correspondents, obviously of unblemished character and most generous
instinct, send me almost tearful expressions of regret that I should
have hitherto ignored one particular document, which throws (in their
eyes) a curious gleam on the dramatist's private life. At least six
times a year am I reminded how it is recorded in more than one obscure
eighteenth-century periodical that the dramatist, George Peele, wrote
to his friend Marle or Marlowe, in an extant letter, of a merry
meeting which was held at a place called the "Globe." Whether the
rendezvous were tavern or playhouse is left undetermined. The
assembled company, I am assured, included not merely Edward Alleyn the
actor, and Ben Jonson, but Shakespeare himself. Together these
celebrated men are said to have discussed a passage in the new play of
_Hamlet_. The reported talk is at the best tame prattle. Yet, if
Shakespeare be anywhere revealed in unconstrained intercourse with
professional associates, no biographer deserves pardon for overlooking
the revelation, however disappointing be its purport.
Unfortunately for this neglected intelligence, the letter in question
is an eighteenth century fabrication. It is a forgery of no intrinsic
brilliance or wit. It bears on its dull face marks of guilt which
could only escape the notice of the uninformed. It is not likely to
mislead the critical. Nevertheless it has deceived many an uncritical
reader, and has constantly found its way into print without meeting
serious confutation. It may therefore be worth while setting its true
origin and subsequent history on record. No endeavour is likely in all
the circumstances of the case to prevent an occasional resurrection of
the meagre spectre; but at present it appears to walk in various
quarters quite unimpeded, and an endeavour to lay it may not be
without its uses.
II
Through the first half of 1763 there was published in London a monthly
magazine called the _Theatrical Review, or Annals of the Drama_, an
anonymous miscellany of dramatic biography and criticism. It was a
colourless contribution to the journalism of the day, and lacked
powers of endurance. It ceased at the end of six months. The six
instalments were re-issued as "Volume I." at the end of June 1763; but
that volume had no successor.[39]
[Footnote 39: Other independent publications of similar character
appeared under the identical title of _The Theatrical Review_ both in
1758 and 1772. The latter collected the ephemeral dramatic criticisms
of John Potter, a well-known writer for the stage.]
All that is worth noting of the _Theatrical Review_ of 1763 now is
that among its contributors was an extremely interesting personality.
He was a young man of good education and independent means, who had
chambers in the Temple, and was enthusiastically applying himself to a
study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan dramatic literature. His name,
George Steevens, acquired in later years world-wide fame as that of
the most learned of Shakespearean commentators. Of the real value of
Steevens's scholarship no question is admissible, and his reputation
justly grew with his years. Yet Steevens's temper was singularly
perverse and mischievous. His confidence in his own powers led him to
contemn the powers of other people. He enjoyed nothing so much as
mystifying those who were engaged in the same pursuits as himself, and
his favourite method of mystification was to announce anonymously the
discovery of documents which owed all their existence to his own
ingenuity. This, he admitted, was his notion of "fun." Whenever the
whim seized him, he would in gravest manner reveal to the Press, or
even contrive to bring to the notice of a learned society, some
alleged relic in manuscript or in stone which he had deliberately
manufactured. His sole aim was to recreate himself with laughter at
the perplexity that such unholy pranks aroused. It is one of these
Puck-like tricks on Steevens's part that has spread confusion among
those of my correspondents, who allege that Peele has handed down to
us a personal reminiscence of the great dramatist.
The _Theatrical Review_, in its second number, offered an anonymous
biography of the great actor and theatrical manager of Shakespeare's
day, Edward Alleyn. This biography was clearly one of Steevens's
earliest efforts. It is for the most part an innocent compilation. But
it contains one passage in its author's characteristic vein of
mischief. Midway in the essay the reader is solemnly assured that a
brand-new contemporary reference to Alleyn's eminent associate
Shakespeare was at his disposal. The new story "carries with it"
(asserts the writer) "all the air of probability and truth, and has
never been in print before." "A gentleman of honour and veracity," run
the next sentences, which were designed to put the unwary student off
his guard, "in the commission of the peace for Middlesex, has shown us
a letter dated in the year 1600, which he assures us has been in the
possession of his family, by the mother's side, for a long series of
years, and which bears all the marks of antiquity." The superscription
was interpreted to run: "For Master Henrie Marle, livynge at the sygne
of the rose by the palace."
There follows at length the paper of which the family of the
honourable and veracious gentleman "in the commission of the peace for
Middlesex" had become possessed "by the mother's side." The words were
these:--
"FRIENDE MARLE,
"I must desyre that my syster hyr watche, and the cookerie
booke you promysed, may be sent by the man. I never longed
for thy company more than last night; we were all very
merrye at the Globe, when Ned Alleyn did not scruple to
affyrme pleasantely to thy friend Will, that he had stolen
his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excellencye, in
_Hamlet_ hys tragedye, from conversations manyfold which had
passed between them, and opinyons given by Allen touchinge
the subject. Shakespeare did not take this talke in good
sorte; but Jonson put an end to the stryfe with wittielie
saying: 'This affaire needeth no contentione; you stole it
from Ned, no doubt; do not marvel; have you not seen him act
tymes out of number?'
"Believe me most syncerelie,
"Harrie,
"Thyne,
"G. PEEL."
The text of this strangely-spelt, strangely-worded epistle, with its
puny efforts at a jest, was succeeded by a suggestion that "G. Peel,"
the alleged signatory, could be none other than George Peele, the
dramatist, who achieved reputation in Shakespeare's early days, and
was an industrious collector of anecdotes.
Thus the impish Steevens baited his hook. The sport which followed
must have exceeded his expectations. Any one familiar with the bare
outline of Elizabethan literary history should have perceived that a
trap had been set. The letter was assigned to the year 1600.
Shakespeare's play of _Hamlet_, to the performance of which it
unconcernedly refers, was not produced before 1602; at that date
George Peele had lain full four years in his grave. Peele could never
have passed the portals of the theatre called the "Globe"; for it was
not built until 1599. No historic tavern of the name is known. The
surname of the person, to whom the letter was pretended to have been
addressed, is suspicious. "Marle" was one way of spelling "Marlowe" at
a period when forms of surnames varied with the caprice of the writer.
The great dramatist, _Christopher_ Marle, or Marloe, or Marlowe, had
died in 1593. "Henrie Marle" is counterfeit coinage of no doubtful
stamp.
The language and the style of the letter are undeserving of serious
examination. They are of a far later period than the Elizabethan age.
They cannot be dated earlier than 1763. Safely might the heaviest odds
be laid that in no year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth "did friende
Marle promyse G. Peel his syster that he would send hyr watche and the
cookerie book by the man," or that "Ned Alleyn made pleasante
affirmation to G. Peel of friend Will's theft of the speech in
_Hamlet_ concerning an actor's excellencye."
From top to toe the imposture is obvious. But the general reader of
the eighteenth century was confiding, unsuspicious, greedy of novel
information. The description of the source of the document seemed to
him precise enough to silence doubt.
III
The _Theatrical Review_ of 1763 succeeded in launching the fraud on a
quite triumphal progress. Again and again, as the century advanced,
was G. Peel's declaration to "friende Marle" paraded, without hint of
its falsity, before snappers-up of Shakespearean trifles. Seven years
after its first publication, the epistle found admission in a slightly
altered setting to so reputable a periodical as the _Annual Register_.
Burke was still directing that useful publication, and whatever
information the _Register_ shielded, was reckoned to be of veracity.
"G. Peel" and "friende Marle" were there, in the year 1770, suffered
to exchange their confidences in the most honourable environment.
Another seven years passed, and in 1777 there appeared an ambitious
work of reference, entitled _Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical
History of Literature_, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, a
free-thinking physician, his chief claim to remembrance. Steevens was
a friend of Berkenhout, and helped him in the preparation of the book.
Into his account of Shakespeare, the credulous physician introduced
quite honestly the fourteen-year-old forgery. The reputed date of
1600, which the supposititious justice of the peace had given it in
the _Theatrical Review_, was now suppressed. Berkenhout confined his
comment to the halting reminiscence: "Whence I copied this letter I do
not recollect; but I remember that at the time of transcribing it, I
had no doubt of its authenticity."
Thrice had the trick been worked effectively in conspicuous places
before Steevens died in 1800. But the evil that he did lived after
him, and within a year of his death the imposture renewed its youth. A
correspondent, who concealed his identity under the signature of
"Grenovicus" (_i.e._, of Greenwich), sent Peel's letter in 1801 to the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, a massive repertory of useful knowledge. There
it was duly reprinted in the number for June. "Grenovicus" had the
assurance to claim the letter as his own discovery. "To my knowledge,"
he wrote, "it has never yet appeared in print." He refrained from
indicating how he had gained access to it, but congratulated himself
and the readers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ on the valiant feast
that he provided for them. His action was apparently taken by the
readers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ at his own valuation.
Meanwhile the discerning critic was not altogether passive. Isaac
D'Israeli denounced the fraud in his _Curiosities of Literature_; but
he and others did their protesting gently. The fraud looked to the
expert too shamefaced to merit a vigorous onslaught. He imagined the
spurious epistle must die of its own inanity. In this he miscalculated
the credulity of the general reader. "Grenovicus" of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ had numerous disciples.
Many a time during the past century has that worthy's exploit been
repeated. Even so acute a scholar as Alexander Dyce thought it worth
while to reprint the letter in 1829 in the first edition of his
collected works of George Peele (Vol. I., page 111), although he
declined to pledge himself to its authenticity. The latest historian
of Dulwich College[40] has admitted it to his text with too mildly
worded a caveat. Often, too, has "G. Peel" emerged more recently from
a long-forgotten book or periodical to darken the page of a modern
popular magazine. I have met him unabashed during the present century
in two literary periodicals of repute--in the _Academy_ (of London),
in the issue of 18th January 1902, and in the _Poet Lore_ (of Boston)
in the following April number. Future disinterments may safely be
prophesied. In the jungle of the _Annual Register_ or the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ the forgery lurks unchallenged, and there will always be
inexperienced explorers, who from time to time will run the unhallowed
thing to earth there, and bring it forth as a new and unsuspected
truth.
[Footnote 40: William Young's _History of Dulwich College_, 1889, II.,
41-2.]
Perhaps forgery is too big a word to apply to Steevens's concoction.
Others worked at later periods on lines of mystification similar to
his; but, unlike his disciples, he did not seek from his misdirected
ingenuity pecuniary gain or even notoriety. He never set his name to
this invention of "Peel" and "Marle," and their insipid chatter about
_Hamlet_ at the "Globe." Steevens's sole aim was to delude the unwary.
It is difficult to detect humour in the endeavour. But the perversity
of the human intellect has no limits. This ungainly example of it is
only worth attention because it has sailed under its false colours
without very serious molestation for one hundred and forty-three
years.
X
SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE[41]
[Footnote 41: This paper was first printed in _The Nineteenth
Century_, June 1899.]
I
Nothing but good can come of a comparative study of English and French
literature. The political intercourse of the two countries has
involved them in an endless series of broils. But between the
literatures of the two countries friendly relations have subsisted for
over five centuries. In the literary sphere the interchange of
neighbourly civilities has known no interruption. The same literary
forms have not appealed to the tastes of the two nations; but
differences of æsthetic temperament have not prevented the literature
of the one from levying substantial loans on the literature of the
other, and that with a freedom and a frequency which were calculated
to breed discontent between any but the most cordial of allies. While
the literary geniuses of the two nations have pursued independent
ideals, they have viewed as welcome courtesies the willingness and
readiness of the one to borrow sustenance of the other on the road. It
is unlikely that any full or formal balance-sheet of such lendings and
borrowings will ever be forthcoming, for it is felt instinctively by
literary accountants and their clients on both shores of the English
Channel that the debts on the one side keep a steady pace with the
debts on the other, and there is no balance to be collected.
No recondite research is needed to establish this general view
of the situation. It is well known how the poetic career of Chaucer,
the earliest of great English poets, was begun under French masters.
The greatest poem of mediæval France, the _Roman de la Rose_,
was turned into English by his youthful pen, and the chief French
poet of the day, Eustace Deschamps, held out to him the hand of
fellowship in the enthusiastic _balade_, in which he apostrophised
"le grand translateur, noble Geoffroi Chaucer." Following Chaucer's
example, the great poets of Elizabeth's reign and of James the
First's reign most liberally and most literally assimilated the
verse of their French contemporaries, Ronsard, Du Bellay, and
Desportes.[42] Early in the seventeenth century, Frenchmen returned
the compliment by naturalising in French translations the prose
romances of Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Greene, the philosophical
essays of Bacon, and the ethical and theological writings of Bishop
Joseph Hall. From the accession of Charles the Second until that
of George the Third, the English drama framed itself on French
models, and Pope, who long filled the throne of a literary dictator
in England, acknowledged discipleship to Boileau. A little later the
literary philosophers of France--Rousseau and the Encyclopédistes--drew
their nutrition from the writings of Hobbes and Locke. French
novel-readers of the eighteenth century found their chief joy in the
tearful emotions excited by the sentimentalities of Richardson and
Sterne. French novel-writers one hundred and thirty years ago had
small chance of recognition if they disdained to traffic in the
lachrymose wares which the English novelists had brought into fashion.
[Footnote 42: In the Introduction to a collection of Elizabethan
Sonnets, published in Messrs Constable's re-issue of Arber's _English
Garner_ (1904), the present writer has shown that numerous sonnets,
which Elizabethan writers issued as original poems, were literal
translations from the French of Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Desportes.
Numerous loans of like character were levied silently on Italian
authors.]
At the present moment the cultured Englishman finds his most palatable
fiction in the publications of Paris. Within recent memory the English
playgoer viewed with impatience any theatrical programme which lacked
a Parisian flavour. The late Sir Henry Irving, who, during the past
generation, sought to sustain the best traditions of the English
drama, produced in his last years two original plays, _Robespierre_
and _Dante_, by the _doyen_ of living French dramatists, M. Sardou.
Complementary tendencies are visible across the Channel. The French
stage often offers as cordial a reception to plays of English
manufacture as is offered in London to the plays derived from France.
No histrionic event attracts higher interest in Paris than the
assumption by a great actor or actress of a Shakespearean rôle for the
first time; and French dramatic critics have been known to generate
such heat in debates over the right conception of a Shakespearean
character that their differences have required adjustment at the
sword's point.
Of greater interest is it to note that in all the cultivated centres
of France a new and unparalleled energy is devoted to-day to the study
of English literature of both the present and the past. The research
recently expended on the topic by French scholars has not been
excelled in Germany, and has rarely been equalled in England. Critical
biographies of James Thomson (of _The Seasons_), of Burns, of Young,
and of Wordsworth have come of late from the pens of French professors
of English literature, and their volumes breathe a minute accuracy and
a fulness of sympathetic knowledge which are certainly not habitual to
English professors of English literature. This scholarly movement in
France shows signs of rapid extension. Each summer vacation sees an
increase in the number of French visitors to the British Museum
reading-room, who are making recondite researches into English
literary history. The new zeal of Frenchmen for English studies claims
the most cordial acknowledgment of English scholars, and it is
appropriate that the most coveted lectureship on English literature in
an English University--the Clark lectureship at Trinity College,
Cambridge--should have been bestowed last year on the learned
professor of English at the Sorbonne, M. Beljame, author of _Le Public
et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIIIe Siècle_. M.
Beljame's unexpected death (on September 17, 1906), shortly after his
work at Cambridge was completed, is a loss alike to English and French
letters.
II
In view of the growth of the French interest in English literary
history, it was to be expected that serious efforts should be made in
France to determine the character and dimensions of the influence
exerted on French literature by the greatest of all English men of
letters--by Shakespeare. That work has been undertaken by M.
Jusserand. In 1898 he gave to the world the results of his
investigation in his native language. Subsequently, with a welcome
consideration for the linguistic incapacities of Shakespeare's
countrymen, he repeated his conclusions in their tongue.[43] The
English translation is embellished with many pictorial illustrations
of historic interest and value.
[Footnote 43: _Shakespeare in France under the Ancien Régime_, by J.J.
Jusserand. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1899.]
Among French writers on English literature, M. Jusserand is the most
voluminous and the most widely informed. His career differs in an
important particular from that of his countrymen who pursue the same
field of study. He is not by profession a teacher or writer: he is a
diplomatist, and now holds the high office of French ambassador to the
United States of America. M. Jusserand has treated in his books of
almost all periods of English literary history, and he has been long
engaged on an exhaustive _Literary History of the English People_, of
which the two volumes already published bring the narrative as far as
the close of the Civil Wars.
M. Jusserand enjoys the rare, although among modern Frenchmen by no
means unexampled, faculty of writing with almost equal ease and
felicity in both French and English. His walk in life gives him a
singularly catholic outlook. His learning is profound, but he is not
overburdened by it, and he preserves his native gaiety of style even
when solving crabbed problems of bibliography. He is at times
discursive, but he is never tedious; and he shows no trace of that
philological pedantry and narrowness or obliquity of critical vision
which the detailed study of literary history has been known to breed
in English and German investigators. While M. Jusserand betrays all
the critical independence of his compatriot M. Taine, his habit of
careful and laborious research illustrates with peculiar vividness the
progress which English scholarship has made in France since M. Taine
completed his sparkling survey of English literature in 1864.
M. Jusserand handles the theme of _Shakespeare in France under the
Ancien Régime_ with all the lightness of touch and wealth of minute
detail to which he has accustomed his readers. Nowhere have so many
facts been brought together in order to illustrate the literary
intercourse of Frenchmen and Englishmen between the sixteenth and the
nineteenth centuries. It is true that his opening chapters have little
concern with Shakespeare, but their intrinsic interest and novelty
atone for their irrelevance. They shed a flood of welcome light on
that interchange of literary information and ideas which is a constant
feature in the literary history of the two countries.
Many will read here for the first time of the great poet Ronsard's
visits to this country; of the distinguished company of English actors
which delighted the court of Henry IV. of France; and of Ben Jonson's
discreditable drunken exploits in the French capital when he went
thither as tutor to Sir Walter Ralegh's son. To these episodes might
well be added the pleasant personal intercourse of Francis Bacon's
brother, Anthony, with the great French essayist Montaigne, when the
Englishman was sojourning at Bordeaux in 1583. Montaigne's Essays
achieved hardly less fame in Elizabethan England than in France. Both
Shakespeare and Bacon gave proof of indebtedness to them.
By some freak of fortune Shakespeare's fame was slow in crossing the
English Channel. The French dramatists of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries lived and died in the paradoxical faith that the
British drama reached its apogee in the achievement of the Scottish
Latinist, George Buchanan, who was reckoned in France "prince of the
poets of our day." In Buchanan's classical tragedies Montaigne played
a part, while he was a student at Bordeaux. His tragedy of _Jephtha_
achieved exceptional fame in sixteenth century France; three Frenchmen
of literary repute rendered it independently into their own language,
and each rendering went through several editions. Another delusion
which French men of letters cherished, not only during Shakespeare's
lifetime, but through three or four generations after his death, was
that Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and the father of Lord
Chancellor Bacon were the greatest authors which England had begotten
or was likely to beget. French enthusiasm for the suggestive irony of
More's Latin romance of _Utopia_ outran that of his fellow-countrymen.
A French translation anticipated the earliest rendering of the work in
the author's native tongue. No less than two independent French
versions of Sir Philip Sidney's voluminous fiction of _Arcadia_ were
circulating in France one hundred and twenty years before the like
honour was paid to any work of Shakespeare.