and they sought to palm off on their customers as his work the
productions of inferior pens. As early as 1595, Thomas Creede, the
surreptitious printer of 'Henry V' and the 'Merry Wives,' had issued the
crude 'Tragedie of Locrine, as 'newly set foorth, overseene and
corrected. By W. S.' It appropriated many passages from an older piece
called 'Selimus,' which was possibly by Greene and certainly came into
being long before Shakespeare had written a line of blank verse. The
same initials--'W.S.' {180}--figured on the title-page of 'The True
Chronicle Historie of Thomas, Lord Cromwell,' which was licensed on
August 11, 1602, was printed for William Jones in that year, and was
reprinted verbatim by Thomas Snodham in 1613. On the title-page of the
comedy entitled 'The Puritaine, or the Widdow of Watling Streete,' which
George Eld printed in 1607, 'W.S.' was again stated to be the author.
Shakespeare's full name appeared on the title-pages of 'The Life of
Old-castle' in 1600 (printed for T[homas] P[avier]), of 'The London
Prodigall' in 1605 (printed by T. C. for Nathaniel Butter), and of 'The
Yorkshire Tragedy' in 1608 (by R. B. for Thomas Pavier). None of these
six plays have any internal claim to Shakespeare's authorship;
nevertheless all were uncritically included in the third folio of his
collected works,(1664). Schlegel and a few other critics of repute have,
on no grounds that merit acceptance, detected signs of Shakespeare's
genuine work in one of the six, 'The Yorkshire Tragedy;' it is 'a coarse,
crude, and vigorous impromptu,' which is clearly by a far less
experienced hand.
The fraudulent practice of crediting Shakespeare with valueless plays
from the pens of comparatively dull-witted contemporaries was in vogue
among enterprising traders in literature both early and late in the
seventeenth century. The worthless old play on the subject of King John
was attributed to Shakespeare in the reissues of 1611 and 1622. Humphrey
Moseley, a reckless publisher of a later period, fraudulently entered on
the 'Stationers' Register' on September 9, 1653, two pieces which he
represented to be in whole or in part by Shakespeare, viz. 'The Merry
Devill of Edmonton' and the 'History of Cardenio,' a share in which was
assigned to Fletcher. 'The Merry Devill of Edmonton,' which was produced
on the stage before the close of the sixteenth century, was entered on
the 'Stationers' Register,' October 22, 1607, and was first published
anonymously in 1608; it is a delightful comedy, abounding in both humour
and romantic sentiment; at times it recalls scenes of the 'Merry Wives of
Windsor,' but no sign of Shakespeare's workmanship is apparent. The
'History of Cardenio' is not extant. {181} Francis Kirkman, another
active London publisher, who first printed William Rowley's 'Birth of
Merlin' in 1662, described it on the title-page as 'written by William
Shakespeare and William Rowley;' it was reprinted at Halle in a so-called
'Collection of pseudo-Shakespearean plays' in 1887.
'The Passionate Pilgrim.'
But poems no less than plays, in which Shakespeare had no hand, were
deceptively placed to his credit as soon as his fame was established. In
1599 William Jaggard, a well-known pirate publisher, issued a poetic
anthology which he entitled 'The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shakespeare.'
The volume opened with two sonnets by Shakespeare which were not
previously in print, and there followed three poems drawn from the
already published 'Love's Labour's Lost;' but the bulk of the volume was
by Richard Barnfield and others. {182} A third edition of the
'Passionate Pilgrim' was printed in 1612 with unaltered title-page,
although the incorrigible Jaggard had added two new poems which he
silently filched from Thomas Heywood's 'Troia Britannica.' Heywood
called attention to his own grievance in the dedicatory epistle before
his 'Apology for Actors' (1612), and he added that Shakespeare resented
the more substantial injury which the publisher had done him. 'I know,'
wrote Heywood of Shakespeare, '[he was] much offended with M. Jaggard
that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name.'
In the result the publisher seems to have removed Shakespeare's name from
the title-page of a few copies. This is the only instance on record of a
protest on Shakespeare's part against the many injuries which he suffered
at the hands of contemporary publishers.
'The Phoenix and the Turtle.'
In 1601 Shakespeare's full name was appended to 'a poetical essaie on the
Phoenix and the Turtle,' which was published by Edward Blount in an
appendix to Robert Chester's 'Love's Martyr, or Rosalins complaint,
allegorically shadowing the Truth of Love in the Constant Fate of the
Phoenix and Turtle.' The drift of Chester's crabbed verse is not clear,
nor can the praise of perspicuity be allowed to the appendix to which
Shakespeare contributed, together with Marston, Chapman, Ben Jonson, and
'Ignoto.' The appendix is introduced by a new title-page running thus:
'Hereafter follow diverse poeticall Essaies on the former subject, viz:
the Turtle and Phoenix. Done by the best and chiefest of our modern
writers, with their names subscribed to their particular workes: never
before extant.' Shakespeare's alleged contribution consists of thirteen
four-lined stanzas in trochaics, each line being of seven syllables, with
the rhymes disposed as in Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.' The concluding
'threnos' is in five three-lined stanzas, also in trochaics, each stanza
having a single rhyme. The poet describes in enigmatic language the
obsequies of the Phoenix and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life
by the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be a mere play of
fancy without recondite intention, or it may be of allegorical import;
but whether it bear relation to pending ecclesiastical, political, or
metaphysical controversy, or whether it interpret popular grief for the
death of some leaders of contemporary society, is not easily determined.
{184} Happily Shakespeare wrote nothing else of like character.
XII--THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE
Shakespeare's practical temperament.
Shakespeare, in middle life, brought to practical affairs a singularly
sane and sober temperament. In 'Ratseis Ghost' (1605), an anecdotal
biography of Gamaliel Ratsey, a notorious highwayman, who was hanged at
Bedford on March 26, 1605, the highwayman is represented as compelling a
troop of actors whom he met by chance on the road to perform in his
presence. At the close of the performance Ratsey, according to the
memoir, addressed himself to a leader of the company, and cynically urged
him to practise the utmost frugality in London. 'When thou feelest thy
purse well lined (the counsellor proceeded), buy thee some place or
lordship in the country that, growing weary of playing, thy money may
there bring thee to dignity and reputation.' Whether or no Ratsey's
biographer consciously identified the highwayman's auditor with
Shakespeare, it was the prosaic course of conduct marked out by Ratsey
that Shakespeare literally followed. As soon as his position in his
profession was assured, he devoted his energies to re-establishing the
fallen fortunes of his family in his native place, and to acquiring for
himself and his successors the status of gentlefolk.
His father's difficulties.
His father's pecuniary embarrassments had steadily increased since his
son's departure. Creditors harassed him unceasingly. In 1587 one
Nicholas Lane pursued him for a debt for which he had become liable as
surety for his brother Henry, who was still farming their father's lands
at Snitterfield. Through 1588 and 1589 John Shakespeare retaliated with
pertinacity on a debtor named John Tompson. But in 1591 a creditor,
Adrian Quiney, obtained a writ of distraint against him, and although in
1592 he attested inventories taken on the death of two neighbours, Ralph
Shaw and Henry Field, father of the London printer, he was on December 25
of the same year 'presented' as a recusant for absenting himself from
church. The commissioners reported that his absence was probably due to
'fear of process for debt.' He figures for the last time in the
proceedings of the local court, in his customary _role_ of defendant, on
March 9, 1595. He was then joined with two fellow traders--Philip Green,
a chandler, and Henry Rogers, a butcher--as defendant in a suit brought
by Adrian Quiney and Thomas Barker for the recovery of the sum of five
pounds. Unlike his partners in the litigation, his name is not followed
in the record by a mention of his calling, and when the suit reached a
later stage his name was omitted altogether. These may be viewed as
indications that in the course of the proceedings he finally retired from
trade, which had been of late prolific in disasters for him. In January
1596-7 he conveyed a slip of land attached to his dwelling in Henley
Street to one George Badger.
His wife's debt.
There is a likelihood that the poet's wife fared, in the poet's absence,
no better than his father. The only contemporary mention made of her
between her marriage in 1582 and her husband's death in 1616 is as the
borrower at an unascertained date (evidently before 1595) of forty
shillings from Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her father's
shepherd. The money was unpaid when Whittington died in 1601, and he
directed his executor to recover the sum from the poet and distribute it
among the poor of Stratford. {187}
It was probably in 1596 that Shakespeare returned, after nearly eleven
years' absence, to his native town, and worked a revolution in the
affairs of his family. The prosecutions of his father in the local court
ceased. Thenceforth the poet's relations with Stratford were
uninterrupted. He still resided in London for most of the year; but
until the close of his professional career he paid the town at least one
annual visit, and he was always formally described as 'of
Stratford-on-Avon, gentleman.' He was no doubt there on August 11, 1596,
when his only son, Hamnet, was buried in the parish church; the boy was
eleven and a half years old.
The coat-of-arms.
At the same date the poet's father, despite his pecuniary embarrassments,
took a step, by way of regaining his prestige, which must be assigned to
the poet's intervention. {188a} He made application to the College of
Heralds for a coat-of-arms. {188b} Then, as now, the heralds when
bestowing new coats-of-arms commonly credited the applicant's family with
an imaginary antiquity, and little reliance need be placed on the
biographical or genealogical statements alleged in grants of arms. The
poet's father or the poet himself when first applying to the College
stated that John Shakespeare, in 1568, while he was bailiff of Stratford,
and while he was by virtue of that office a justice of the peace, had
obtained from Robert Cook, then Clarenceux herald, a 'pattern' or sketch
of an armorial coat. This allegation is not noticed in the records of
the College, and may be a formal fiction designed by John Shakespeare and
his son to recommend their claim to the notice of the heralds. The
negotiations of 1568, if they were not apocryphal, were certainly
abortive; otherwise there would have been no necessity for the further
action of 1596. In any case, on October 20, 1596, a draft, which remains
in the College of Arms, was prepared under the direction of William
Dethick, Garter King-of-Arms, granting John's request for a coat-of-arms.
Garter stated, with characteristic vagueness, that he had been 'by
credible report' informed that the applicant's 'parentes and late
antecessors were for theire valeant and faithfull service advanced and
rewarded by the most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of famous
memories sythence whiche tyme they have continewed at those partes
[_i.e._ Warwickshire] in good reputacion and credit;' and that 'the said
John [had] maryed Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden, of
Wilmcote, gent.' In consideration of these titles to honour, Garter
declared that he assigned to Shakespeare this shield, viz.: 'Gold, on a
bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his crest or cognizance a
falcon, his wings displayed argent, standing on a wreath of his colours,
supporting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid.' In the margin of this
draft-grant there is a pen sketch of the arms and crest, and above them
is written the motto, 'Non Sans Droict.' {189} A second copy of the
draft, also dated in 1596, is extant at the College. The only
alterations are the substitution of the word 'grandfather' for
'antecessors' in the account of John Shakespeare's ancestry, and the
substitution of the word 'esquire' for 'gent' in the description of his
wife's father, Robert Arden. At the foot of this draft, however,
appeared some disconnected and unverifiable memoranda which John
Shakespeare or his son had supplied to the heralds, to the effect that
John had been bailiff of Stratford, had received a 'pattern' of a shield
from Clarenceux Cook, was a man of substance, and had married into a
worshipful family. {190}
[Picture: Coat-of-arms]
Neither of these drafts was fully executed. It may have been that the
unduly favourable representations made to the College respecting John
Shakespeare's social and pecuniary position excited suspicion even in the
habitually credulous minds of the heralds, or those officers may have
deemed the profession of the son, who was conducting the negotiation, a
bar to completing the transaction. At any rate, Shakespeare and his
father allowed three years to elapse before (as far as extant documents
show) they made a further endeavour to secure the coveted distinction.
In 1599 their efforts were crowned with success. Changes in the interval
among the officials at the College may have facilitated the proceedings.
In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become Earl Marshal and chief of the
Heralds' College (the office had been in commission in 1596); while the
great scholar and antiquary, William Camden, had joined the College, also
in 1597, as Clarenceux King-of-Arms. The poet was favourably known to
both Camden and the Earl of Essex, the close friend of the Earl of
Southampton. His father's application now took a new form. No grant of
arms was asked for. It was asserted without qualification that the coat,
as set out in the draft-grants of 1596, had been _assigned_ to John
Shakespeare while he was bailiff, and the heralds were merely invited to
give him a 'recognition' or 'exemplification' of it. {191} At the same
time he asked permission for himself to impale, and his eldest son and
other children to quarter, on 'his ancient coat-of-arms' that of the
Ardens of Wilmcote, his wife's family. The College officers were
characteristically complacent. A draft was prepared under the hands of
Dethick, the Garter King, and of Camden, the Clarenceux King, granting
the required 'exemplification' and authorising the required impalement
and quartering. On one point only did Dethick and Camden betray
conscientious scruples. Shakespeare and his father obviously desired the
heralds to recognise the title of Mary Shakespeare (the poet's mother) to
bear the arms of the great Warwickshire family of Arden, then seated at
Park Hall. But the relationship, if it existed, was undetermined; the
Warwickshire Ardens were gentry of influence in the county, and were
certain to protest against any hasty assumption of identity between their
line and that of the humble farmer of Wilmcote. After tricking the
Warwickshire Arden coat in the margin of the draft-grant for the purpose
of indicating the manner of its impalement, the heralds on second
thoughts erased it. They substituted in their sketch the arms of an
Arden family living at Alvanley in the distant county of Cheshire. With
that stock there was no pretence that Robert Arden of Wilmcote was
lineally connected; but the bearers of the Alvanley coat were unlikely to
learn of its suggested impalement with the Shakespeare shield, and the
heralds were less liable to the risk of litigation. But the Shakespeares
wisely relieved the College of all anxiety by omitting to assume the
Arden coat. The Shakespeare arms alone are displayed with full heraldic
elaboration on the monument above the poet's grave in Stratford Church;
they alone appear on the seal and on the tombstone of his elder daughter,
Mrs. Susanna Hall, impaled with the arms of her husband; {192a} and they
alone were quartered by Thomas Nash, the first husband of the poet's
granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall. {192b}
Some objection was taken a few years later to the grant even of the
Shakespeare shield, but it was based on vexatious grounds that could not
be upheld. Early in the seventeenth century Ralph Brooke, who was York
herald from 1593 till his death in 1625, and was long engaged in a bitter
quarrel with his fellow officers at the College, complained that the arms
'exemplified' to Shakespeare usurped the coat of Lord Mauley, on whose
shield 'a bend sable' also figured. Dethick and Camden, who were
responsible for any breach of heraldic etiquette in the matter, answered
that the Shakespeare shield bore no more resemblance to the Mauley coat
than it did to that of the Harley and the Ferrers families, which also
bore 'a bend sable,' but that in point of fact it differed conspicuously
from all three by the presence of a spear on the 'bend.' Dethick and
Camden added, with customary want of precision, that the person to whom
the grant was made had 'borne magistracy and was justice of peace at
Stratford-on-Avon; he maried the daughter and heire of Arderne, and was
able to maintain that Estate.' {193}
Purchase of New Place.
Meanwhile, in 1597, the poet had taken openly in his own person a more
effective step in the way of rehabilitating himself and his family in the
eyes of his fellow townsmen. On May 4 he purchased the largest house in
the town, known as New Place. It had been built by Sir Hugh Clopton more
than a century before, and seems to have fallen into a ruinous condition.
But Shakespeare paid for it, with two barns and two gardens, the then
substantial sum of 60 pounds. Owing to the sudden death of the vendor,
William Underhill, on July 7, 1597, the original transfer of the property
was left at the time incomplete. Underhill's son Fulk died a felon, and
he was succeeded in the family estates by his brother Hercules, who on
coming of age, May 1602, completed in a new deed the transfer of New
Place to Shakespeare. {194a} On February 4, 1597-8, Shakespeare was
described as a householder in Chapel Street ward, in which New Place was
situated, and as the owner of ten quarters of corn. The inventory was
made owing to the presence of famine in the town, and only two
inhabitants were credited with a larger holding. In the same year (1598)
he procured stone for the repair of the house, and before 1602 had
planted a fruit orchard. He is traditionally said to have interested
himself in the garden, and to have planted with his own hands a
mulberry-tree, which was long a prominent feature of it. When this was
cut down, in 1758, numerous relics were made from it, and were treated
with an almost superstitious veneration. {194b} Shakespeare does not
appear to have permanently settled at New Place till 1611. In 1609 the
house, or part of it, was occupied by the town clerk, Thomas Greene,
'alias Shakespeare,' who claimed to be the poet's cousin. His
grandmother seems to have been a Shakespeare. He often acted as the
poet's legal adviser.
It was doubtless under their son's guidance that Shakespeare's father and
mother set on foot in November 1597--six months after his acquisition of
New Place--a lawsuit against John Lambert for the recovery of the
mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilmcote. The litigation dragged on for
some years without result.
Appeals for aid from his fellow-townsmen.
Three letters written during 1598 by leading men at Stratford are still
extant among the Corporation's archives, and leave no doubt of the
reputation for wealth and influence with which the purchase of New Place
invested the poet in his fellow-townsmen's eyes. Abraham Sturley, who
was once bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently to a brother in
London, says: 'This is one special remembrance from our father's motion.
It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakspere, is willing to
disburse some money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near
about us: he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the
matter of our tithes. By the instructions you can give him thereof, and
by the friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark for him to
shoot at, and would do us much good.' Richard Quiney, another townsman,
father of Thomas (afterwards one of Shakespeare's two sons-in-law), was,
in the autumn of the same year, harassed by debt, and on October 25
appealed to Shakespeare for a loan of money. 'Loving countryman,' the
application ran, 'I am bold of you as of a friend craving your help with
xxx_li_.' Quiney was staying at the Bell Inn in Carter Lane, London, and
his main business in the metropolis was to procure exemption for the town
of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. Abraham Sturley, writing to
Quiney from Stratford ten days later (on November 4, 1598), pointed out
to him that since the town was wholly unable, in consequence of the
dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped 'that our countryman, Mr. Wm.
Shak., would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when
and where, and how.'
Financial position before 1599.
The financial prosperity to which this correspondence and the
transactions immediately preceding it point has been treated as one of
the chief mysteries of Shakespeare's career, but the difficulties are
gratuitous. There is practically nothing in Shakespeare's financial
position that a study of the contemporary conditions of theatrical life
does not fully explain. It was not until 1599, when the Globe Theatre
was built, that he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse. But
his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor were by no means
contemptible at an earlier date. His gains in the capacity of dramatist
formed the smaller source of income. The highest price known to have
been paid before 1599 to an author for a play by the manager of an acting
company was 11 pounds; 6 pounds was the lowest rate. {197a} A small
additional gratuity--rarely apparently exceeding ten shillings--was
bestowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first production was
especially well received; and the author was by custom allotted, by way
of 'benefit,' a certain proportion of the receipts of the theatre on the
production of a play for the second time. {197b} Other sums, amounting
at times to as much as 4 pounds, were bestowed on the author for revising
and altering an old play for a revival. The nineteen plays which may be
set to Shakespeare's credit between 1591 and 1599, combined with such
revising work as fell to his lot during those eight years, cannot
consequently have brought him less than 200 pounds, or some 20 pounds a
year. Eight or nine of these plays were published during the period, but
the publishers operated independently of the author, taking all the risks
and, at the same time, all the receipts. The publication of
Shakespeare's plays in no way affected his monetary resources, although
his friendly relations with the printer Field doubtless secured him,
despite the absence of any copyright law, some part of the profits in the
large and continuous sale of his poems.
But it was as an actor that at an early date he acquired a genuinely
substantial and secure income. There is abundance of contemporary
evidence to show that the stage was for an efficient actor an assured
avenue to comparative wealth. In 1590 Robert Greene describes in his
tract entitled 'Never too Late' a meeting with a player whom he took by
his 'outward habit' to be 'a gentleman of great living' and a
'substantial man.' The player informed Greene that he had at the
beginning of his career travelled on foot, bearing his theatrical
properties on his back, but he prospered so rapidly that at the time of
speaking 'his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for 200
pounds.' Among his neighbours 'where he dwelt' he was reputed able 'at
his proper cost to build a windmill.' In the university play, 'The
Return from Parnassus' (1601?), a poor student enviously complains of the
wealth and position which a successful actor derived from his calling.