We know nothing, absolutely nothing. No reputed play by Shakespeare was
published before 1597, and none bore the name Shakespeare on the title
page till 1598. Lodge, in his prose satire “Wits Misery,” dated 1596,
enumerates the wits of the time. Shakspere is not mentioned. Dr. Peter
Heylys was born in 1600, and died in 1662, thus being sixteen years old
when Shakspere, the player died. In reckoning up the famous dramatic
poets of England he omits Shakspere. Ben Jonson, in the catalogue
of writers, also omits Shakspere, and at a later date, writing on
the instruction of youth and the best authors, he forgets all about
Shakspere. Philip Henslow, the old play-broker, also in writing his
notebook during the twelve years beginning in February, 1591, does not
even mention Shakspere. Milton’s poem on Shakespeare (1630) was not
published in his works in 1645. This epitaph was prefixed to the folio
edition of Shakespeare (1632), but without Milton’s name. It is the
first of his reputed poems that was published. Its pedigree was not at
all satisfactory. Milton, having been misled by Ben Jonson’s lines on
Shakespeare, “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,” writes
of
“Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
Warbles his native woodnotes wild.”
Milton’s acquaintance with Shakespeare verse must have been very
meager, for had he read “Venus and Adonis,” so classic and formal,
he would agree with Walter Savage Lander that “No poet was ever less
a warbler of woodnotes wild.” It was never said in the original
authorities that a Shakespeare play, or one by Shakspere, was played
between 1594 and 1614. There were published in quarto twenty-three
plays in Shakespeare’s name—twelve of which are not now accepted—and
nine without his name. The folio (1623) is the sole original authority
for seventeen plays, but five writers—four of them very inferior
men—refer to Shakespeare, antecedent to the folio of 1623.
Search as we may, we fail to find the play-actor in affiliation
with poets or scholars. How unlike the literary men of that age;
for instance, George Chapman, who had been called the “blank of his
age,” and not without reason for, in all that pertains to the poet’s
personal history, absolutely nothing is known in regard to his family,
and very little of his own private life. Much, however, is known
concerning Chapman’s personal authorship of poems and plays for the
list of passages extracted from his poems in “England’s Parnassus”
or the “Choicest Flowers of Our Modern Poets” contains no less than
eighty-one. At the time of this publication (1600), he had published
but two plays and three poems. “The proud full sail of his great verse”
(Chapman’s Homer) had not at this time been unfurled.
At the time, this first English anthology was compiled and published,
thirteen of the Shakespeare plays and two poems had been issued.
Nevertheless Shakespeare does not figure in the anthology of his day.
Why? The play-actor, William Shakspere, in his life time was not
publicly credited with the personal authorship of the plays and poems
called Shakespeare’s, except possibly by three or four poeticules,
Bomfield, Freeman, Meres, and Weaver, who followed each other in the
iteration and reiteration of the same insipid and affected compliments,
not one of them implying a personal acquaintance with the author. Some
few persons may have believed that the player and play-wright were one
and the same person, and were deceived into so believing. This much
we do know, that the player Shakspere never openly sanctioned the
identification, although he may have been accessory to the deception.
It should be borne in mind also that no poet was remembered in
Shakspere’s will, as were the actors.
Many writers of that age were communistic in the use of the name
“Shakespeare” as a descriptive title, very much like the Italians’
pantomime called “Silverspear,” standing for the collocuted works of
not one, but several play-makers. Sir Thomas Brown complained that
his name was being used to float books that he never wrote. In the
list before us there are forty-nine plays which were published with
Shakespeare’s name. Doubtless there were many others: not one in fifty
of the dramas of this period, according to Hallowell-Philips, having
descended to modern times. Many writers of that age wrote anonymously
and pseudonymously. Edmund Spencer, author of “The Shepherd’s
Calendar” remained incognito for seven years. Eight years after this
work appeared George Whitstone ascribed it to Philip Sidney and a
cotemporary writer, mistaking Spencer’s masking name for the author
of the works. Spencer committed “The Faerie Queen” to the press after
nine years. Only four of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays were published
in Fletcher’s lifetime and none of them bore Beaumont’s name. Fletcher
survived his partner nine years. Robert Burton, author of “The Anatomy
of Melancholy,” maintained his incognito for a time, he avers, because
it gave him greater freedom. Jean Baptiste Poquelin preferred to be
known as Molière. Francais-Marie Aronet won enduring fame as Voltaire.
Sir Walter Scott maintained his incognito as the great unknown for
years like “Junius,” “whose secret was intrusted to no one and was
never to be revealed.” Sir Walter Scott preserved his secret until
driven to the brink of financial destruction. Drayton also had written
under the pseudonym of Rowland. Who can doubt that the author of
“Hamlet,” “Lear” and “Macbeth,” chose to sheath his private life and
personality as a man of letters in an impenetrable incognito—“the
nothingness of a name.”
Of the thirty-seven plays assigned by the folio of 1623, not one had
received the acknowledgment of their reputed author (Shakespeare).
Not a single line in verse or prose assented to for comparison and
identification, and in the absence of credible evidence of his
authorship of certain poems, there can be no authoritative sanction of
the assignment.
No person writing on the subject of Shakespeare can write a literary
life of the individual man, for player Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon
does not offer a single point of correspondence to the activities of
a literary man or scholar. The fantastical critics profess to read
the story of the author’s life in his works. This is an absurdity,
for dramatic art is mainly character creation and cannot be made to
disclose a knowledge of his private life. The artist is an observer
and paints the thing seen. He, himself, is not the thing which he
depicts but he gives the character as it is. In the opinion of the
present writer it is a waste of time to attempt to identify Shakspere,
the play-actor, with any one of the dramatic personages contained in
the plays called Shakespeare’s.
Forty-six years after the death of William Shakspere of Stratford,
Thomas Fuller in his “Worthies,” published posthumously in 1662, wrote:
“Many were the wit-combats between him and Ben Jonson, which two I
behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war.”
Fuller being born in 1608, was only eight years old when
player-Shakspere died, and but two when he quitted London. If this
precocious youngster beheld the “wit-combats” of the two, he could only
have beheld them as he lay “mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms.”
VI.
We have in conclusion decided to focus the interest of the reader
chiefly in the attestation of Ben Jonson for the works which were
associated with the name of William Shakspere of Stratford. Ben Jonson
presents a contrast to William Shakspere, in almost every respect, so
striking as to awaken an irrepressible desire to compare the mass of
proven facts adduced from authentic records. Being born in the city
of London in the early part of 1574, he was ten years younger than
Shakspere. He was the son of a clergyman. In spite of poverty he was
educated at Westminster School, William Camden being his tutor, to whom
Jonson refers as “Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe all that I
am—in arts all that I owe.” A recent writer on the subject of Jonson
says, “No other of Shakspere’s contemporaries has left so splendid and
so enthusiastic an eulogy of the master.” In this statement all must
concur, for Jonson is the only writer of eminence among Shakspere’s
cotemporaries, who has left words of praise or censure, or have taken
any notice, either of Shakspere, or of the works which bear his name;
notwithstanding, it was the custom among literary men of the day to
belaud their friends in verse or prose, Shakspere in his lifetime was
honored with no mark of Ben Jonson’s admiration. Not a single line
of commendatory verse was addressed to Shakspere by Jonson, although
this promiscuous panegyrist was, with characteristic extravagance, so
indiscriminate in sympathy or patronage. What shrimp was there among
hack writers who could not gain a panegyric from his generous tongue?
For five and twenty years Shakspere and Jonson jostled in London
streets, yet there was no sign or word of recognition as they passed
each other by. Writers on the subject of Jonson and Shakspere say
that we have abundant tradition of their close friendship. There are
no credible traditions. The manufactured traditions, so conspicuous in
books called, “A Life of William Shakspere,” are the dreams of fancy,
fraud and fiction, used to fill the lacuna, or gap, in the life of the
Stratford man.
The proven facts of William Shakspere’s life are facts unassociated
with authorcraft—facts that prove the isolation and divorcement of
player and poet. The proven facts of Ben Jonson’s life are facts
interlacing man and poet. Almost every incident in his life reveals his
personal affection, or bitter dislike, for his fellow craftsmen, always
ready for a quarrel, arrogant, vain, boastful and vulgar. There is
much truth in Dekker’s charge, “’Tis thy fashion to flirt ink in every
man’s face and then crawl into his bosom.” He had many quarrels with
Marston, beat him, and wrote his “Poetaster” on him. He was federated
in a comedy “(Eastward Ho)” with Chapman, and was sent to prison for
libeling the Scottish nobility. Ben Jonson’s personality and literary
work are inseparable. Drunk or sober, few have served learning with
so much pertinacity, and fewer still, have so successfully challenged
admiration even from literary rivals, with whom at times he was most
bitterly hostile, and at other times, indisputably open-handed and
jovial.
Ben Jonson had a literary environment always for there is perfect
interlacement of man and craft. He became one of the most prolific
writers of his age occupying among the men of his day a position of
literary supremacy. “In the forty years of his literary career he
collected a library so extensive that Gifford doubted whether any
library in England was so rich in scarce and valuable books.” From the
pages of Isaac De Israeli we read, “No poet has left behind him so many
testimonials of personal fondness by inscriptions and addresses in the
copies of his works which he presented to his friends.” But of all
these, as strange as it must seem to the votaries of Shakspere, not a
single copy of Jonson’s works is brought forward to bear witness of his
personal regard and admiration for Shakspere, and we may add that there
is no testimonial by Shakspere of his regard and personal fondness for
Ben Jonson, although many of the literary antiquaries have unearthed
in their researches facts or new discoveries, which they have brought
forward as new particulars of the life of William Shakspere. These,
if not incompatible with authorship, are surely divorcing Shakspere,
the actor, from Shakespeare, the author poet. They but deepen the
mystery that surrounds the personality of the author of the immortal
plays—“The shadow of a mighty name.” At the same time they disclose the
true character of Shakspere the actor, money-lender, land-owner and
litigant, which is affirmative of John Bright’s opinion that “any man
who believes that William Shakspere of Stratford wrote ‘Hamlet’ or
‘Lear’ is a fool.”
The student reader will perceive that Jonson’s verse does not agree
with his prose, and that his “Ode to Shakespeare,” which Dryden called
“an insolent, sparing, and invidious, panegyric,” was not the final
word of comment which is contained in Ben Jonson’s “Discoveries”—a
prose reference in disparagement of Shakespeare, the writer, while
laudatory of the man whom he may have believed was identifiable with
the play-wright. We believe he was mistaken in so believing. Ben Jonson
was vulnerable most in his character as a witness. The reader must
therefore be indulgent if we make some remarks upon the credibility and
competency of this witness. The elder writers on the subject of Jonson
and Shakespeare before Gifford’s time (1757-1826) were always harping
on Ben Jonson’s jealousy and envy of Shakespeare. Since Gifford’s day
the antiquary has been abroad in the land without having discovered
anything of a literary life of Shakespeare. As if by general consent,
all recent writers on the subject regard Jonson’s attestation, or his
metrical tribute, to the “memory of my beloved author, Mr. William
Shakespeare, an essential element in Shakespeare’s biography as the
title deed of authorship.” Having made him their star witness, we shall
hear no more of Jonson’s jealousy and envy of Shakespeare.
A final consideration will show how little Ben Jonson is to be relied
on “as attesting the responsibility of the Stratford player for the
works which are associated with his name.” There is not a word or
sentence in all Jonson’s writings which bear witness to Shakspere
as a writer of plays or poems anterior to the Stratford player’s
death, as all reference to Shakespeare in Jonson’s verse and prose
are posterior to this event. They refute each other and discredit the
writer. “Conversations of Ben Jonson with William Drummond” are of
great literary and historical value and are important too, as bearing
on Ben Jonson’s competency and credibleness as a witness. The Drummond
notes were first printed by Mr. David Lang, who discovered them among
the manuscripts of Sir Robert Sibbald, a well known antiquarian.
“Conversations,” as we have it on the evidence of Drummond, is
in accord with almost every contemporary reference to Jonson and
internally they agree with Ben Jonson’s own “Discoveries.” There
should be no controversy in regard to the justice of the Scottish
poet’s criticism. From the notes recorded by Drummond we learn, “He
(Ben Jonson) is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and
scorner of others, especially after drink which is one of the elements
in which he liveth.” The conversations recorded by Drummond took place
when Jonson visited him at Hawthornden in 1618-19 and disclose the
fact that “Rare Ben” was a vulgar, boastful, tipsy backbiter, who
black-guarded many of his fellow craftsmen. The last circumstance
recorded of Ben Jonson is where reference is made to his display
of self-worship at the expense of others. In a letter dated from
Westminster April 5, 1636, James Howell describes a Solem supper given
by Jonson at which he and Thomas Carew were present, when Ben seems to
have drenched himself with his favorite canary wine. Howell writes,
“I was invited yesternight to a Solem supper by B. J. whom you deeply
remember. There was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and
jovial welcome. One thing intervened which almost spoiled the relish of
the rest. Ben began to engross all the discourse to vapour extremely
of himself and by vilifying others to magnify his own muse. Thomas
Carew buzzed me in the ear that Ben had barreled up a great deal of
knowledge, yet seems he had not read the ‘Ethiques’ which, among other
precepts of morality, forbid self commendation. But for my part I am
content to dispense with this Roman infirmity of B’s now that time has
snowed upon his pricranium.”
The reader is not unmindful that the language of Ben Jonson is
sometimes grossly opprobrious, sometimes basely adulatory, while
his laudatory verses on Shakespeare, Silvester, Beaumont and other
cotemporary writers, are in striking contrast by the discrepancy of
testimony disclosed by his prose works and conversations. In the
memorial verses Jonson tells us Shakespeare stood alone—“Alone for
the comparison of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth
or since did from their ashes come.” The strictest scrutiny, however,
into the life and works of Ben Jonson fails to denote his actual
acquaintance with the works of the greatest genius of our world. What
became of his enthusiastic eulogy of Shakespeare, when “from my house
in the Black-Friars this 11th day of February, 1607” Ben Jonson writes
his dedication—“Volpone” to “The Two Famous Universities,” which should
have disclosed his close friendship with, and admiration for, William
Shakespeare, for the great dramatist was then in the zenith of his
power. The dedication of “Volpone” was written nine years before the
death of William Shakspere, the player, when Jonson declared “I shall
raise the despised head of poetry again and stripping her out of those
rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form.”
It should be remembered, that at the time of this sweeping condemnation
of what he terms dramatic or stage-poetry, thirty-one of the thirty-six
of the immortal Shakespearean plays were then written. All of the very
greatest—“Hamlet,” “Lear,” “Macbeth”—were, in Ben Jonson’s estimation
in 1607, “rotten and base rags.” While in 1623 in the “Memorial Verses”
he tells us that their reputed author was the “soul of the age.” “It
is a legal maxim that a witness who swears for both sides swears for
neither, and a rule of common law no less than common sense that his
evidence must be ruled out.” Ben Jonson’s egotism would, of course,
preclude a just judgment of the work of his fellow craftsman. He felt
that his own writings were immeasurably superior. Did he ever read
the so-called Shakspere plays before he wrote the “Ode to the Memory
of my Beloved The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath
Left Us” for the syndicate of printers? For the affirmative of the
proposition there is not the faintest presumption of probable evidence.
Jonson often became the generous panegyrist of poets whose writings in
all probability he never had read. He took pleasure in commending in
verse the works of men not worthy of his notice, and in lauding and
patronizing juvenile mediocrity and poeticules of the gutter-snipe
order. In his prefatory remarks to the reader in “Sejanus” there is the
same display of excess of commendation. Ben Jonson writes, “Lastly I
would inform you that this book in all numbers is not the same with
that which was acted on the public stage wherein a second pen had good
share, in place of which I have rather chosen to put weaker and no
doubt less pleasing of my own than to defraud so happy a genius of his
right by my loathed usurpations.”
According to Dryden, Ben Jonson’s compliments were left-handed.
Nevertheless, the words “so happy a genius” have directed the thoughts
of commentators to Shakespeare. Mr. Nicholson, however, has shown
that the person alluded to is not Shakespeare, but a very inferior
poet, Samuel Sheppard, who more than forty years later claimed for
himself the honor of having collaborated in “Sejanus” with Ben Jonson.
Compliments bestowed on inferior men of the elder time are in later
times the reprisal of Shakespearean buccaneers; while many of Jonson’s
versified panegyrics on cotemporary poets were retrieved by his
withering contempt for many of them, orally expressed, or contained in
his prose works, Shakespeare being included among these. Still, at the
Apollo room of the Devil Tavern were numbered the most distinguished
men of the day outside of literary circles, as well as within, who
sought his fellowship and would gladly have sealed themselves of the
tribe of Ben. Clarendon tells us that “his conversations were very good
and with men of most note.”
The following is, in part, from the notes recorded by William Drummond,
Laird of Hawthornden.
“Conversations of Ben Jonson. His censure of the English poets was
this: That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making every one speak as
well as himself. Spencer’s stanzas pleased him not nor his matter.
“Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, had no children, but no poet,
and was jealous of him; that Michael Drayton’s long verses pleased
him not—Drayton feared him and he esteemed not of him; that Donne’s
‘Anniversary’ was profane and full of blasphemies ... that Donne, for
not keeping of accent deserved hanging; that Shakespeare wanted art;
that Day, Dekker and Minshew were all rogues; that Abram Francis, in
his English hexameters, was a fool; that next to himself only Fletcher
and Chapman could make a masque.
“He esteemeth John Donne the first poet in the world in some things;
that Donne, himself, for not being understood would perish.
“Sir Henry Wotton’s verses of a ‘Happy Life’ he hath by heart, and a
piece of Chapman’s translation of the thirteen of the ‘Iliads,’ which
he thinketh well done. That Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and
his own verse.
“He had many quarrels with Marston; that Markham was not of the
number of the faithful, and but a base fellow; that such were Day and
Middleton; that Chapman and Fletcher were loved of him; that Spencer
died for lack of bread in King street; that the King said Sir P. Sidney
was no poet. Neither did he see any verses in England to the Scullers,
meaning that John Taylor was the best poet in England; that Shakespeare
in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck
in Bohemia where there is no sea near by some 100 miles.
“Sundry times he (Jonson) hath devoured his books, sold them all for
necessity; that he hath consumed a whole night in lying looking at
his great toe, about which he hath seen Carthagenians and the Romans
fighting; that the half of his comedies were not in print; he said to
Prince Charles, of Inigo Jones, that when he wanted words to express
the greatest villain in the world, he would call him an ‘Inigo,’ Jones
having accused him for naming him, behind his back, a fool, he denied
it; but, says he, I said he was an arrant knave, and I avouch it; of
all his plays he never gained 200 pounds; he dissuaded me from poetry
for that she had beggared him when he might have been a rich lawyer,
physician, or merchant; that piece of the ‘Pucelle of the Court’ was
stolen out of his pocket by a gentleman who drank him drowsy.”
These occasional infractions of sobriety by Ben Jonson when he
conversed with Drummond at Hawthornden in 1618-19 became habitual with
him long before James Howell’s invitation to a Solem supper by B. J.
1636.
Day, Middleton, Dekker and Sir Walter Raleigh could have instituted
a civil suit against Ben Jonson for defamation of character, because
of the defamatory words in conversation with William Drummond of
Hawthornden, had the notes recorded by Drummond been published in
the lifetime of the defamed. However, they had come to regard him,
doubtless, as a notorious slanderer who would as soon falsify as
verify, and was not to be believed in unsworn testimony about his
fellowmen or as a credible witness as to any matter—one whose testimony
was none too good under every sanction possible to give it. This is the
writer who gave genesis to the Stratford myth. The matter-of-fact to be
accentuated is that the contemporaries of the writer of the immortal
plays did not know positively who wrote them; we do not know positively
who wrote them; and our latest posterity, when Holy Trinity’s
monuments, turrets, and towers shall have crumbled and commingled with
the shrined dust of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon, may not
know positively who wrote them.
In conclusion, it has not been our design to point out, or suggest,
who, in fact, wrote the poems and plays, but rather to show that the
man of Stratford was by education, temperament, character, reputation,
opportunity and calling, wholly unequal to so transcendent a task,
and that the authorship assumed in favor of this man, rests upon
no tangible proof, but to the contrary upon strained and farfetched
conjecture, merely.
INDEX.
Pages
Alleyn Edward, 17, 18, 19, 42, 107
Addenbroke John, 115, 116
Aubrey John, 141
Blank Verse, 31
Bame Richard, 78
Burbages, 18, 42
Beaumont Francis, 122, 123, 142, 148, 150, 157, 169, 174
Burns Robert, 48
Burton Robert, 53, 157
Bruno, 79
Bodley Sir Thomas, 94
Betterton, 103
Bright John, 164
Brown Sir Thomas, 156
Brown Richard, 16
Bunyan John, 44, 45
Brown J. M., 54
Camden William, 160
Chapman George, 81, 93, 122, 136, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146,
147, 154, 155, 163, 174, 175
Chettle Henry, 35, 43, 49, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79,
80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91
Collier J. P., 25
Cook Dr. James, 101
Coleridge S. T., 47, 144, 145
Cicero, 50, 84
Combe William, 109, 110, 125
Cromwell Oliver, 3
Dryden John, 39, 148, 165, 172