered into with a piercing insight,
he quipped it in this manner:
"It chanced that Roscius and he met at dinner both guests unto Archias,
the poet, when the proud comedian dared to make comparison with Tully.
Why Roscius art thou proud with Æsop's crow, being prankt with the glory
of others' feathers? Of thyself thou canst say nothing and if the
cobbler hath taught thee to say _Ave Cæsar_ disdain not thy tutor
because thou pratest in a King's chamber. What sentence thou utterest on
the stage flows from the censure of our wits, and what sentence or
conceit the people applaud for excellence, that comes from the secrets
of our knowledge. I grant your acting, though it be a kind of mechanical
labour, yet well done, 'tis worthy of praise, but you worthless if for
so small a toy you wax proud."
Here again Tully is Peele, and Greene is merely describing more fully
the alleged encounter between Alleyn and Peele, mentioned by Nashe the
year before in _The Anatomy of Absurdity_.
Though it has never been noticed before, in this connection, we possess
in Edward Alleyn's own papers preserved at Dulwich College a remarkable
confirmation of this emulation, which, however, Greene and Nashe distort
to the prejudice of Alleyn, who, as shall be shown, was innocent in the
affair. The whole thing arose from admirers of Alleyn's among the
theatre-frequenting gentry offering wagers to friends who championed
Peele in order to provide after-dinner entertainment for themselves, by
putting the poet and the player on their mettle in "expressing a
passion"--the one in action and the other in phrases. Alleyn refused the
contest "for fear of hurting Peele's credit," but gossip of the proposed
wager got abroad and was distorted by the scholars, who affected to be
insulted by the idea of one of their ilk contending with a player.
Failing to bring about this match, Alleyn's backers, not to be beaten,
and in order, willy-nilly, to make a wager on their champion, evidently
tried to get Alleyn to display his powers before friends who professed
to admire Bentley and Knell[22]--actors of a slightly earlier date, who
were now either retired from the stage or dead. The following letter and
poem were evidently written in 1589, as Nashe's reference to the
"encounter," which is the first notice of it, was published in this
year:
"Your answer the other nighte, so well pleased the Gentlemen, as I
was satisfied therewith, though to the hazarde of ye wager; and yet
my meaninge was not to prejudice Peele's credit; neither wolde it,
though it pleased you so to excuse it, but beinge now growen farther
into question, the partie affected to Bentley (scornynge to wynne the
wager by your deniall), hath now given you libertie to make choice of
any one playe, that either Bentley or Knell plaide, and least this
advantage, agree not with your minde, he is contented, both the
plaie, and the time, shall be referred to the gentlemen here present.
I see not, how you canne any waie hurte your credit by this action;
for if you excell them, you will then be famous, if equall them; you
wynne both the wager and credit, if short of them; we must and will
saie Ned Allen still.--Your frend to his power,
W.P.
Deny me not sweete Nedd, the wager's downe,
and twice as muche, commande of me and myne:
And if you wynne I sweare the half is thyne;
and for an overplus, an English Crowne.
Appoint the tyme, and stint it as you pleas,
Your labor's gaine; and that will prove it ease."
(addressed) "To Edward Allen."
This letter to Edward Alleyn from his friend "W.P." is finely written in
an English, and the verses in an Italian, hand. The words, "Ned Allen,"
"sweete Nedd," and "English Crowne" are in gilt letters.[23] The
occasion and its instigation must have been of interest to Alleyn for
him to have preserved the letter for so many years; his reason for doing
so evidently being to enable him to refute Greene's published and widely
circulated misconstruction of it. It is evident that both the letter and
poem were written while Alleyn was still young, when he already had
ardent admirers, and his reputation was growing but not generally
admitted, and at about the time that Peele had commenced to write for
his company. Alleyn was twenty-four years old in 1589, and already
regarded by many as the best actor in London. George Peele, who had
written for the Queen's company in the past, at about, or shortly after,
this date, began to write for Strange's company. His _Edward I._, which
was published in 1593, was undoubtedly written between 1589-91, when
Shakespeare was still connected with Strange's men.
The "cobbler" who taught Roscius to say "Ave Cæsar" was Christopher
Marlowe, whose father was a shoemaker. Marlowe was the principal writer
for Burbage at this period, and continued so until his death in 1593.
"Ave Cæsar" and "a King's chamber" are references to the play of _Edward
III._, which I shall demonstrate later was written by Marlowe, though
revised by Shakespeare after Marlowe's death. It is the only known play
of this period in which the expression "Ave Cæsar" occurs.
In many of Greene's romances the central figure has been recognised as a
more or less fanciful autobiographical sketch. In his last work, _A
Groatsworth of Wit_, in the introduction to which he makes his
well-known attack upon Shakespeare, the adventures of Roberto, the
protagonist of the story, tally approximately with known circumstances
of Greene's life. In the opening of the story, Roberto's marriage, his
desertion of his wife, his attachment to another woman who deserts him
when he falls into poverty, all coincide with the facts in his own
career. From this we may infer that what follows has also a substratum
of truth regarding a temporary connection of Greene with Alleyn's
company as playwright, though it is evident that he describes Alleyn's
theatrical conditions as they were between 1589 and 1592 and after
Alleyn had acquired the theatrical properties of the old Admiral's
company from Richard Jones, Robert Browne, and his brother, John Alleyn,
in 1589. Greene's account of Roscius' own attempts at dramatic
composition need not be taken very seriously, though it is not at all
improbable that Alleyn, who was very ambitious, at some time tentatively
essayed dramatic composition or revision. It was certainly a very
inexperienced playwright, yet one who had some idea of the style of
phrase that caught the ear of the masses, who interpolated the tame and
prosy lines of the old _Taming of a Shrew_ so freely with selections
from Marlowe's most inflated grandiloquence, and one, also, who had
access to Marlowe's manuscripts. The plays from which these selections
were taken were all Burbage properties in 1588-89, as was also _The
Taming of a Shrew_. It was this kind of dramatic stage-carpenter work
that left an opening for Nashe's strictures in 1589 in his _Menaphon_
"Address." Several of the later covert references to Alleyn as Roscius,
by Greene and Nashe, indicate that he had tried his hand upon the
composition and revision of dramatic work, in which he had the
assistance of a "theological poet." While they undoubtedly refer to
Shakespeare as one of the "idiot art-masters" they use the plural and
include others in authority in Burbage's company.
Greene, representing himself as Roberto after his mistress had deserted
him, describes himself as sitting under a hedge as an outcast and
bemoaning his fate.
"On the other side of the hedge sat one that heard his sorrow, who,
getting over, came ... and saluted Roberto.... 'If you vouchsafe such
simple comfort as my ability will yield, assure yourself that I will
endeavour to do the best that ... may procure your profit ... the
rather, for that I suppose you are a scholar; and pity it is men of
learning should live in lack.' Roberto ... uttered his present grief,
beseeching his advice how he might be employed. 'Why, easily,' quoth
he, 'and greatly to your benefit; for men of my profession get by
scholars their whole living.' 'What is your profession?' said
Roberto. 'Truly, sir,' said he, 'I am a player.' 'A player!' quoth
Roberto; 'I took you rather for a gentleman of great living; for if
by outward habit men should be censured, I tell you you would be
taken for a substantial man.' 'So am I, where I dwell,' quoth the
player, 'reputed able at my proper cost to build a windmill. What
though the world once went hard with me, when I was fain to carry my
fardel a foot-back? _Tempora mutantur_--I know you know the meaning
of it better than I, but I thus construe it--_It is otherwise now_;
for my very share in playing apparel will not be sold for two hundred
pounds.' 'Truly,' said Roberto, 'it is strange that you should so
prosper in that vain practice, for that it seems to me your voice is
nothing gracious.' 'Nay, then,' said the player, 'I mislike your
judgement; why, I am as famous for _Delphrygus_ and _The King of
Fairies_ as ever was any of my time; _The Twelve Labours of Hercules_
have I thundered on the stage, and played three scenes of the Devil
in _The Highway to Heaven_.' 'Have ye so?' said Roberto; 'then I pray
you pardon me.' 'Nay, more,' quoth the player, 'I can serve to make a
pretty speech, for I was a country author, passing at a moral; for it
was I that penned _The Moral of Man's Wit_, _The Dialogue of Dives_,
and for seven years' space was absolute interpreter of the puppets.
But now my almanac is out of date:
'"The people make no estimation
Of morals, teaching education----"
Was this not pretty for a rhyme extempore? If ye will ye shall have
more.' 'Nay, it is enough,' said Roberto; 'but how mean ye to use
me?' 'Why, sir, in making plays,' said the other, 'for which you
shall be well paid, if you will take the pains.' Roberto, perceiving
no remedy, thought it best to respect his present necessity, (and,)
to try his wit, went with him willingly; who lodged him at the town's
end in a house of retail ... there by conversing with bad company, he
grew _a malo in pegus_, falling from one vice to another.... But
Roberto, now famoused for an arch-playmaking poet, his purse, like
the sea, sometime swelled, anon, like the same sea, fell to a low
ebb; yet seldom he wanted, his labours were so well esteemed. Marry
this rule he kept, whatever he fingered beforehand, was the certain
means to unbind a bargain; and being asked why he so slightly dealt
with them that did him good, 'It becomes me,' saith he, 'to be
contrary to the world. For commonly when vulgar men receive earnest,
they do perform. When I am paid anything aforehand, I break my
promise.'"
The player described here is the same person indicated by Nashe three
years before in his _Menaphon_ "Address." Both are represented as being
famous for their performance of _Delphrygus_ and _The King of the
Fairies_, but the events narrated connecting Greene with Alleyn, and the
opulent condition of the latter, refer to a more recent stage of
Greene's and Alleyn's affairs than Nashe's reference. Both Nashe's and
Greene's descriptions point to a company of players that between 1589-91
had won a leading place in London theatrical affairs; that performed at
the Theatre; that played _Hamlet_, _The Taming of a Shrew_, _Edward
III._, and _Fair Em_: the leader of which personally owned theatrical
properties valued at two hundred pounds, and who was regarded by them as
an actor of unusual ability. Seven years before 1592 this company
performed mostly in the provinces, carrying their "fardels on their
backs." It is very apparent then that it is Alleyn's old and new
companies, the Worcester-Admiral-Strange development, to which the
allusions refer.
While the "idiot art-masters" indicated by Nashe and Greene as those who
chose, purchased, and reconstructed the plays used by Strange's company,
included others beside Shakespeare in their satirical intention, this
phase of their attacks upon the Theatre and its leading figures became
centred upon Shakespeare as his importance in the conduct of its
business increased, and his dramatic ability developed.
It is now generally agreed by critics that Shakespeare cannot have left
Stratford for London before 1585, and probably not before 1586-87, and
the likelihood has been shown that he then entered the service of James
Burbage as a hired servant, or servitor, for a term of years. When
Henslowe, in 1598, bound Richard Alleyn as a hired servant, he did so
for a period of two years, which, we may judge, was then the customary
term of such service. Assuming that Shakespeare bound himself to Burbage
in 1586-87, his term of service would have expired in 1588-89. Though we
possess no evidence that Shakespeare had produced any original plays at
this time, the strictures of Nashe and Greene make it apparent that he
had by then attained to the position of what might be called dramatic
critic for the Burbage interests. In this capacity he helped to choose
the plays purchased by his employers for the use of the companies in
which they were interested.
Greene had come at odds with theatrical managers several years before
Shakespeare could have attained to the position of reader for the
Burbages. Even some of Greene's earlier reflections, however, seem to be
directed against the management of the Shoreditch Theatre. In attacking
theatrical managers he writes in, what he calls, "mystical speeches,"
and transfigures the persons he attacks under fictitious characters and
names. In his _Planetomachia_, published in 1585, he caricatures one
actor-manager under the name of Valdracko, who is an actor in _Venus'
Tragedy_, one of the tales of the book. Valdracko is described as an old
and experienced actor, "stricken in age, melancholick, ruling after the
crabbed forwardness of his doting will, impartial, for he loved none but
himself, politic because experienced, familiar with none except for his
profit, skillful in dissembling, trusting no one, silent, covetous,
counting all things honest that were profitable." This characterisation
cannot possibly have referred to Shakespeare in the year 1585. When it
is noticed, however, that nearly all of Greene's later attacks are
directed against the Theatre and its fellows, it is probable that the
stubborn, wilful, and aged James Burbage is also here scurrilously
indicated. In writing of London and the actors in his "dark speeches,"
Greene refers to London as Rome and to the Shoreditch Theatre as the
"theatre in Rome." In his _Penelope's Web_ he writes: "They which smiled
at the theatre in Rome might as soon scoff at the rudeness of the scene
as give a plaudite at the perfection of the acting." While it is
Burbage's Theatre that is here referred to, it is evident that his
quarrel was not now with the actors--whom both he and Nashe praise in
their quality--but with the plays, their authors, and the theatrical
managers who patronised them.
It is evident that Shakespeare had something to do with the acceptance
by the Burbages of plays by Marlowe and Kyd, and that Greene believed
his own lack of patronage by the companies playing at the Theatre was
due to Shakespeare's adverse influence. Knowing Shakespeare to be _the
son of a Stratford butcher, educated at a grammar school and recently a
bonded servitor to Burbage_, this "Master of Arts in Cambridge"
questions the literary and dramatic judgment of the grammar school
youth, and late serving-man, and employs his fellow university scholar,
Thomas Nashe, to ridicule him and his critical pretensions.
Nashe returned to England in 1589, after a two years' absence upon the
Continent, and cannot have acquired at first hand the knowledge he shows
of dramatic affairs in London during the preceding year. It is evident
that this knowledge was gained from Greene for that purpose. Mr. Fleay
has demonstrated that Nashe, in his preface to Greene's _Menaphon_,
alludes satirically to Thomas Kyd as the author of _The Taming of a
Shrew_, and of the old _Hamlet_. Both of these plays were owned by Lord
Strange's (now the Lord Chamberlain's) company in 1594, when, as I have
suggested, they had recently taken them over from Pembroke's company,
which was undoubtedly a Burbage company--using some of the Burbage
properties and plays while under Shakespeare's management in 1591-94.
Being Burbage properties, these plays were acted by Lord Strange's
company between 1589 and 1591. Besides satirically indicating these
plays and their author, Nashe goes on to criticise the "idiot
art-masters" who make choice of such plays for the actors. "This
affectation of actors and audience," writes Nashe--meaning this suiting
of plays to the crude taste of the actors and the cruder taste of the
public--"is all traceable to their idiot art-masters that intrude
themselves as the alchemists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of
arrogance) think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of
bragging blank verse, indeed it may be the ingrafted overflow of some
killcow conceit, etc. Among this kind of men that repose eternity in the
mouth of a player I can but engross some _deep read school men or
grammarians, who have no more learning in their skull than will serve to
take up a commodity, nor art in their brains than was nourished in a
serving man's idleness_, will take upon them to be ironical censurers of
all when God and poetry doth know they are the simplest of all."
This attack of Nashe's upon Shakespeare was recognised by all of the
scholastic clique, and certain of its phrases are re-echoed in later
attacks upon him by other scholars for several years afterwards; in
fact, Nashe's diatribe proved to be a cue for Shakespeare's future
detractors. In the expression "killcow," Nashe alludes to Shakespeare's
father's trade. A few years later--1594--Chapman refers to Shakespeare
as "judgements butcher," and later still, in 1598, Florio in his
dedication of the _Worlde of Wordes_, and, in 1600, Ben Jonson in _Every
Man out of his Humour_, also refer satirically to the supposed fact that
Shakespeare's father was a butcher. In 1593 Chapman, in attacking
Shakespeare in the early _Histriomastix_, re-echoes the term "idiot
art-master." The phrase "ingrafted overflow of a killcow conceit" refers
to Shakespeare's additions to, or revisions of, plays owned by his
company that were originally written by such scholars as Greene. "Deep
read school men or grammarians" is a reference to Shakespeare's grammar
school education. "No more learning than will serve to take up a
commodity" refers to Shakespeare's business management of Burbage's
affairs, and "a serving man's idleness" to his recently ended term of
service with Burbage in that capacity.
It shall be shown that in later years when Chapman, Roydon, Florio,
Marston, and Jonson attacked Shakespeare in published or acted plays
that he invariably answers them in kind. We have only inferential
evidence that he answered Greene's and Nashe's reflections at this time
by writing a ballad against them. Ralph Sidley, in verses prefixed to
Greene's _Never Too Late_, published in the following year (1590),
defends Greene from the attack of a ballad or jig maker, whom he calls a
clown.
"The more it works, the quicker is the wit;
The more it writes, the better to be 'steemed.
By labour ought men's wills and wits be deem'd,
Though dreaming dunces do inveigh against it.
But write thou on, though Momus sit and frown;
A Carter's jig is fittest for a clown.
_Bonum quo communius eo melius._"
At the end of Greene's _Never Too Late_ in the host's tale a ballad
maker and player is attacked under the name of Mullidor; he is described
as follows: "He is said to be a fellow that was of honest parents, but
very poor: and his person was as if he had been cast in Æsop's mould;
his back like a lute, and his face like Thersites', his eyes broad and
tawny, his hair harsh and curled like a horse-mane, his lips were of the
largest size in folio.... The only good part that he had to grace his
visage was his nose, and that was conqueror-like, as beaked as an
eagle.... Into his great head (Nature) put little wit, that he knew
rather his sheep by the number, for he was never no good arithmetician,
and yet he was a proper scholar, and well seen in ditties."
When we discount the caricature and spiteful animus of this description
it closely matches the presentments of Shakespeare given by the most
authoritative portraits which have come down to us. His parents, as we
know, were undoubtedly poor, otherwise he would not have been in London
as a servitor to Burbage. His eyes are invariably shown as hazel in
colour and widely set apart; his hair heavy, curled, and falling to his
shoulders; his lips very full, his nose large and "beaked," and his
brow, or "great head," of unusual height and breadth. It is apparent,
then, that this is a spiteful and distorted, but recognisable,
description of Shakespeare, who, I infer from many indications in his
opponents' plays, wore his hair in a peculiar manner, was not very tall,
and was also somewhat thin-legged. The Chandos portrait which shows his
shoulders, suggests that they were slightly sloping and somewhat round
rather than square. On the whole, a physical type not calculated to
inspire fear in a bully. Greene, on the other hand, is described by
Chettle as a handsome-faced and well-proportioned man, and we may judge
of a rather swash-buckling deportment.
Robert Greene died in September 1592. Shortly afterwards Henry Chettle
published Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, which was his last literary
effort, and appended a farewell letter of Greene's addressed "To those
gentlemen, his quandam acquaintances, that spend their time in making
plays, R.G. wisheth a better exercise and wisdom to prevent his
extremities." In this epistle, addressing Marlowe, Nashe, and Peele, as
well as two others at whose identity we can only guess, he says:
"If wofull experience may move you, gentlemen, to beware, or
unheard-of wretchedness intreat you to take heed, I doubt not but you
will look backe with sorrow on your time past, and endevour with
repentance to spend that which is to come. Wonder not (for with thee
will I first beginne), thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene,
who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, 'There is no
God,' should now give glorie unto his greatnesse; for penetrating is
his power, his hand lyes heavy upon me, he hath spoken unto me with a
voyce of thunder, and I have felt he is a God that can punish
enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded that
thou shouldest give no glory to the giver? Is it pestilent
Machivilian policie that thou hast studied? O peevish follie! what
are his rules but meere confused mockeries, able to extirpate in
small time the generation of mankinde? for if _sic volo, sic iubeo_,
holde in those that are able to command, and if it be lawfull _fas et
nefas_, to doo any thing that is beneficiall, onely tyrants should
possesse the earth, and they, striving to exceed in tiranny, should
each to other be a slaughterman, till, the mightyest outliving all,
one stroke were left for Death, that in one age mans life should
end.... With thee I joyne young Juvenall, that byting satyrist, that
lastly with mee together writ a comedie. Sweet boy, might I advise
thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words; inveigh
against vaine men, for thou canst doo it, no man better, no man so
well; thou hast a libertie to reproove all and name none; for one
being spoken to, all are offended--none being blamed, no man is
injured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage; tread on a
worme, and it will turne; then blame not schollers who are vexed with
sharpe and bitter lines, if they reproove thy too much liberty of
reproofe.
"And thou no lesse deserving then the other two, in some things
rarer, in nothing inferiour, driven, as myselfe, to extreame shifts,
a little have I to say to thee; and, were it not an idolatrous oath,
I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith
thou dependest on so mean a stay. Base-minded men all three of you,
if by my misery yee bee not warned; for unto none of you, like me,
sought those burs to cleave; those puppits, I meane, that speake from
our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange
that I to whom they have been beholding, is it not like that you to
whom they all have been beholding, shall, were yee in that case that
I am now, be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for
there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his
_Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde_, supposes hee is as well able
to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you; and, beeing an
absolute Johannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceit the onely
Shake-scene in a countrey. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wittes
to bee imployed in more profitable courses, and let these apes
imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaynte them with your
admyred inventions! I knowe the best husband of you all will never
proove an usurer, and the kindest of them all will never proove a
kinde nurse; yet, whilst you may, seeke you better maisters; for it
is pitty men of such rare wits should bee subject to the pleasures of
such rude groomes.
"In this I might insert two more[24] that both have writte against
these buckram gentlemen; but let their owne worke serve to witnesse
against their owne wickednesse, if they persever to maintaine any
more such peasants. For other new comers, I leave them to the mercie
of those painted monsters, who, I doubt not, will drive the
best-minded to despise them; for the rest, it skills not though they
make a jeast at them...."
It is now accepted by critics that these allusions of Greene's were
directed against Shakespeare, and that the line "Tygres heart wrapt in a
players hyde" refers to Shakespeare's revision of _The True Tragedy of
Richard, Duke of York_, a play in the original composition of which
Greene evidently had some hand. It has not before been suggested,
however, that this play was performed by the Earl of Pembroke's company,
under Shakespeare's management, in 1592. It was evidently the publicity
given Marlowe's and Shakespeare's revision by the stage revival of the
play by Pembroke's company at this time that called forth Greene's
attack. This brings us to the end of the year 1592 in outlining
chronologically the evidences of the antagonism of the scholars to
Shakespeare.
In June 1593 George Peele shows animus against Shakespeare by echoing
Greene's phrases in the introduction to _The Honour of the Garter_. In
these verses, in complimenting several noblemen and "gentlemen poets,"
such as Sidney, Spenser, Harrington, Fraunce, Campion, and others, he
refers also to
"ordinary grooms,
With trivial humours to pastime the world,
That favour Pan and Phoebus both alike."
This appears to be a reflection of Greene's "rude groomes" of the
previous September and a reference to Shakespeare's theatrical work and
his _Venus and Adonis_, which, though only recently published, had no
doubt been read in MS. form for some time before.
I shall now proceed to show that at the end of 1593, after Lord
Pembroke's company had returned from their unprofitable provincial tour
when they were compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges,"
George Chapman wrote a play satirising Shakespeare and the disastrous
fortunes of this company. This play was revised by Marston and Chapman
in 1599, under the title of _Histriomastix, or The Player Whipt_, as a
counter-attack upon Shakespeare in order to revenge the satire which he,
in conjunction with Dekker and Chettle, directed against Chapman and
Marston in _Troilus and Cressida_, and in a play reconstructed from
_Troilus and Cressida_ by Dekker and Chettle, called _Agamemnon_, in
1598-99. This latter phase of the matter shall be dealt with when I come
to a consideration of the literary warfare of the later period.
It has never before been suggested that George Chapman had any hand in
the composition of _Histriomastix_, though Mr. Richard Simpson shows
clearly that it was an old play roughly revised in the form in which it
was acted in 1599. Mr. Simpson suggests that it might have been written
by Peele, in its original form, owing to certain verbal resemblances
between portions of it and Peele's dedication to his _Honour of the
Garter_. He dates its original composition in about 1590, but in doing
so had evidently forgotten that he had already written: "The early
Chrisoganus (of this play) seems to be of the time when the Earl of
Northumberland, Raleigh, and Harriot strove to set up an Academy in
London, and the spirit of the play, and even its expressions, were quite
in unison with Peele's dedication of his _Honour of the Garter_,1593."
All literary and historical references to the academical efforts of the
Earl of Northumberland, Harriot, and others point to the years 1591-93
as the time in which this attempt to establish an Academy was made.
Chapman in his dedication of _The Shadow of Night_ to Roydon, in 1594,
refers to the movement as then of comparatively recent date. "But I stay
this spleen when I remember, my good Matthew, how joyfully oftentimes
you reported unto me that most ingenious Derby, deep-searching
Northumberland, and skill-embracing Earl of Hunsdon had most profitably
entertained learning in themselves to the vital warmth of freezing
Science," etc. Peele's allusions to the movement in his dedication to
the _Honour of the Garter_, which is dated 26th June 1593, are as
follows:
"Renowned Lord, Northumberland's fair flower,
The Muses' love, patron and favourite,
That artisans and scholars dost embrace.
And clothest Mathesis in rich ornaments,
That admirable mathematic skill,
Familiar with the stars and Zodiac,
To whom the heaven lies open as her book;
By whose directions undeceivable,
Leaving our Schoolmen's vulgar trodden paths,
And following the ancient reverent steps
Of Trismegistus and Pythagoras,
Through uncouth ways and unaccessible,
Doth pass into the pleasant spacious fields
Of divine science and philosophy," etc.
Shakespeare evidently reflects knowledge of this academical attempt and
pokes fun at the scholars in his reference to "a little academie" in
_Love's Labour's Lost_:
"Navarre shall be the wonder of the world
Our Court shall be a little academie
Still and contemplative in living art."
This play was originally written late in 1591, but was drastically
revised late in 1594, or early in 1595, after Shakespeare had read
Chapman's _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_; and again, in 1598. The
reference to the Academy was evidently introduced at the time of its
first revision.
Mr. Simpson recognises the fact that most of the Chrisoganus passages,
especially those in the earlier portions of _Histriomastix_, pertain to
the play in its original form. If the reader will take the trouble to
read Chapman's _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_ (1594), his poem to Thomas
Harriot, and his _Tears of Peace_, and compare their mental attitude and
verbal characteristics with the "Chrisoganus" and "Peace" passages of
_Histriomastix_, Chapman's authorship of the latter will become
apparent. The following parallels from four of Chapman's poems are
convincing, and they can be extended indefinitely:
_Histriomastix_--
"Have always borne themselves in Godlike State
With lofty foreheade higher than the stars."
_De Guiana, Carmen Epicum_--
"Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars."
_Histriomastix_--
"Consume whole groves and standing fields of corn
In thy wild rage and make the proud earth groan."
_The Shadow of Night_--
"Convert the violent courses of thy floods,
Remove whole fields of corn and highest woods."
_Histriomastix_--
"Whose glory which thy solid virtues won
Shall honour Europe while there shines a sun."
_Poem to Harriot_--
"When thy true wisdom by thy learning won
Shall honour learning while there shines a sun."
Chapman in several instances in this play echoes Greene's slurs against
Shakespeare and, in the same manner as Peele in the _Honour of the
Garter_, repeats the actual phrases and epithets used by Greene and
Nashe.
_Histriomastix_--
"I scorn a scoffing fool about my throne--
An artless idiot (that like Æsop's daw
Plumes fairer feathered birds)."
These lines evince Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's phrase "idiot
art-master," and of Greene's "upstart crow beautified with our
feathers," and clearly pertain to the play in its earlier form (1593)
when Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_ (published late in 1592) was still a
new publication. In fact, it is not improbable that Nashe collaborated
with Chapman in the early form of this play.
Again when Chapman writes the following lines:
_Histriomastix_--
"O age, when every Scriveners boy shall dippe
Profaning quills into Thessalies spring;
When every artist prentice that hath read
The pleasant pantry of conceipts shall dare
To write as confident as Hercules;
When every ballad-monger boldly writes," etc.
It is apparent that he again echoes Nashe's and Greene's attacks upon
Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, all of which, however, he appears to have
thought (as have later critics) were directed against Shakespeare.
The lines quoted above evidently reflect Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's
preface to Greene's _Menaphon_ in the expressions "Scriveners boy,"
"artist prentice," and "ballad-monger," while the words
"shall dippe
Profaning quills into Thessalies spring"
refer to Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, and the lines from Ovid with
which he heads that poem.
In 1593 when, as I have indicated, _Histriomastix_ in its early form was
written, Shakespeare had published _Venus and Adonis_ and dedicated it
to the Earl of Southampton. In the composition of this poem Shakespeare
undoubtedly worked from Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_. He prefixed to the poem two lines from Ovid's fifteenth
Elegy:
"Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua";
which are rendered in Marlowe's translation:
"Let base conceited wits admire vile things,
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses springs."
In _The Shadow of Night_, published in the following year, Chapman again
resents the fact that one of Shakespeare's "small Latin and less Greek"
should invade the classical preserves of the scholars for his poetical
and dramatic subjects:
"Then you that exercise the virgin court
Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort,
Making her drunken with Gorgonean dews,
And therewith all your ecstasies infuse,
That she may reach the topless starry brows
Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs
Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing
Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring
(As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind,
And in her force, the forces of the mind:
An argument to ravish and refine
An earthly soul and make it more devine.
Sing then with all, her palace brightness bright,
The dazzle-sun perfection of her light;
Circling her face with glories, sing the walks,
Where in her heavenly magic mood she stalks,
Her arbours, thickets, and her wondrous game,
(A huntress being never match'd in fame,)
_Presume not then ye flesh-confounded souls,
That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls_,
Which sever mounting spirits from the senses,
_To look into this deep fount for thy pretenses_."
In these lines, besides indicating Shakespeare's recent Ovidian
excursion in _Venus and Adonis_ by his reference to "Castalian bowls,"
Chapman shows knowledge of Shakespeare's intention, in the composition
of _Love's Labour's Lost_, of exhibiting Queen Elizabeth as a huntress.
Chapman's Cynthia of _The Shadow of Night_ is plainly a rhapsodised
idealisation of the Queen. Later on I shall elaborate the fact that
_Love's Labour's Lost_ was written late in 1591, or early in 1592, as a
reflection of the Queen's progress to Cowdray House, the home of the
Earl of Southampton's maternal grandfather, Viscount Montague, and that
the shooting of deer by the Princess and her ladies fancifully records
phases of the entertainments arranged for the Queen during her visit.
Assuming, then, from the foregoing evidence and inferences that Chapman
composed the early _Histriomastix_ in 1593, let us examine the play
further in order to trace its fuller application to Shakespeare and his
affairs in that year.
Though _Histriomastix_ was revised as an attack upon Shakespeare in 1599
by Chapman and Marston, who had commenced to collaborate in dramatic
work in the previous year, its original plot and action remain
practically unaltered. In its revision its early anti-Shakespearean
intention was merely amplified and brought up to date by a few topical
allusions, fitting circumstances in the lives of the persons
caricatured, pertaining to the later period. The substitution of
_Troilus and Cressida_ for _The Prodigal Child_, as the play within the
play presented by Sir Oliver Owlet's company, is also due to the period
of revision. All of the passages of the play which are suggestive of the
period of revision are palpably in the style of John Marston.
Among the persons of the early play is Chrisoganus, a scholar and
mathematician, who has set up an academy to expound the seven liberal
Sciences: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and
Astronomy, all of which are introduced as persons in the first act.
Chrisoganus was undoubtedly intended for Chapman's friend Thomas
Harriot, the mathematician and astronomer, who was so prominent in the
academical movement of 1592-93. The name Chrisoganus is evidently a
reflection of Harriot's _Ephemeris Chrisometra_, a MS. copy of which is
preserved in Zion College. Chapman's poem to Harriot, prefixed to his
_Achilles Shield_ (1599), expresses many of the same ideas voiced in
_Histriomastix_ and in much the same language, and indicates Chapman's
collaboration with Marston in the revision of the play in that year.
In the early _Histriomastix_ Chapman represents himself in the character
of Peace. When the utterances of Peace are compared with certain of
Chapman's poems, such as his _Euthymia Raptus_, or _The Tears of Peace_
(1609), his poem to Harriot (1598), _The Shadow of Night_ (1594), and
_Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ (1595), in all of which he breaks away from
his subject-matter at intervals to extol his own virtues and bewail his
poverty and his neglect by patrons, it becomes evident that he
transfigures himself in _Histriomastix_ as Peace; which character acts
as a chorus to, or running commentary on, the action of the play.
The whole spirit and purpose of this play is reproduced in _The Tears of
Peace_, which is a dialogue between Peace and an interlocutor, who
discuss at great length exactly the same ideas and subjects,
dramatically treated, in _Histriomastix_, _i.e._ the neglect of learning
and the learned, and "the pursuit of wealth, glory, greatness, pleasure,
and fashion" by "plebian and lord alike," as well as the unaccountable
success of an ignorant playwright who writes plays on any subject that
comes into his head:
"And how they trot out in their lines the ring
With idly iterating oft one thing,
A new fought combat, an affair at sea,
A marriage or progress or a plea.
No news but fits them as if made for them,
Though it be forged but of a woman's dream."
The plays of no other dramatist of that period match the description of
the subjects of the plays given here. The "progress," mentioned by
Chapman, is undoubtedly a reference to _Love's Labour's Lost_; "A
marriage," _Midsummer Night's Dream_; "a plea," _The Merchant of
Venice_; "A new fought combat," _Henry V._--as a reflection of the
military services of Southampton and Essex in Ireland in 1599; "an
affair at sea," _Twelfth Night_, _The Merchant of Venice_, etc.
In the second scene of _Histriomastix_, to Peace, the Arts, and
Chrisoganus, come Mavortius and a group of his friends representing the
nobility whom the academicians endeavour to win to their attendance and
support. Mavortius and his followers refuse to cultivate Chrisoganus and
the Arts, preferring a life of dalliance and pleasure, and to patronise
plays and players instead. Other characters are introduced representing
the Law, the Army, and Merchandise, who also neglect the Arts and live
for pastime and sport.
The company of players patronised by Mavortius performs under the
licence of Sir Oliver Owlet, and under the leadership of Posthaste, an
erstwhile ballad maker, who writes plays for the company and who
threatens to return to ballad making when playing proves unprofitable.
One of Mavortius' followers, Landulpho, an Italian lord, criticises the
play presented by Posthaste and his fellows, and lauds the Italian
drama.
A period of peace and prosperity, during which Chrisoganus and the Arts
are neglected by the extravagant and pleasure-seeking lords and
populace, is followed by war with an aftermath of poverty when Sir
Oliver Owlet's company of players is disrupted, and the actors are
compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges."
_Enter_ CONSTABLE.]
HOST. Master Constable, ho! these players will not pay their shot.
POST. Faith, sir, war hath so pinch'd us we must pawn.
CONST. Alas, poor players! Hostess, what comes it to?
HOST. The Sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The hirelings--pence.
POST. What, sixpence an egg, and two and two an egg?
HOST. Faith, famine affords no more.
POST. Fellows, bring out the hamper. Chose somewhat out o'th stock.
_Enter the Players._
What will you have this cloak to pawn? What think you its worth?
HOST. Some fewer groats.
ONIN. The pox is in this age; here's a brave world fellows!
POST. You may see what it is to laugh at the audience.
HOST. Well, it shall serve for a pawn.
The further development of this narrative will make it evident beyond
any reasonable doubt that Posthaste, the poet-actor, is intended to
caricature Shakespeare, and Sir Oliver Owlet's company and its
misfortunes to reflect the Earl of Pembroke's company in similar
circumstances in 1593; that Mavortius is the young Earl of Southampton,
to whom Shakespeare dedicated _Venus and Adonis_ in 1593, and _Lucrece_
in the year following; that Landulpho, the Italian lord, represents John
Florio, who, in 1591, in his _Second Fruites_, criticised English
historical drama and praised Italian plays, and who, at about the same
time as teacher of languages entered into the pay and patronage of the
Earl of Southampton, a connection which his odd and interesting
personality enabled him to hold thereafterwards for several years. The
part which Landulpho takes in the play was somewhat developed by Marston
in 1599, at which time it shall later on be shown that the relations
between Florio and Shakespeare had reached a heated stage. The play of
_The Prodigal Child_, which was the play within the play acted by
Posthaste and his fellows in the earlier form of _Histriomastix_, did
not, in my opinion, represent the English original of the translated
German play of _The Prodigal Son_ which Mr. Simpson presents as the
possible original, but was meant to indicate Shakespeare's _Love's
Labours Won_, which was written late in the preceding year as a
reflection of Southampton's intimacy with Florio, and the beginning of
his affair with Mistress Davenant,[25] the Oxford tavern keeper's wife.
The expression _The Prodigal Child_ differs from that of _The Prodigal
Son_ in meaning, in that the word "Child" at that period meant a young
nobleman. There is nothing whatever suggestive of Shakespeare's work in
the translated German play, and it was merely the similarity of title
that led Mr. Simpson to propose it as the play indicated. The play
satirised by Chapman under the title of _The Prodigal Child_ was
undoubtedly written by Shakespeare, and it is no more likely that
Chapman would use the actual name of the play at which he points than
that he would use the actual names of the various persons or of the
company of players whose actions and work he caricatures.
In 1594 George Chapman published _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_, and in
1595 his _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ and _A Coronet for his Mistress
Philosophy_, dedicating both publications to his friend Matthew Roydon.
The dedication of these poems to Roydon was an afterthought; they were
not primarily written with Roydon in mind.[26] It has been made evident
that Chapman had first submitted these poems to the Earl of Southampton
in an endeavour to win his patronage, and failing to do so dedicated
them to Roydon and attacked Shakespeare in the dedications, where he
refers to him in the capacity of reader to the Earl of Southampton, and
imputes to his adverse influence his ill-success in his attempt. In the
dedication to _The Shadow of Night_ he writes:
"How then may a man stay his marvailing to see passion-driven men
reading but to curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with
affection to great men's fancies take upon them as killing censures
as if they were judgements butchers or as if the life of truth lay
tottering in their verdicts.
"Now what supererogation in wit this is to think skill so mightily
pierced with their loves that she should prostitutely shew them her
secrets when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with
invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their
souls like an heavenly familiar. Why then should our _Intonsi
Catones_ with their profit ravished gravity esteem her true favours
such questionless vanities as with what part soever thereof they seem
to be something delighted they queamishly commend it for a pretty
toy. Good Lord how serious and eternal are their idolatrous platts
for riches."
The expression "passion-driven," as applied by Chapman to Shakespeare in
1594, especially in a dedication written to Matthew Roydon,--who in this
same year published _Willobie his Avisa_,--plainly refers to
Shakespeare's relations at that time with Mistress Davenant, who was the
original for the figure now known as the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, as
well as for the Avisa of _Willobie his Avisa_. The words "reading but to
curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with affection to great
men's fancies," refer to Shakespeare in the capacity of reader to the
Earl of Southampton. In an attack which John Florio makes upon
Shakespeare in 1598, he also makes a similar reference to him in this
capacity. The expression "judgements butcher," like Nashe's "killcow,"
indicates Shakespeare's father's trade of butcher.
It was the obvious parallel between Chapman's, "when she will scarcely
be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not
without having drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar," and
Shakespeare's allusion, in Sonnet 86, to a poet who attempted to
supplant him in Southampton's favour--
"He nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine"--
that led Professor Minto to suggest Chapman as the rival poet of the
Sonnets. In a former essay I have demonstrated the truth of Professor
Minto's suggestion.
Chapman's _Intonsi Catones_, or "Unshorn Catos," refers to the peculiar
manner in which Shakespeare wore his hair, which Greene describes as
"harsh and curled like a horse-mane," and is also a reference to his
provincial breeding and, presumed, lack of culture.
There are a number of indications in the few facts we possess of
Shakespeare's life in 1594, and also in his own and contemporary
publications, to warrant the assumption that the Earl of Southampton
bestowed some unusual evidence of his bounty upon him in this year. If
ever there was a period in his London career in which Shakespeare needed
financial assistance more than at other times it was in this year. Lord
Strange's company had now been acting under Henslowe's management for
two years. The financial condition of both Burbage and Shakespeare must
at this time have been at a low ebb. The plague had prevented Pembroke's
company playing in London for nearly a year, and we have seen that their
attempts to play in the provinces had resulted in failure and loss. In
about the middle of 1594, however, Lord Strange's players (now the Lord
Chamberlain's men) return to Burbage and the Theatre, when Shakespeare
becomes not only a member of the company, but, from the fact that his
name is mentioned with that of Kempe and Richard Burbage in the Court
records of the payment for performances in December 1594, it is evident
that he was then also a leading sharer in the company.
In parting from Henslowe and reorganising under Burbage in 1594 it is
apparent that the reorganisers of the Lord Chamberlain's men would need
considerable capital if we may judge the financial affairs of this
company by those of the Lord Admiral's company (subsequently Lord
Nottingham's men) while under Henslowe's management. On 13th October
1599 Henslowe records in his _Diary_: "Received with the company of my
Lord of Nottingham's men to this place, beinge the 13th of October 1599,
and it doth appeare that I have received of the debte which they owe
unto me three hundred fifty and eight pounds." This was only a partial
payment of this company's debt, which evidently was considerably in
excess of this amount. It is unlikely, then, that Lord Strange's company
was free of debt to him at the end of their term under his management.
Shakespeare's earliest biographer, Nicholas Rowe, records, on the
authority of Sir William Davenant, "that my Lord Southampton at one time
gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase
which he heard he had a mind to." Whatever truth there may be as to the
amount of money here mentioned, it is apparent that Southampton
evidenced his bounty to Shakespeare in 1594 in some substantial manner,
which quickly became noised abroad among the poets and writers who
sought patronage. Several of these poets in approaching Southampton
refer inferentially to his munificence to Shakespeare. In 1594 Barnabe
Barnes writes:
"Vouchsafe right virtuous Lord with gracious eyes
_Those heavenly lamps which give the muses light_
To view my muse with your judicial sight," etc.
The words italicised evidently refer to Southampton's acceptance of
_Venus and Adonis_ in the preceding year. Later in 1594, Thomas Nashe
dedicated _The Life of Jack Wilton_ to Southampton, and in a dedicatory
Sonnet to a poem preserved in the Rawlinson MS. in the Bodleian Library,
entitled _The Choice of Valentines_, Nashe apologises for the salacious
nature of the poem, and in an appended Sonnet evidently refers to
Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_ in the line italicised below:
"Thus hath my pen presumed to please my friend,
Oh might'st thou likewise please Apollo's eye;
No, honor brooks no such impietie,
_Yet Ovids Wanton Muse did not offend_,
He is the fountain whence my streams do flow,
Forgive me if I speak as I were taught."
In 1595 Gervase Markham, in a Sonnet prefixed to his poem on Richard
Grenville's fight in the _Revenge_, addresses Southampton as:
"Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill,
_Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen_,
Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill
Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men."
The line italicised not only refers to Shakespeare but gives evidence
also of the assured standing among poets which he had now attained in
unbiased judgments.
In addition to these evidences of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at
this time, we have the poet's own acknowledgment of the recent receipt
of a valuable gift in the _Lucrece_ dedication: "_The warrant I have of
your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes
it assured of acceptance_."
In his _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_ (1594) and its dedication, Chapman
complains of his lack of patronage and refers to what he designates as
Shakespeare's "_idol atrous platts for riches_."[27] In the body of the
poem he writes:
"Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices,
Wisdom conforms herself to all earth's guises,
_Good gifts are often given to men past good
And noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood_."
In view of the general knowledge of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare
at this time, and of the anti-Shakespearean intention which I have
demonstrated in Chapman's poem, it is apparent that these lines refer to
the nobleman's gift as well as to the intimacy between the peer and the
player at this period.
In this same year (1594) the scholars devised a plan to disrupt the
intimacy between Shakespeare and Southampton by producing and publishing
a scandalous poem satirising their relations, entitled _Willobie his
Avisa, or the true picture of a modest maid and a chaste and constant
wife_. In this poem Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is
represented as "Henry Willobie a young man and a scholar of very good
hope," while Shakespeare is indicated as "W.S.," an "old actor." "W.S."
is depicted as aiding and abetting Henry Willobie in a love affair with
Avisa, the wife of an Oxford tavern keeper who conducts a tavern
described as follows:
"See yonder house where hangs the badge
Of England's saint when captains cry
Victorious land to conquering rage."
In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa
at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long
before had tryed the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly
recovered of the like infection." _Willobie his Avisa_ in some measure
reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the
lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in
Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at
this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authorship as
well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem.
In 1595 George Chapman published his _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ and his
_A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, in both of which poems, as well
as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner
in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous
essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as
definitely establishing the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to
Shakespeare as well as his identity as the rival poet of the
Sonnets.[28]
Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in
1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this
coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the
rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and
literary prestige.
The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the
envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friendship and
patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.
Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the
acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when _Venus
and Adonis_ was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new
evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two
years before that date.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 20: _English Dramatic Companies_, 1558-1641, by John Tucker
Murray.]
[Footnote 21: In 1594 Cuthbert Burbie published a play entitled _The
Cobbler's Prophecy_, the authorship of which is ascribed to "R. Wilson"
on the title-page. The textual resemblances between this play, _The
Pedlar's Prophecy_, _The Three Ladies of London_, and _The Three Lords
and Three Ladies_, and certain parallels between the two latter and
_Fair Em_, all of which plays were published anonymously, led Mr. Fleay
to credit all of them to Wilson, in which--excluding _Fair Em_--he was
probably correct. All of these plays, with the exception of _The
Pedlar's Prophecy_, were either Burbage's or Admiral's properties. _The
Three Lords and Three Ladies_ was published for Richard Jones in 1590,
and _The Cobblers Prophecy_ for Cuthbert Burbie in 1594. All plays
published for Richard Jones were formerly old Admiral's properties, and
nearly all the early plays published for Cuthbert Burbie old Burbage
properties. _Fair Em_, while not published until 1631, records on the
title-page that it was acted by Lord Strange's company. _The Pedlar's
Prophecy_ was, however, published by Thomas Creede, all of whose
publications Mr. Fleay has found were old Queen's properties. Admitting,
then, that all of these plays were written by Robert Wilson, the latter
play must have been written by him for the Queen's company later than
1582-83, when he left Leicester's company. It appears probable also that
the earlier plays--_The Three Ladies_ and _The Cobbler's Prophecy_--were
written for Leicester's company before that date, and retained by
Burbage when he severed his connection with Leicester's men, or else,
that they were retained by Leicester's men as company properties and
brought to Strange's men in 1588-89 by Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, when
their old company disbanded. It is evident, then, _The Three Lords and
Three Ladies_, which Mr. Fleay admits is merely an amplification of the
old play of _The Three Ladies_, which he dates as being first published
in 1584, was a revision made when all these plays became Strange's
properties, and that the scriptural parallels between _The Three Lords
and Three Ladies_, _The Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_, which are quite
absent in _The Pedlar's Prophecy_--the only one of these plays ascribed
in the publication itself to Wilson--are due to the revisionary efforts
of the "theological poet" referred to by Greene as doing such work for
Strange's company, and as having had a hand in _Fair Em_, which was
acted in about 1590, in which year _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_,
which shows similar scriptural characteristics, was published. From a
time reference in the earlier form of this play--_The Three Ladies_--in
the first scene, "not much more than twenty-six years, it was in Queen
Mary's time," Mr. Fleay arbitrarily dates from the last year of Mary's
reign, and concludes that it may have been acted by the Queen's company
in 1584. He admits, however, that it does not appear in the list of the
Queen's men's plays for this year, and later on infers from other
evidence that the allusion to twenty-six years from Queen Mary's time
probably referred to the first date of publication, which is unknown,
but which he places, tentatively, in 1584. "That it was played by the
Queen's men," he writes, "is shown under the next play,--_The Three
Lords and Three Ladies_,--which is an amplification of the preceding
play performed shortly after Tarleton's death in about 1588." Mr. Fleay
writes further: "If I rightly understand the allusions, Tarleton acted
in _Wit and Will_ in 1567-68. The allusion to Tarleton's picture shows
that _Tarleton's Jests_, in which his picture appears, had already been
published. The statement that Simplicity (probably acted by Wilson
himself), Wit, and Will had acted with Tarleton, proves that the present
play was acted by the Queen's men."
In arguing to place Robert Wilson as a member of Strange's company in
1588-89, Mr. Fleay borrows both premises and inference from the facts to
support his theory. He is no doubt right in dating the original
composition of _The Three Ladies of London_ before 1584, and probably
also in attributing all of these plays to Wilson, but, seeing that they
were all Burbage properties in 1589-90, is it not evident that _The
Three Ladies of London_ was an old Leicester play produced by Wilson
before 1582-83, when he and Burbage left that company, and either that
Burbage then retained possession of it, or, that it was brought to
Strange's men by Pope, Kempe, and Bryan in 1589? Mr. Fleay admits that
_The Three Lords and Three Ladies_ is merely an amplification of _The
Three Ladies_ made after Tarleton's death, which occurred in 1588. It
seems apparent, then, that the scriptural phraseology noticeable in _The
Three Ladies_, _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_, which
led Mr. Fleay to impute the last to Wilson's pen, and also to connect
him as a writer and an actor with Lord Strange's company in 1589-90, is
the work of the "theological poet" indicated by Greene and Nashe as
having had a hand in _Fair Em_ in 1589. It is also evident that the
actors who took the parts of Simplicity, Wit, and Will,--in _The Three
Lords and Three Ladies_,--who had formerly acted with Tarleton, were
Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, Strange's men, who were all formerly Leicester's
men. It is much more likely that these old members of Leicester's
company, who in Tarleton's time would have been juniors in the company,
would recall and boast of their old connection, than that his late
associates in the Queen's company would do so within a year or two of
his death.]
[Footnote 22: Bentley was a Queen's player in 1584, and probably came
from Sussex's company to the Queen's upon the organisation of that
company in 1583.]
[Footnote 23: This letter and the verses are printed in _Henslowe's
Papers_, p. 32, W.W. Greg, 1907, and in the works of several earlier
editors.]
[Footnote 24: "The two more" here indicated by Greene are, I believe,
Lodge and Matthew Roydon, both of whom are mentioned by Nashe in his
address "To the Gentlemen of the two Universities" prefixed to Greene's
_Menaphon_. I have elsewhere shown that Roydon was a prolific ballad
writer who invariably wrote anonymously, or under pen names, and have
made evident his authorship of _Willobie his Avisa_, as well as its
anti-Shakespearean intention. Roydon also wrote plays as well as
ballads, and was possibly one of the "theological poets" referred to by
Greene in the introduction to his _Farewell to Folly_, who, he
intimates, were averse "for their calling and gravity" to have their
names appear as the authors of ballads or plays, and so secured "some
other batillus to set their names to their verses." Roydon's affected
anonymity is referred to by several other contemporary writers. Robert
Arnim writes of him as "a light that shines not in the world as it is
wished, but yet the worth of his lustre is known." Roydon was a curate
of the Established Church. Shakespeare's lack of respect for Church of
England curates, which is several times exhibited in his plays, was, no
doubt, due in some degree to his dislike of Roydon.]
[Footnote 25: Since the publication of _Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady
of Shakespeare's Sonnets_, in 1913, I have learned that John Davenant
was married twice. Roydon's _Willobie his Avisa_ refers to his first
wife, who was Anne Birde, daughter of Mayor William Birde of Bristol,
whom he married before July 1592. I have also found that his second wife
was Jane Shepherd of Durham. This matter will be fully elucidated in a
forthcoming publication.]
[Footnote 26: _Shakespeare and the Rival Poet_, 1902.]
[Footnote 27: A probable allusion to his _Lucrece_ dedication.]
[Footnote 28: _Shakespeare and the Rival Poet_, John Lane, London,
1903.]