The vicissitudes of the celebrity of Shakespeare may form a chapter in
the philosophy of literature and the history of national opinions.
Shakespeare was destined to have his dramatic faculty contested by many
successful rivals, to fall into neglect, to be rarely acted and less
read, to appear barbarous and unintelligible, to be even discarded from
the glorious file of dramatists by the anathemas of hostile criticism;
and finally, in the resurrection of genius (a rare occurrence!) to
emerge into universal celebrity. This literary history of Shakespeare is
an incident in the history of the human mind singular as the genius
which it relates to. The philosopher now contemplates the phenomenon of
a poet who in his peculiar excellence is more poetical than the poets of
every other people. We have to track the course of this prodigy, and if
possible to comprehend the evolutions of this solitary luminary. It is
knowledge which finally must direct our feelings in the operations of
the mind as well as in the phenomena of nature. We are conscious that
even the anomalous is regulated by its own proper motion, and that there
is nothing in human nature so arbitrary as to stand by itself so
completely insulated as to be an effect without a cause.
SHAKESPEARE is a poet who is always now separated from other poets, and
the only one, except POPE, whose thoughts are familiar to us as
household words. His eulogy has exhausted the language of every class of
enthusiasts, the learned and the unlearned, the profound and the
fantastical. The writings of this greatest of dramatists are, as once
were those of Homer, a Bible whence we receive those other revelations
of man, and of all that concerns man. There was no excess of wonder and
admiration when HURD declared that "This astonishing man is the most
original THINKER and SPEAKER since the days of HOMER."
The halo which surrounds the poetic beatitude has almost silenced
criticism in its devotion; but a literary historian may not at all
times be present in the choir of votaries; his labours lie outwards
among the progressive opinions of a people, nor is he free to pass over
what may seem paradoxical if it lies in his way.
The universal celebrity of Shakespeare is comparatively of recent
origin: received, rejected, and revived, we must ascertain the alternate
periods, and we must look for the causes of the neglect as well as the
popularity of the poet. We may congratulate ourselves on the numerous
escapes of our national bard from the oblivion of his dramatic brothers.
The history and the works of Shakespeare, and perhaps the singularity of
the poet's character in respect to his own writings, are some of the
most startling paradoxes in literary history.
Malone describes Shakespeare as "the great poet whom nature framed to
disregard the wretched models that were set before him, and to create a
drama from his own native and original stores." This cautious but
creeping commentator, notwithstanding that he had often laboured to
prove the contrary, gaily shot this arrow drawn from the quiver of
Dryden, who has delivered very contradictory notions of Shakespeare.
Veritably--for we are now writing historically--Shakespeare never
"created our drama, disregarding the wretched models before him;" far
from this! the great poet had those models always before him, and worked
upon them; no poet has so freely availed himself of the inventions of
his predecessors, and in reality many of the dramas of Shakespeare had
been written before he wrote.
It cannot be denied that our great poet never exercised his invention in
the fables of his dramas; thus he spared himself half the toil of his
work. He viewed with the prophetic eye of genius the old play or the old
story, and at once discovered all its capabilities; he saw at once all
that it had and all that it had not; its characterless personages he was
confident that he could quicken with breath and action, and that his own
vein, allowed to flow along the impure stream, would have the force to
clear the current, and to expand its own lucid beauty.
Had not the felicitous genius of our bard revelled in this facility of
adopting and adapting the ready-made inventions of many a luckless
playwright, we might have lost our Shakespeare; for he never wrote for
us, but for his little theatre. He had no leisure to afford whole days
in constructing plots for plays, nor much troubled himself with those
which he followed closely even to a fault; nor did the quickness of his
genius neglect a solitary thought, nor lose a fortunate expression. To
what extent were these borrowings from manuscript plays we cannot even
surmise; we have one specimen of Shakespeare's free use of whatever the
poet's judgment caught, in those copious passages which he transplanted
from North's "Plutarch" and Holinshed's "Chronicles," lending their
words his own music.
One of his commentators, George Steevens, published six old plays on
which Shakespeare had grounded six of his own; but this rash act was in
the early days of the commentatorship; Steevens must soon have
discovered the inconvenience of printing unreadable dramas, to exhibit
the concealed industry of the mighty bard. The spells of Shakespeare did
not hang on the artificial edifice of his fable; he looked abroad for
mankind, and within his own breast for all the impulses of the beings of
his imagination. All he required was a scene; then the whole "sphere of
humanity," as Jonson expressed it, lie wide before him. There was a Jew
before the _Merchant of Venice_; a shrew had been tamed before Katherine
by Petruchio; a King Lear and his three daughters, before the only one
the world knows; and a tragical Hamlet had philosophised like Seneca, as
the satirical Nash told, before our Shakespeare's: but this list is
needless, for it would include every drama he has left us. Even the
beings of his creation lie before him in their embryon state. His
creative faculty never required more than a suggestion. The prototype of
the wonderful Caliban has not hitherto been discovered, but the fairies
of the popular mythology become the creatures of his own imagination.
Middleton first opened the incantations of "the witches." The Hecate of
Middleton is a mischief-brooding hag, gross and tangible, and her
"spirits, black, white, and grey," with her "devil-toad, devil-ram,
devil-cat, and devil-dam," disturb their spells by the familiar drollery
of their names, and their vulgar instincts. Out of this ordinary
domestic witchcraft the mightier poet raised "the weird sisters,"
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't,
nameless, bodiless, vanishing shadows!
And what seemed corporal
Melted as breath into the wind.
The dramatic personages which seem to me peculiar to Shakespeare, and in
which he evidently revelled, serving his purposes on very opposite
occasions, are his clowns and domestic fools. Yet his most famous comic
personage, the fat knight, was the rich graft on the miserable scion of
Sir John Oldcastle, in an old play; the slight hint of "a mere pampered
glutton" was idealised into that inimitable variety of human nature
combined in one man--at once so despicable and so delightful!
The life of our poet remains almost a blank, and his very name a subject
of contention.[1] Of that singular genius who is now deemed the
national bard, we can only positively ascertain that the place of his
birth was that of his death; a circumstance which, for a poet, is some
evidence of his domestic prosperity; but the glorious interval of
existence, how and all he performed on the stage of human life, no one
observed as differing from his fellows of the company, and he of all men
the least; and of his productions, wherein we are to find every
excellence to which any poet has reached, our scepticism is often at
work to detect what is Shakespearian among that which cannot be.
Of the idle traditions of the youth of Shakespeare, Malone, after
"foraging for anecdotes" during half a century, has painfully satisfied
us that all which so many continued to repeat was apocryphal. Having
with his own eyes ascertained that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, he
closed with his famous corollary, that "therefore he could have no deer
to be stolen." But other parks and other deer were liable to the
mischance of furnishing venison for a young deer-fancier to treat his
friends; and Sir Thomas Lucy, probably, was Justice Shallow on this
occasion to the poetic stripling. The other circumstances of the poet's
early life, too well known to repeat, may stand on the same ground.
Personal facts may come down to us confused, inaccurate, and mistaken,
but they do not therefore necessarily rest on no foundation. The
invention of such irrelevant circumstances seems to be without a motive;
and though the propagators of gossip are strange blunderers, they rarely
aspire to be original inventors. We are not concerned with such tales,
for there is nothing in them which is peculiar to the idiosyncrasy of
the great poet.
The first noticeable incident in the life of Shakespeare was his
marriage in 1582, in his eighteenth year; the nuptials of the poet seem
an affair of domestic convenience, rather than a poetical incident in
"the romance of life."
In 1586, being only twenty-two years of age, Shakespeare quitted home
for the metropolis.
At this critical moment of his life, which Malone sought for in despair,
we should have remained in darkness, had not the unfortunate and
intrepid industry of the most devoted enthusiast of the Shakespearian
school lifted his steady torch.[2] Shakespeare arrived at the theatre
not to hold the horses of gentlemen, as was so long reported, without,
for he had a more friendly interest within, doors. There he joined a
neighbour in his shire, Richard Burbage, who subsequently became the
renowned actor of the future Shakespeare's creations; and likewise
Thomas Green, his townsman, and no inferior actor and poet. It is hardly
a conjecture to presume that their friendly invitations had tempted our
youthful adventurer to join their company. In three years Shakespeare
obtained shares in the theatre, which multiplied every year, till he
became the joint-proprietor with Burbage. The friendship of the actor
and the dramatist was a golden bond, when each had conferred on the
other their mutual popularity. The plays of Shakespeare were higher
favourites with the public during the lifetime of this Garrick of the
poet's own days; and the renowned actor was so charmed by his own
success, that he perpetuated among his daughters the delightful name of
Juliet, which reminded him, with pride, of his own exquisite Romeo.
Shakespeare proved a closer and a more refined observer of the art of
acting than nature had enabled him to show himself as an actor, by
practising his own professional precepts. Two actors, who long survived
the poet, recorded that he had critically instructed the one to enact
Hamlet, and the other Henry the Eighth.[3]
How in an indifferent actor like Shakespeare was betrayed those latent
dramatic faculties by which he was one day to be the delight of that
stage which he could not tread, remains a secret which the poet has not
told. But whether it was by accident or in some happy hour, we know not,
that Shakespeare, in conning the manuscript of some wretched drama, felt
the glorious impulse which prompted the pen to strike out whole
passages, and to interpolate whole scenes; that moment was the obscure
birth of his future genius. How he was employed at this unknown era of
his life, the peevish jealousy of a brother of the craft has curiously
informed us.
When Shakespeare was a name yet scarcely known, save to that mimetic
world, tenanted by playwrights, it appears that he was there sustaining
an active and secret avocation. The great bard had been serving a silent
apprenticeship to the dramatic muse, by trying his hand on the old
stock-pieces which lay in the theatrical treasury, and further venturing
his repolishing touches on the new. Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele had
submitted to his soft pencillings or his sharp pruning-hook. The actors
were often themselves a sort of poets, and would compete with those who
were only poets; and in pricing the hasty wares, would often have them
fashioned to their liking. Alluding to the treatment the dramatists were
enduring from their masters, Robert Greene indignantly addressed his
peers. This curious passage, first discovered by Tyrwhit, has been often
quoted, and indispensably must be once more; for it tells us how
Shakespeare, in 1592, had been fully employed within six years of his
arrival at the metropolis. Greene desires his friends would no longer
submit to the actors. "Do not trust those burrs, who have sought to
cleave to us all; those puppets that speak from our mouths, those antics
garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I to whom they all have
been beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all too have been
beholding, shall, were ye in that case I am now, be both of them at once
forsaken?[4] Yes, trust them not! There is _an upstart crow beautified
with our feathers_, that with _his tyger's heart wrapt in a player's
hide_, supposes he is as well able to _bombast[5] out a blank verse_ as
the best of you, and being _an absolute Johannes Factotum_, is, in his
own conceit, the only SHAKE-SCENE in a country."
"The absolute Johannes Factotum," "the only shake-scene," and "the crow
beautified with their feathers," are one person; but "the tyger's heart
wrapt in a player's hide," particularly points out that person. It is,
in fact, a parody of a line composed by this batch of poets in one of
their dramas, _The Contention of the Two Houses of York and Lancaster_;
and which, with many others, Shakespeare had wholly appropriated. In the
third part of _King Henry the Sixth_, in Act I., Scene IV., it stands as
Peele or Greene had originally composed it--
O, tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!
This attack on our untiger-like Shakespeare turns poor Greene into an
enraged wasp, peevish and mortified at the Shakespearian hand which had
often larded his leanness, or scarified his tumidities. Greene charges
Shakespeare with altering the plays of himself, Marlowe, Lodge, and
Peele, and then claiming all the merit of the work![6]
Our great bard was not insensible to the fancy of his querulous
libeller, since it was on Greene's "Dorastus and Fawnia" Shakespeare
founded his _Winter's Tale_, as he took his _As You Like It_ from
Lodge's "Rosalynd," whose very name he preserved. Thus borrowing from
the writings of his unfortunate and reckless brothers of Parnassus, he
has made immortal works which have long expired.
The active employment of Shakespeare among the old plays was so well
known at the time, that when his name became familiar to the public, the
printers were often eager to obtain the original neglected plays in
their meagre condition, to avail themselves of the popularity of the
Shakespearian rifacimentos. Fraud and deception were evidently practised
on the uncritical readers. One of these cunning publishers issued the
old play of _The Contention of the Two Houses_, &c., as _newly corrected
and enlarged_ by William Shakespeare; which was true as it was acted on
the stage, but false in the copy of the elder dramatist which was
republished. In this manner several plays not only bear the consecrating
name of Shakespeare, but seven which are now discarded from his works
appeared in the edition of Rowe; in some of these the hand of
Shakespeare appears to have been discerned; and it has been suggested by
Mr. Collier, an experienced critic in the history of the drama, that it
is possible that all the plays of Shakespeare have not yet been given to
the world.
In the second and third parts of _King Henry the Sixth_, for the first
was placed in his volume merely to complete the historical series,
Shakespeare made ample use of several dramas; and Malone, whose
microscopic criticism obtained for him the sarcastic cognomen of
_Minutius Felix_, by an actual scrutiny, which we may well believe cost
him the most anxious pains, computed the lines of these dramas, and has
passed his word, that of six thousand and forty-three lines, one
thousand seven hundred and seventy-one were written by some author who
preceded Shakespeare; two thousand three hundred and seventy-three were
formed by him on the foundation laid by his predecessors, and one
thousand eight hundred and forty-nine lines were entirely our poet's own
composition. Malone has even contrived to distinguish them in the text;
those which Shakespeare _adopted_ are printed in the usual manner; the
speeches which he _altered_ or expanded, are marked by inverted commas;
and to all the lines entirely _composed_ by himself, asterisks are
prefixed. A critical reader may derive a curious gratification by
attending to this novel text of our national poet; the only dramatist to
whom this singularity has ever occurred, and on whose writings this
anomalous operation could have been performed.
Shakespeare was more conversant with these preceding dramatists, most of
whose writings have perished, than we can ever discover; but it is
fortunate for us that his creative faculties brooded over such a world
of chaotic genius. He scrupled not to appropriate those happier
effusions which were not only worthy of his own genius, but are not
distinguishable from it. Sometimes he only retouched, sometimes he nobly
amplified, expanding a slight hint into some glorious passage, and
elevating a creeping dialogue into an impassioned scene. His judgment
was always the joint-workman of his fancy.
Who by the interior evidence could have conjectured that the following
Shakespearian effusion, musical with his own music, was, in truth, a
mere transcription from an old play of _Richard Duke of York_, whose
author remains unknown? I mark by italics the rejections of Shakespeare.
In the slight emendations, we may observe that our poet consulted his
ear; but in the first verse he has chosen a more expressive term.
------Doves will peck in _rescue_ (safeguard) of their brood.
Unreasonable creatures feed their young;
And though man's face be fearful to their eyes,
Yet, in protection of their tender ones,
Who hath not seen them even with those _same_ wings
Which _they have sometimes_ used _in_ fearful flight,
(Which sometime they have used with fearful flight,)
Make war with him that climb'd unto their nest,
Offering their own lives in their young's defence?
The speech of Queen Margaret, in the third part of _Henry the Sixth_,
Act V. Scene IV., in the old play, consisted of a single metaphor
included in twelve lines. The single metaphor was not rejected, but it
is amplified and nobly sustained through forty lines in the queen's
animated address to the lords:--
The mast but now blown overboard,
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, &c.
The two celebrated scenes in which the dead body of the murdered Duke of
Gloster is placed before us, with such precision of horror, minutely
appalling, and of the raving despair of Cardinal Beaufort so awfully
depicted by his death, "making no sign," are splendours whose igniting
sparks flew out of the ashes of old plays, one of _King John_, and the
other of _The Contentions of the Two Houses_, and of the chronicles. But
still these sublime descriptions and these fearful images are the
inspirations of Shakespeare; their truth of nature, and the completeness
of the purpose of the poet, the bare originals could not impart.
These ascertained evidences may suffice--it would be tedious to proceed
with their abundance--of the studiousness and propriety of Shakespeare
in his adoptions and adaptations of our earlier drama. Dr. Farmer was
the first to discover that these plays were not written _originally_ by
Shakespeare; but that able researcher was not then aware of what only
the progress of discovery could demonstrate, that hardly a single drama
of our national bard can be deemed to have been of his own original
invention.
While thus occupied in altering and writing old plays for his own
theatre, in 1593 first appeared to the world the name of William
Shakespeare in the dedication to the Earl of Southampton of his "Venus
and Adonis." The poet has called this poem, of a few pages, "the first
heir of my invention." For him who had already written much, the
expression is singular, and it looks like a tacit acknowledgment that
the poet considered that the five or six plays which he had already set
forth had really no claim to "_his_ invention." And the dedication
betrays the tremulousness of a virgin effort. "Should this first heir
prove deformed," declared our poet in his own Shakespearian diction, "I
shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after _ear so
barren a land_, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest." The poet,
doubtless, was induced to proceed; for the following year, 1594,
produced his "Lucrece." He described his first poem as "unpolished
lines;" and he still calls his second his "untutored lines." As the
former, so likewise is the present dedicated to the same earl. The
fervour of the style indicates the influence of the patron, and the
singleness of the devotion of the poet, who tells his noble patron "What
I have done is yours, and what I have to do is yours." The humble
actor's intercourse with his noble friend is a remarkable incident, for
the poet was not yet famous when he prefixed his name to these poems.
This earl, then in his youth, we learn was attached to theatrical
amusements; and it has been ingeniously conjectured that the princely
donation of a thousand pounds, which the peer presented to the poet, a
tradition which Davenant had handed down, may have occurred, if it ever
happened, in the interval between the publication of these two poems.
The Ovidian deliciousness of "Venus and Adonis," and the more solemn
narrative of "Tarquin and Lucrece," early obtained celebrity among the
youthful and impassioned generation. Shakespeare was long renowned as
the amatory poet of the nation by many who had not learned to
distinguish the bard among his dramatic brethren. Numerous editions of
these poems confirm their popularity, and the public voice resounded
from the lyres of many poets.
No poet more successfully opened his career than Shakespeare by these
two popular poems; but it is remarkable that he made no farther essay
with a view to permanent fame, which, as it would seem to us, he never
imagined he was to derive from his dramas.
Meres, a critic of the day, has informed us that, in 1598, some sonnets
by Shakespeare were in circulation among his friends. These were
effusions of the hour; and, possibly, some may have been descriptive of
his own condition. In 1599, a poetical collection called "The Passionate
Pilgrim," appeared under the name of Shakespeare; and ten years
afterwards another, entitled "Shakespeare's Sonnets," was given to the
world; but as poetical miscellanies were formed in those days by
publishers who were not nice in the means they used to procure
manuscripts, it is quite uncertain what are genuine and what may be the
composition of other writers in these collections.
In "The Passionate Pilgrim," some critics find difficulty in tracing the
hand of the poet; and we accidentally discover by the complaint of
Heywood, a congenial dramatist, that there were two of his poems in one
edition of this collection; and we know that there were also other poems
by Marlowe, and Barnefield, and others. Heywood tells us that
Shakespeare was greatly offended at this licentious use of his name;[7]
but he must have been imperturbably careless on such matters, otherwise
he would not have suffered three editions of this spurious miscellany.
The fate of "The Sonnets" is remarkable. Steevens boldly ejected them
from the poet's works, declaring that the strongest Act of Parliament
that could be framed could not compel their perusal. Shall we ascribe to
this caustic wit a singular deficiency in his judicial decisions, or
look to some other cause for the ejection of these sonnets which have
become of late the subject of so much curious inquiry? An ingenious
attempt has been recently made to form what is called an autobiography
of the poet by stringing together the sonnets in six distinct poems;
this would be sufficient evidence that they had never passed under the
eye of the author, and that he could have had no concern in a
publication which has thus mutilated his living members. This
bookseller's collection remains for more than one cause an ambiguous
volume.
Shakespeare now stands alone the national bard; but hoary Time, which
has decreed who are his inferiors, once saw them his equals; and when he
mingled with his fellows, possibly the world looked up to a Coryphaeus
whose name was not Shakespeare. Two inquiries interest us: Was the
pre-eminence of our national bard acknowledged by his
contemporaries?--and, What cause occasioned the utter neglect of his own
reputation?
Among his contemporaries, Shakespeare could not possess the pre-eminence
of the present age, for who were then to be his judges? His rivals or
his audience? Our gentle Shakespeare, as Jonson called him, perhaps at
no time appreciated his own genius at its peculiar excellence, and
therefore was not likely to discover his solitary pre-eminence among a
formidable crowd of rivals, nor were they likely to acknowledge in their
friend "Will" the prevailing charm which has now subdued the world. They
have even occasionally darted a shaft of ridicule or a sharp parody at
our immortal tragedian; the madness of Hamlet and Ophelia could serve
these dramatic writers as a subject for raillery;[8] and the airy
Fletcher, who would have emulated Shakespeare, was guilty of sneering at
his inimitable master. The learned JONSON was apt to be critical;
CHAPMAN cast his Greek glances haughtily on the vernacular bard; MARSTON
was caustic; and DRAYTON, his intimate, who had composed two or three
tragedies, could hardly perceive any supremacy in SHAKESPEARE, and for
us, seems parsimoniously to commend his "comic vein" as strong
As any one that traffick'd with the stage;
while BEN JONSON is hailed as
Lord of the theatre, who could bear
The buskin, as the sock, away.
It was not from his dramatic brothers that SHAKESPEARE could have
discovered his more than supremacy; and while the brotherhood had family
quarrels among themselves, Shakespeare appears never to have moved
offensively or defensively. Gifford tells us that he has never mentioned
one of his contemporaries with commendation, and only once appears, with
Jonson and others, to have contributed some commendatory lines to the
volume of an obscure and whimsical poet.[9] As Shakespeare did not deal
in this literary traffic of that day, he has received fewer tributes
than some of the meanest of our poets. But if Shakespeare has not
noticed any of his associates, neither has the poet ever alluded to
himself in his works. He never exults in his triumphs, nor is querulous
on those who oppugned them.
With his audience he was unquestionably popular; we hear of none of his
plays having been condemned, though such mischances are recorded of his
rivals, and, above all, of his great compeer Jonson. We know that he was
fortunate in the personation of his characters; and those natural
touches, listened to on the spot when nature was left free to act her
part, fell on contagious and instantaneous sympathies. But if the poet
charmed by his "many-coloured life," his very faults were not less
delightful. His audience revelled in bustle and bombast, and it is
possibly in compliance with their stirring unchastised taste that we
have received so much of his rude originals.
Our poet's recklessness of the fate of his own dramas, and his utter
disregard of posterity, is at least one unquestionable fact in the blank
page of his life. He was utterly reckless of his personal reputation
among his contemporary readers, or otherwise he would not have suffered
in his lifetime mutilated dramas, or even their first draughts,
surreptitiously procured, to pass under his own name;--huddled pieces
without even the divisions of the acts, or crude and ridiculous dramas
which he was incapable of having written. These were suicidal acts of
his own fame, but they never broke his silence; and even in his retreat
from the metropolis, in the leisure of his native bowers of Avon,
Shakespeare felt not
That last infirmity of noble minds,
The spur of fame,
pricking his patient acquiescence, and disturbing his careless freedom;
he issued no protest, he uttered no complaint, against the effrontery of
the printers of those days, who published, as "newly corrected by
William Shakespeare," old plays which he never wrote; nor did he yield
the yearnings of a nurse to those ricketty children of the press which
passed as his progeny, bearing a name which he never could have deemed
immortal. We may trace to its real cause this utter carelessness of his
poetical existence.
The horizon of this poet's hopes was bounded by his daily task and his
prosperous theatre. Assuredly it was not an ordinary gratification to be
conscious that his friend Burbage would call into a real existence
_Romeo_, _Macbeth_, and _Othello_, and that the shares of the playhouse
would in due time be transferred for Warwickshire acres. But his mind
was above his condition, and however the dramatist flourished at "the
Globe," Shakespeare himself felt the misery of a degraded
station;--players and play-writing were held to be equally despicable in
that day. This "secret sorrow" he may have himself confided to us; for
in one of "the sonnets," he pathetically laments the compulsion which
forced him to the trade of pleasing the public; and this humiliation, or
this "stain," as the poet felt it, is illustrated by a novel
image--"Chide Fortune," exclaims the bard,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds;
Thence comes it that _my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in_, LIKE THE DYER'S HAND.
SHAKESPEARE, in the vigour of life, withdrew from the theatre and the
metropolis, returning to his native abode.[10] "The properties and the
wardrobe" were now exchanged for "land and tithes." It is consolatory
for us to have ascertained that our national bard, not yet, however,
national, did not participate in the common misery of his noblest
brothers. Four years glided away in the tranquil obscurity of his
family, till his death! Yet still some old associations survived with
the dramatic bard, some reveries of the winter theatre of "the
Blackfriars," and the summer Globe "open to the sky," for we are told
that two or three of his noblest dramas were composed during his
retirement; and he retained his unbroken love for old companionship to
the last, for, by a credible tradition, Shakespeare died of a fever
contracted by convivial indulgence at a joyous meeting with his beloved
cronies Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton.
We hear nothing more of SHAKESPEARE nor of any fragmentary manuscripts;
no verses were scattered on his funereal bier as with Spenser, no
sepulchral volume of elegies was gathered, as with Jonson, to consecrate
his memory. There was yet no SHAKESPEARE! no national bard! The poet
himself could not have favoured a friend with a copy of many of his own
plays, and probably could not himself have repeated one of those admired
soliloquies which we now get by rote. SHAKESPEARE was wholly insensible
to the days which were to come. All this to us seems incredible!
Seven years passed away silently, and the nation remained without their
Shakespeare, although Jonson, in the very year that the poet had
deceased, had set the first example of a collection of dramas made by
their own author; the volume sanctioned by his critical learning he
dignified as his "works:" a proud distinction by which he laid himself
open to the epigrammatists. At length, in 1623, two of Shakespeare's
fellow-comedians, Heminges and Condell, published the first folio
edition of "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies."
These player-editors profess that "they have done this office to the
dead only to keep the memory of so worthy a _friend and fellow_ alive as
was our Shakespeare." Yet their utter negligence shown in "their
fellow's" volume is no evidence of their pious friendship, nor perhaps
of their care or their intelligence. The publication was not, I fear, so
much an offering of affection as a pretext to secure the copyright.
Their real design seems to have been to recover the monopoly of ALL the
plays, having lost the proprietorship of several which had _stolen
abroad in Shakespeare's lifetime_, and to obtain this crafty purpose
they practised a fraudulent deception.
_Fifteen quarto plays_ the public already possessed; no one appears to
have known how they had issued from the study of the poet, or the
treasury of the theatre. Our player-editors, however, now cautioned
their readers that these fifteen plays were a fraud practised on them;
that "they were stolen and surreptitious copies maimed and deformed."
But what these new editors themselves alleged, they knew was false; for
they actually reprinted, unaltered, in their own collection these
declared surreptitious copies. As the reprint became subject to their
negligence, these _first editions_ were appreciated by Capel and Malone
as manuscripts, and by these quarto plays they corrected the text of the
folio volume. The mystifying republication of these fifteen quarto plays
is a piece of literary history of no common occurrence. CAPEL imagined
that the player-editors merely reprinted these very copies which they
had so loudly decried to save the labour of transcription. But looking
closer into this affair, we seem to detect that a double deception was
practised. The printers of these plays had secured the copyright by
entering them at Stationers' Hall, and when the folio collection was
projected it was found necessary by Heminges and Condell to admit the
proprietors into the copartnership of the volume. Hence their names
appear in the titlepage. Malone imagined that this circumstance
indicated that the volume of Shakespeare was considered so great a risk
that it required the joint aid of these printers. But the parties only
united to secure the monopoly of all the plays.
It therefore results that the player-editors pretended to warn the
public that all the preceding editions were "maimed and deformed," and
the proprietors of these pretended surreptitious editions silently
acquiesced in their own condemnation, for the future advantages they
expected to derive from their share in the monopoly.
It is quite obvious that the first proprietors of the quarto plays could
never have acquired such complete copies without either Shakespeare or
his company having furnished them. Yet Shakespeare, if he had connived
at these publications, could never have revised the press; another
evidence of the utter recklessness of the poet of the fate of his
dramas.
The player-editors supplied about twenty new dramas, and by another
adroit deception in their titlepage they announced that all the dramas
were NOW published "acording to the original copies."
Alas! where were these "original copies?" The precious autographs could
not have endured through many a season the thumbings of "the
book-holder" or the prompter. The playhouse copies, carelessly written
out in parts for the actors, interpolated with whole scenes, spurious
with ribaldry, and extemporaneous nonsense at the caprice of some
favourite actor, corrupt with false readings, obscure with distorted
alterations, and often omissions of a line or half a line to connect or
to complete the sense, verse lurking in prose, and metre without
feet,--such were the original sins of the copies despatched in haste to
a rapid press, and the writings of Shakespeare come before the world in
these hurried proofs from printers among whom a corrector of the press
seems to have been unknown. It is in this prolific soil of weeds that
many are still too curiously seeking for the genuine text of
Shakespeare, perhaps too often irretrievable.[11] The recollections of
these two players were so inaccurate that they at first totally omitted
the _Troilus and Cressida_, which is inserted without pagination, and
with little discrimination in the writings of Shakespeare, preserved
the barbarous _Titus Andronicus_, evidently one of Marlowe's gigantic
pieces, and the old play of "the first part of _Henry the Sixth_;" but
it is by no means certain that not less than twenty other dramas had
various degrees of claims to be included in the works of Shakespeare;
such as the suspicious _Pericles_.[12] But the incompetence of these
player-editors, even in transcribing from the prompter's copies, was not
their only fault. "Will" was but "their fellow;" time had not hallowed
him into the national poet; and they themselves had formed no elevated
conception of the art of Sophocles and Terence; for in their dedication
to two peers they express their fear whether their noble patrons from
"their greatness would _descend to the reading of_ SUCH TRIFLES;" the
immortal writings! These unhappy editors seem to reflect back to us the
humiliated feelings of Shakespeare and the age on the histrionic art. In
that early epoch of our literature the sock and buskin had indeed been
worn by a reckless race.
Charles the First was a lover of the English drama. The king delighted
to explore into the manuscript plays which were laid before the master
of the revels for his license. Milton has acquainted us that the
writings of Shakespeare formed the favourite studies of the monarch.[13]
In the "Iconoclastes," alluding to those writers who have shown the
characteristic religious hypocrisy of tyrants, Milton observes, "I shall
not instance an abstruse author wherein the king might be less
conversant, but one whom we well know was the CLOSET COMPANION of these
his solitudes, William Shakespeare."
This has been considered as a designed reproach, and we are startled by
such a style from the author of "Comus" and of "Samson Agonistes." The
odious distinction of not referring the king to an abstruse author
seems a palpable sneer at the course of the king's reading, who,
however, was not deficient in learning; and in making the king's "closet
companion" Shakespeare, Milton too well knew that he was casting the
deepest odium on the royal character, for to this poet's then masters,
the puritanical faction, there could be nothing less to be forgiven than
a king, and a king in his imprisonments, mockingly here called "these
his solitudes," than to be a play-reader! The slur, the gibe, and the
covert satire are, I fear, too obvious. I would gladly have absolved our
great bard from this act of treason at least against the majesty of
Shakespeare's genius.[14] Milton had more deeply studied Shakespeare
than any king whatever; but at this moment his literature was to be
stretched on the torture of his politics.
In the history of the celebrity of Shakespeare, this day of royal favour
sank amid the national tempest: and the theatre was abolished with the
throne.
With the Restoration, the drama returned to the people. Half a century
only had elapsed since our poet flourished; but in that half century our
style, with our manners and modes of feeling, had suffered the
vicissitudes of a revolution. If in the reign of Charles the First they
perceived a change in the language from that of Elizabeth, that change
was more apparent when, in retrograding, it was reduced to the indigent
nakedness of the Puritanic period, and then, bursting into an opposite
direction, like