SHAKSPERE’S AFTER-RESIDENCE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
The nearest _reliable_ authority we have for any story connected with
William Shakspere is the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, a man of literary
tastes, who kept a voluminous journal, and it is he who gives us the
account of “as I have heard, Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a
merrie meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a
feavour there contracted” (was it at the house in Blackfriars? they are
hardly all likely to have been at Stratford). Also in his Diary,
“Remember to peruse Shakespeare’s plays and bee much versed in them, that
I may not be ignorant in that matter. . . . Whether Dr. Heylin does well
in reckoning up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England to
omit Shakespeare?” Note here that Mr. Ward, although Vicar of the
parish, and a man of high education, was not acquainted with the works of
Shakespeare simply because he had not before realized the point that his
parishioner, whose descendants and relatives lived in humble guise, was
really the illustrious Shakespeare, whose praise was in all mouths, and
that therefore it was not necessary he should be “up in them,” as they
were not the subject of conversation in the town of his birth and youth
and burial, clearly the pressure upon him to get them up came later on
from without. He was not appointed to the Vicarage until 1662.
Diary of Rev. John Ward, from 1648 to 1679: “I _have heard_ that Mr.
Shakespeare was a natural wit, without any art at all,” and that is
pretty well all the Vicar of his native place heard tell of him as a
writer of these plays. He has nearly as much to say of “Edmund Alline, a
stage-player, who founded the College of Dulwich.” “I have heard that
Mr. Shakespeare was a natural wit without any art at all: hee frequented
the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at Stratford,
and supplied the stage with two plays every year and for itt had an
allowance so large that he spent at the rate of £1000 a year as I have
heard.”—From Diary of Rev. John Ward. How came Shakespeare’s brother
stage-player to be worth thousands, whilst the other’s income saved was
only about £200 or at most £300 a year? Was he the trusted middle man,
or Kemp, or both, in the secret?
Shakespeare’s Plays—Who Wrote them?
There is a quaint story printed by the Camden Society—Kemp’s “Nine Daies’
Wonder,” published 1600. Kemp was one of the leading performers in that
company in which Shakespere had subordinate parts assigned him, and
Edward Alleyne was chief manager. Nash was a friend of his, and his
tract, “An Almond for a Parrot,” is dedicated to him, “Monsieur du
Kempe.” He talks of another great journey, and signifies that he keeps
it dark whether “Rome, Jerusalem, Venice, or any other place at your idle
appoint” (p. 20). One of his letters begins, “My notable Shakerags,”
mentions “a penny poet, whose first making was the miserable stolne story
of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat.” In the Returne from
Parnassus—dialogue, “_Phil._ What, M. Kempe, how doth the Emperour of
Germany? _Student_. God save you, M. Kempe: Welcome from dancing the
morrice ‘over the Alpes.’ _Kempe_. Is it not better to _make a foole of
the world as I have done_ than to be fooled of the world as you schollers
are.” There is also that well-known allusion to “our fellow Shakespeare
putting them all down, I and Ben Jonson too, and giving him a purge that
made him beray his credit” (whatever that may mean). Also p. xiv, “The
Travailes of the Three English Brothers, Sir Anthony, Sir Thomas, and Sir
Robert Shirley, as it is now play’d by Her Majesties Servants,” the
following scene is supposed to take place at Venice:—“_Servant_. An
Englishman desires accesse to you. _Sir Anthony_. What is his name?
_Servant_. He calls himself Kempe. _Sir. Ant._ Bid him come in;
Welcome, honest Will, and what good new plays have you?” etc. Nash also
speaks of Kemp as being at Bergamo, and an Englishman from Venice meeting
him there and having a conversation on the “order and maner of our
plays.” These allusions, whether feigned or otherwise, show there were
communications going on between her Majesties players and foreign parts,
which were understood to be connected with “new plays” and “plays of
note.”
Was there any distant connection between Will Kempe and Sir A. Sherley?
His mother’s name was Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe, and had three
sons—Thomas, Anthony, and Robert. “No three persons of one family ever
experienced adventures at the same time so uncommon or so interesting”
(from a book “The Sherley Brothers,” by one of the same house, for
Roxburghe Club, Evelyn Philip Shirley). Sir Anthony married a first
cousin of the Earl of Essex, “who had oftentimes to befriend him.” He
was sent on embassies to every quarter of the known world. Was ofttimes
in communication with Burleigh. We hear of him most in Italy, “sent by
Emperor of Germany as ambassador to Morocco”; “hired horses to pass the
Alpes” (see Kemp, p. 16); writes to Anthony Bacon, a friend of Essex (p.
22). It appears that he wrote many letters at this period to his patron
Earl of Essex, Mr. Anthony Bacon, and Mr. Secretary Cecil. He is found
everywhere, sometimes employed as ambassador, sometimes on special
missions, sometimes in questionable ventures. Milan, Venice, where at
one time he seems to have resided for several years, Rome, Persia,
Cyprus, Antioch, Syracuse, Prague, Arabia, Tripoli, Aleppo, Bagdad,
Constantinople, Portugal, Spain. Sir Anthony appears (Annals of the
Shirley Family) with his brother Sir Robert to have always been in debt
and difficulty, “sometimes like to starve for want of bread,” profuse and
extravagant when money was to be had, utterly careless how it was
obtained. Mention is made of “Henry Sherley, kinsman of Mr. James
Sherley, the _play-wright_, and who did also excel him in that faculty.”
Henry Sherley was the author of the following plays never printed:
Spanish Duke of Lerna, Duke of Guise, Gasaldo the country lover (p. 270,
Annals of Shirley Family). Sir Anthony was ever aiming to get reinstated
at Court, and if he had been known to have been mixed up with these
plays, it would have been fatal to his chance with Elizabeth. Clearly he
had something to do with Will Kempe, a member of Alleyn’s company, who
acted the prominent parts in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice,
etc. Was not “Will Kempe” the go-between the manager and the author?
Was it not necessary, in order to keep the secret, that the MSS. should
not pass from hand to hand, or be entrusted even to the ambassador’s bag?
Lansdowne MSS. 1608, Milan, Sir Anthony Sherley to his sister, Lady
Tracy, “you will say, I should have written; it is true, but there are
such intercepting of my poor papers that before God I dare commit nothing
to paper, and now less than ever.” The extraordinary capacity and
knowledge of languages and familiarity with places and scenery by Sir
Anthony Sherley, especially in Italy, were clearly unequalled. What
share had he in what may be a joint-stock company for the production of
these plays? It is now acknowledged that many of the plays are
translated from Italian plays and other novels. Did he bring this grist
to the mill, find novels and stories, translate them, and forward them by
his trusted kinsman Kempe to others to ship-shape them and fit them for
the stage? May not the name of Sherley have oozed out amongst “the
playwrights,” and thence “_Henry_ Sherley, who excelled in that faculty,”
been spoken of as the man who wrote them. Sir Anthony keeps up his
friendship with Anthony Bacon, whom no doubt he knew in earlier days at
Court. How fond they all were of the name of Anthony. A greater
knowledge of men and manners and languages and the leading men and
courtiers of the day or such a master of travel existed not in his time.
Strange also is it that “The Travailes of the three English Brothers, Sir
Thomas, Sir Anthony, and Mr. Robert Sherley,” should be presented on the
stage by this same company of which Kempe was a member. How were they
acquainted with them?
These are all singular coincidences, and as I write I have been perusing
Donnelly, and I find nothing to contradict, but much to back up my
theories. His chapter ix. vol. i. p. 171, also x. and others passim,
might fit Sherley as well as Bacon. (Shylock, p. 224.) Sherley borrows
money wherever he could get credit and at other times spends it freely.
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my monies and my usances.
Sir Anthony, has he not often “sat on the Rialto”? has he not often
watched the Argosies come “to road”? Has he not had ventures everywhere?
Read over The Merchant of Venice, and say if it could possibly have been
written but by one resident there and half Italian in his knowledge and
familiarity with people and scenes in Italy itself. What is Antonio
everywhere but Anthony “writ new”? See Sonnets, lxxvi.:
Why write I still all _one_, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
See also Sonnets passim illustrating and explaining “my papers yellowed
with their age,” “my muse,” “my verse.”
What are the names of places mentioned? Tripolis, Mexico, England,
Lisbon, Barbary, India, “where his argosies with portly sail,” “the
pageants of the sea.” What in Othello? Cyprus on the brow of the sea
“stand ranks of people and they cry a sail.” May—nay, must have
witnessed it in person.
The leading qualifications for the author of Shakespeare’s Plays to
possess are summed up on the medallion of Sir Anthony Sherley’s picture,
Antonius Sherleyus Anglus Eques aurati (Annals of the Shirley Family,
second edition, p. 297, “Multorum mores hominum qui vidit et urbes”), and
it was his and his alone to fulfil them to the letter. He must have a
familiarity with sylvan life, its beauties, its copses, and its ferns and
flowers; must have mixed in youthful sports, hawked, _hunted the hare_,
and chased the roe and conies in his father’s park at Wiston (there is an
ancient picture of the Lord of the Manor there, issuing forth on a
sporting expedition, p. 264). He no doubt visited Chartley (Erdeswick’s
Staffordshire). “The park is very large and hath therein red deer,
fallow deer, wild beasts, and swine,” passed on to Tamworth, the ancient
seat of Ferrers family (see Shirley Annals, p. 183). “In the principal
chamber is a very noble chimney piece of dark oak, reaching to the
ceiling, carved with the story of Venus and Adonis, and the arms of
Ferrers and the motto, {20} ‘_only one_.’” May be the young Southampton
was with him there. His education must have been liberal—Oxford, Hart
and All Souls’ Colleges—he was at them both. He must have studied at the
bar and had great legal knowledge—“Inns of Court” gave him that. English
court life, its pageants, its courtiers, he knew them well. Camps he had
commanded at Zutphen. His friends and kinsmen were Essex, Lord
Southampton, the latter to whom he dedicated his Venus and Adonis, had
like himself married a sister Vernon, a cousin of Lord Essex. The
fickleness of sovereigns he had felt, he had in some way offended
Elizabeth, and that spiteful woman never him forgave; she cut off his
kinsman Essex’s head and stole his books. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,”
_Val_ to _Duke_:
“These banished men that I have kept withal,
Are men endued with worthy qualities,
Forgive them what they have committed here,
And let them be recalled from their exile:
They are reformed, civil, full of good,
And fit for great employment.”
Sherley Brothers, p. 27, to Sir Cecill, “his whole object being if
possible to conciliate the Queen, and to obtain leave to return to
England. Elizabeth however remained inexorable.”—A.D. 1600.
P. 34. Venice, “which city remained his head quarters for some
years.”—1601.
P. 50. A.D. 1605.—“Four months abode in Saphia, kept open house . . .;
to supply his own turn for money he got credit of Jews to take up money,
and pay them in moriscos, but at an excessive rate, almost fifty for an
hundred.”
All foreign courts, even the Czar of Muscovy, the great Sophi, King of
Morocco, of Persia; well, he had had missions to them, and been of them
and amongst them. A thorough knowledge of a sailor’s life, their own
peculiar phrases and ship-shape ways are his to speak of as a sailor
would; perils by sea and land, he had gone through them all. Languages,
most of them on his mouth-tips dwell (Alls Well that Ends Well, “If there
be here German or Dane, low Dutch, Italian, or French, let him speak to
me”). The habits and the ways, the customs, dresses, manners, laws of
almost every known nation then, he had witnessed, thought on, and had
both an eye-sight and head knowledge of them. Horses, he knew their
points; nightingales (passim), he had listened to their song.
Among the papers relating to the Low Countries in the S.P.O. is the
following in illustration of Shakespeare’s well-known line, “Saddle white
Surrey to the field,” etc. “A note of all the horses of old store, which
Thomas Underwood acknowledgeth himself to have received since his coming
to your honor’s (Sir H. Sidney) service, June 2, 1589, _e.g._:
Charge. Discharge.
Graie Stanhope given to Sir Roger Williams.
Baie SHURLIE ,, Mr. Ralph Love.
Baie Skipworth ,, The Grooms.
Graie Essex ,, Mr. St. Barbe.
Graie Bingham ,, Sir Philip Sidney.
Pied Markham ,, The French Ambassador.
Dun Sidney ,, Bonham.
Sorrel Bingham ,, Sir Richard Bingham.
Black Stanhope ,, To the cart at Fulham.”
“Anthony Sherley had a command in the Low Countries among the English
when Sir Philip Sidney was killed” (Wood). “This was before Zutphen in
1586.”—From Sherley Brothers (p. 4).
“Dispatched with title of Colonel into Brittany under Essex,” 1591 (p.
5).
Might he not even have heard Essex or Sir Philip Sidney give orders to
saddle his gray charger to the field to-morrow.
Anthony Sherley and no other was he who wrote these plays.