publication of Greene’s celebrated letter, and his admission that he
re-wrote it, we know that the letter must have been surreptitiously
procured as evidenced by its contents. The letter is as authentic,
doubtless, as any garbled or mutilated document may be; but Chettle’s
foolish statement contained in his preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams” has
awakened the suspicion, in regard to the authorship of “Groats Worth
of Wit,” that, while the letter (or as much as Chettle chose to have
published) is genuine, “I put something out,” the pamphlet “Groats
Worth of Wit” is spurious, and evidently not the work of Robert Greene.
Who can be content to believe Chettle’s statement that Greene placed
this criminating letter in the hands of printers, or that it was left
in their hands by others at his request? A private letter, written to
three friends, who have been co-workers in drama-making, calling them
to repentance, charging one (Marlowe) with diabolical atheism! This was
a very serious charge in those times, when persons were burnt at the
stake for professing their unbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity.
Chettle was the first to make current the charge of atheism against
Marlowe, the one of them that took offense, and whose acquaintance he
(Chettle) did not seek. Chettle reverenced Marlowe’s learning, and
would have his readers believe that he did greatly mitigate Greene’s
charge, but the contents of the letter as transcribed by Chettle and
printed by the bookmakers, discredit Chettle’s statement, as the
charge of diabolical atheism was not struck out, and was, if proven,
punishable by death.
There is no evidence adduced to show that Marlowe was indignant
because of Greene’s admonition, contained in a private letter written
to three play-makers of his own fellowship, but resented the public
charge of atheism, for which he, Chettle, as accessory and transcriber,
was chiefly responsible in making public. We know that Marlowe was
in retreat at the time of his death at Deptford, for in May, 1593,
following the publication of Greene’s letter printed at the end of the
pamphlet, “Groats Worth of Wit,” the Privy Council issued a warrant for
Marlowe’s arrest. A copy of Marlowe’s blasphemies, so called, was sent
to Her Highness, and endorsed by one Richard Bame, who was soon after
hanged at Tyburn for some loathsome crime. But a few days later, before
Marlowe’s apprehension, they wrote in the parish-book at Deptford on
June 1st “Christopher Marlowe slain by Francis Archer.” At the age of
thirty, he, “the first and greatest inheritor of unfulfilled renown,”
went where “Orpheus and where Homer are.”
The loss to English letters in Marlowe’s untimely death cannot be
measured, nevertheless, England of that day was spared the infamy of
his execution. However, the zealots of those days found a subject, in
Francis Kett, a fellow of Marlowe’s college, who was burnt in Norwich
in 1589 for heresy. Unlike Marlowe, he was a pious, God-fearing man
who fell a victim to the strenuousity with which he maintained his
religious convictions. Another subject was found in the person of
Bartholomew Leggett, who was burnt at the stake for stating his
confession of faith, which was identical with the religious belief of
Thomas Jefferson and President William H. Taft. The times were thirsty
for the blood of daring spirits. The shores of the British Isles were
strewn with the wreckage of the great Armada. In Germany, Kepler (he of
the three laws) was struggling to save his poor old mother from being
burnt at the stake for a witch. In Italy, they burnt Bruno at the stake
while Galileo played recanter.
That Marlowe was one of the play-makers who felt incensed at the
publication of Greene’s letter admits of no doubt. He most likely would
have resented the public charge of atheism. “With neither of them that
take offense was I acquainted (writes Chettle) and with one of them
(Marlowe) I care not if I never be.” In such blood bespattered times,
Chettle could and did write “for the first (Marlowe) whose learning
I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene’s book (letter) struck out
what in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ, or had it
been true yet to publish it was intolerable.” Chettle’s conscience
must have been a little seared, for he omitted to strike out the only
statement of fact contained in the letter, which could have imperiled
the life of Marlowe! The letter evidences the fact that all of that
portion referring to Marlowe was not garbled, and that there was not
any intolerable something struck out, but instead, as transcriber for
the pirate publisher, he retained the fulminating passage, “had said
in his heart there is no God.” Notwithstanding Chettle’s statement, we
are of the opinion that the passage about Marlowe was printed in its
integrity.
Chettle’s having failed to omit the charge of diabolical atheism,
reveals the strong personal antipathy he had for Marlowe. Few there
are who set up Marlowe as claimant for Chettle’s apology, and fewer
still, who would not regard him worthy of the compliment, “factitious
grace in writing,” and whose acquaintance Chettle did not seek, but
whose fascinating personality and exquisite feeling for poetry was the
admiration of Drayton and Chapman, who were among the noblest, as well
as the best loved, of their time. George Chapman was among the few men
whom Ben Jonson said he loved. Anthony Wood described him as “a person
of most reverend aspect, religious and temperate qualities.” Chapman
sought conference with the soul of Marlowe:
“Of his free soul whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierian flood.”
Henry Chettie’s act of placation is offered to one of two of the three
play-makers addressed, and not to the actor referred to, who was not
one of those addressed; therefore, “upstart crow” could not have been
the recipient of Chettle’s apology, or placation, in whose behalf
(“upstart crow”) Chettle retracts nothing. The following reference is
to one of the offended playmakers pointed at in Greene’s address, whom
Chettle wishes to placate, “The other whome at that time I did not so
much spare as since I wish I had—that I did not I am as sorry as if the
original fault had been my fault because myself have seen his demeanor
no less civil excellent in the qualities he professes; besides, divers
of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his
honesty and his factitious grace in writing that approves his art.”
With the votaries of Shakspere, however, these words of Chettle chime
with their dreams of fancy; for there is a pre-inclination and a
predetermination to read Shakspere into them, as if the words of Greene
and Chettle were not accessible to all inquirers—words that can be
made to comprehend only one of the two playmakers that take offense,
who must be one of the three (Marlowe, Nash and Peele) admonished by
Greene, and who were of his fellowship. The reader, after studying
Elizabethan literature and history, is content to believe that the
least celebrated of the three playmakers pointed at in Greene’s address
(Marlowe, Nash and Peele), stood high enough in the scale of literary
merit in 1592 to be the recipient of Chettle’s praise.
The word “quality,” in “excellent in the quality he professes,” is by
the fantastically inclined, made to yield a convenient connotation,
but in the ordinary and contextural meaning of the word, may embrace
all that makes or helps to make any person such as he is. Are these
words of Chettle written in 1592 when the theatre was lying under a
social ban, and the actor was still a social outcast, identifiable
with a vagabond at law, or with Thomas Nash, who took his bachelor’s
degree at Cambridge in 1585? “In the autumn of 1592, Nash was the guest
of Archbishop Whitgift at Crogdon, whither the household had retired
for fear of the plague, and, as the official antagonist of Martin
Marprelate was constrained to keep up such a character as would enable
divers of worship to report his uprightness of dealing,” he certainly
was entitled to commendation for his “factitious grace in writing.” The
appropriation of the complimentary remarks of Chettle on Nash, or any
one of the three playmakers addressed, to Shakspere, who was not one of
those addressed, and therefore, could not have been the recipient of
Chettle’s apology, so called, is one of the fancies in which critics of
the highest reputation have indulged. There is nothing equal to this in
all the annals of literature, unless it be “Cicero’s famous letter to
Lucretius, in which he asks the historian to lie a little in his favor
in recording the events of his consulship, for the sake of making him a
greater man.”
Chettle lost no time in transcribing the posthumous letter. Doubts as
to “Groats Worth of Wit” were entertained at the time of publication.
Some suspected Nash to have had a hand in the authorship, others
accused Chettle. Nash did take offense at the report that it was his.
Its publication caused much excitement and the rumor went abroad that
the pamphlet was a forgery. “Other news I am advised of,” writes Nash,
in an epistle prefixed to the second edition of “Pierce-penniless,”
“that a scald, trivial, lying pamphlet called ‘Greene’s Groats Worth of
Wit’ is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soul,
but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded
from my pen, or if I were any way privy to the writing or printing of
it.” We regard these words confirmatory of the fact that “Groats Worth
of Wit” is not a work of unquestioned authenticity, and, furthermore,
that Nash did not believe it the work of Robert Greene. _Prima facie_,
it is spurious, for Nash spoke in high praise of Greene’s writings.
He neither would, nor could, have used the words “scald, trivial,
lying” of a genuine work of Robert Greene, whose writings were held in
high favor by all classes. Nash could not have taken offense at the
allusion of Greene, which was rather complimental, though personal,
and not intended for publication; but it did, however, contain some
slight mixture of censure,—“Sweet boy, might I advise thee, get not
many enimies by bitter words. Blame not scholars vexed with sharp lines
if they reprove thy too much liberty of reproof.” Nash was very angry,
but only because Greene’s letter was given to the public by Chettle,
who felt constrained to placate “that byting satyrist,” whose raillery
he had reason to fear, by bearing witness to “his civil demeanor and
factitious grace in writing.”
Votaries of Shakspere may take their choice of one of the three
addressed. Which one shall be named? What matter it to them, with
Shakspere barred, whether Nash, Peele or Marlowe be named, the least
of whom was worthy of Chettle’s commendation?
There is not a crumb of evidence adduced for Shakspere as a putative
author of plays until 1598, and then only in the variable and shadowy
Elizabethan title page. Chettle terms Greene “the only comedian of a
vulgar writer,” meaning he was a writer in the vernacular tongue or
common language, a fact which proves Shakspere’s nihility as playmaker
in 1592. Now the fact of the matter is that this “lying pamphlet,”
so called by Nash, was not authored by Greene. It should be called,
“Chettle’s Groats Worth of Wit,” for the pamphlet proper is from
his pen or some other hack writer’s. The letter alone was authored
by Greene, addressed as a private letter to three fellow poets, and
surreptitiously procured for Chettle and transcribed by him. Chettle
writes, “I had only in the copy this share—it was ill written—licensed
it must be, ere it could be printed, which could never be if it might
not be read. To be brief I writ it over and as nearly as I could
follow the copy. Only, in that letter I put something out, but in the
whole book, not a word in, for I protest it was all Greene’s, not mine,
nor Master Nash’s, as some unjustly have affirmed.”
The letter and pamphlet both in Greene’s handwriting would have been
the best possible evidence of the genuineness of its contents and
legibility. Chettle’s not offering in evidence the original letter
is strong presumptive proof of the commission of a forgery. He, if
not the chief actor in the offense, was an accessory after the fact,
and should, in his appeal to the public in defense of his reputation,
have brought forward the pamphlet itself, embracing the whole matter,
for examination and comparison; for we feel satisfied that such an
examination would prove that the celebrated letter was authored and
in the handwriting of Robert Greene, and not so ill written that it
could not be read by the printers, who must have been familiar with
the handwriting of the largest contributor of the prose literature of
his day. For ourselves, what we have adduced convinces us that the
tract, “Groats Worth of Wit,” was authored and written by one of Philip
Henslowe’s hacks, presumedly, Henry Chettle, a literary dead beat,
and an indigent of many imprisonments, who was always importuning the
old play-broker for money. Since the tract, “Groats Worth of Wit,”
was in Chettle’s own handwriting, he strove to fool the printers by
transcribing Greene’s letter and binding both together, through that
“disguised hood” to fool the public. Abraham Lincoln is reputed to
have said, “You may fool all the people some of the time, and some of
the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the
time.” It is possible that Chettle may have fooled some of the people
of his own generation some of the time, but in later times, through the
misapprehension of his quoted words, he has fooled the Shaksperolators
all of the time. Chettle, however, would not permit the letter to come
forward in its integrity and speak for itself, disclosing the nature of
the intolerable something “stroke out,” which piques our curiosity, but
not in anticipation of any of those indecencies that taint the writings
of Ben Jonson and the work of many writers of that age, not excepting
Shakespeare, who is also amenable in no slight degree to the charge of
the same coarseness of taste which excites repulsion in the feelings of
Leo Tolstoy.
The fact of the whole matter appears to be that Henry Chettle,
wishing to profit financially by the great commercial value of Robert
Greene’s name, was accessory to the embezzlement and the commission
of a forgery, and was the silent beneficiary of the fraud. The mutual
connection of hack writer and pirate publisher is so obvious that a
jury of discerning students, with the exhibits, presented together
with the presumptive proofs and inferential evidence contextured in
both letter and preface, should easily confirm our opinion of the
incredibleness of Chettle’s statements contained in the preface to
“Kind Hearts Dreams.” The evidence of their falsity is, _prima-facie_,
destitute of credible attestations.
We are made to see, in our survey of the age of Elizabeth, much that
is in striking contrast with the spirit and activities of our time.
There is a notable contrast between the public play house of those
days, where no respectable woman ever appeared, and with the theatre
of our day—the rival of the church as a moral force. In the elder time
“the permanent and persistent dishonor attached to the stage,” and
the stigma attached to the poets who wrote for the public playhouse,
attached in like manner to the regular frequenters of public theatres,
the majority of whom could neither read nor write, but belonged chiefly
to the vicious and idle class of the population. At all the theatres,
according to Malone, it appears that noise and show were what chiefly
attracted an audience in spite of the reputed author. There was clamor
for a stage reeking with blood and anything ministering to their
unchaste appetites. The spectacular actor and clown was relatively
advantaged, as he could say much more than was set down for him. Kemp’s
extemporizing powers of histrionic buffoonery, gagging, and grimacing,
paid the running expenses of the playhouse.
“It must be borne in mind that actors then occupied an inferior
position in society, and that in many quarters even the vocation of
a dramatic writer was considered scarcely respectable.” Ben Jonson’s
letter to the Earl of Salisbury, lets us see very clearly that he
regarded play writing as a degradation. We transcribe it in part as
follows:
“I am here, my honored Lord, unexamined and unheard, committed to
a vile prison and with me a gentleman (whose name may perhaps have
come to your Lordship), one Mr. George Chapman, a learned and honest
man. The cause (would I could name some worthier though I wish we
had known none worthy our imprisonment) (is the words irk-me that
our fortune hath necessitated us to so despise a course) a play, my
Lord—.”
We see how keenly Jonson felt the disgrace, not on account of the
charge of reflecting on some one in a play in which they had federated,
for he protested his own and Chapman’s innocence, but he felt that
their degradation lay chiefly in writing stage poetry, for drama-making
was regarded as a degrading kind of employment, which poets accepted
who were struggling for the meanest necessities of life, and were
driven by poverty to their production, and to the slave-driving
play-brokers, many of whom became very rich by making the flesh and
blood of poor play-writers their maw.
In looking into Philip Henslowe’s old note-book, we see how the
grasping play-brokers of the olden time speculated on the poor
play-writers necessities, when plays were not regarded as literature;
when the most strenuous and laborious of dramatic writers for the
theatre could not hope to gain a competence by the pen alone, but
wrote only for bread; when play-writers were in the employ of the
shareholding actors, as hired men; and when their employers, the
actors, were social outcasts who, in order to escape the penalty for
the infraction of the law against vagabondage, were nominally retained
by some nobleman. In further proof of the degradation which was
attached to the production of dramatic composition, “when Sir Thomas
Bodley, about the year 1600, extended and remodeled the old university
library and gave it his name, he declared that no such riff-raff as
play-books should ever find admittance to it.” “When Ben Jonson treated
his plays as literature by publishing them in 1616 as his works, he was
ridiculed for his pretentions, while Webster’s care in the printing of
his plays laid himself open to the charge of pedantry.”
V
What Lord Rosebery says of Napoleon is equally true of the author
of “Hamlet” and “King Lear,” “Mankind will always delight to
scrutinize something that indefinitely raises its conception of its
own powers and possibilities, and will seek, though eternally in
vain, to penetrate the secrets of this prodigious intellect,” and
it is to Stratford-on-Avon that many turn for the final glimpse of
what Swinburne calls “the most transcendent intelligence that ever
illuminated humanity.” William Shakspere, the third child and eldest
son (probably), of John Shakspere, is supposed to have been born at
a place on the chief highway or road leading from London to Ireland,
where the road crosses the river Avon. This crossing was called
Street-ford or Stratford. This, at any rate, was the place of his
baptism in 1564, as is evidenced by the parish register. The next
proven fact is that of his marriage in 1582, when he was little more
than eighteen years old. Before this event nothing is known in regard
to him.
John Shakspere, the father apparently of William Shakspere, is first
discovered and described as a resident of Henley Street, where our
first glimpse is had of him in April, 1552. In that year he was
fined the sum of twelve pence for a breach of the municipal sanitary
regulations. Nothing is known in regard to the place of his birth and
nurture, nor in regard to his ancestry. The evidence is, _prima-facie_,
that the Shaksperes were of the parvenu class. John Shakspere seems to
have been a chapman, trading in farmer’s produce. In 1557 he married
Mary Arden, the seventh and youngest daughter of Robert Arden, who
had left to her fifty-three acres and a house, called “Ashbies” at
Wilmecote. He had also left to her other land at Wilmecote, and an
interest in two houses at Smitterfield.
This step gave John Shakspere a reputation among his neighbors of
having married an heiress, and he was not slow to take advantage of
it. His official career commenced at once by his election in 1557, as
one of the ale-tasters, to see to the quality of bread and ale; and
again in 1568 he was made high bailiff of Stratford. John Shakspere
was the only member of the Shakspere family who was honored with civic
preferment and confidence, serving the corporation for the ninth time
in several functions. However, the time of his declination was at hand,
for in the autumn of 1578 the wife’s property at Ashbies was mortgaged
for forty pounds. The money subsequently tendered in repayment of the
loan was refused until other sums due to the same creditor were repaid.
John Shakspere was deprived of his aldermanship September 6, 1580,
because he did not come to the hall when notified. On March 29, he
produced a writ of habeas corpus, which shows he had been in prison
for debt. Notwithstanding his inability to read and write, he had more
or less capacity for official business, but so managed his private
affairs as to wreck his own and his wife’s fortune.
At the time of the habeas corpus matter William Shakspere was thirteen
years old. “In all probability,” says his biographer, “the lad was
removed from school, his father requiring his assistance.” There was
a grammar school in Stratford which was reconstructed on a medieval
foundation by Edward VI, though the first English grammar was not
published until 1586. This was after Shakespere had finished his
education. “No Stratford record nor Stratford tradition says that
Shakspere attended the Stratford grammar school.” But, had the waning
fortune of his father made it possible, he might have been a student
there from his seventh year—the probable age of admission—until his
improvident marriage when little more than eighteen and a half years
old. However, a provincial grammar school is a convenient place for
the lad about whose activities we know nothing, and whose education is
made to impinge on conjecture and fanciful might-have-been.
We are told that Shakspere must have been sent to the free school at
Stratford, as his parents and all the relatives were unlearned persons,
and there was no other public education available; nevertheless, it
was the practice of that age to teach the boy no more than his father
knew. One thing is certain, that the scholastic awakening in the
Shakspere family was of short duration, for it began and ended with
William Shakspere. His youngest daughter, Judith, was as illiterate
as were her grandparents. She could not even write her name, although
her father at the time of her school age had become wealthy, and his
eldest daughter “the little premature Susanna,” as De Quincy calls her,
could barely scrawl her name, being unable to identify her husband’s
(Dr. Hall) handwriting, which no one but an illiterate could mistake.
Her contention with the army surgeon, Dr. James Cook, respecting her
husband’s manuscripts, is proof that William Shakspere was true to his
antecedents by conferring illiteracy upon his daughters. The Shakspere
of Stratford-on-Avon was not exceptionally liberal and broad minded in
the matter of education in contrast with many of his contemporaries,
notably Richard Mulcaster, (1531-1611), who says that “the girl should
be as well educated as her brother,” while the real author of the
immortal plays had also written, “Ignorance is the curse of God,” and,
“There is no darkness but ignorance.”