Richard Farmer's 'Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare' (1767), reprinted
in the Variorum editions; Octavius Gilchrist's 'Examination of the
Charges . . . . of Ben Jonson's Enmity towards Shakespeare' (1808); W. J.
Thoms's 'Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?' (1849), a study based on an
erroneous identification of the poet with another William Shakespeare;
Lord Campbell's 'Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements considered' (1859);
John Charles Bucknill's 'Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare' (1860); C. F.
Green's' 'Shakespeare's Crab-Tree, with its Legend' (1862); C. H.
Bracebridge's 'Shakespeare no Deer-stealer' (1862); William Blades's
'Shakspere and Typography' (1872); and D. H. Madden's 'Diary of Master
William Silence (Shakespeare and Sport),' 1897. A full epitome of the
biographical information accessible at the date of publication is
supplied in Karl Elze's 'Life of Shakespeare' (Halle, 1876; English
translation, 1888), with which Elze's 'Essays' from the publications of
the German Shakespeare Society (English translation, 1874) are worth
studying. A less ambitious effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil (1861)
is seriously injured by the writer's acceptance of Collier's forgeries.
Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere Primer' (1877) and his 'Introduction to
Shakspere' (1893), and Dr. Furnivall's 'Introduction to the Leopold
Shakspere,' are all useful summaries of leading facts.
Aids to study of plots and text. Concordances. Bibliographies.
Francis Douce's 'Illustrations of Shakespeare' (1807, new edit. 1839),
'Shakespeare's Library' (ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. Hazlitt, 1875),
'Shakespeare's Plutarch' (ed. Skeat, 1875), and 'Shakespeare's Holinshed'
(ed. W. G. Boswell-Stone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of
Shakespeare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's 'Shakespeare Lexicon' (1874)
and Dr. E. A. Abbott's 'Shakespearian Grammar' (1869, new edit. 1893) are
valuable aids to a study of the text. Useful concordances to the Plays
have been prepared by Mrs. Cowden-Clarke (1845), to the Poems by Mrs. H.
H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one volume,
with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett (London and New York,
1895). {364} A 'Handbook Index' by J. O. Halliwell (privately printed
1866) gives lists of obsolete words and phrases, songs, proverbs, and
plants mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. An unprinted glossary
prepared by Richard Warner between 1750 and 1770 is at the British Museum
(Addit. MSS. 10472-542). Extensive bibliographies are given in Lowndes's
'Library Manual' (ed. Bohn); in Franz Thimm's 'Shakespeariana' (1864 and
1871); in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 9th edit. (skilfully classified
by Mr. H. R. Tedder); and in the 'British Museum Catalogue' (the
Shakespearean entries in which, comprising 3,680 titles, were separately
published in 1897).
Critical studies.
The valuable publications of the Shakespeare Society, the New Shakspere
Society, and of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, comprising
contributions alike to the aesthetic, textual, historical, and
biographical study of Shakespeare, are noticed above (see pp. 333-4,
346). To the critical studies, on which comment has already been made
(see p. 333)--viz. Coleridge's 'Notes and Lectures,' 1883, Hazlitt's
'Characters of Shakespeare's Plays,' 1817, Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere:
his Mind and Art,' 1875, and Mr. A. C. Swinburne's 'A Study of
Shakespeare,' 1879--there may be added the essays on Shakespeare's
heroines respectively by Mrs. Jameson in 1833 and Lady Martin in 1885;
Dr. Ward's 'English Dramatic Literature' (1875, new edit. 1898); Richard
G. Moulton's 'Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist' (1885); 'Shakespeare
Studies' by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1893); F. S. Boas's 'Shakspere and his
Predecessors', (1895), and Georg Brandes's 'William Shakespeare'--an
elaborately critical but somewhat fanciful study--in Danish (Copenhagen,
1895, 8vo), in German (Leipzig, 1895), and in English (London, 1898, 2
vols. 8vo).
Shakespearean forgeries.
The intense interest which Shakespeare's life and work have long
universally excited has tempted unprincipled or sportively mischievous
writers from time to time to deceive the public by the forgery of
documents purporting to supply new information. The forgers were
especially active at the end of last century and during the middle years
of the present century, and their frauds have caused students so much
perplexity that it may be useful to warn them against those Shakespearean
forgeries which have obtained the widest currency.
John Jordan, 1746-1809.
The earliest forger to obtain notoriety was John Jordan (1746-1809), a
resident at Stratford-on-Avon, whose most important achievement was the
forgery of the will of Shakespeare's father; but many other papers in
Jordan's 'Original Collections on Shakespeare and Stratford-on-Avon'
(1780), and 'Original Memoirs and Historical Accounts of the Families of
Shakespeare and Hart,' are open to the gravest suspicion. {366a}
The Ireland forgeries, 1796.
The best known Shakespearean forger of the eighteenth century was William
Henry Ireland (1777-1835), a barrister's clerk, who, with the aid of his
father, Samuel Ireland (1740?-1800), an author and engraver of some
repute, produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers claiming to relate to
Shakespeare's career. The title ran: 'Miscellaneous Papers and Legal
Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare, including the
tragedy of "King Lear" and a small fragment of "Hamlet" from the original
MSS. in the possession of Samuel Ireland.' On April 2, 1796 Sheridan and
Kemble produced at Drury Lane Theatre a bombastic tragedy in blank verse
entitled 'Vortigern' under the pretence that it was by Shakespeare, and
had been recently found among the manuscripts of the dramatist that had
fallen into the hands of the Irelands. The piece, which was published,
was the invention of young Ireland. The fraud of the Irelands, which for
some time deceived a section of the literary public, was finally exposed
by Malone in his valuable 'Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Ireland
MSS.' (1796). Young Ireland afterwards published his 'Confessions'
(1805). He had acquired much skill in copying Shakespeare's genuine
signature from the facsimile in Steevens's edition of Shakespeare's works
of the mortgage-deed of the Blackfriars house of 1612-13, {366b} and,
besides conforming to that style of handwriting in his forged deeds and
literary compositions, he inserted copies of the signature on the
title-pages of many sixteenth-century books, and often added notes in the
same feigned hand on their margins. Numerous sixteenth-century volumes
embellished by Ireland in this manner are extant, and his forged
signatures and marginalia have been frequently mistaken for genuine
autographs of Shakespeare.
Forgeries promulgated by Collier and others, 1835-1849.
But Ireland's and Jordan's frauds are clumsy compared with those that
belong to the present century. Most of the works relating to the
biography of Shakespeare or the history of the Elizabethan stage produced
by John Payne Collier, or under his supervision, between 1835 and 1849
are honeycombed with forged references to Shakespeare, and many of the
forgeries have been admitted unsuspectingly into literary history. The
chief of these forged papers I arrange below in the order of the dates
that have been allotted to them by their manufacturers. {367a}
1589 (November). Appeal from the Blackfriars players
(16 in number) to the Privy Council
for favour. Shakespeare's name
stands twelfth. From the manuscripts
at Bridgewater House, belonging to
the Earl of Ellesmere. First printed
in Collier's 'New Facts regarding the
Life of Shakespeare,' 1835.
1596 (July). List of inhabitants of the Liberty of
Southwark, Shakespeare's name
appearing in the sixth place. First
printed in Collier's 'Life of
Shakespeare,' 1858, p. 126.
1596. Petition of the owners and players of
the Blackfriars Theatre to the Privy
Council in reply to an alleged
petition of the inhabitants
requesting the closing of the
playhouse. Shakespeare's name is
fifth on the list of petitioners.
This forged paper is in the Public
Record Office, and was first printed
in Collier's 'History of English
Dramatic Poetry' (1831), vol. i. p.
297, and has been constantly
reprinted as if it were genuine.
{367b}
1596 (_circa_). A letter signed H. S.(_i.e._ Henry,
Earl of Southampton), addressed to
Sir Thomas Egerton, praying
protection for the players of the
Blackfriars Theatre, and mentioning
Burbage and Shakespeare by name.
First printed in Collier's 'New
Facts.'
1596 (_circa_). A list of sharers in the Blackfriars
Theatre, with the valuation of their
property, in which Shakespeare is
credited with four shares, worth 933
pounds 6s. 8d. This was first
printed in Collier's 'New Facts,'
1835, p. 6, from the Egerton MSS. at
Bridgewater House.
1602 (August 6). Notice of the performance of
'Othello' by Burbage's 'players'
before Queen Elizabeth when on a
visit to Sir Thomas Egerton, the
lord-keeper, at Harefield, in a
forged account of disbursements by
Egerton's steward, Arthur
Mainwaringe, from the manuscripts at
Bridgewater House, belonging to the
Earl of Ellesmere. Printed in
Collier's 'New Particulars regarding
the Works of Shakespeare,' 1836, and
again in Collier's edition of the
'Egerton Papers,' 1840 (Camden
Society)) pp. 342-3.
1603 (October 3). Mention of 'Mr. Shakespeare of the
Globe' in a letter at Dulwich from
Mrs. Alleyn to her husband; part of
the letter is genuine. First
published in Collier's Memoirs of
Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 63. {368}
1604 List of the names of eleven players
(April 9). of the King's Company fraudulently
appended to a genuine letter at
Dulwich College from the Privy
Council bidding the Lord Mayor permit
performances by the King's players.
Printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of
Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 68. {368b}
1605 (November-December). Forged entries in Master of the
Revels' account-books (now at the
Public Record Office) of performances
at Whitehall by the King's players of
the 'Moor of Venice'--_i.e._
'Othello'--on November 1, and of
'Measure for Measure' on December 26.
Printed in Peter Cunningham's
'Extracts from the Accounts of the
Revels at Court' (pp. 203-4),
published by the Shakespeare Society
in 1842. Doubtless based on Malone's
trustworthy memoranda (now in the
Bodleian Library) of researches among
genuine papers formerly at the Audit
Office at Somerset House. {369a}
1607. Notes of performances of 'Hamlet' and
'Richard II' by the crews of the
vessels of the East India Company's
fleet off Sierra Leone. First
printed in 'Narratives of Voyages
towards the North-West, 1496-1631,'
edited by Thomas Rundall for the
Hakluyt Society, 1849, p. 231, from
what purported to be an exact
transcript 'in the India Office' of
the 'Journal of William Keeling,'
captain of one of the vessels in the
expedition. Keeling's manuscript
journal is still at the India Office,
but the leaves that should contain
these entries are now, and have long
been, missing from it.
1609 (January 4). A warrant appointing Robert Daborne,
William Shakespeare, and others
instructors of the Children of the
Revels. From the Bridgewater House
MSS. first printed in Collier's 'New
Facts,' 1835.
1609 List of persons assessed for poor
(April 6). rate in Southwark, April 6, 1609, in
which Shakespeare's name appears.
First printed in Collier's 'Memoirs
of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 91. The
forged paper is at Dulwich. {369b}
1611 (November). Forged entries in Master of the
Revels' account-books (now at the
Public Record Office) of performances
at Whitehall by the King's Players of
the 'Tempest' on November 1, and of
the 'Winter's Tale' on November 5.
Printed in Peter Cunningham's
'Extracts from the Revels Accounts,'
p. 210. Doubtless based on Malone's
trustworthy memoranda of researches
among genuine papers formerly at the
Audit Office at Somerset House.
{369c}
II.--THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY.
Its source. Toby Matthew's letter.
The apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's Stratford
career and the breadth of observation and knowledge displayed in his
literary work has evoked the fantastic theory that Shakespeare was not
the author of the literature that passes under his name, and perverse
attempts have been made to assign his works to his great contemporary,
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the great contemporary prose-writer,
philosopher, and lawyer. It is argued that Shakespeare's plays embody a
general omniscience (especially a knowledge of law) which was possessed
by no contemporary except Bacon; that there are many close parallelisms
between passages in Shakespeare's and passages in Bacon's works, {370}
and that Bacon makes enigmatic references in his correspondence to secret
'recreations' and 'alphabets' and concealed poems for which his alleged
employment as a concealed dramatist can alone account. Toby Matthew
wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Albans) at an uncertain date after
January 1621: 'The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation and
of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by
another.' {371} This unpretending sentence is distorted into conclusive
evidence that Bacon wrote works of commanding excellence under another's
name, and among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only
sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his 'most prodigious wit' was
some Englishman named Bacon whom he met abroad--probably a pseudonymous
Jesuit like most of Matthew's friends. (The real surname of Father
Thomas Southwell, who was a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the Low
Countries, was Bacon. He was born in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near
Walsingham, Norfolk, being son of Thomas Bacon of that place, and he died
at Watten in 1637.)
Chief exponents. Its vogue in America.
Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, _d._ 1855), in his 'Romance of
Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shakespeare's authorship. There
followed in a like temper 'Who wrote Shakespeare?' in 'Chambers's
Journal,' August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnams'
Monthly,' January, 1856. On the latter was based 'The Philosophy of the
Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by
Nathaniel Hawthorne, London and Boston, 1857. Miss Delia Bacon, who was
the first to spread abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the
established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2,
1859. {372} Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first
to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord Bacon the author
of Shakespeare's plays?--a letter to Lord Ellesmere' (1856), which was
republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent
of this strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who
published at New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the Plays attributed to
Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2
vols.) Bacon's 'Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' a commonplace
book in Bacon's handwriting in the British Museum (London, 1883), was
first edited by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian
theory; it contained many words and phrases common to the works of Bacon
and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the argument from parallelisms of
expression to its extremest limits. The Baconian theory has found its
widest acceptance in America. There it achieved its wildest
manifestation in the book called 'The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's
Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays' (Chicago and London, 1887, 2
vols.), which was the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings,
Minnesota. The author pretended to have discovered among Bacon's papers
a numerical cypher which enabled him to pick out letters appearing at
certain intervals in the pages of Shakespeare's First Folio, and the
selected letters formed words and sentences categorically stating that
Bacon was author of the plays. Many refutations have been published of
Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless contention.
Extent of the literature.
A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop and promulgate
the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a magazine (named since May
1893 'Baconiana'). A quarterly periodical also called 'Baconiana,' and
issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. 'The
Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy' by W. H. Wyman,
Cincinnati, 1884, gives the titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or
pamphlets on both sides of the subject, published since 1848; the list
was continued during 1886 in 'Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal
published at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its
original number.
The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare's
responsibility for the works published under his name gives the Baconian
theory no rational right to a hearing while such authentic examples of
Bacon's effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of
contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher,
he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare.
Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone render
any other conclusion possible.
III.--THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON.
Southampton and Shakespeare.
From the dedicatory epistles addressed by Shakespeare to the Earl of
Southampton in the opening pages of his two narrative poems, 'Venus and
Adonis' (1593) and 'Lucrece' (1594), {374a} from the account given by Sir
William D'Avenant, and recorded by Nicholas Rowe, of the earl's liberal
bounty to the poet, {374b} and from the language of the sonnets, it is
abundantly clear that Shakespeare enjoyed very friendly relations with
Southampton from the time when his genius was nearing its maturity. No
contemporary document or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that
Shakespeare was the friend or _protege_ of any man of rank other than
Southampton; and the student of Shakespeare's biography has reason to ask
for some information respecting him who enjoyed the exclusive distinction
of serving Shakespeare as his patron.
Parentage. Birth on Oct. 6, 1573.
Southampton was a patron worth cultivating. Both his parents came of the
New Nobility, and enjoyed vast wealth. His father's father was Lord
Chancellor under Henry VIII, and when the monasteries were dissolved,
although he was faithful to the old religion, he was granted rich estates
in Hampshire, including the abbeys of Titchfield and Beaulieu in the New
Forest. He was created Earl of Southampton early in Edward VI's reign,
and, dying shortly afterwards, was succeeded by his only son, the father
of Shakespeare's friend. The second earl loved magnificence in his
household. 'He was highly reverenced and favoured of all that were of
his own rank, and bravely attended and served by the best gentlemen of
those counties wherein he lived. His muster-roll never consisted of four
lacqueys and a coachman, but of a whole troop of at least a hundred
well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen.' {375a} The second earl remained a
Catholic, like his father, and a chivalrous avowal of sympathy with Mary
Queen of Scots procured him a term of imprisonment in the year preceding
his distinguished son's birth. At a youthful age he married a lady of
fortune, Mary Browne, daughter of the first Viscount Montague, also a
Catholic. Her portrait, now at Welbeck, was painted in her early married
days, and shows regularly formed features beneath bright auburn hair.
Two sons and a daughter were the issue of the union. Shakespeare's
friend, the second son, was born at her father's residence, Cowdray
House, near Midhurst, on October 6, 1573. He was thus Shakespeare's
junior by nine years and a half. 'A goodly boy, God bless him!'
exclaimed the gratified father, writing of his birth to a friend. {375b}
But the father barely survived the boy's infancy. He died at the early
age of thirty-five--two days before the child's eighth birthday. The
elder son was already dead. Thus, on October 4, 1581, the second and
only surviving son became third Earl of Southampton, and entered on his
great inheritance. {375c}
Education.
As was customary in the case of an infant peer, the little earl became a
royal ward--'a child of state'--and Lord Burghley, the Prime Minister,
acted as the boy's guardian in the Queen's behalf. Burghley had good
reason to be satisfied with his ward's intellectual promise. 'He spent,'
wrote a contemporary, 'his childhood and other younger terms in the study
of good letters.' At the age of twelve, in the autumn of 1585, he was
admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge, 'the sweetest nurse of
knowledge in all the University.' Southampton breathed easily the
cultured atmosphere. Next summer he sent his guardian, Burghley, an
essay in Ciceronian Latin on the somewhat cynical text that 'All men are
moved to the pursuit of virtue by the hope of reward.' The argument, if
unconvincing, is precocious. 'Every man,' the boy tells us, 'no matter
how well or how ill endowed with the graces of humanity, whether in the
enjoyment of great honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that
yearning for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour.' The paper,
still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of calligraphy; every letter is
shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refinement most uncommon
in boys of thirteen. {376a} Southampton remained at the University for
some two years, graduating M.A. at sixteen in 1589. Throughout his after
life he cherished for his college 'great love and affection.'
Before leaving Cambridge, Southampton entered his name at Gray's Inn.
Some knowledge of law was deemed needful in one who was to control a
landed property that was not only large already but likely to grow.
{376b} Meanwhile he was sedulously cultivating his literary tastes. He
took into his 'pay and patronage' John Florio, the well-known author and
Italian tutor, and was soon, according to Florio's testimony, as
thoroughly versed in Italian as 'teaching or learning' could make him.
'When he was young,' wrote a later admirer, 'no ornament of youth was
wanting in him;' and it was naturally to the Court that his friends sent
him at an early age to display his varied graces. He can hardly have
been more than seventeen when he was presented to his sovereign. She
showed him kindly notice, and the Earl of Essex, her brilliant favourite,
acknowledged his fascination. Thenceforth Essex displayed in his welfare
a brotherly interest which proved in course of time a very doubtful
blessing.
Recognition of Southampton's youthful beauty.