the profession that we find the most important link in the chain of
witnesses alike to the persistence and authenticity of the oral
tradition of Shakespeare which was current in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Sir William D'Avenant, the chief playwright and
promoter of theatrical enterprise of his day, enjoyed among persons of
influence and quality infinite credit and confidence. As a boy he and
his brothers had come into personal relations with the dramatist under
their father's roof, and the experience remained the proudest boast of
their lives. D'Avenant was little more than ten when Shakespeare died,
and his direct intercourse with him was consequently slender; but
D'Avenant was a child of the Muses, and his slight acquaintance with
the living Shakespeare spurred him to treasure all that he could learn
of his hero from any who had enjoyed fuller opportunities of intimacy.
To learn the manner in which the child D'Avenant and his brothers came
to know Shakespeare is to approach the dramatist through oral tradition
at very close quarters. D'Avenant's father, a melancholy person who
was never known to laugh, long kept at Oxford the Crown Inn in Carfax.
Gossip which was current in Oxford throughout the seventeenth century,
and was put on record before the end of it by more than one scholar of
the university, establishes the fact that Shakespeare on his annual
journeys between London and Stratford-on-Avon was in the habit of
staying at the elder D'Avenant's Oxford hostelry. The report ran that
"he was exceedingly respected" in the house, and was freely admitted
to the inn-keeper's domestic circle. The inn-keeper's wife was
credited with a mercurial disposition which contrasted strangely with
her husband's sardonic temperament; it was often said in Oxford that
Shakespeare not merely found his chief attraction at the Crown Inn in
the wife's witty conversation, but formed a closer intimacy with her
than moralists would approve. Oral tradition speaks in clearer tones
of his delight in the children of the family--four boys and three
girls. We have at command statements on that subject from the lips of
two of the sons. The eldest son, Robert, who was afterwards a parson
in Wiltshire, and was on familiar terms with many men of culture,
often recalled with pride for their benefit that "Mr William
Shakespeare" had given him as a child "a hundred kisses" in his
father's tavern-parlour.
The third son, William, was more expansive in his reminiscences. It
was generally understood at Oxford in the early years of the
seventeenth century that he was the poet's godson, as his Christian
name would allow, but some gossips had it that the poet's paternity
was of a less spiritual character. According to a genuine anecdote of
contemporary origin, when the boy, William D'Avenant, in Shakespeare's
lifetime, informed a doctor of the university that he was on his way
to ask a blessing of his godfather who had just arrived in the town,
the child was warned by his interlocutor against taking the name of
God in vain. It is proof of the estimation in which D'Avenant held
Shakespeare that when he came to man's estate he was "content enough
to have" the insinuation "thought to be true." He would talk freely
with his friends over a glass of wine of Shakespeare's visits to his
father's house, and would say "that it seemed to him that he wrote
with Shakespeare's very spirit." Of his reverence for Shakespeare he
gave less questionable proof in a youthful elegy in which he
represented the flowers and trees on the banks of the Avon mourning
for Shakespeare's death and the river weeping itself away. He was
credited, too, with having adopted the new spelling of his name
D'_Aven_ant (for Davenant), so as to read into it a reference to the
river Avon.
In maturer age D'Avenant sought out the old actors Taylor and Lowin,
and mastered their information respecting Shakespeare, their early
colleague on the stage. With a curious perversity he mainly devoted
his undoubted genius in his later years to rewriting in accordance
with the debased taste of Charles the Second's reign the chief works
of his idol; but until D'Avenant's death in 1668 the unique character
of Shakespeare's greatness had no stouter champion than he, and in the
circle of men of wit and fashion, of which he was the centre, none
kept the cult alive with greater enthusiasm. His early friend Sir John
Suckling, the Cavalier poet, who was only seven years old when
Shakespeare died, he infected so thoroughly with his own affectionate
admiration that Suckling wrote of the dramatist in familiar letters as
"my friend Mr William Shakespeare," and had his portrait painted by
Vandyck with an open volume of Shakespeare's works in his hand. Even
more important is Dryden's testimony that he was himself "first
taught" by D'Avenant "to admire" Shakespeare.
One of the most precise and valuable pieces of oral tradition which
directly owed currency to D'Avenant was the detailed story of the
generous gift of £1000, which Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of
Southampton, made the poet, "to enable him to go through with a
purchase which he heard he had a mind to." Rowe, Shakespeare's first
biographer, recorded this particular on the specific authority of
D'Avenant, who, he pointed out, "was probably very well acquainted
with the dramatist's affairs." At the same time it was often repeated
that D'Avenant was owner of a complimentary letter which James the
First had written to Shakespeare with his own hand. A literary
politician, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave and Duke of
Buckinghamshire, who survived D'Avenant nearly half a century, said
that he had examined the epistle while it was in D'Avenant's keeping.
The publisher Lintot first printed the Duke's statement in the preface
to a new edition of Shakespeare's Poems in 1709.
D'Avenant's devotion did much for Shakespeare's memory; but it
stimulated others to do even more for the after-generations who wished
to know the whole truth about Shakespeare's life. The great actor of
the Restoration, Thomas Betterton, was D'Avenant's close associate in
his last years. D'Avenant coached him in the parts both of Hamlet and
of Henry the Eighth, in the light of the instruction which he had
derived through the medium of Taylor and Lowin from Shakespeare's own
lips. But more to the immediate purpose is it to note that D'Avenant's
ardour as a seeker after knowledge of Shakespeare fired Betterton
into making a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon to glean oral traditions
of the dramatist's life there. Many other of Shakespeare's admirers
had previously made Stratford Church, where stood his tomb, a place of
pilgrimage, and Aubrey had acknowledged in hap-hazard fashion the
value of Stratford gossip. But it was Betterton's visit that laid the
train for the systematic union of the oral traditions of London and
Stratford respectively.
It was not until the London and Warwickshire streams of tradition
mingled in equal strength that a regular biography of Shakespeare was
possible. Betterton was the efficient cause of this conjunction. All
that Stratford-on-Avon revealed to him he put at the disposal of
Nicholas Rowe, who was the first to attempt a formal memoir. Of
Betterton's assistance Rowe made generous acknowledgment in these
terms:--
I must own a particular Obligation to him [_i.e._,
Betterton] for the most considerable part of the Passages
relating to his [_i.e._, Shakespeare's] Life, which I have
here transmitted to the Publick; his veneration for the
Memory of Shakespear having engag'd him to make a Journey
into Warwickshire, on purpose to gather up what Remains he
could of a Name for which he had so great a Value.
VI
The contemporary epitaph on Shakespeare's tomb in Stratford-on-Avon
Church, which acclaimed Shakespeare a writer of supreme genius, gave
the inhabitants of the little town no opportunity of ignoring at any
period the fact that the greatest poet of his era had been their
fellow-townsman. Stratford was indeed openly identified with
Shakespeare's career from the earliest possible day, and Sir William
Dugdale, the first topographer of Warwickshire, writing about 1650,
noted that the place was memorable for having given "birth and
sepulture to our late famous poet Will Shakespeare." But the obscure
little town produced in the years that followed Shakespeare's death
none who left behind records of their experience, and such fragments
of oral tradition of Shakespeare at Stratford as are extant survive
accidentally, with one notable exception, in the manuscript notes of
visitors, who, like Betterton, were drawn thither by a veneration
acquired elsewhere.
The one notable exception is John Ward, a seventeenth-century vicar of
Stratford, who settled there in 1662, at the age of thirty-three,
forty-six years after Shakespeare's death. Ward remained at Stratford
till his death in 1681. He is the only resident of the century who
wrote down any of the local story. Ward was a man of good sentiment.
He judged that it became a vicar of Stratford to know his Shakespeare
well, and one of his private reminders for his own conduct
runs--"Remember to peruse Shakespeare's plays, and bee much versed in
them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter."
Ward was a voluminous diarist and a faithful chronicler as far as he
cared to go. Shakespeare's last surviving daughter, Judith Quiney, was
dying when he arrived in Stratford; but sons of Shakespeare's sister,
Mistress Joan Hart, were still living in the poet's birthplace in
Henley Street. Ward seems, too, to have known Lady Barnard,
Shakespeare's only grandchild and last surviving descendant, who,
although she only occasionally visited Stratford after her second
marriage in 1649 and her removal to her husband's residence at
Abington, near the town of Northampton, retained much property in her
native place till her death in 1670. Ward reported from local
conversation six important details, viz., that Shakespeare retired to
Stratford in his elder days; that he wrote at the most active period
of his life two plays a year; that he made so large an income from his
dramas that "he spent at the rate of £1000 a year"; that he
entertained his literary friends Drayton and Jonson at "a merry
meeting" shortly before his death, and that he died of its effects.
Oxford, which was only thirty-six miles distant, supplied the majority
of Stratford tourists, who, before Betterton, gathered oral tradition
there. Aubrey, the Oxford gossip, roughly noted six local items other
than those which are embodied in Ward's diary, or are to be gleaned
from Beeston's reminiscences, viz., that Shakespeare had as a lad
helped his father in his trade of butcher; that one of the poet's
companions in boyhood, who died young, had almost as extraordinary a
"natural wit"; that Shakespeare betrayed very early signs of poetic
genius; that he paid annual visits to his native place when his career
was at its height; that he loved at tavern meetings in the town to
chaff John Combe, the richest of his fellow-townsmen, who was accused
of usurious practices; and finally, that he died possessed of a
substantial fortune.
Until the end of the century, visitors were shown round the church by
an aged parish clerk, some of whose gossip about Shakespeare was
recorded by one of them in 1693. The old man came thus to supply two
further items of information: how Shakespeare ran away in youth, and
how he sought service at a playhouse, "and by this meanes had an
opportunity to be what he afterwards proved." A different visitor to
Stratford next year recorded in an extant letter to a friend yet more
scraps of oral tradition. These were to the effect that "the great
Shakespear" dreaded the removal of his bones to the charnel-house
attached to the church; that he caused his grave to be dug seventeen
feet deep; and that he wrote the rude warning against disturbing his
bones, which was inscribed on his gravestone, in order to meet the
capacity of the "very ignorant sort of people" whose business it was
to look after burials.
Betterton gained more precise particulars--the date of baptism and the
like--from an examination of the parochial records; but the most
valuable piece of oral tradition with which the great actor's research
must be credited was the account of Shakespeare's deer-stealing
escapade at Charlecote. Another tourist from Oxford privately and
independently put that anecdote into writing at the same date, but
Rowe, who first gave it to the world in his biography, relied
exclusively on Betterton's authority. At a little later period
inquiries made at Stratford by a second actor, Bowman, yielded a
trifle more. Bowman came to know a very reputable resident at
Bridgtown, a hamlet adjoining Stratford, Sir William Bishop, whose
family was of old standing there. Sir William was born ten years after
Shakespeare died, and lived close to Stratford till 1700. He told
Bowman that a part of Falstaff's character was drawn from a
fellow-townsman at Stratford against whom Shakespeare cherished a
grudge owing to his obduracy in some business transaction. Bowman
repeated the story to Oldys, who put it on record.
Although one could wish the early oral tradition of Stratford to have
been more thoroughly reported, such as is extant in writing is
sufficient to prove that Shakespeare's literary eminence was well
known in his native place during the century that followed his death.
In many villages in the neighbourhood of Stratford--at Bidford, at
Wilmcote, at Greet, at Dursley--there long persisted like oral
tradition of Shakespeare's occasional visits, but these were not
written down before the middle of the eighteenth century; and although
they are of service as proof of the local dissemination of his fame,
they are somewhat less definite than the traditions that suffered
earlier record, and need not be particularised here. One light piece
of gossip, which was associated with a country parish at some distance
from Stratford, can alone be traced back to remote date, and was
quickly committed to writing. A trustworthy Oxford don, Josias Howe,
fellow and tutor of Trinity, was born early in the seventeenth century
at Grendon in Buckinghamshire, where his father was long rector, and
he maintained close relations with his birthplace during his life of
more than ninety years. Grendon was on the road between Oxford and
London. Howe stated that Shakespeare often visited the place in his
journey from Stratford, and that he found the original of his
character of Dogberry in the person of a parish constable who lived on
there till 1642. Howe was on familiar terms with the man, and he
confided his reminiscence to his friend Aubrey, who duly recorded it,
although in a somewhat confused shape.
VII
It is with early oral tradition of Shakespeare's personal experience
that I am dealing here. It is not my purpose to notice early literary
criticism, of which there is abundant supply. It was obviously the
free circulation of the fame of Shakespeare's work which stimulated
the activity of interest in his private fortunes and led to the
chronicling of the oral tradition regarding them. It could easily be
shown that, outside the circle of professional poets, dramatists,
actors, and fellow-townsmen, Shakespeare's name was, from his first
coming into public notice, constantly on the lips of scholars,
statesmen, and men of fashion who had any glimmer of literary taste.
The Muse of History indeed drops plain hints of the views expressed at
the social meetings of the great in the seventeenth century when
Shakespeare was under discussion. Before 1643, "all persons of quality
that had wit and learning" engaged in a set debate at Eton in the
rooms of "the ever-memorable" John Hales, Fellow of the College, on
the question of Shakespeare's merits compared with those of classical
poets. The judges who presided over "this ingenious assembly"
unanimously and without qualification decided in favour of
Shakespeare's superiority.
A very eminent representative of the culture and political
intelligence of the next generation was in full sympathy with the
verdict of the Eton College tribunal. Lord Clarendon held Shakespeare
to be one of the "most illustrious of our nation." Among the many
heroes of his admiration, Shakespeare was of the elect few who were
"most agreeable to his lordship's general humour." Lord Clarendon was
at the pains of securing a portrait of Shakespeare to hang in his
house in St James's. Similarly, the proudest and probably the richest
nobleman in political circles at the end of the seventeenth century,
the Duke of Somerset, was often heard to speak of his "pleasure in
that Greatness of Thought, those natural Images, those Passions finely
touch'd, and that beautiful Expression which is everywhere to be met
with in Shakespear."
VIII
It was to this Duke of Somerset that Rowe appropriately dedicated the
first full and formal biography of the poet. That work was designed as
a preface to the first critical edition of Shakespeare's plays, which
Rowe published in 1709. "Though the works of Mr Shakespear may seem to
many not to want a comment," Rowe wrote modestly enough, "yet I fancy
some little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to
go along with them." Rowe did his work quite as well as the
rudimentary state of the biographic art of his day allowed. He was
under the complacent impression that his supply of information
satisfied all reasonable curiosity. He had placed himself in the hands
of Betterton, an investigator at first hand. But the fact remains that
Rowe made no sustained nor scholarly effort to collect exhaustively
even the oral tradition; still less did he consult with thoroughness
official records or references to Shakespeare's literary achievements
in the books of his contemporaries. Such labour as that was to be
undertaken later, when the practice of biography had assimilated more
scientific method. Rowe preferred the straw of vague rhapsody to the
brick of solid fact.
Nevertheless Rowe's memoir laid the foundations on which his
successors built. It set ringing the bell which called together that
mass of information drawn from every source--manuscript archives,
printed books, oral tradition--which now far exceeds what is
accessible in the case of any poet contemporary with Shakespeare. Some
links in the chain of Shakespeare's career are still missing, and we
must wait for the future to disclose them. But, though the clues at
present are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes
the patient investigator. The ascertained facts are already numerous
enough to define beyond risk of intelligent doubt the direction that
Shakespeare's career followed. Its general outline is, as we have
seen, fully established by one source of knowledge alone--one out of
many--by the oral tradition which survives from the seventeenth
century.
It may be justifiable to cherish regret for the loss of Shakespeare's
autograph papers and of his familiar correspondence. But the absence
of such documentary material can excite scepticism of the received
tradition only in those who are ignorant of the fate that invariably
befell the original manuscripts and correspondence of Elizabethan and
Jacobean poets and dramatists. Save for a few fragments of small
literary moment, no play of the era in its writer's autograph escaped
early destruction by fire or dustbin. No machinery then ensured, no
custom then encouraged, the due preservation of the autographs of men
distinguished for poetic genius. Provision was made in the public
record offices or in private muniment-rooms for the protection of the
official papers and correspondence of men in public life, and of
manuscript memorials affecting the property and domestic history of
great county families. But even in the case of men of the sixteenth or
seventeenth century in official life who, as often happened, devoted
their leisure to literature, the autographs of their literary
compositions have for the most part perished, and there usually only
remain in the official depositories remnants of their writings about
matters of official routine.
Not all those depositories, it is to be admitted, have yet been fully
explored, and in some of them a more thorough search than has yet been
undertaken may be expected to throw new light on Shakespeare's
biography. Meanwhile, instead of mourning helplessly over the lack of
material for a knowledge of Shakespeare's life, it becomes us to
estimate aright what we have at our command, to study it closely in
the light of the literary history of the epoch, and, while neglecting
no opportunity of bettering our information, to recognise frankly the
activity of the destroying agencies which have been at work from the
outset. Then we shall wonder, not why we know so little, but why we
know so much.
IV
PEPYS AND SHAKESPEARE[14]
[Footnote 14: A paper read at the sixth meeting of the Samuel Pepys
Club, on Thursday, November 30, 1905, and printed in the _Fortnightly
Review_ for January, 1906.]
I
In his capacity of playgoer, as indeed in almost every other capacity,
Pepys presents himself to readers of his naïve diary as the
incarnation, or the microcosm, of the average man. No other writer has
pictured with the same lifelike precision and simplicity the average
playgoer's sensations of pleasure or pain. Of the play and its
performers Pepys records exactly what he thinks or feels. He usually
takes a more lively interest in the acting and in the scenic and
musical accessories than in the drama's literary quality. Subtlety is
at any rate absent from his criticism. He is either bored or amused.
The piece is either the best or the worst that he ever witnessed. His
epithets are of the bluntest and are without modulation. Wiser than
more professional dramatic critics, he avoids labouring at reasons for
his emphatic judgments.
Always true to his rôle of the average man, Pepys suffers his mind to
be swayed by barely relevant accidents. His thought is rarely free
from official or domestic business, and the heaviness or lightness of
his personal cares commonly colours his playhouse impressions. His
praises and his censures of a piece often reflect, too, the physical
comforts or discomforts which attach to his seat in the theatre. He is
peculiarly sensitive to petty annoyances--to the agony of sitting in a
draught, or to the irritation caused by frivolous talk in his near
neighbourhood while a serious play is in progress. On one occasion,
when he sought to practise a praiseworthy economy by taking a back
seat in the shilling gallery, his evening's enjoyment was well-nigh
spoiled by finding the gaze of four clerks in his office steadily
directed upon him from more expensive seats down below. On another
occasion, when in the pit with his wife and her waiting-woman, he was
overcome by a sense of shame as he realised how shabbily his
companions were dressed, in comparison with the smartly-attired ladies
round about them.
Everyone knows how susceptible Pepys was in all situations of life to
female charms. It was inevitable that his wits should often wander
from the dramatic theme and its scenic presentation to the features of
some woman on the stage or in the auditory. An actress's pretty face
or graceful figure many times diverted his attention from her
professional incompetence. It is doubtful if there were any affront
which Pepys would not pardon in a pretty woman. Once when he was in
the pit, this curious experience befell him. "I sitting behind in a
dark place," he writes, "a lady spit backward upon me by mistake, not
seeing me; but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not
troubled at it at all." The volatile diarist studied much besides the
drama when he spent his afternoon or evening at the play.