already won him admirers, and his successes excited the sympathetic
regard of colleagues more kindly than Greene. In December 1592 Greene's
publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for Greene's attack on the
young actor to his 'Kind Hartes Dreame,' a tract reflecting on phases of
contemporary social life. 'I am as sory,' Chettle wrote, 'as if the
originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his
[_i.e._ Shakespeare's] demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent in
the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his
uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace
in writing that aprooves his art.'
Divided authorship of 'Henry VI.'
The first of the three plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI was
originally published in the collected edition of Shakespeare's works; the
second and third plays were previously printed in a form very different
from that which they subsequently assumed when they followed the first
part in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond doubt that in these plays
Shakespeare did no more than add, revise, and correct other men's work.
In 'The First Part of Henry VI' the scene in the Temple Gardens, where
white and red roses are plucked as emblems by the rival political parties
(act ii. sc. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps the wooing
of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the impress of his style. A play
dealing with the second part of Henry VI's reign was published
anonymously from a rough stage copy in 1594, with the title 'The first
part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and
Lancaster.' A play dealing with the third part was published with
greater care next year under the title 'The True Tragedie of Richard,
Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was
sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.' In both these
plays Shakespeare's revising hand can be traced. The humours of Jack
Cade in 'The Contention' can owe their savour to him alone. After he had
hastily revised the original drafts of the three pieces, perhaps with
another's aid, they were put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts by
his own company (Lord Strange's men), and the third, under some
exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare was not
content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, possibly for a
revival, he undertook a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with
another writer. 'The First Part of The Contention' was thoroughly
overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in the folio 'The
Second Part of Henry VI;' there more than half the lines are new. 'The
True Tragedie,' which became 'The Third Part of Henry VI,' was less
drastically handled; two-thirds of it was left practically untouched;
only a third was thoroughly remodelled. {60}
Shakespeare's coadjutors.
Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two successive revisions of
'Henry VI' is matter for conjecture. The theory that Greene and Peele
produced the original draft of the three parts of 'Henry VI,' which
Shakespeare recast, may help to account for Greene's indignant
denunciation of Shakespeare as 'an upstart crow, beautified with the
feathers' of himself and his fellow dramatists. Much can be said, too,
in behalf of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatest
of his predecessors, in the first revision of which 'The Contention' and
the 'True Tragedie' were the outcome. Most of the new passages in the
second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare alone, but a few suggest
a partnership resembling that of the first revision. It is probable that
Marlowe began the final revision, but his task was interrupted by his
death, and the lion's share of the work fell to his younger coadjutor.
Shakespeare's assimilative power.
Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that receptivity of mind
which impels them to assimilate much of the intellectual effort of their
contemporaries and to transmute it in the process from unvalued ore into
pure gold. Had Shakespeare not been professionally employed in recasting
old plays by contemporaries, he would doubtless have shown in his
writings traces of a study of their work. The verses of Thomas Watson,
Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge were
certainly among the rills which fed the mighty river of his poetic and
lyric invention. Kyd and Greene, among rival writers of tragedy, left
more or less definite impression on all Shakespeare's early efforts in
tragedy. It was, however, only to two of his fellow dramatists that his
indebtedness as a writer of either comedy or tragedy was material or
emphatically defined. Superior as Shakespeare's powers were to those of
Marlowe, his coadjutor in 'Henry VI,' his early tragedies often reveal
him in the character of a faithful disciple of that vehement delineator
of tragic passion. Shakespeare's early comedies disclose a like
relationship between him and Lyly.
Lyly's influence in comedy.
Lyly is best known as the author of the affected romance of 'Euphues,'
but between 1580 and 1592 he produced eight trivial and insubstantial
comedies, of which six were written in prose, one was in blank verse, and
one was in rhyme. Much of the dialogue in Shakespeare's comedies, from
'Love's Labour's Lost' to 'Much Ado about Nothing,' consists in thrusting
and parrying fantastic conceits, puns, or antitheses. This is the style
of intercourse in which most of Lyly's characters exclusively indulge.
Three-fourths of Lyly's comedies lightly revolve about topics of
classical or fairy mythology--in the very manner which Shakespeare first
brought to a triumphant issue in his 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'
Shakespeare's treatment of eccentric character like Don Armado in 'Love's
Labour's Lost' and his boy Moth reads like a reminiscence of Lyly's
portrayal of Sir Thopas, a fat vainglorious knight, and his boy Epiton in
the comedy of 'Endymion,' while the watchmen in the same play clearly
adumbrate Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges. The device of masculine
disguise for love-sick maidens was characteristic of Lyly's method before
Shakespeare ventured on it for the first of many times in 'Two Gentlemen
of Verona,' and the dispersal through Lyly's comedies of songs possessing
every lyrical charm is not the least interesting of the many striking
features which Shakespeare's achievements in comedy seem to borrow from
Lyly's comparatively insignificant experiments. {62}
Marlowe's influence in tragedy. 'Richard III.'
Marlowe, who alone of Shakespeare's contemporaries can be credited with
exerting on his efforts in tragedy a really substantial influence, was in
1592 and 1593 at the zenith of his fame. Two of Shakespeare's earliest
historical tragedies, 'Richard III' and 'Richard II,' with the story of
Shylock in his somewhat later comedy of the 'Merchant of Venice,' plainly
disclose a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's footsteps. In
'Richard III' Shakespeare, working single-handed, takes up the history of
England near the point at which Marlowe and he, apparently working in
partnership, left it in the third part of 'Henry VI.' The subject was
already familiar to dramatists, but Shakespeare sought his materials in
the 'Chronicle' of Holinshed. A Latin piece, by Dr. Thomas Legge, had
been in favour with academic audiences since 1579, and in 1594 the 'True
Tragedie of Richard III' from some other pen was published anonymously;
but Shakespeare's piece bears little resemblance to either. Throughout
Shakespeare's 'Richard III' the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeniable.
The tragedy is, says Mr. Swinburne, 'as fiery in passion, as single in
purpose, as rhetorical often, though never so inflated in expression, as
Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" itself.' The turbulent piece was naturally
popular. Burbage's impersonation of the hero was one of his most
effective performances, and his vigorous enunciation of 'A horse, a
horse! my kingdom for a horse!' gave the line proverbial currency.
'Richard II.'
'Richard II' seems to have followed 'Richard III' without delay.
Subsequently both were published anonymously in the same year (1597) as
they had 'been publikely acted by the right Honorable the Lorde
Chamberlaine his servants;' but the deposition scene in 'Richard II,'
which dealt with a topic distasteful to the Queen, was omitted from the
early impressions. Prose is avoided throughout the play, a certain sign
of early work. The piece was probably composed very early in 1593.
Marlowe's tempestuous vein is less apparent in 'Richard II' than in
'Richard III.' But if 'Richard II' be in style and treatment less deeply
indebted to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly suggested by
Marlowe's 'Edward II.' Throughout its exposition of the leading
theme--the development and collapse of the weak king's
character--Shakespeare's historical tragedy closely imitates Marlowe's.
Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his embellishments are
numerous, and include the magnificently eloquent eulogy of England which
is set in the mouth of John of Gaunt.
Acknowledgments to Marlowe.
In 'As you like it' (III. v. 80) Shakespeare parenthetically commemorated
his acquaintance with, and his general indebtedness to, the elder
dramatist by apostrophising him in the lines:
Dead Shepherd! now I find thy saw of might:
'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?'
The second line is a quotation from Marlowe's poem 'Hero and Leander'
(line 76). In the 'Merry Wives of Windsor' (III. i. 17-21) Shakespeare
places in the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans snatches of verse from Marlowe's
charming lyric, 'Come live with me and be my love.'
Between February 1593 and the end of the year the London theatres were
closed, owing to the prevalence of the plague, and Shakespeare doubtless
travelled with his company in the country. But his pen was busily
employed, and before the close of 1594 he gave marvellous proofs of his
rapid powers of production.
'Titus Andronicus.'
'Titus Andronicus' was in his own lifetime claimed for Shakespeare, but
Edward Ravenscroft, who prepared a new version in 1678, wrote of it: 'I
have been told by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was
not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he
only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or
characters.' Ravenscroft's assertion deserves acceptance. The tragedy,
a sanguinary picture of the decadence of Imperial Rome, contains powerful
lines and situations, but is far too repulsive in plot and treatment, and
too ostentatious in classical allusions, to take rank with Shakespeare's
acknowledged work. Ben Jonson credits 'Titus Andronicus' with a
popularity equalling Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy,' and internal evidence shows
that Kyd was capable of writing much of 'Titus.' It was suggested by a
piece called 'Titus and Vespasian,' which Lord Strange's men played on
April 11, 1592; {65} this is only extant in a German version acted by
English players in Germany, and published in 1620. {66a} 'Titus
Andronicus' was obviously taken in hand soon after the production of
'Titus and Vespasian' in order to exploit popular interest in the topic.
It was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on January 23, 1593-4, when it
was described as a new piece; but that it was also acted subsequently by
Shakespeare's company is shown by the title-page of the first extant
edition of 1600, which describes it as having been performed by the Earl
of Derby's and the Lord Chamberlain's servants (successive titles of
Shakespeare's company), as well as by those of the Earls of Pembroke and
Sussex. It was entered on the 'Stationers' Register' to John Danter on
February 6, 1594. {66b} Langbaine claims to have seen an edition of this
date, but none earlier than that of 1600 is now known.
'Merchant of Venice.'
For part of the plot of 'The Merchant of Venice,' in which two romantic
love stories are skilfully blended with a theme of tragic import,
Shakespeare had recourse to 'Il Pecorone,' a fourteenth-century
collection of Italian novels by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino. {66c} There a
Jewish creditor demands a pound of flesh of a defaulting Christian
debtor, and the latter is rescued through the advocacy of 'the lady of
Belmont,' who is wife of the debtor's friend. The management of the plot
in the Italian novel is closely followed by Shakespeare. A similar story
is slenderly outlined in the popular medieval collection of anecdotes
called 'Gesta Romanorum,' while the tale of the caskets, which
Shakespeare combined with it in the 'Merchant,' is told independently in
another portion of the same work. But Shakespeare's 'Merchant' owes much
to other sources, including more than one old play. Stephen Gosson
describes in his 'Schoole of Abuse' (1579) a lost play called 'the Jew . . .
showne at the Bull [inn]. . . representing the greedinesse of worldly
chusers and bloody mindes of usurers.' This description suggests that
the two stories of the pound of flesh and the caskets had been combined
before for purposes of dramatic representation. The scenes in
Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates with Shylock are roughly
anticipated, too, by dialogues between a Jewish creditor Gerontus and a
Christian debtor in the extant play of 'The Three Ladies of London,' by
R[obert] W[ilson], 1584. There the Jew opens the attack on his Christian
debtor with the lines:
Signor Mercatore, why do you not pay me? Think you I will be mocked
in this sort?
This three times you have flouted me--it seems you make thereat a
sport.
Truly pay me my money, and that even now presently,
Or by mighty Mahomet, I swear I will forthwith arrest thee.
Subsequently, when the judge is passing judgment in favour of the debtor,
the Jew interrupts:
Stay, there, most puissant judge. Signor Mercatore consider what you
do.
Pay me the principal, as for the interest I forgive it you.
Shylock and Roderigo Lopez.
Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare in 'The Merchant of
Venice' betrays the last definable traces of his discipleship to Marlowe.
Although the delicate comedy which lightens the serious interest of
Shakespeare's play sets it in a wholly different category from that of
Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta', the humanised portrait of the Jew Shylock
embodies distinct reminiscences of Marlowe's caricature of the Jew
Barabbas. But Shakespeare soon outpaced his master, and the inspiration
that he drew from Marlowe in the 'Merchant' touches only the general
conception of the central figure. Doubtless the popular interest aroused
by the trial in February 1594 and the execution in June of the Queen's
Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez, incited Shakespeare to a new and
subtler study of Jewish character. {68} For Shylock (not the merchant
Antonio) is the hero of the play, and the main interest culminates in the
Jew's trial and discomfiture. The bold transition from that solemn scene
which trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently poetic and humorous
incidents of the concluding act attests a mastery of stagecraft; but the
interest, although it is sustained to the end, is, after Shylock's final
exit, pitched in a lower key. The 'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the
manager, produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was probably the
earliest version of 'The Merchant of Venice,' and it was revised later.
It was not published till 1600, when two editions appeared, each printed
from a different stage copy.
'King John.'
To 1594 must also be assigned 'King John,' which, like the 'Comedy of
Errors' and 'Richard II,' altogether eschews prose. The piece, which was
not printed till 1623, was directly adapted from a worthless play called
'The Troublesome Raigne of King John' (1591), which was fraudulently
reissued in 1611 as 'written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as by 'W.
Shakespeare.' There is very small ground for associating Marlowe's name
with the old play. Into the adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy,
and the theme grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. The three chief
characters--the mean and cruel king, the noblehearted and desperately
wronged Constance, and the soldierly humourist, Faulconbridge--are in all
essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed with the same sureness
of touch that marked in Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The
scene, in which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert that the king
has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as affecting as any passage in
tragic literature.
'Comedy of Errors' in Gray's Inn Hall.
At the close of 1594 a performance of Shakespeare's early farce, 'The
Comedy of Errors,' gave him a passing notoriety that he could well have
spared. The piece was played on the evening of Innocents' Day (December
28), 1594, in the hall of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience of
benchers, students, and their friends. There was some disturbance during
the evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, who,
dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded them, retired in dudgeon.
'So that night,' the contemporary chronicler states, 'was begun and
continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it
was ever afterwards called the "Night of Errors."' {70} Shakespeare was
acting on the same day before the Queen at Greenwich, and it is doubtful
if he were present. On the morrow a commission of oyer and terminer
inquired into the causes of the tumult, which was attributed to a
sorcerer having 'foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up
our disorders with a play of errors and confusions.'
Early plays doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare.
Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public attention during the
period under review (1591-4)--'Arden of Feversham' (licensed for
publication April 3, 1592, and published in 1592) and 'Edward III'
(licensed for publication December 1, 1595, and published in 1596).
Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the ground that
their dramatic energy is of a quality not to be discerned in the work of
any contemporary whose writings are extant. There is no external
evidence in favour of Shakespeare's authorship in either case. 'Arden of
Feversham' dramatises with intensity and insight a sordid murder of a
husband by a wife which took place at Faversham in 1551, and was fully
reported by Holinshed. The subject is of a different type from any which
Shakespeare is known to have treated, and although the play may be, as
Mr. Swinburne insists, 'a young man's work,' it bears no relation either
in topic or style to the work on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a
period so early as 1591 or 1592. 'Edward III' is a play in Marlowe's
vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare on even more shadowy grounds.
Capell reprinted it in his 'Prolusions' in 1760, and described it as
'thought to be writ by Shakespeare.' Many speeches scattered through the
drama, and one whole scene--that in which the Countess of Salisbury
repulses the advances of Edward III--show the hand of a master (act ii.
sc. ii.) But there is even in the style of these contributions much to
dissociate them from Shakespeare's acknowledged productions, and to
justify their ascription to some less gifted disciple of Marlowe. {72a}
A line in act ii. sc. i. ('Lilies that fester smell far worse than
weeds') reappears in Shakespeare's Sonnets' (xciv. l. 14). {72b} It was
contrary to his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line in
the play was doubtless borrowed from a manuscript copy of the 'Sonnets.'
'Mucedorus.'
Two other popular plays of the period, 'Mucedorus' and 'Faire Em,' have
also been assigned to Shakespeare on slighter provocation. In Charles
II.'s library they were bound together in a volume labelled 'Shakespeare,
Vol. I.,' and bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify the
misnomer.
'Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic comedy, dates from the
early years of Elizabeth's reign; it was first published, doubtless after
undergoing revision, in 1595, and was reissued, 'amplified with new
additions,' in 1610. Mr. Payne Collier, who included it in his privately
printed edition of Shakespeare in 1878, was confident that a scene
interpolated in the 1610 version (in which the King of Valentia laments
the supposed loss of his son) displayed genius which Shakespeare alone
could compass. However readily critics may admit the superiority in
literary value of the interpolated scene to anything else in the piece,
few will accept Mr. Collier's extravagant estimate. The scene was
probably from the pen of an admiring but faltering imitator of
Shakespeare. {73}
'Faire Em.'
'Faire Em,' although not published till 1631, was acted by Shakespeare's
company while Lord Strange was its patron, and some lines from it are
quoted for purposes of ridicule by Robert Greene in his 'Farewell to
Folly' in 1592. It is another rudimentary endeavour in romantic comedy,
and has not even the pretension of 'Mucedorus' to one short scene of
conspicuous literary merit.
VI--THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC
Publication of 'Venus and Adonis.'
During the busy years (1591-4) that witnessed his first pronounced
successes as a dramatist, Shakespeare came before the public in yet
another literary capacity. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, the
printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a license for the
publication of 'Venus and Adonis,' a metrical version of a classical tale
of love. It was published a month or two later, without an author's name
on the title-page, but Shakespeare appended his full name to the
dedication, which he addressed in conventional style to Henry
Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton. The Earl, who was in his
twentieth year, was reckoned the handsomest man at Court, with a
pronounced disposition to gallantry. He had vast possessions, was well
educated, loved literature, and through life extended to men of letters a
generous patronage. {74} 'I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare
now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship,
nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to
support so weak a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention
prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.' 'The
first heir of my invention' implies that the poem was written, or at
least designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is affluent in
beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, but imbued with a tone of
license which may be held either to justify the theory that it was a
precocious product of the author's youth, or to show that Shakespeare was
not unready in mature years to write with a view to gratifying a patron's
somewhat lascivious tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful Latin motto
from Ovid's 'Amores:' {75a}
Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.
The influence of Ovid, who told the story in his 'Metamorphoses,' is
apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first
suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes
Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same
metre (six-line stanzas rhyming _a b a b c c_), but narrates in the
exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt
that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of his inspiration. {75b}
'Lucrece.'