SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY PLAYS
The poet is credited with the authorship of some thirty-seven plays,
though modern criticism has endeavoured to show that he took but a small
part in the making of a few of these, and of the whole thirty-seven
little more than a dozen were published during his life. It is supposed
that his first play was the comedy "Love's Labour's Lost," in which he
would appear to have gone to his own brain for the plot. Here we find a
certain broad outlook upon contemporary life, with many a passing
reference to matters of topical interest, while vivid recollections of
life in Warwickshire among slow-witted rustics account for some of the
humorous episodes. Historians can trace many of the references in the
play, which is supposed to have been written in 1591, five years after
the author left Stratford, revised in 1597, and published a year later.
Cuthbert Burbie, who, like Shakespeare's earliest London friend, Richard
Field, was a member of the Stationers' Company, was the publisher, and
the printer was one William White of "Cow Lane near Holborn Conduit."
"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" came next, adapted from a Spanish source,
and not published until the author was dead.
"The Comedy of Errors" is borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo
and Juliet," founded upon a _novellino_ by Masuccio, who had taken the
story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has
the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it. There is
internal evidence to suggest 1591 or 1592 as the date, and Shakespeare
was still a young man then, on the sunny side of thirty, and with the
currents of his life no longer turned awry. There is here a ring of
confidence and enthusiasm that three centuries have proved powerless to
dull. After due revision, the play was printed in 1597 by John Danter, a
publisher of rather evil repute. Two years later Burbie published an
authorised edition.
Oddly enough, the success of "Romeo and Juliet" would appear to have
been eclipsed by that of "King Henry VI." The events set out in the
trilogy were sufficiently familiar to the people to give the work an
interest that is almost fictitious. Criticism has shown that the poet's
part in these productions was but small. Some say that Greene and Peele
were the authors of the plays, that Shakespeare rewrote them perhaps
with a little aid from Marlowe. Certain it is that Greene attacked the
poet furiously when the remodelled work was produced, calling upon his
brother dramatists of repute to beware of upstart puppets and "rude
groomes." But Shakespeare was serenely unmoved by these abusive
epithets, for which Greene's publisher apologised later. He was in
the historical vein, and proceeded to write "Richard III.," in which
Richard Burbage is said to have made a great sensation; the following
play was "Richard II.," and the poet was clearly responsive to the
influence of Marlowe in each of these works.
=BEN JONSON
From Painting in the National Portrait Gallery=
Shortly after "Richard II." was written and produced the plague visited
London, and the poet sought the country. He may have written a small
part, a very small part, of the "Titus Andronicus," and after that he
picked the stage Jew of Marlowe and the rest out of the gutter, and gave
the world in "The Merchant of Venice" a figure that commands keen
interest not untouched with sympathy. "King John," bearing date 1594, is
another piece of inimitable adaptation. By this time the "Venus and
Adonis" had been published with a dedication to the third Earl of
Southampton, and the poet followed it a year later with "The Rape of
Lucrece," dedicated to the same patron.
These works created a sensation. Shakespeare the actor was already a
familiar figure, Shakespeare the dramatist was known and admired, but
Shakespeare the poet seems to have taken literary London by surprise. It
is hard to say why, for there are passages in the plays he had already
written that challenge comparison with anything in the poems; but praise
from the great Elizabethans was not to be lightly won, and no poet could
have sought to wear a worthier garland than theirs. Shakespeare was
admitted at once to the most select circles. Queen Elizabeth became his
patron. Greenwich, Whitehall, and Richmond Palaces witnessed
performances of his plays, with their author taking some small part in
them. "The Palace of Nonsuch," a private purchase of Queen Elizabeth's
situated near Richmond, may still be seen in old prints--a charming
place enough. The palace at Greenwich, coming right up to the banks of
the Thames, is also to be seen in old prints, and it says all that is
needed for the state of Father Thames in the poet's time that a royal
palace could be lapped by our great river below London Bridge.
Shakespeare's capacity for writing makes us realise that the quantity
was almost as remarkable as the worth. He wrote his plays at the rate of
two in a year, with his work as manager and actor thrown in, and his
poems as a thing apart. The quality of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape
of Lucrece" brought him into the company of the country's great
sonneteers; he was inspired to give attention to the sonnet form and
made it one of the vehicles for the expression of his most beautiful
thoughts. The most were written about the year with which we are now
dealing, 1594. In accordance with the custom of the time, they were not
printed immediately, but were written by the poet and given to his
friends. But by this time the interest aroused by new work from
Shakespeare's pen extended throughout literary circles, and the sonnets
must have been copied and quoted extensively before they were published
by a literary pirate named Thorpe in 1609.
The dedication of these sonnets to "Mr. W. H." has roused an enormous
controversy, into which there is no need to venture far, as it lies
outside the scope of a brief biography. It should never be forgotten
that the sonnet in the days of Elizabeth was a form overladen with the
conceits of many countries, and that few men would have regarded
seriously the sentiments to which they committed themselves. Suffice it
that many of the sonnets are of a haunting loveliness that defies
praise, and gives to the best-intentioned expressions of admiration a
quality of impertinence. If for W. H. we read H. W. and forget the
prefix "Mr.," the troubles that have agitated generations of critics are
seen to evaporate. H. W. would become Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of
Southampton, to whom in the sonnets constant references occur. A pirated
edition might well have been handled either carelessly or with a view to
suggesting what could not be said openly.
Next in order of the plays we come to that exquisite fantasy "A
Midsummer Night's Dream," in which we find references to Shakespeare's
supreme patron, Queen Elizabeth, and to the pageants he had seen as a
little lad when the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at
Kenilworth (1575). In 1595 or 1596 came "All's Well that Ends Well,"
taken from an Italian source, and "The Taming of the Shrew," with an
introduction dealing boldly with the Stratford country and some of its
worthies, contemporaries of the poet. In the two-part play of "Henry
IV." that followed we have further references to Shakespeare's
birthplace, and he introduces us to Mr. Justice Shallow, who was to come
into prominence again in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." Clearly the
dramatist was closely concerned at this period of his life with certain
happenings in the place of his birth. These references help us, in place
of authenticated records, to show that Shakespeare still kept in fairly
close touch with his early home. "Henry IV." is famous for its scenes in
the Boar's Head at Eastcheap, and lest the enumeration of plays should
become a little tiresome, let us turn aside for a brief space to
consider the taverns of Queen Elizabeth's day and the company to be met
in them.
=CHARLECOTE HALL=