speaks of him as “learned,” erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The
epithets for him are “sweet,” “gentle,” “honeyed,” “sugared,”
“honey-tongued”—this is the convention. The tradition followed by
Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote
_L’Allegro_ just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare “sweetest
Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” with “native wood-notes wild”; and gives to
Jonson “the _learned_ sock.” Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years
before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a
Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare’s works appeared when each
of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive
interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his
plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at
Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller’s remark that Shakespeare’s
“learning was very little,” that, if alive, he would confess himself “to
be never any scholar.” {151a} I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the
persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare’s generation, such as
Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation.
If Mr. Collins’s view be correct, the men of Shakespeare’s and of
Milton’s generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was
deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of
Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.
VIII
“THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”
WHEN Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the
Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, “Ah, but you cannot prove
the author mentioned to be the actor.” We have seen that Meres (1598)
speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet (“Poor
poet-ape that would be thought our chief,” quoth Jonson), as author of
_Venus and Adonis_, and as a sonneteer. “All this does nothing whatever
to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays
and poems alluded to,” says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again.
{155a}
The allusions, I repeat, _do_ prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was
believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is
found to have been conspicuously before the town. “There is nothing at
all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal
knowledge of Shakespeare.” There is nothing at all to prove that Meres,
native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of nine-tenths of the
English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he mentions. “On the
question—who was Shakespeare?—he throws no light.” He “throws no light
on the question” “who was?” any of the poets mentioned by him, except
one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this “sad
repeated air,”—“critics who praise Shakespeare do not say _who
Shakespeare_ was,”—would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge:
though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,—otherwise he
would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration.
The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less
the need for any critic to tell his public “who Shakespeare was.”
As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is
alluded to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the
account-book of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender,
pawn-broker, purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare
is _not_ mentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled,
may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money to
several actors, some of them of Shakespeare’s company, “The Lord
Chamberlain’s.” There is no such note of a loan to Shakespeare. Does
this prove that he was not an actor? If so, Burbage was not an actor;
Henslowe never names him.
There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance
of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes _the name of
Shakespeare __is never once mentioned as the author of any play_. How
weird! But in _these_ notes the names of the authors of the plays acted
are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays?
On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money to
authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs,
threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and nine
authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also Ben Jonson
(1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, authors in
Henslowe’s pay. _But the same of Shakespeare never appears_.
Mysterious! The other men’s names, writes Dr. Furness, occur “because
they were all writers for Henslowe’s theatre, but we must wait at all
events for the discovery of some other similar record, before we can
produce corresponding memoranda regarding Shaksper” (_sic_) “and his
productions.” {157a}
The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying, “Henslowe
records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because he lent him no
money. He records no payments for plays to Shakespeare the author-actor,
because to Henslowe the actor sold no plays.” That is the whole
explanation of the Silence of Philip Henslowe. If Shakspere did sell a
play to Henslowe, why should that financier omit the fact from his
accounts? Suppose that the actor was illiterate as Baconians fervently
believe, and sold Bacon’s plays, what prevented him from selling a play
of Bacon’s (under his own name, as usual) to Henslowe? To obtain a
Baconian reply you must wander into conjecture, and imagine that Bacon
forbade the transaction. Then _why_ did he forbid it? Because he could
get a better price from Shakspere’s company? The same cause would
produce the same effect on Shakspere himself; whether he were the author,
or were Bacon’s, or any man’s go-between. On any score but that of
money, why was Henslowe good enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood,
Middleton, and Webster, and not good enough for Bacon, who did not appear
in the matter at all, but was represented in it by the actor, Will? As a
gentleman and a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much discredited if
he were known to sell (for £6 on an average) his noble works to the Lord
Chamberlain’s Company, as if he sold them to Henslowe.
I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and philosopher
is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a commission on his
sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole sum in each case. I
know not whether the players paid Shakspere a sum down for his (or
Bacon’s) plays, or whether Will received a double share, or other, or any
share of the profits on them, as Henslowe did when he let a house to the
players. Nobody knows any of these things.
“If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would have
employed him also, like the others, in that behalf.” {159a} Henslowe
would, if he could have got the “copy” cheap enough. Was any one of “the
others,” the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If
not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shakspere _was_ a
shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe’s so-called “Diary,”
mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry
Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the
company protected by the Earl of Nottingham. {159b} Modern publishers
and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists and
playwrights.
It appears to me that Shakspere’s company would be likely, as his plays
were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him, and to
give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,—whether the wares were
his own—or Bacon’s. He was a keen man of business. In such a case, he
would not write for Henslowe’s pittance. He had a better market. The
plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, were
at his disposal, and he did not dispose of them to Henslowe, wherefore
Henslowe cannot mention him in his accounts. That is all.
Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr. Greenwood
cites the circumstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn’s papers “there is
not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper in his list of actors,
poets, and theatrical comrades.” {160a} If this means that Shakspere is
not mentioned by Alleyn among actors, are we to infer that William was
not an actor? Even Baconians insist that he was an actor. “How strange,
how more than strange,” cries Mr. Greenwood, “that Henslowe should make
no mention in all this long diary, embracing all the time from 1591 to
1609, of the actor-author . . . No matter. _Credo quia impossibile_!”
{160b} _Credo_ what? and what is _impossible_? Henslowe’s volume is no
Diary; he does not tell a single anecdote of any description; he merely
enters loans, gains, payments. Does Henslowe mention, say, Ben Jonson,
_when he is not doing business with Ben_? Does he mention any actor or
author except in connection with money matters? Then, if he did no
business with Shakspere the actor, in borrowing or lending, and did no
business with Shakespeare the author, in borrowing, lending, buying or
selling, “How strange, how more than strange” it would be if Henslowe
_did_ mention Shakespeare! He was not keeping a journal of literary and
dramatic jottings. He was keeping an account of his expenses and
receipts. He never names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions
Shakespeare.
Mr. Greenwood again expresses his views about this dark suspicious
mystery, the absence of Shakespeare or Shakspere (or Shak, as you like
it), from Henslowe’s accounts, if Shak(&c.) wrote plays. But the
mystery, if mystery there be, is just as obscure if the actor were the
channel through which Bacon’s plays reached the stage, for the pretended
author of these masterpieces. Shak—was not the man to do all the
troking, bargaining, lying, going here and there, and making himself a
motley to the view for £0, 0_s._ 0_d._ If he were a sham, a figure-head,
a liar, a fetcher-and-carrier of manuscripts, _he would be paid for it_.
But he did not deal with Henslowe in his bargainings, and _that_ is why
Henslowe does not mention him. Mr. Greenwood, in one place, {161a}
agrees, so far, with me. “Why did Henslowe not mention Shakespeare as
the writer of other plays” (than _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_)? “I
think the answer is simple enough.” (So do I.) “Neither Shakspere nor
‘Shakespeare’ ever wrote for Henslowe!” The obvious is perceived at
last; and the reason given is “that he was above Henslowe’s ‘skyline,’”
“he” being the Author. We only differ as to _why_ the author was above
Henslowe’s “sky-line.” I say, because good Will had a better market,
that of his Company. I understand Mr. Greenwood to think,—because the
Great Unknown was too great a man to deal with Henslowe. If to write for
the stage were discreditable, to deal (unknown) with Henslowe was no more
disgraceful than to deal with “a cry of players”; and as (unknown) Will
did the bargaining, the Great Unknown was as safe with Will in one case
as in the other. If Will did not receive anything for the plays from his
own company (who firmly believed in his authorship), they must have said,
“Will! dost thou serve the Muses and thy obliged fellows for naught?
Dost thou give us two popular plays yearly,—gratis?”
Do you not see that, in the interests of the Great Secret itself, Will
_had_ to take the pay for the plays (pretended his) from somebody. Will
Shakspere making his dear fellows and friends a present of two
masterpieces yearly was too incredible. So I suppose he did have
royalties on the receipts, or otherwise got his money; and, as he
certainly did not get them from Henslowe, Henslowe had no conceivable
reason for entering Will’s name in his accounts.
Such are the reflections of a plain man, but to an imaginative soul there
seems to be a brooding mist, with a heart of fire, which half conceals
and half reveals the darkened chamber wherein abides “The Silence of
Philip Henslowe.” “The Silence of Philip Henslowe,” Mr. Greenwood
writes, “is a very remarkable phenomenon . . . ” It is a phenomenon
precisely as remarkable as the absence of Mr. Greenwood’s name from the
accounts of a boot-maker with whom he has never had any dealings.
“If, however, there was a man in high position, ‘a concealed poet,’” who
“took the works of others and rewrote and transformed them, besides
bringing out original plays of his own . . . then it is natural enough
that his name should not appear among those [of the] for the most part
impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe paid money for playwriting.”
{163a} Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact, the name of Bacon, or
Southampton, or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or
Sir Fulke Greville, or any other “man in high position,” does _not_
appear in Henslowe’s accounts. Nor does the name of William Shak(&c.).
But why should it not appear if Will sold either his own plays, or those
of the noble friend to whom he lent his name and personality—to Henslowe?
Why not?
Then consider the figure, to my mind impossible, of the great “concealed
poet” “of high position,” who can “bring out original plays of his own,”
and yet “takes the works of others,” say of “sporting Kyd,” or of Dekker
and Chettle, and such poor devils,—_takes_ them as a Yankee
pirate-publisher takes my rhymes,—and “rewrites and transforms them.”
Bacon (or Bungay) _cannot_ “take” them without permission of their legal
owners,—Shakspere’s or any other company;—of any one, in short, who, as
Ben Jonson says, “buys up reversions of old plays.” How is he to manage
these shabby dealings? Apparently he employs Will Shakspere, spells his
own “_nom de plume_” “Shakespeare,” and has his rewritings and
transformations of the destitute author’s work acted by Will’s company.
What a situation for Bacon, or Sir Fulke Greville, or James VI, or any
“man in high position” whom fancy can suggest! The plays by the original
authors, whoever they were, could only be obtained by the “concealed
poet” and “man in high position” from the legal owners, Shakspere’s
company, usually. The concealed poet had to negotiate with the owners,
and Bacon (or whoever he was) employed that scamp Will Shakspere, first,
I think, to extract the plays from the owners, and then to pretend that
he himself, even Will, had “rewritten and transformed them.”
What an associate was our Will for the concealed poet; how certain it was
that Will would blackmail the “man in high position”! “Doubtless” he
did: we find Bacon arrested for debt, more than once, while Will buys New
Place, in Stratford, with the money extorted from the concealed poet of
high position. {164a} Bacon did associate with that serpent Phillips, a
reptile of Walsingham, who forged a postscript to Mary Stuart’s letter to
Babington. But now, if not Bacon, then some other concealed poet of high
position, with a mysterious passion for rewriting and transforming plays
by sad, needy authors, is in close contact with Will Shakspere, the
Warwickshire poacher and ignorant butcher’s boy, country schoolmaster,
draper’s apprentice, _enfin_, _tout le tremblement_.
“How strange, how more than strange!”
The sum of the matter seems to me to be that from as early as March 3,
1591, we find Henslowe receiving small sums of money for the performances
of many plays. He was paid as owner or lessee of the House used by this
or that company. On March 3, 1591, the play acted by “Lord Strange’s
(Derby’s) men” was _Henry VI_. Several other plays with names familiar
in Shakespeare’s Works, such as _Titus Andronicus_, all the three parts
of _Henry VI_, _King Leare_ (April 6, 1593), _Henry V_ (May 14, 1592),
_The Taming of a Shrew_ (June 11, 1594), and _Hamlet_, paid toll to
Henslowe. He “received” so much, on each occasion, when they were acted
in a theatre of his. But he never records his purchase of these plays;
and it is not generally believed that Shakespeare was the author of all
these plays, in the form which they bore in 1591–4: though there is much
difference of opinion.
There is one rather interesting case. On August 25, 1594, Henslowe
enters “_ne_” (that is, “a new play”) “Received at the Venesyon Comodey,
eighteen pence.” That was his share of the receipts. The Lord
Chamberlain’s Company, that of Shakespeare, was playing in Henslowe’s
theatre at Newington Butts. If the “Venesyon Comodey” (Venetian Comedy)
were _The Merchant of Venice_, this is the first mention of it. But
nobody knows what Henslowe meant by “the Venesyon Comodey.” He does not
mention the author’s name, because, in this part of his accounts he never
does mention the author or authors. He only names them when he buys
from, or lends to, or has other money dealings with the authors. He had
none with Shakespeare, hence the Silence of Philip Henslowe.
IX
THE LATER LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE—HIS MONUMENT AND PORTRAITS
IN the chapter on the Preoccupations of Bacon the reader may find help in
making up his mind as to whether Bacon, with his many and onerous duties
and occupations, his scientific studies, and his absorbing scientific
preoccupation, is a probable author of the Shakespearean plays. Mr.
Greenwood finds the young Shakspere impossible—because of his
ignorance—which made him such a really good pseudo-author, and such a
successful mask for Bacon, or Bacon’s unknown equivalent. The Shakspere
of later life, the well-to-do Shakspere, the purchaser of the right to
bear arms; so bad at paying one debt at least; so eager a creditor; a
would-be encloser of a common; a man totally bookless, is, to Mr.
Greenwood’s mind, an impossible author of the later plays.
Here, first, are moral objections on the ground of character as revealed
in some legal documents concerning business. Now, I am very ready to
confess that William’s dealings with his debtors, and with one creditor,
are wholly unlike what I should expect from the author of the plays.
Moreover, the conduct of Shelley in regard to his wife was, in my
opinion, very mean and cruel, and the last thing that we could have
expected from one who, in verse, was such a tender philanthropist, and in
life was—women apart—the best-hearted of men. The conduct of Robert
Burns, alas, too often disappoints the lover of his _Cottar’s Saturday
Night_ and other moral pieces. He was an inconsistent walker.
I sincerely wish that Shakespeare had been less hard in money matters,
just as I wish that in financial matters Scott had been more like
himself, that he had not done the last things that we should have
expected him to do. As a member of the Scottish Bar it was inconsistent
with his honour to be the secret proprietor of a publishing and a
printing business. This is the unexplained moral paradox in the career
of a man of chivalrous honour and strict probity: but the fault did not
prevent Scott from writing his novels and poems. Why, then, should the
few bare records of Shakspere’s monetary transactions make _his_
authorship impossible? The objection seems weakly sentimental.
Macaulay scolds Scott as fiercely as Mr. Greenwood scolds Shakspere,—for
the more part, ignorantly and unjustly. Still, there is matter to cause
surprise and regret. Both Scott and Shakspere are accused of writing for
gain, and of spending money on lands and houses with the desire to found
families. But in the mysterious mixture of each human personality, any
sober soul who reflects on his own sins and failings will not think other
men’s failings incompatible with intellectual excellence. Bacon’s own
conduct in money matters was that of a man equally grasping and
extravagant. Ben Jonson thus describes Shakespeare as a social
character: “He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature . . . I
loved the man and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as
any.” Perhaps Ben never owed money to Shakspere and refused to pay!
We must not judge a man’s whole intellectual character, and declare him
to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about
matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan Mr.
Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which the
ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,—pursued by the distraint of
one of the friendly family of Quiney—Adrian Quiney. They were neighbours
and made a common dunghill in Henley Street. {171a} I do not, like Mr.
Greenwood, see anything “at all out of the way” in the circumstance “that
a man should be writing _Hamlet_, and at the same time bringing actions
for petty sums lent on loan at some unspecified interest.” {171b} Nor do
I see anything at all out of the way in Bacon’s prosecution of his friend
and benefactor, Essex (1601), while Bacon was writing _Hamlet_. Indeed,
Shakspere’s case is the less “out of the way” of the two. He wanted his
loan to be repaid, and told his lawyer to bring an action. Bacon wanted
to keep his head (of inestimable value) on his shoulders; or to keep his
body out of the Tower; or he merely, as he declares, wanted to do his
duty as a lawyer of the Crown. In any case, Bacon was in a tragic
position almost unexampled; and was at once overwhelmed by work, and, one
must suppose, by acute distress of mind, in the case of Essex. He must
have felt this the more keenly, if, as some Baconians vow, _he wrote the
Sonnets to Essex_. Whether he were writing his _Hamlet_ when engaged in
Essex’s case (1601), or any other of his dramatic masterpieces, even this
astonishing man must have been sorely bestead to combine so many branches
of business.
Thus I would reply to Mr. Greenwood’s amazement that Shakspere, a hard
creditor, and so forth, should none the less have been able to write his
plays. But if it is meant that a few business transactions must have
absorbed the whole consciousness of Shakespeare, and left him neither
time nor inclination for poetry, consider the scientific preoccupation of
Bacon, his parliamentary duties, his ceaseless activity as “one of the
legal body-guard of the Queen” at a time when he had often to be
examining persons accused of conspiracy,—and do not forget his long and
poignant anxiety about Essex, his constant efforts to reconcile him with
Elizabeth, and to advocate his cause without losing her favour; and,
finally, the anguish of prosecuting his friend, and of knowing how hardly
the world judged his own conduct. Follow him into his relations with
James I; his eager pursuit of favour, the multiplicity of his affairs,
his pecuniary distresses, and the profound study and severe labour
entailed by the preparation for and the composition of _The Advancement
of Learning_ (1603–5). He must be a stout-hearted Baconian who can
believe that, between 1599 and 1605, Bacon was writing _Hamlet_, and
other masterpieces of tragedy or comedy. But all is possible to genius.
What Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown was doing at this period, “neither
does he know, nor do I know, but he only.” He, no doubt, had abundance
of leisure.
At last Shakspere died (1616), and had not the mead of one melodious
tear, as far as we know, from the London wits, in the shape of obituary
verses. This fills Mr. Greenwood with amazement. “Was it because ‘the
friends of the Muses’ were for the most part aware that Shakespeare had
not died with Shakspere?” Did Jonson perchance think that his idea might
be realised when he wrote,
“What a sight it were,
To see thee in our waters yet appear”?
and so on. Did Jonson expect and hope to see the genuine “Shakespeare”
return to the stage, seven years after the death of Shakspere the actor,
the Swan of Avon? As Jonson was fairly sane, we can no more suspect him
of having hoped for this miracle than believe that most of the poets knew
the actor not to be the author. Moreover Jonson, while desiring that
Shakespeare might “shine forth” again and cheer the drooping stage,
added,
“Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light,”
that is—the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of
involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians.
Beaumont died in the same year as Shakspere, who died in the depths of
the country, weary of London. Has Mr. Greenwood found obituary poems
dropped on the grave of the famous Beaumont? Did Fletcher, did Jonson,
produce one melodious tear for the loss of their friend; in Fletcher’s
case his constant partner? No? Were the poets, then, aware that
Beaumont was a humbug, whose poems and plays were written by Bacon?
{174a}
I am not to discuss Shakespeare’s Will, the “second-best bed,” and so
forth. But as Shakespeare’s Will says not a word about his books, it is
decided by Mr. Greenwood that he had no books. Mr. Greenwood is a
lawyer; so was my late friend Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., of White Staunton,
who remarks that Shakespeare bequeathed “all the rest of my goods,
chattels, leases, &c., to my son-in-law, John Hall, gent.” (He really
_was_ a “gent.” with authentic coat-armour.)
It is with Mr. Elton’s opinion, not with my ignorance, that Mr. Greenwood
must argue in proof of the view that “goods” are necessarily exclusive of
books, for Mr. Elton takes it as a quite natural fact that Shakespeare’s
books passed, with his other goods, to Mr. Hall, and thence to a Mr.
Nash, to whom Mr. Hall left “my study of books” {175a} (library). I only
give this as a lawyer’s opinion.
There is in the Bodleian an Aldine Ovid, “with Shakespeare’s” signature
(merely Wm. She.), and a note, “This little volume of Ovid was given to
me by W. Hall, who sayd it was once Will Shakespeare’s.” I do not know
that the signature (like that on Florio’s _Montaigne_, in the British
Museum) has been detected as a forgery; nor do I know that Shakespeare’s
not specially mentioning his books proves that he had none. Lawyers
appear to differ as to this inference: both Mr. Elton and Mr. Greenwood
seem equally confident. {175b} But if it were perfectly natural that the
actor, Shakspere, should have no books, then he certainly made no effort,
by the local colour of owning a few volumes, to persuade mankind that he
_was_ the author. Yet they believed that he was—really there is no
wriggling out of it. As regards any of his own MSS. which Shakespeare
may have had (one would expect them to be at his theatre), and their
monetary value, if they were not, as usual, the property of his company,
and of him as a member thereof, we can discuss that question in the
section headed “The First Folio.”
It appears that Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, could write no more than
her grandfather. {176a} Nor, I repeat, could the Lady Jane Gordon,
daughter of the great Earl of Huntly, when she was married to the Earl of
Bothwell in 1566. At all events, Lady Jane “made her mark.” It may be
feared that Judith, brought up in that very illiterate town of Stratford,
under an illiterate mother, was neglected in her education. Sad, but
very common in women of her rank, and scarcely a proof that her father
did not write the plays.
As “nothing is known of the disposition and character” {176b} of
Shakespeare’s grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, who died in 1670, it is not
so paralysingly strange that nothing is known of any relics or anecdotes
of Shakespeare which she may have possessed. Mr. Greenwood “would have
supposed that she would have had much to say about the great poet,”
exhibited his books (if any), and so forth. Perhaps she did,—but how, if
we “know nothing about her disposition and character,” can we tell? No
interviewers rushed to her house (Abington Hall, Northampton-shire) with
pencils and notebooks to record her utterances; no reporter interviewed
her for the press. It is surprising, is it not?
The inference might be drawn, in the Baconian manner, that, during the
Commonwealth and Restoration, “the friends of the Muses” knew that the
actor was _not_ the author, and therefore did not interview his
granddaughter in the country.
“But, at any rate, we have the Stratford monument,” says Mr. Greenwood,
and delves into this problem. Even the Stratford monument of Shakespeare
in the parish church is haunted by Baconian mysteries. If the gentle
reader will throw his eye over the photograph {177a} of the monument as
it now exists, he may not be able to say to the face of the poet—
“Thou wast that all to me, Will,
For which my soul did pine.”
But if he has any knowledge of Jacobean busts on monuments, he will
probably agree with me in saying, “This effigy, though executed by
somebody who was not a Pheidias, and who perhaps worked merely from
descriptions, is, at all events, Jacobean.” The same may assuredly be
said of the monument; it is in good Jacobean style: the pillars with
their capitals are graceful: all the rest is in keeping; and the two
inscriptions are in the square capital letters of inscriptions of the
period; not in italic characters. Distrusting my own _expertise_, I have
consulted Sir Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Holmes of the National Portrait
Gallery. They, with Mr. Spielmann, think the work to be of the early
seventeenth century.
Next, glance at the figure opposite. This is a reproduction of “the
earliest representation of the Bust” (and monument) in Dugdale’s
_Antiquities of Warwickshire_ (1656). Compare the two objects, point by
point, from the potato on top with holes in it, of Dugdale, which is
meant for a skull, through all the details,—bust and all. Does Dugdale’s
print, whether engraved by Hollar or not, represent a Jacobean work?
Look at the two ludicrous children, their legs dangling in air; at the
lions’ heads above the capitals of the pillars; at the lettering of the
two visible words of the inscription, and at the gloomy hypochondriac or
lunatic, clasping a cushion to his abdomen. That hideous design was not
executed by an artist who “had his eye on the object,” if the object were
a Jacobean monument: while the actual monument was fashioned in no period
of art but the Jacobean. From Digges’ rhymes in the Folio of 1623, we
know that Shakespeare already had his “Stratford monument.” _The
existing object is what he had_; the monument in Dugdale is what, I hope,
no architect of 1616–23 could have imagined or designed.
[Picture: The Monument in Dugdale’s “History of the Antiquities of
Warwickshire” (1656) (By permission of John Murray, Esq.)]
Dugdale’s engraving is not a correct copy of any genuine Jacobean work of
art. Is Dugdale accurate in his reproductions of other monuments in
Stratford Church? To satisfy himself on this point, Sir George
Trevelyan, as he wrote to me (June 13, 1912), “made a sketch of the Carew
Renaissance monument in Stratford Church, and found that the
discrepancies between the original tomb and the representation in
Dugdale’s _Warwickshire_ are far and away greater than in the monument to
William Shakespeare.”
Mr. Greenwood, {179a} while justly observing that “the little sitting
figures . . . are placed as no monumental sculptor would place them,” “on
the whole sees no reason at all why we should doubt the substantial
accuracy of Dugdale’s figure . . . It is impossible to suppose that
Hollar would have drawn and that Dugdale would have published a mere
travesty of the Stratford Monument.”
I do not know who drew the design, but a travesty of Jacobean work it is
in every detail of the monument. A travesty is what Dugdale gives as a
representation of the Carew monument. Mr. Greenwood, elsewhere,
repeating his criticism of the impossible figures of children, says:
“This is certainly mere matter of detail, and, in the absence of other
evidence, would give us no warrant for doubting the substantial accuracy
of Dugdale’s presentment of the ‘Shakespeare’ bust.” {180a}
Why are we to believe that Dugdale’s artist was merely fantastic in his
design of the children (and also remote from Jacobean taste in every
detail), and yet to credit him with “substantial accuracy” in his
half-length of a gloomy creature clutching a cushion to his stomach?
With his inaccuracies as to the Carew monument, why are we to accept him
as accurate in his representation of the bust? Moreover, other evidence
is not wanting. It is positively certain that the monument existing in
1748, was then known as “the original monument,” and that no other
monument was put in its place, at that date or later.
[Picture: The Carew Monument in Stratford Church]
[Picture: The Carew Monument as Represented in Dugdale’s “History of the
Antiquities of Warwickshire” (1656)]
Now Mrs. Stopes {180b} argues that in 1748 the monument was “entirely
reconstructed,” and so must have become no longer what Dugdale’s man
drew, but what we see to-day. It is positively certain that her opinion
is erroneous.
If ever what we see to-day was substituted for anything like what
Dugdale’s man drew, the date of the substitution is unknown.
Mrs. Stopes herself discovered the documents which disprove her theory.
They were known to Halliwell-Phillipps, who quotes an unnamed
“contemporary account.” {181a} This account Mrs. Stopes, with her
tireless industry, found in the Wheler manuscripts, among papers of the
Rev. Joseph Greene, in 1746 Head Master of the Grammar School. In one
paper of September 1740 “the original monument” is said to be “much
impaired and decayed.” There was a scheme for making “a new monument” in
Westminster Abbey. _That_, I venture to think, would have been in
Hanoverian, not in Jacobean taste and style. But there was no money for
a new monument. Mrs. Stopes also found a paper of November 20, 1748,
showing that in September 1746, Mr. Ward (grandfather of Mrs. Siddons)
was at Stratford with “a cry of players.” He devoted the proceeds of a
performance of _Othello_ to the reparation of the then existing monument.
The amount was twelve pounds ten shillings. The affair dragged on, one
of the Church-wardens, a blacksmith, held the £12, 10_s._, and was
troublesome. The document of November 20, 1748, was drawn up to be
signed, but was not signed, by the persons who appear to be chiefly
concerned in the matter. It directed that Mr. Hall, a local limner or
painter, is to “take care, according to his ability, that the monument
shall become as like as possible to what it was when first erected.”
This appears to have been the idea of Mr. Greene. Another form of words
was later adopted, directing Mr. Hall, the painter, “to repair and
beautify, or to have the direction of repairing and beautifying, _the
original monument_ of Shakespeare the poet.” Mrs. Stopes infers, justly
in my opinion, that Hall “would fill up the gaps, restore what was
amissing as he thought it ought to be, and finally repaint it according
to the original colours, traces of which he might still be able to see.”
In his _History and Antiquities of Stratford-on-Avon_, {182a} Mr. Wheler
tells us that this was what Hall did. “In the year 1748 the monument was
carefully repaired, and the original colours of the bust, &c., as much as
possible preserved by Mr. John Hall, limner, of Stratford.”
It follows that we see the original monument and bust, but the painting
is of 1861, for the bust, says Wheler, was in 1793 “painted in white,” to
please Malone. It was repainted in 1861.
Mrs. Stopes, unluckily, is not content with what Hall was told to do, and
what, according to Wheler, he did. She writes: “It would only be giving
good value for his money” (£12, 10_s._) “to his churchwardens if Hall
added (_sic_) a cloak, a pen, and manuscript.” He “could not help
changing” the face, and so on.
Now it was physically impossible to _add_ a cloak, a pen, and manuscript
to such a stone bust as Dugdale’s man shows; to take away the cushion
pressed to the stomach, and to alter the head. Mr. Hall, if he was to
give us the present bust, had to make an entirely new bust, and, to give
us the present monument in place of that shown in Dugdale’s print, had to
construct an entirely new monument. Now Hall was a painter, not (like
Giulio Romano) also an architect and sculptor. _Pour tout potage_ he had
but £12, 10_s._ He could not do, and he did not do these things! he did
not destroy “the original monument” and make a new monument in Jacobean
style. He was straitly ordered to “repair and beautify the original
monument”; he did repair it, and repainted the colours. That is all. I
do not quote what Halliwell-Phillipps tells us {183a} about the repairing
of the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, and the pen; work which,
he says, had to be renewed by William Roberts of Oxford in 1790. He
gives no authority, and Baconians may say that he was hoaxed, or “lied
with circumstance.”
Mr. Greenwood {183b} quotes Halliwell-Phillipps’s _Works of Shakespeare_
(1853), in which he says that the design in Dugdale’s book “is evidently
too inaccurate to be of any authority; the probability being that it was
not taken from the monument itself.” Indeed the designer is so
inaccurate that he gives the first word of the Latin inscription as
“Judicyo,” just as Oudry blunders in the Latin inscription of a portrait
of Mary Stuart which he copied badly. Mr. Greenwood proceeds: “In his
_Outlines_ Halliwell simply ignores Dugdale. His engraving was doubtless
too inconvenient to be brought to public notice!” Here Halliwell is
accused of suppressing the truth; if he invented his minute details about
the repeated reparation of the writing hand,—not represented in Dugdale’s
design,—he also lied with circumstance. But he certainly quoted a
genuine “contemporary account” of the orders for repairing and
beautifying the original monument in 1748, and I presume that he also had
records for what he says about reparations of the hand and pen. He
speaks, too, of substitutions for decayed alabaster parts of the
monument, though not in his _Outlines_; and I observe that, in Mrs.
Stopes’s papers, there is record of a meeting on December 20, 1748, at
which mention was made of “the materials” which Hall was to use for
repairs.
To me the evidence of the style as to the date of both monument and bust
speaks so loudly for their accepted date (1616–23) and against the
Georgian date of 1748, that I need no other evidence; nor do I suppose
that any one familiar with the monumental style of 1590–1620 can be of a
different opinion. In the same way I do not expect any artist or
engraver to take the engraving of the monument in Rowe’s _Shakespeare_
(1709), and that by Grignion so late as 1786, for anything but copies of
the design in Dugdale, with modifications made _à plaisir_. In Pope’s
edition (1725) Vertue gives the monument with some approach to accuracy,
but for the bald plump face of the bust presents a top-heavy and
sculpturally impossible face borrowed from “the Chandos portrait,” which,
in my opinion, is of no more authority than any other portrait of
Shakespeare. None of them, I conceive, was painted from the life.
The Baconians show a wistful longing to suppose the original bust, copied
in Dugdale, to have been meant for Bacon; but we need not waste words
over this speculation. Mr. Greenwood writes that “if I should be told
that Dugdale’s effigy represented an elderly farmer deploring an
exceptionally bad harvest, ‘I should not feel it to be strange!’ Neither
should I feel it at all strange if I were told that it was the
presentment of a philosopher and Lord Chancellor, who had fallen from
high estate and recognised that all things are but vanity.”
[Picture: From Vertue’s Engraving of the Monument (1725) (By permission
of John Murray, Esq.)]
“_I_ should not feel it to be strange” if a Baconian told me that the
effigy of a living ex-Chancellor were placed in the monument of the dead
Will Shakspere, and if, on asking why the alteration was made, I were
asked in reply, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, “Was Dugdale’s bust thought to
bear too much resemblance to one who was not Shakspere of Stratford? Or
was it thought that the presence of a woolsack” (the cushion) “might be
taken as indicating that Shakspere of Stratford was indebted for support
to a certain Lord Chancellor?” {186a} Such, indeed, are the things that
Baconians might readily say: do say, I believe.
Dugdale’s engraving reproduces the first words of a Latin inscription,
still on the monument:
_Judicio Pylium_, _genio Socratem_, _arte Maronem_
_Terra tegit_, _populus mæret_, _Olympus habet_:
“Earth covers, Olympus” (heaven? or the Muses’ Hill?) “holds him who was
a Nestor in counsel; in poetic art, a Virgil; a Socrates for his Dæmon”
(“Genius”). As for the “Genius,” or dæmon of Socrates, and the permitted
false quantity in making the first syllable of Socrates short; and the
use of _Olympus_ for heaven in epitaphs, it is sufficient to consult the
learning of Mr. Elton. {186b} The poet who made such notable false
quantities in his plays had no cause to object to another on his
monument. We do not know who erected the monument, and paid for it, or
who wrote or adapted the epitaph; but it was somebody who thought
Shakespeare (or Bacon?) “a clayver man.” The monument (if a trembling
conjecture may be humbly put forth) was conceivably erected by the piety
of Shakespeare’s daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hall. They
exhibit a taste for the mortuary memorial and the queer Latin
inscription. Mrs. Hall gratified the Manes of her poor mother, Mrs.
Shakespeare, with one of the oddest of Latin epitaphs. {187a} It opens
like an epigram in the Greek Anthology, and ends in an unusual strain of
Christian mysticism. Mr. Hall possesses, perhaps arranged for himself, a
few Latin elegiacs as an epitaph.
The famous “Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,” and so on, on the stone
in the chancel, beneath which the sacred dust of Shakespeare lies, or
lay, is the first of “the last lines written, we are told,” {187b} “by
the author of _Hamlet_.” Who tells us that Shakespeare wrote the four
lines of doggerel? Is it conceivable that the authority for
Shakespeare’s authorship of the doggerel is a tradition gleaned by Mr.
Dowdall of Queen’s in 1693, from a parish clerk, aged over eighty, he
says,—criticism makes the clerk twenty years younger. {187c} For
Baconians the lines are bad enough to be the work of William Shakspere of
Stratford.
Meanwhile, in 1649, when Will’s daughter, Mrs. Hall, died, her epitaph
spoke quite respectfully of her father’s intelligence.
“Witty above her sex, but that’s not all,
Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall,
Something of Shakespeare was in _that_, but _this_
Wholly of Him with whom she’s now in bliss.” {187d}
Thirty-three years after Shakespeare’s death he was still thought “witty”
in Stratford. But what could Stratford know? Milton and Charles I were
of the same opinion; so was Suckling, and the rest of the generation
after Shakespeare. But they did not know, how should they, that Bacon
(or his equivalent) was the genuine author of the plays and poems. The
secret, perhaps, so widely spread among “the friends of the Muses” in
1616, was singularly well kept by a set of men rather given to blab as a
general rule.
I confess to be passing weary of the Baconian hatred of Will, which
pursues him beyond his death with sneers and fantastic suspicions about
his monument and his grave, and asks if he “died with a curse upon his
lips, an imprecation against any man who might _move his bones_? A mean
and vulgar curse indeed!” {188a} And the authority for the circumstance
that he died with a mean and vulgar curse upon his lips?
About 1694, a year after Mr. Dowdall in 1693, and eighty years almost
after Shakespeare’s death, W. Hall, a Queen’s man, Oxford (the W. Hall,
perhaps, who gave the Bodleian Aldine Ovid, with Shakespeare’s signature,
true or forged, to its unknown owner), went to Stratford, and wrote about
his pilgrimage to his friend Mr. Thwaites, a Fellow of Queen’s. Mr. Hall
heard the story that Shakespeare was the author of the mean and vulgar
curse. He adds that there was a great ossuary or bone-house in the
church, where all the bones dug up were piled, “they would load a great
number of waggons.” Not desiring this promiscuity, Shakespeare wrote the
Curse in a style intelligible to clerks and sextons, “for the most part a
very ignorant sort of people.”
If Shakespeare _did_, that accommodation of himself to his audience was
the last stroke of his wisdom, or his wit. {189a} Of course there is no
evidence that he wrote the mean and vulgar curse: that he did is only the
pious hope of the Baconians and Anti-Willians.
Into the question of the alleged portraits of Shakespeare I cannot enter.
Ben spoke well of the engraving prefixed to the First Folio, but Ben, as
Mr. Greenwood says, was anxious to give the Folio “a good send-off.” The
engraving is choicely bad; we do not know from what actual portrait, if
from any, it was executed. Richard Burbage is known to have amused
himself with the art of design; possibly he tried his hand on a likeness
of his old friend and fellow-actor. If so, he may have succeeded no
better than Mary Stuart’s embroiderer, Oudry, in his copy of the portrait
of her Majesty.
That Ben Jonson was painted by Honthorst and others, while Shakespeare,
as far as we know, was not, has nothing to do with the authorship of the
plays. Ben was a scholar, the darling of both Universities; constantly
employed about the Court in arranging Masques; his learning and his
Scottish blood may have led James I to notice him. Ben, in his later
years, was much in society; fashionable and literary. He was the father
of the literary “tribe of Ben.” Thus he naturally sat for his portrait.
In the same way George Buchanan has, and had, nothing like the fame of
Knox. But as a scholar he was of European reputation; haunted the Court
as tutor of his King, and was the “good pen” of the anti-Marian nobles,
Murray, Morton, and the rest. Therefore Buchanan’s portrait was painted,
while of Knox we have only a woodcut, done, apparently, after his death,
from descriptions, for Beza’s _Icones_. The Folio engraving may have no
better source. Without much minute research it is hard to find authentic
portraits of Mary Stuart, and, just as in Shakespeare’s case, {190a} the
market, in her own day and in the eighteenth century, was flooded with
“mock-originals,” not even derived (in any case known to me) from genuine
and authentic contemporary works.
One thing is certain about the Stratford bust. Baconians will believe
that Dugdale’s man correctly represented the bust as it was in his time;
and that the actual bust is of 1748, in spite of proofs of Dugdale’s
man’s fantastic inaccuracy; in spite of the evidence of style; and in
spite of documentary evidence that “the original monument” was not to be
destroyed and replaced by the actual monument, but was merely “repaired
and beautified” (painted afresh) by a local painter.
X
“THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE”
IN perusing the copious arguments of the Anti-Shakesperean but
Non-Baconian Mr. Greenwood, I am often tempted, in Socratic phrase, to
address him thus: Best of men, let me implore you, first, to keep in
memory these statements on which you have most eloquently and abundantly
insisted, namely, that society in Stratford was not only not literary,
but was illiterate. Next pardon me for asking you to remember that the
late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century did not resemble our
fortunate age. Some people read Shakespeare’s, Beaumont’s, and
Fletcher’s plays. This exercise is now very rarely practised. But
nobody cared to chronicle literary gossip about the private lives and
personal traits of these and several other Elizabethan and Jacobean
playwrights, in the modern manner. Of Shakespeare (pardon, I mean
Shakspere), the actor, there is one contemporary anecdote, in my poor
opinion a baseless waggery. Of Beaumont there is none. Of a hand-maid
of Fletcher, who drank sack in a tumbler, one anecdote appears at the end
of the seventeenth century,—nothing better. Meanwhile of Shakspere the
“traditions” must be sought either at Stratford or in connection with the
London Stage; and in both cases the traditions began to be in demand very
late.
As Stratford was not literary, indeed was terribly illiterate, any
traditions that survived cannot conceivably have been literary. That is
absolutely certain. Natives at Stratford had, by your own hypothesis,
scant interest in literary anecdote. Fifty years after Shakespeare’s
death, no native was likely to cherish tales of any sprouts of wit
(though it was remembered in 1649, that he was “witty”), or any
“wood-notes wild,” which he may have displayed or chirped at an early
age.
Such things were of no interest to Stratford. If he made a speech when
he killed a calf, or poached, or ran away to town, the circumstance might
descend from one gaffer to another; he might even be remembered as “the
best of his family,”—the least inefficient. Given your non-literary and
illiterate Stratford, and you can expect nothing more, and nothing
better, than we receive.
Let me illustrate by a modern example. In 1866 I was an undergraduate of
a year’s standing at Balliol College, Oxford, certainly not an unlettered
academy. In that year, the early and the best poems of a considerable
Balliol poet were published: he had “gone down” some eight years before.
Being young and green I eagerly sought for traditions about Mr.
Swinburne. One of his contemporaries, who took a First in the final
Classical Schools, told me that “he was a smug.” Another, that, as Mr.
Swinburne and his friend (later a Scotch professor) were not cricketers,
they proposed that they should combine to pay but a single subscription
to the Cricket Club. A third, a tutor of the highest reputation as a
moralist and metaphysician, merely smiled at my early enthusiasm,—and
told me nothing. A white-haired College servant said that “Mr. Swinburne
was a very quiet gentleman.”
Then you take us to dirty illiterate Stratford, from fifty to eighty
years after Shakspere’s death,—a Civil War and the Reign of the Saints, a
Restoration and a Revolution having intervened,—and ask us to be
surprised that no anecdotes of Shakspere’s early brilliance, a century
before, survived at Stratford.
A very humble parallel may follow. Some foolish person went seeking
early anecdotes of myself at my native town, Selkirk on the Ettrick.
From an intelligent townsman he gathered much that was true and
interesting about my younger brothers, who delighted in horses and dogs,
hunted, shot, and fished, and played cricket; one of them bowled for
Gloucestershire and Oxford. But about me the inquiring literary snipe
only heard that “Andra was aye the stupid ane o’ the fam’ly.” Yet, I,
too, had bowled for the local club, _non sine gloria_! Even _that_ was
forgotten.
Try to remember, best of men, that literary anecdotes of a fellow
townsman’s youth do not dwell in the memories of his neighbours from
sixty to a hundred years after date. It is not in human nature that what
was incomprehensible to the grandsire should be remembered by the
grandson. Go to “Thrums” and ask for literary memories of the youth of
Mr. Barrie.
Yet {198a} the learned Malone seems to have been sorry that little of
Shakespeare but the calf-killing and the poaching, and the dying of a
fever after drink taken (_where_, I ask you?), with Ben and Drayton, was
remembered, so long after date, at Stratford, of all dirty ignorant
places. Bah! how could these people have heard of Drayton and Ben?
Remember that we are dealing with human nature, in a peculiarly
malodorous and densely ignorant _bourgade_, where, however, the “wit” of
Shakespeare was not forgotten (in the family) in 1649. See the epithet
on the tomb of his daughter, Mrs. Hall.
You give us the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford (1661–3), who has
heard that the actor was “a natural wit,” and contracted and died of a
fever, after a bout with Drayton and Ben. I can scarcely believe that
_these_ were local traditions. How could these _rustauds_ have an
opinion about “natural wit,” how could they have known the names of Ben
and Drayton?
When you come to Aubrey, publishing in 1680, sixty years after
Shakespeare’s death, you neglect to trace the steps in the descent of his
tradition. As has been stated, Beeston, “the chronicle of the Stage”
(died 1682), gave him the story of the school-mastering; Beeston being
the son of a servitor of Phillips, an actor and friend of Shakespeare,
who died eleven years before that player. The story of the
school-mastering and of Shakespeare “knowing Latin pretty well,” is of no
value to me. I think that he had some knowledge of Latin, as he must
have had, if he were what I fancy him to have been, and if (which is mere
hypothesis) he went for four years to a Latin School. But the story does
not suit you, and you call it “a mere myth,” which, “of course, will be
believed by those who wish to believe it.” But, most excellent of
mortals, will it not, by parity of reasoning, “of course be disbelieved
by those who do _not_ wish to believe it”?
And do you want to believe it?
To several stage anecdotes of the actor as an excellent instructor of
younger players, you refer slightingly. They do not weigh with me:
still, the Stage would remember Shakspere (or Shakespeare) best in stage
affairs. In reference to a very elliptic statement that, “in _Hamlet_
Betterton benefited by Shakespeare’s coaching,” you write, “This is
astonishing, seeing that Shakspere had been in his grave nearly twenty
years when Betterton was born. The explanation is that Taylor, of the
Black Fryars Company, was, according to Sir William Davenant, instructed
by Shakspere, and Davenant, who had seen Taylor act, according to Downes,
instructed Betterton. There is a similar story about Betterton playing
King Henry VIII. Betterton was said to have been instructed by Sir
William, who was instructed by Lowen, who was instructed by Shakspere!”
{200a}
Why a note of exclamation? Who was Downes, and what were his
opportunities of acquiring information? He “was for many years
book-keeper in the Duke’s Company, first under Davenant in the old house
. . . ” Davenant was notoriously the main link between “the first and
second Temple,” the theatre of Shakespeare whom, as a boy, he knew, and
the Restoration theatre. Devoted to the traditions of the stage, he
collected Shakespearean and other anecdotes; he revived the theatre,
cautiously, during the last years of Puritan rule, and told his stories
to the players of the early Restoration. As his Book-keeper with the
Duke of York’s Company, Downes heard what Davenant had to tell; he also,
for his _Roscius Anglicanus_, had notes from Charles Booth, prompter at
Drury Lane. On May 28, 1663, Davenant reproduced _Hamlet_, with young
Betterton as the Prince of Denmark. Davenant, says Charles Booth, “had
seen the part taken by Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, and Taylor
had been instructed by the author,” (not Bacon but) “Mr. William
Shakespeare,” and Davenant “taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of
it.” Mr. Elton adds, “We cannot be sure that Taylor was taught by
Shakespeare himself. He is believed to have been a member of the King’s
Company before 1613, and to have left it for a time before Shakespeare’s
death.” {201a} His name is in the list in the Folio of “the principall
Actors in all these plays,” but I cannot pretend to be certain that he
played in them in Will’s time.
It is Mr. Pepys (December 30, 1668) who chronicles Davenant’s splendid
revival of _Henry VIII_, in which Betterton, as the King, was instructed
by Sir William Davenant, who had it from old Mr. Lowen, that had his
instruction “from Mr. Shakespear himself.” Lowin, or Lowen, joined
Shakespeare’s Company in 1604, being then a man of twenty-eight. Burbage
was the natural man for Hamlet and Henry VIII; but it is not unusual for
actors to have “understudies.”
The stage is notoriously tenacious of such traditions.
When we come with you to Mr. W. Fulman, about 1688, and the additions to
his notes made about 1690–1708, we are concerned with evidence much too
remote, and, in your own classical style, “all this is just a little
mixed.” {201b} With what Mr. Dowdall heard in 1693, and Mr. William Hall
(1694) heard from a clerk or sexton, or other illiterate dotard at
Stratford, I have already dealt. I do not habitually believe in what I
hear from “the oldest aunt telling the saddest tale,”—no, not even if she
tells a ghost story, or an anecdote about the presentation by Queen Mary
of her portrait to the ancestor of the Laird,—the portrait being dated
1768, and representing her Majesty in the bloom of girlhood. Nor do I
care for what Rowe said (on Betterton’s information), in 1709, about
Shakespeare’s schooling; nor for what Dr. Furnivall said that Plume
wrote; nor for what anybody said that Sir John Mennes (Menzies?) said.
But I do care for what Ben Jonson and Shakespeare’s fellow-actors said;
and for what his literary contemporaries have left on record. But this
evidence you explain away by ætiological guesses, absolutely modern, and,
I conceive, to anyone familiar with historical inquiry, not more valuable
as history than other explanatory myths.
What Will Shakspere had to his literary credit when he died, was men’s
impressions of the seeing of his acted plays; with their knowledge, if
they had any, of fugitive, cheap, perishable, and often bad reprints, in
quartos, of about half of the plays. Men also had _Venus and Adonis_,
_Lucrece_, and the Sonnets, which sold very poorly, and I do not wonder
at it. Of the genius of Shakespeare England could form no conception,
till the publication of the Folio (1623), not in a large edition; it
struggled into a Third Edition in 1664. The _engouement_ about the poet,
the search for personal details, did not manifest itself with any vigour
till nearly thirty years after 1664—and we are to wonder that the
gleanings, at illiterate Stratford, and in Stage tradition, are so scanty
and so valueless. What could have been picked up, by 1680–90, about
Bacon at Gorhambury, or in the Courts of Law, I wonder.
XI
THE FIRST FOLIO
“THE First Folio” is the name commonly given to the first collected
edition of Shakespeare’s plays. The volume includes a Preface signed by
two of the actors, Heminge and Condell, panegyrical verses by Ben Jonson
and others, and a bad engraved portrait. The book has been
microscopically examined by Baconians, hunting for cyphered messages from
their idol in italics, capital letters, misprints, and everywhere. Their
various discoveries do not win the assent of writers like the late Lord
Penzance and Mr. Greenwood.
The mystery as to the sources, editing, and selection of plays in the
Folio (1623) appears to be impenetrable. The title-page says that _all_
the contents are published “according to the true original copies.” If
_only_ MS. copies are meant, this is untrue; in some cases the best
quartos were the chief source, supplemented by MSS. The Baconians,
following Malone, think that Ben Jonson wrote the Preface (and certainly
it looks like his work), {207a} speaking in the name of the two actors
who sign it. They say that Shakespeare’s friends “have collected and
published” the plays, have so published them “that whereas you were
abus’d with divers stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed
by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors that exposed them:
_even those_” (namely, the pieces previously ill-produced by pirates)
“are now offered to your view cur’d, and perfect of their limbes; and
_all the rest_” (that is, all the plays which had not been piratically
debased), “absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them.” So obscure
is the Preface that not _all_ previously published separate plays are
explicitly said to be stolen and deformed, but “_divers_ stolen copies”
are denounced. Mr. Pollard makes the same point in _Shakespeare Folios
and Quartos_, p. 2 (1909).
Now, as a matter of fact, while some of the quarto editions of separate
plays are very bad texts, others are so good that the Folio sometimes
practically reprints them, with some tinkerings, from manuscripts. Some
quartos, like that of _Hamlet_ of 1604, are excellent, and how they came
to be printed from good texts, and whether or not the texts were given to
the press by Shakespeare’s Company, or were sold, or stolen, is the
question. Mr. Pollard argues, on grounds almost certain, that “we have
strong _prima facie_ evidence that the sale to publishers of plays
afterwards duly entered on the Stationers’ Registers was regulated by
their lawful owners.” {208a}
The Preface does not explicitly deny that some of the separately printed
texts were good, but says that “divers” of them were stolen and deformed.
My view of the meaning of the Preface is not generally held. Dr. H. H.
Furness, in his preface to _Much Ado about Nothing_ (p. vi), says, “We
all know that these two friends of Shakespeare assert in their Preface to
the Folio that they had used the Author’s manuscripts, and in the same
breath denounce the Quartos as stolen and surreptitious.” I cannot see,
I repeat, that the Preface denounces _all_ the Quartos. It could be
truly said that _divers_ stolen and maimed copies had been foisted on
“abused” purchasers, and really no more _is_ said. Dr. Furness writes,
“When we now find them using as ‘copy’ one of these very Quartos” (_Much
Ado about Nothing_, 1600), “we need not impute to them a wilful falsehood
if we suppose that in using what they knew had been printed from the
original text, howsoever obtained, they held it to be the same as the
manuscript itself . . . ” That _was_ their meaning, I think, the Quarto
of _Much Ado_ had _not_ been “maimed” and “deformed,” as divers other
quartos, stolen and surreptitious, had been.
Shakspere, unlike most of the other playwrights, was a member of his
Company. I presume that his play was thus the common good of his Company
and himself. If they sold a copy to the press, the price would go into
their common stock; unless they, in good will, allowed the author to
pocket the money.
It will be observed that I understand the words of the Preface otherwise
than do the distinguished Editors of the Cambridge edition. They write,
“The natural inference to be drawn from this statement” (in the Preface)
“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_” (my italics).
The Editors agree with Dr. Furness, not with Mr. Pollard, whose learned
opinion coincides with my own.
Perhaps it should be said that I reached my own construction of the sense
of this passage in the Preface by the light of nature, before Mr.
Pollard’s valuable book, based on the widest and most minute research,
came into my hands. By the results of that research he backs his opinion
(and mine), that some of the quartos are surreptitious and bad, while
others are good “and were honestly obtained.” {210a} The Preface never
denies this; never says that all the quartos contain maimed and
disfigured texts. The Preface draws a distinction to this effect, “even
those” (even the stolen and deformed copies) “are now cured and perfect
in their limbs,”—that is, have been carefully edited, while “_all the
rest_” are “absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.” This does
not allege that all the rest are printed from Shakespeare’s own holograph
copies.
Among the plays spoken of as “all the rest,” namely, those not hitherto
published and not deformed by the fraudulent, are, _Tempest_, _Two
Gentlemen_, _Measure for Measure_, _Comedy of Errors_, _As You Like It_,
_All’s Well_, _Twelfth Night_, _Winter’s Tale_, _Henry VI_, iii., _Henry
VIII_, _Coriolanus_, _Timon_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and
Cleopatra_, and _Cymbeline_. Also _Henry VI_, i., ii., _King John_, and
_Taming of the Shrew_, appeared now in other form than in the hitherto
published Quartos bearing these or closely similar names. We have,
moreover, no previous information as to _The Shrew_, _Timon_, _Julius
Cæsar_, _All’s Well_, and _Henry VIII_. The Preface adds the remarkable
statement that, whatever Shakespeare thought, “he uttered with that
easinesse, that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”
It is plain that the many dramas previously unpublished could only be
recovered from manuscripts of one sort or another, because they existed
in no other form. The Preface takes it for granted that the selected
manuscripts contain the plays “absolute in their numbers as he conceived
them.” But the Preface does not commit itself, I repeat, to the
statement that all of these many plays are printed from Shakespeare’s own
handwriting. After “as he conceived them,” it goes on, “Who, as he was a
most happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His
mind and hand went together: and what he thought he uttered with that
easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”
This may be meant to _suggest_, but does not _affirm_, that the actors
_have_ “all the rest” of the plays in Shakespeare’s own handwriting.
They may have, or may have had, some of his manuscripts, and believed
that other manuscripts accessible to them, and used by them, contain his
very words. Whether from cunning or design, or from the Elizabethan
inability to tell a plain tale plainly, the authors or author of the
Preface have everywhere left themselves loopholes and ways of evasion and
escape. It is not possible to pin them down to any plain statement of
facts concerning the sources for the hitherto unpublished plays, “the
rest” of the plays.
These, at least, were from manuscript sources which the actors thought
accurate, and some may have been “fair copies” in Shakespeare’s own hand.
(Scott, as regards his novels, sent his _prima cura_, his first writing
down, to the press, and his pages are nearly free from blot or erasion.
In one case at least, Shelley’s first draft of a poem is described as
like a marsh of reeds in water, with wild ducks, but he made very elegant
fair copies for the press.) Let it be supposed that Ben Jonson wrote all
this Preface, in accordance with the wishes and instructions of the two
actors who sign it. He took their word for the almost blotless MSS.
which they received from Shakespeare. He remarks, in his posthumously
published _Discoveries_ (notes, memories, brief essays), “I remember the
players have _often_ mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in
his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line.” And Ben
gives, we shall later see, his habitual reply to this habitual boast.
As to the sources of such plays as had been “maimed and deformed by
injurious impostors,” and are now “offered cur’d and perfect of their
limbs,” “it can be proved to demonstration,” say the Cambridge Editors,
“that several plays in the Folio were printed from earlier quarto
editions” (but the players secured a retreat on this point), “and that in
other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or from a better
manuscript than the Folio text, and therefore of higher authority.”
_Hamlet_, in the Folio of 1623, when it differs from the quarto of 1604,
“differs for the worse in forty-seven places, while it differs for the
better in twenty places.”
Can the wit of man suggest any other explanation than that the editing of
the Folio was carelessly done; out of the best quartos and MSS. in the
theatre for acting purposes, and,—if the players did not lie in what they
“often said,” and if they kept the originals,—out of some MSS. received
from Shakspere? Whether the two players themselves threw into the press,
after some hasty botchings, whatever materials they had, or whether they
employed an Editor, a very wretched Editor, or Editors, or whether the
great Author, Bacon, himself was his own Editor, the preparation of a
text was infamously done. The two actors, probably, I think, never read
through the proof-sheets, and took the word of the man whom they employed
to edit their materials, for gospel. The editing of the Folio is so
exquisitely careless that twelve printer’s errors in a quarto of 1622, of
_Richard III_, appear in the Folio of 1623. Again, the _Merry Wives_ of
the Folio, is nearly twice as long as the quarto of 1619, yet keeps old
errors.
How can we explain the reckless retention of errors, and also the large
additions and improvements? Did the true author (Bacon or Bungay) now
edit his work, add much matter, and go wrong forty-seven times where the
quarto was right, and go right twenty times when the quarto was wrong?
Did he, for the Folio of 1623, nearly double _The Merry Wives_ in extent,
and also leave all the errors of the fourth quarto uncorrected?
In that case how negligent was Bacon of his immortal works! Now Bacon
was a scholar, and this absurd conduct cannot be imputed, I hope, to him.
Mr. Pollard is much more lenient than his fellow-scholars towards the
Editor or Editors of the Folio. He concludes that “manuscript copies of
the plays were easily procurable.” Sixteen out of the thirty-six plays
existed in quartos. Eight of the sixteen were not used for the Folio;
five were used, “with additions, corrections, or alterations” (which must
have been made from manuscripts). Three quartos only were reprinted as
they stood. The Editors greatly preferred to use manuscript copies; and
showed this, Mr. Pollard thinks, by placing plays, never before printed,
in the most salient parts of the three sets of dramas in their book.
{215a} They did make an attempt to divide their plays into Acts and
Scenes, whereas the quartos, as a general rule, had been undivided. But
the Editors, I must say, had not the energy to carry out their good
intentions fully—or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in
well-doing. The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse
and worse as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack.
A great living author, who had a decent regard for his own works, could
never have made or passed this slovenly Folio. Yet Mr. Greenwood argues
that probably Bungay was still alive and active, after Shakspere was dead
and buried. (Mr. Greenwood, of course, does not speak of Bungay, which I
use as short for his Great Unknown.) Thus, _Richard III_ from 1597 to
1622 appeared in six quartos. It is immensely improved in the Folio, and
so are several other plays. Who made the improvements, which the Editors
could only obtain in manuscripts? If we say that Shakespeare made them
in MS., Mr. Greenwood asks, “What had he to work upon, since, after
selling his plays to his company, he did not preserve his manuscript?”
{216a} Now I do not know that he did sell his plays to his company. We
are sure that Will got money for them, but we do not know what
arrangement he made with his company. He may have had an author’s rights
in addition to a sum down, as later was customary, and he had his regular
share in the profits. Nor am I possessed of information that “he did not
preserve his manuscript.” How can we know that? He may have kept his
first draft, he may have made a fair copy for himself, as well as for the
players, or may have had one made. He may have worked on a copy
possessed by the players; and the publisher of the quartos of 1605, 1612,
1622, may not have been allowed to use, or may not have asked for the
latest manuscript revised copy. The _Richard III_ of the Folio contains,
with much new matter, the printer’s errors of the quarto of 1622. I
would account for this by supposing that the casual Editor had just sense
enough to add the new parts in a revised manuscript to the quarto, and
was far too lazy to correct the printer’s errors in the quarto. But Mr.
Greenwood asks whether “the natural conclusion is not that ‘some person
unknown’ took the Quarto of 1622, revised it, added the new passages, and
thus put it into the form in which it appeared in 1623.” This natural
conclusion means that the author, Bungay, was alive in 1622, and put his
additions and improvements of recent date into the quarto of 1622, but
never took the trouble to correct the errors in the quarto. And so on in
other plays similarly treated. “Is it not a more natural conclusion that
‘Shakespeare’” (Bungay) “himself revised its publication, and that some
part of this revision, at any rate, was done after 1616 and before 1623.”
{217a}
Mr. Greenwood, after criticising other systems, writes, {217b} “There is,
of course, another hypothesis. It is that Shakespeare” (meaning the real
author) “did not die in 1616,” and here follows the usual notion that
“Shakespeare” was the “_nom de plume_” of that transcendent genius,
“moving in Court circles among the highest of his day (as assuredly
Shakespeare must have moved)—who wished to conceal his identity.”
I have not the shadow of assurance that the Author “moved in Court
circles,” though Will would see a good deal when he played at Court, and
in the houses of nobles, before “Eliza and our James.” I never moved in
Court circles: Mr. Greenwood must know them better than I do, and I have
explained (see _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and _Shakespeare_, _Genius_, _and
Society_) how Will picked up his notions of courtly ways.
“Another hypothesis,” the Baconian hypothesis,—“_nom de plume_” and
all,—Mr. Greenwood thinks “an extremely reasonable one”: I cannot easily
conceive of one more unreasonable.
“Supposing that there was such an author as I have suggested, he may well
have conceived the idea of publishing a collected edition of the plays
which had been written under the name of Shakespeare, and being himself
busy with other matters, he may have entrusted the business to some
‘literary man,’ to some ‘good pen,’ who was at the time doing work for
him; and why not to the man who wrote the commendatory verses, the ‘Lines
to the Reader’” (opposite to the engraving), “and, as seems certain, the
Preface, ‘to the great variety of Readers’?” {218a}
That man, that “good pen,” was Ben Jonson. On the “supposing” of Mr.
Greenwood, Ben is “doing work for” the Great Unknown at the time when
“the business” following on the “idea of publishing a collected edition
of the plays which had been written under the name of Shakespeare”
occurred to the illustrious but unknown owner of that “_nom de plume_.”
In plain words of my own,—the Author may have entrusted “the business,”
and what was that business if not the editing of the Folio?—to Ben
Jonson—“who was at the time doing work for him”—for the Author.
Here is a clue! We only need to know for what man of “transcendent
genius, universal culture, world-wide philosophy . . . moving in Court
circles,” and so on, Ben “was working” about 1621–3, the Folio appearing
in 1623.
The heart beats with anticipation of a discovery! “On January 22, 1621,
Bacon celebrated his sixtieth birthday with great state at York House.
Jonson was present,” and wrote an ode, with something about the Genius of
the House (_Lar_ or Brownie),
“Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst.”