Fleay and Mr. George Wyndham to treat _Troilus and Cressida_ as
Shakespeare's contribution to the embittered controversy of 1601-2,
between Jonson on the one hand and Marston and Dekker and their actor
friends on the other hand, and to represent the play as a pronouncement
against Jonson. According to this fanciful view, Shakespeare held up
Jonson to savage ridicule in Ajax, while in Thersites he denounced
Marston, despite Marston's intermittent antagonism to Jonson, which
entitled him to freedom from attack by Jonson's foes. The appearance of
the word 'mastic' in the line (1. iii. 73) 'When rank Thersites opes his
mastic jaws' is treated as proof of Shakespeare's identification of
Thersites with Marston, who used the pseudonym 'Therio-mastix' in his
_Scourge of Villainy_. It would be as reasonable to identify him with
Dekker, who wrote the greater part of _Satiro-mastix_. 'Mastic' is
doubtless an adjective formed without recondite significance from the
substantive 'mastic,' _i.e._ the gum commonly used at the time for
stopping decayed teeth. No hypothesis of a polemical intention is needed
to account for Shakespeare's conception of Ajax or Thersites. There is
no trait in either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading
of Chapman's _Homer_ would fail to suggest. The controversial
interpretation of the play is in conflict with chronology (for _Troilus_
cannot, on any showing, be assigned to the period of the war between
Jonson and Dekker, in 1601-2), and it seems confuted by the facts and
arguments already adduced in the discussion of the theatrical conflict
(see pp. 213-219). If more direct disproof be needed, it may be found in
Shakespeare's prologue to _Troilus_, where there is a good-humoured and
expressly pacific allusion to the polemical aims of Jonson's _Poetaster_.
Jonson had introduced into his play 'an _armed_ prologue' on account, he
asserted, of his enemies' menaces. Shakespeare, after describing in his
prologue to _Troilus_ the progress of the Trojan war before his story
opened, added that his 'prologue' presented itself '_arm'd_,' not to
champion 'author's pen or actor's voice,' but simply to announce in a
guise befitting the warlike subject-matter that the play began in the
middle of the conflict between Greek and Trojan, and not at the
beginning. These words of Shakespeare put out of court any
interpretation of Shakespeare's play that would represent it as a
contribution to the theatrical controversy.
{230} _England's Mourning Garment_, 1603, sign. D. 3.
{231} At the same time the Earl of Worcester's company was taken into
the Queen's patronage, and its members were known as 'the Queen's
servants,' while the Earl of Nottingham's company was taken into the
patronage of the Prince of Wales, and its members were known as the
Prince's servants. This extended patronage of actors by the royal family
was noticed as especially honourable to the King by one of his
contemporary panegyrists, Gilbert Dugdale, in his _Time Triumphant_,
1604, sig. B.
{232a} The entry, which appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the
Chamber, was first printed in 1842 in Cunningham's _Extracts from the
Accounts of the Revels at Court_, p. xxxiv. A comparison of Cunningham's
transcript with the original in the Public Record Office (_Audit
Office_--_Declared Accounts_--Treasurer of the Chamber, bundle 388, roll
41) shows that it is accurate. The Earl of Pembroke was in no way
responsible for the performance at Wilton House. At the time, the Court
was formally installed in his house (cf. _Cal. State Papers_, Dom.
1603-10) pp. 47-59), and the Court officers commissioned the players to
perform there, and paid all their expenses. The alleged tradition,
recently promulgated for the first time by the owners of Wilton, that _As
You Like It_ was performed on the occasion, is unsupported by
contemporary evidence.
{232b} The grant is transcribed in the New Shakspere Society's
_Transactions_, 1877-9, Appendix ii., from the Lord Chamberlain's papers
in the Public Record Office, where it is now numbered 660. The number
allotted it in the _Transactions_ is obsolete.
{233a} A contemporary copy of this letter, which declared the Queen's
players acting at the Fortune and the Prince's players at the Curtain to
be entitled to the same privileges as the King's players, is at Dulwich
College (cf. G. F. Warner's _Catalogue of the Dulwich Manuscripts_, pp.
26-7). Collier printed it in his _New Facts_ with fraudulent additions,
in which the names of Shakespeare and other actors figured.
{233b} Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his _Outlines_, i. 213, cites a royal
order to this effect, but gives no authority, and I have sought in vain
for the document at the Public Record Office, at the British Museum, and
elsewhere. But there is no reason to doubt the fact that Shakespeare and
his fellow-actors took, as Grooms of the Chamber, part in the ceremonies
attending the Constable's visit to London. In the unprinted accounts of
Edmund Tilney, master of the revels, for the year October 1603 to October
1604, charge is made for his three days' attendance with four men to
direct the entertainments 'at the receaving of the Constable of Spayne'
(Public Record Office, _Declared Accounts_, Pipe Office Roll 2805). The
magnificent festivities culminated in a splendid banquet given in the
Constable's honour by James I at Whitehall on Sunday, August 19/29--the
day on which the treaty was signed. In the morning all the members of
the royal household accompanied the Constable in formal procession from
Somerset House. After the banquet, at which the earls of Pembroke and
Southampton acted as stewards, there was a ball, and the King's guests
subsequently witnessed exhibitions of bear baiting, bull baiting, rope
dancing, and feats of horsemanship. (Cf. Stow's _Chronicle_, 1631, pp.
845-6, and a Spanish pamphlet, _Relacion de la jornada del exc__mo__
Condestabile de Castilla_, etc., Antwerp, 1604, 4to, which was summarised
in Ellis's _Original Letters_, 2nd series, vol. iii. pp. 207-215, and was
partly translated in Mr. W. B. Rye's _England as seen by Foreigners_, pp.
117-124).
{234} At the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A 204) are the original
accounts of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber for
various (detached) years in the early part of James I's reign. These
documents show that Shakespeare's company acted at Court on November 1
and 4, December 26 and 28, 1604, and on January 7 and 8, February 2 and
3, and the evenings of the following Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and
Shrove Tuesday, 1605.
{235} These dates are drawn from a memorandum of plays performed at
Court in 1604 and 1605 which is among Malone's manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library, and was obviously derived by Malone from authentic
documents that were in his day preserved at the Audit Office in Somerset
House. The document cannot now be traced at the Public Record Office,
whither the Audit Office papers have been removed since Malone's death.
Peter Cunningham professed to print the original document in his accounts
of the revels at Court (Shakespeare Society, 1842, pp. 203 _et seq._),
but there is no doubt that he forged his so-called transcript, and that
the additions which he made to Malone's memorandum were the outcome of
his fancy. Collier's assertion in his _New Particulars_, p. 57, that
_Othello_ was first acted at Sir Thomas Egerton's residence at Harefield
on August 6, 1602, was based solely on a document among the Earl of
Ellesmere's MSS. at Bridgwater House, which purported to be a
contemporary account by the clerk, Sir Arthur Maynwaring, of Sir Thomas
Egerton's household expenses. This document, which Collier reprinted in
his _Egerton Papers_ (Camden Soc.), p. 343, was authoritatively
pronounced by experts in 1860 to be 'a shameful forgery' (cf. Ingleby's
_Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy_, 1861, pp. 261-5).
{237} Dr. Garnett's _Italian Literature_, 1898, p. 227.
{239} Cf. Letter by Mrs. Stopes in _Athenaeum_, July 25, 1896.
{240} Cf. _Macbeth_, ed. Clark and Wright, Clarendon Press Series.
{241a} This fact is stated on the title-page of the quartos.
{241b} Sidney tells the story in a chapter entitled 'The pitiful state
and story of the Paphlagonian unkind king and his blind son; first
related by the son, then by his blind father' (bk. ii. chap. 10, ed. 1590
4to; pp. 132-3, ed. 1674, fol.)
{242} It was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 by Dyce, who
owned the manuscript.
{245} Mr. George Wyndham in his introduction to his edition of North's
_Plutarch_, i. pp. xciii-c, gives an excellent criticism of the relations
of Shakespeare's play to Plutarch's life of Antonius.
{246} See the whole of Coriolanus's great speech on offering his
services to Aufidius, the Volscian general, IV. v. 71-107:
My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces,
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname, Coriolanus . . . to do thee service.
North's translation of Plutarch gives in almost the same terms
Coriolanus's speech on the occasion. It opens: 'I am Caius Martius, who
hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces generally,
great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus
that I bear.' Similarly Volumnia's stirring appeal to her son and her
son's proffer of submission, in act V. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce with
equal literalness North's rendering of Plutarch. 'If we held our peace,
my son,' Volumnia begins in North, 'the state of our raiment would easily
betray to thee what life we have led at home since thy exile and abode
abroad; but think now with thyself,' and so on. The first sentence of
Shakespeare's speech runs:
Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . .
{249} See p. 172 and note 2.
{250} In I. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as 'past grace' in the
theological sense. In I. ii. 30-31 the Second Lord remarks: 'If it be a
sin to make a true election, she is damned.'
{251a} See p. 255, note I. Camillo's reflections (I. ii. 358) on the
ruin that attends those who 'struck anointed kings' have been regarded,
not quite conclusively, as specially designed to gratify James I.
{251b} _Conversations with Drummond_, p. 16.
{251c} In _Winter's Tale_ (IV. iv. 760 et seq.) Autolycus threatens that
the clown's son 'shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey,
set on the head of a wasp's nest,' &c. In Boccaccio's story the villain
Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare's Iachimo), after 'being bounden to the stake
and anointed with honey,' was 'to his exceeding torment not only slain
but devoured of the flies and wasps and gadflies wherewith that country
abounded' (cf. _Decameron_, translated by John Payne, 1893, i. 164).
{253a} Printed in Cohn's _Shakespeare in Germany_.
{253b} Golding's translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, edit. 1612, p.
82 _b_. The passage begins:
Ye ayres and windes, ye elves of hills, ye brookes and woods alone.
{254} _Variorum Shakespeare_, 1821, xv. 423. In the early weeks of 1611
Shakespeare's company presented no fewer than fifteen plays at Court.
Payment of 150 pounds was made to the actors for their services on
February 12, 1610-11. The council's warrant is extant in the _Bodleian
Library MS._ Rawl. A 204 (f. 305). The plays performed were not
specified by name, but some by Shakespeare were beyond doubt amongst
them, and possibly 'The Tempest.' A forged page which was inserted in a
detached account-book of the Master of the Court-Revels for the years
1611 and 1612 at the Public Record Office, and was printed as genuine in
Peter Cunningham's _Extracts from the Revels' Accounts_, p. 210, supplies
among other entries two to the effect that 'The Tempest' was performed at
Whitehall at Hallowmas (_i.e._ November 1) 1611 and that 'A Winter's
Tale' followed four days later, on November 5. Though these entries are
fictitious, the information they offer may be true. Malone doubtless
based his positive statement respecting the date of the composition of
'The Tempest' in 1611 on memoranda made from papers then accessible at
the Audit Office, but now, since the removal of those archives to the
Public Record Office, mislaid. All the forgeries introduced into the
Revels' accounts are well considered and show expert knowledge (see p.
235, note I). The forger of the 1612 entries probably worked either on
the published statement of Malone, or on fuller memoranda left by him
among his voluminous manuscripts.
{255a} Cf. _Universal Review_, April 1889, article by Dr. Richard
Garnett.
{255b} Harmonised scores of Johnson's airs for the songs 'Full Fathom
Five' and 'Where the Bee sucks,' are preserved in Wilson's _Cheerful
Ayres or Ballads set for three voices_, 1660.
{257a} Cf. Browning, _Caliban upon Setebos_; Daniel Wilson, _Caliban_,
_or the Missing Link_ (1873); and Renan, _Caliban_ (1878), a drama
continuing Shakespeare's play.
{257b} When Shakespeare wrote _Troilus and Cressida_ he had formed some
conception of a character of the Caliban type. Thersites say of Ajax
(III. iii. 264), 'He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster.'
{258a} Treasurer's accounts in Rawl. MS. A 239, leaf 47 (in the
Bodleian), printed in New Shakspere Society's _Transactions_, 1895-6,
part ii. p. 419.
{258b} _The Merry Devill of Edmonton_, a comedy which was first
published in 1608, was also re-entered by Moseley for publication on
September 9, 1653, as the work of Shakespeare (see p. 181 _supra_).
{259a} Dyce thought he detected traces of Shirley's workmanship, but it
was possibly Theobald's unaided invention.
{259b} The 1634 quarto of the play was carefully edited for the New
Shakspere Society by Mr. Harold Littledale in 1876. See also Spalding,
_Shakespeare's Authorship of_ '_Two Noble Kinsmen_,' 1833, reprinted by
New Shakspere Society, 1876; article by Spalding in _Edinburgh Review_,
1847; _Transactions_, New Shakspere Society, 1874.
{260} Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle in _Transactions_ of the New Shakspere
Society, 1882.
{261} _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, 1675, pp. 425-6. Wotton adds 'that the
piece was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of Pomp and
Majesty, even to the matting of the Stage; the Knights of the Order, with
their Georges and Garters, the Guards with their embroidered Coats, and
the like: sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very
familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King _Henry_ making a Masque at the
Cardinal _Wolsey's_ House, and certain Canons being shot off at his
entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was
stopped, did light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an
idle Smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled
inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour
the whole House to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that
vertuous fabrique; wherein yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw and
a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that
would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a
provident wit put it out with bottle[d] ale.' John Chamberlain writing
to Sir Ralph Winwood on July 8, 1613, briefly mentions that the theatre
was burnt to the ground in less than two hours owing to the accidental
ignition of the thatch roof through the firing of cannon 'to be used in
the play.' The audience escaped unhurt though they had 'but two narrow
doors to get out' (Winwood's _Memorials_, iii. p. 469). A similar
account was sent by the Rev. Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering,
Bart., from London, June 30, 1613. 'The fire broke out,' Lorkin wrote,
'no longer since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at
the Globe the play of _Henry VIII_' (_Court and Times of James I_, 1848,
vol. i. p. 253). A contemporary sonnet on 'the pittifull burning of the
Globe playhouse in London,' first printed by Haslewood 'from an old
manuscript volume of poems' in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1816, was
again printed by Halliwell-Phillipps (i. pp. 310, 311) from an authentic
manuscript in the library of Sir Matthew Wilson, Bart., of Eshton Hall,
Yorkshire.
{263a} _Bodl. MS._ Rawl. A 239; cf. Spedding in _Gentleman's Magazine_,
1850, reprinted in New Shakspere Society's _Transactions_, 1874.
{263b} Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle in New Shakspere Society's _Transactions_,
1884.
{264} Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 87.
{265a} Manningham, _Diary_, March 23, 1601, Camd. Soc. p. 39.
{265b} Cf. Aubrey, _Lives_; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 43; and art. Sir
William D'Avenant in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
{267} The indenture prepared for the purchaser is in the
Halliwell-Phillipps collection, which was sold to Mr. Marsden J. Perry of
Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., in January 1897. That held by the
vendor is in the Guildhall Library.
{268} Shakespeare's references to puritans in the plays of his middle
and late life are so uniformly discourteous that they must be judged to
reflect his personal feeling. The discussion between Maria and Sir
Andrew Aguecheek regarding Malvolio's character in _Twelfth Night_ (II.
iii. 153 et seq.) runs:
MARIA. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.
SIR ANDREW. O! if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog.
SIR TOBY. What, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear
knight.
SIR ANDREW. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason
good enough.
In _Winter's Tale_ (IV. iii. 46) the Clown, after making contemptuous
references to the character of the shearers, remarks that there is 'but
one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.' Cf. the
allusions to 'grace' and 'election' in Cymbeline, p. 250, note 1.
{269a} The town council of Stratford-on-Avon, whose meeting-chamber
almost overlooked Shakespeare's residence of New Place, gave curious
proof of their puritanic suspicion of the drama on February 7, 1612, when
they passed a resolution that plays were unlawful and 'the sufferance of
them against the orders heretofore made and against the example of other
well-governed cities and boroughs,' and the council was therefore
'content,' the resolution ran, that 'the penalty of xs. imposed [on
players heretofore] be x_li_. henceforward.' Ten years later the King's
players were bribed by the council to leave the city without playing.
(See the present writer's _Stratford-on-Avon_, p. 270.)
{269b} The lines as quoted by Aubrey (_Lives_, ed. Clark, ii. 226) run:
Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows,
But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes;
If any man ask, who lies in this tomb?
Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe.
Rowe's version opens somewhat differently:
Ten-in-the-hundred lies here ingrav'd.
'Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav'd.
The lines, in one form or another, seem to have been widely familiar in
Shakespeare's lifetime, but were not ascribed to him. The first two in
Rowe's version were printed in the epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot], 1608,
and again in Camden's _Remaines_, 1614. The whole first appeared in
Richard Brathwaite's _Remains_ in 1618 under the heading: 'Upon one John
Combe of Stratford upon Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon a Tombe
that he had Caused to be built in his Life Time.'
{271} The clumsy entry runs: 'Sept. Mr. Shakespeare tellyng J. Greene
that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe.' J. Greene is
to be distinguished from Thomas Greene, the writer of the diary. The
entry therefore implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene that the writer
of the diary, Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the enclosure. Those
who represent Shakespeare as a champion of popular rights have to read
the 'I' in 'I was not able' as 'he.' Were that the correct reading,
Shakespeare would be rightly credited with telling J. Greene that he
disliked the enclosure; but palaeographers only recognise the reading
'I.' Cf. _Shakespeare and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe_, a
facsimile of Greene's diary, now at the Birthplace, Stratford, with a
transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited by Dr. C. M. Inglehy, 1885.
{272a} _British Magazine_, June 1762.
{272b} Cf. Malone, _Shakespeare_, 1821, ii. 500-2; Ireland,
_Confessions_, 1805, p. 34; Green, _Legend of the Crab Tree_, 1857.
{272c} The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to May 3 in the
new; Cervantes, whose death is often described as simultaneous, died at
Madrid ten days earlier--on April 13, in the old style, or April 23,
1616, in the new.
{273} Hall's letter was published as a quarto pamphlet at London in
1884, from the original, now in the Bodleian Library Oxford.
{274} Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., has been kind enough to give me a legal
opinion on this point. He wrote to me on December 9, 1897: 'I have
looked to the authorities with my friend Mr. Herbert Mackay, and there is
no doubt that Shakespeare barred the dower.' Mr. Mackay's opinion is
couched in the following terms: 'The conveyance of the Blackfriars estate
to William Shakespeare in 1613 shows that the estate was conveyed to
Shakespeare, Johnson, Jackson, and Hemming as joint tenants, and
therefore the dower of Shakespeare's wife would be barred unless he were
the survivor of the four bargainees.' That was a remote contingency,
which did not arise, and Shakespeare always retained the power of making
'another settlement when the trustees were shrinking.' Thus the bar was
for practical purposes perpetual, and disposes of Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps's assertion that Shakespeare's wife was entitled to
dower in one form or another from all his real estate. Cf. _Davidson on
Conveyancing_; Littleton, sect. 45; _Coke upon Littleton_, ed. Hargrave,
p. 379 _b_, note I.
{276a} A hundred and fifty pounds is described as a substantial jointure
in _Merry Wives_, III. iii. 49.
{276b} Leonard Digges, in commendatory verses before the First Folio of
1623, wrote that Shakespeare's works would be alive
[When] Time dissolves thy Stratford monument.
{277} Cf. Dugdale, _Diary_, 1827, p. 99; see under article on Bernard
Janssen in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
{278a} 'Timber,' in _Works_, 1641.
{278b} John Webster, the dramatist, made vague reference in the address
before his 'White Divel' in 1612 to 'the right happy and copious industry
of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, and M. Heywood.'
{280} The words run: 'Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife of
Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th day of August,
1623, being of the age of 67 yeares.
'Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti,
Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo!
Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore,
Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua.
Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget,
Clausa licet tumulo, mater, et astra petet.'
{281} Cf. Hall, _Select Observations_, ed. Cooke, 1657.
{282} Baker, _Northamptonshire_, i. 10; _New Shaksp. Soc. Trans._
1880-5, pt. ii. pp. 13--15.
{283} Halliwell-Phillipps, _Hist. of New Place_, 1864, fol.
{284} Wise, _Autograph of William Shakespeare_ . . . _together with_
4,000 _ways of spelling the name_, Philadelphia, 1869.
{285} See the article on John Florio in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_, and Sir Frederick Madden's _Observations on an Autograph of
Shakspere_, 1838.
{286} Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, _New Lamps or Old_, 1880; Malone,
_Inquiry_, 1796.
{290} Mr. Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery, who
has ittle doubt of the genuineness of the picture, gave an interesting
account of it at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 12,
1895. Mr. Cust's paper is printed in the Society's _Proceedings_, second
series, vol. xvi. p. 42. Mr. Salt Brassington, the librarian of the
Shakespeare Memorial Library, has given a careful description of it in
the _Illustrated Catalogue of the Pictures in the Memorial Gallery_,
1896, pp. 78-83.
{291a} _Harper's Magazine_, May 1897.
{291b} Cf. Evelyn's _Diary and Correspondence_, iii. 444.