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diff --git a/77063-0.txt b/77063-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd30d81 --- /dev/null +++ b/77063-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3169 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77063 *** + + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE + + Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. + + Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. + + + + + WILLIAM SHAKSPERE + _and_ ROBERT GREENE + THE EVIDENCE + + _By_ + WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN + + + + + Tribune Publishing Co. + OAKLAND, CAL. + + [Illustration] + + + + + COPYRIGHTED BY + WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN + SANTA MONICA, CAL. + FEBRUARY 26, 1912 + + + + + To the Memory of + My Mother + + + + +_PREFACE._ + + +_The design of this work is to give some account of the conspicuous +events and of some of the personages connected with the literary +history of England in that wonderful Renaissance which took place +in the Elizabethan age. All that the writer has attempted is a +concise narrative of some of the facts, grouping them together in +a compact form, with such reflections as seemed to him to be just +and appropriate. To secure this end he has labored to strip from +Shakspere’s biography the manufactured traditions which date from a +considerable period after Shakspere’s death. Where all is conjecture +let the reader do his own guessing and strive for the abatement of that +new Freak called Esthetic Criticism with which some of our critics and +commentators designate their own absurdities._ + +_The writer has given unusual prominence to several distinguished +personages amongst Shakspere’s contemporaries, notably Robert Greene, +William Kemp and Ben Jonson. The work is sketchy in execution because +the materials do not exist for more than an outline figure._ + +_The readers familiar with the old English dramatic poets do not +believe in an exclusive authorship, or uniform workmanship, of the +greatest of the Elizabethan English works. While they set up no +claimant for the writings so commonly credited to William Shakspere of +Stratford-on-Avon, they believe, nevertheless, that the Stratfordian +canon is open to demurrer._ + +_Conspicuous among modern and recent writers on the subject of Robert +Greene, who show the courage of their convictions by their valiant +strokes in defense of that poet’s reputation, are Professor J. M. Brown +of New Zealand, Dr. A. B. Grossart, and Professor Storojenko. The +citations borrowed from their works attest the writer’s obligation to +them, and are sufficiently indicated in the text._ + + _WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN_ + + _Santa Monica, California._ + + + + +WILLIAM SHAKSPERE AND ROBERT GREENE + +THE EVIDENCE + + +I + +This book was written primarily for private satisfaction, the author +having no desire for approbation, and to disclose merely the true +William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon; to find him as a man; to feel +his personal presence; to know him as he was known by his neighbors as +landowner, money lender, captain of amusements, actor, play-broker and +litigant. From dusty records that do not awaken a deific impulse may +be read the true story of his life, but, before directing the readers’ +attention to the documentary evidence, which can be entirely depended +upon in regard to himself, his family, neighbors, fellow-actors and +associates, we desire to cut out the worthless conjectures which are +contained in most, if not all, of the recent works on the subject of +Shakespeare. Circumstances, however slight, may give rise to idle +conjectures, but their worthlessness may be best discerned by setting +up against them reasonable ones. To repeat apocryphal anecdotes and +manufactured traditions that are not reasonable inferences from +concurrent events is to dissipate mental energy; antiquity _per +se_ adds nothing to confirmation or probability. In that digest of +biography, so often quoted, George Stevens tells his readers in less +than fifty words all he knew with any degree of certainty concerning +Shakspere, with the exception of his conjectures as to the authorship +of the poems and plays. This great Shaksperean commentator indulges +in no aesthetic dreams or whimsical conjectures which taint the +credibility of his successors by their statement of them as proven +facts. + +Of all kinds of literature, biography extends the most generous +hospitality. Its subjects live an after life in affiliation with the +readers without regard to condition. In seeking to renew the enthusiasm +of our youth for this species of writing we visit the public library +and find many changes in biographical history, such as the elimination +of spurious tradition and fanciful conjecture. For instance, instead +of the traditional life of Washington, there is a life of the true +Washington: and, instead of a caricatured life of Cromwell, there is +a record of the duly attested facts of the many-sided and wondrous +Cromwell. With what astonishment we survey the huge issue of books +on Shakspere which stand conspicuous on the shelves! There are more +than ten thousand books and pamphlets—many of them of the memoir +order—almost every one of which has a biographical preface; but we find +that most, if not all, the biographers of Shakspere still lead the +reader into the shadow of chaotic conjecture and might-have-been, and +that Shaksperean literature still lacks a book on the personal life of +William Shakspere that shall be to most, if not all others, a pruning +hook cutting out the reveries and guess work which unfortunately have +seduced the historian and misled the reader. We hold in our hand one of +the more recent of these books of fictitious biography, transmissive +“fraud of the imagination” which authenticates nothing! + +As co-readers, we will now focus our attention and thoughts intently +upon the celebrated letter written by the dying hand of Robert Greene, +and addressed to three brother poets to whom he administers a gentle +reproof on account of their by-gone and present faults, of which, +play-writing was most to be shunned. This remarkable letter reveals +Robert Greene as the most tragical figure of his time—a sad witness of +his ultimate penitence and absolute confession, a character of pathetic +sincerity, weirdness and charnel-like gloom that chills the soul. This +letter, so often referred to, and seemingly so little understood, is +one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing in our literary annals. +It has all the credibility that a dying statement can give, but it also +evidences the fact that Robert Greene had previously drawn the fire of +the improvising actors “who wrought the disfigurement of the poet’s +work.” There is one in particular at whom he hurls a dart and hits the +mark. + +“Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our +(poet’s) feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s +hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the +best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own +conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.” + +This sorrow-stricken man wrote these words of censure with the utmost +sincerity. Earlier biographers made no attempt to read Shakspere into +these lines of reproof, but those only of later times regard the +allusion invaluable as being the first literary notice of Shakspere, +and find pleasure in reading into Shakspere’s life the fact of his +having been satirized in 1592 under the name “Shake-scene,” used by +Greene contumeliously. + +The letter is contained in a little work entitled “Greene’s Groats +Worth of Wit,” “Bought with a Million of Repentance, originally +published in 1592, having been entered at Stationers Hall on the +20th of September in that year.” “To those Gentlemen his Quondam +acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plaies.” + +“With thee (Marlowe) will I first begin, thou famous gracer of +tragedians, that Greene, who hath said with thee, like the foole in his +heart, there is no God, should now give glorie unto His greatnesse; for +penetrating is His power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He hath spoken +unto me with a voice of thunder and I have felt He is a God that can +punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded +that thou shouldst give no glory to the giver?”.... + +“With thee I joyne young Juvenall, (Nash) that byting satyrist that +lastlie with mee together writ a comedie. Sweete boy, might I advise +thee, be advised, and get not many enimies by bitter words.... Blame +not schollers vexed with sharp lines, if they reprove thy too much +libertie of reproofe.” + +“And thou (Peele) no less deserving than the other two, in some things +rarer, in nothing inferiour; driven (as myselfe) to extreame shifts; +a little have I to say to thee; and were it not an idolatrous oath, I +would swear by sweet S. George thou are unworthie better hap, sith thou +dependest on so meane a stay. (theatre) Base minded men all three of +you, if by my miserie ye be not warned; for unto none of you, like me, +sought those burrs to cleave; those puppits, I meane, that speake from +our mouths, those anticks garnisht 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 have beene beholding, shall, were ye in that case that +I am now, be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for +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 out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute +‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own conceit the onely Shake-scene in a +countrie.”... + +“But now returne I againe to you three, knowing my miserie is to you no +news; and let me heartily entreate you to be warned by my harmes.... +For it is a pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the +pleasures of such rude groomes.” + +Those biographers and critics who have written concerning Shakspere and +Greene misapprehensively compound an integrate letter and pamphlet. It +should be made clear that Greene’s letter to his fellow poets is not +an integral part of “Groats Worth of Wit,” though appended towards the +end of this pamphlet. The letter is strikingly personal and impressive, +not a continuance of a pamphlet describing the folly of youth, but a +mere appendage not properly constituting a portion of it. It was the +classical commentator, Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-85), we believe, who first +made current the groundless opinion that purports to identify Shakspere +as the one pointed at, but most, if not all, recent biographers and +commentators state as a “proven fact” that Robert Greene was the first +to bail Shakspere out of obscurity by the “reprehensive reference” to +an “upstart crow.” + +The effect of conjectural reading is to raise a tempest of depreciation +by which Shakspere’s biographers and commentators have succeeded +in handing down to posterity Greene’s reputation as a preposterous +combination of infamy and envy, harping with fiendish delight on the +irregularities and defects of Robert Greene’s private life, which were +not even shadowed in his writings. The writings of Greene “whose pen +was pure” are exceptionally clean. Why then this unmerited abuse so +malignant in disposition and passion? We answer that it is because the +biographers of Shakspere have been seduced from truth by a vagrant +conjecture into the belief that William Shakspere was the object and +recipient of Greene’s censure. It is apparent that the statement which +affirms this is false, and we shall endeavor to show that Robert +Greene’s detractors are on the wrong trail. + + + + +II + + +There now arises the crucial enquiry concerning the charge that William +Shakspere was thus lampooned in 1592 by Robert Greene in his celebrated +address “To those Gentlemen of his own fellowship that spend their wits +making plaies”—inferentially, Marlowe, Nash and Peele. The exigency of +the case demands, in the opinion of Shakspere’s modern biographers, +the appropriation of Greene’s reproachful reference to Shakspere, +(though no name is mentioned) yet the actor referred to by Greene the +children in London streets well knew and acclaimed; and every student +of Elizabethan literature, history and bibliography, should know +that the reference is identifiable with William Kemp, the celebrated +comic actor, jig-dancer, and jester, who was, in his own conceit, the +“only Shake-scene (dance-scene) in a country,” “Shake-scene” and +(dance-scene) being interchangeable compounds in the old meaning; but +the votaries of Shakspere, posing as his biographers, in the urgency +of their desire to remove doubts which had existed respecting the +beginning of Shakspere’s early literary productivity as play-maker, or +as an elaborator of the works of other men, prior to the year 1592, +crave some notation of literary activity in the young man who went up +from Stratford to London in 1587 (probably). + +As the immortal plays were coming out anonymously and surreptitiously, +there is a very strong desire to appropriate or embezzle “the only +Shake-scene” reference, for, in the similarity and sound of the +compound word “Shake-scene” in one of its elements there is that which +fits it to receive a Shakespearean connotation, thus catching the +popular fancy of Shakespere’s biographers and academic commentators. +The compound word “Shake-scene” is made by the joining of two words +generic in both its elements, and, in combination having generic +characteristics pertaining to a large or comprehensive class—that is +to say, the words “shake” and “scene” bear a sense in which they are +descriptive of all the various things to which they are applied, and +of all other things that share their common properties. The fanciful +biographers of William Shakspere rely on these words of reproof and +censure as being the initial notice of his worth and work which was +to lift him from his place of obscurity in the year 1592. The meaning +of Greene’s words in the idiom of the times, as in their contextural +and natural sense, yield nothing which is confirmatory of such +contention; for “dance” is connoted under the term “shake,” answering +to the first element in “Shake-scene,” which in the old meaning meant +“dance,” generic for quick action; and “scene” meant “stage” instead +of “scenery” as in the modern meaning, for the theatres were then in a +state of absolute nudity—in other words, “Shake-scene” meant a dancing +performance upon the stage. In the plain unobtrusive language of our +day, as well as in Elizabethan English, the word “shake”—the first +element in “Shake-scene” is interchangeable with “dance,” and, when +given a specialized meaning with a view to theatrical matters in the +year 1592, with Kemp and Shakspere claimants for Greene’s reproof, who +could doubt that the name which was so loudly acclaimed is identifiable +with the spectacular luminary of the times, William Kemp? In setting up +the comic actor and jig-dancer as claimant for Greene’s objurgation, +we promise the reader attestative satisfaction by establishing the +truth of our contention by particular passages in “the address” when +explained by the context as transcriptive of Kemp’s actual history. + +We now direct the attention of the reader specifically to the arrogant +and boastful comedian, William Kemp. This man, according to Robert +Greene’s view, was the personification of everything detestable in +the actor—whose profession he despised. We think the biographers and +commentators have mistaken the spectacularity of William Kemp for the +rising sun of William Shakspere. In the closing years of the sixteenth, +and the early years of the seventeenth, century there lived in London +the most spectacular comic actor and clown of his day, the greatest +“Shake-scene” or (dance-scene) of his generation, William Kemp, the +worthy successor of Dick Tarlton. He had a continental reputation in +1589. This year also Nash dedicated to Kemp one of his attacks upon +Martin Marprelate entitled “An Almond for a Parrot.” “There is ample +contemporary evidence that Kemp was the greatest comic actor of his +time in England, and his notoriety as a morris-dancer was so great that +his journeyings were called dances. He was the court favorite famous +for his improvisions, and loved by the public,” but hated by academic +play-writers and ridiculed by ballad-makers. Kemp, in giving his first +pamphlet “The Nine Days Wonder” to the press in 1599, turned upon his +enemies and in retaliation called them “Shake-rags,” which he used +derisively and as contumeliously as Greene had used “Shake-scene.” The +use of the word “Shake-rags” by Kemp in his first and only published +work is _prima-facie_ evidence, that he also made use of the same term, +orally and in his usual acrimonious manner, either against Greene, +or those of his fellowship. The first element in the compound words +“Shake-scene” and “Shake-rags” is governed by the same general law of +movement or rhythmic action exemplified in dancing and rhymery. In 1640 +Richard Brown in his “Antipodes” refers to the practice of jesters, in +the days of Tarlton and Kemp, of introducing their own wit into poet’s +plays, Kemp, writing in 1600, asserts that he spent his life in mad +jigs and merry jests, although he was entrusted with many leading parts +in farce or broad comedy. His dancing of jigs at the close of a play +gave him his chief popularity (“Camden Society Papers”). “The jigs were +performed to musical accompaniment and included the singing of comic +words. One or two actors at times supported Kemp in his entertainment, +dancing and singing with him. Some examples of the music to which Kemp +danced are preserved in a manuscript collection of John Dowland now +in the library of Cambridge University. The words were, doubtless, +often improvised at the moment, but, on occasions, they were written +out and published. The Stationers Register contains licenses for the +publication of at least four sets of words for the jigs in which Kemp +was the chief performer.” + +According to Henslowe’s Diary, William Kemp was on June 15, 1592, +a member of the company of the Lord Strange players under Henslowe +and Alleyn, playing a principal comic part in the “Knack to Know a +Knave,” and introducing into it what is called on the title page his +“Applauded Merriments,” a technical term for a piece of theatrical +buffoonery. In 1593 Nash warned Gabriel Harvey “lest William Kemp +should make merriment of him.” “As early as 1586, Kemp was a member +of a company of great importance which had arrived at Elsinore where +the king held court. He remained two months in Denmark, and received +a larger amount of board money than his fellow actors. In a letter of +Sir Phillip Sidney, dated Utrecht March 24, 1586, he says, ‘I sent +you a letter by Will (Kemp), my Lord Leicester’s jesting player.’ It +was after his return from these foreign expeditions that we find Kemp +uniting his exertions with those of Alleyn at the Rose and Fortune +theatres, as Prince Henry’s servants. During this whole period from +his return in 1586 from Denmark, to the year 1598, he did not stay +uninterruptedly at the theatres of the Burbages. From February 19, +to June 22, 1592, a part of Lord Leicester’s company played under +Henslowe and Alleyn. In 1602 Kemp was again in London, acting under +Henslowe and Alleyn as one of the Earl of Worcester’s men. We gather +from Henslowe’s Diary that on March 10th, he borrowed in ready money +twenty shillings. + +“Kemp was a very popular performer as early as 1589. We shall see +hereafter that he, following the example of Tarlton, was in the habit +of extemporizing and introducing matter of his own that has not come +down to us. ‘Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set +down for them’ (Hamlet, Act. III, Scene II.). These words were aimed +at Kemp, or one of his school, and it was about this date, according +to Henslowe’s Diary, that Kemp went over from the Lord Chamberlain to +the Lord Nottingham players. The most important duty of the clown was +not to appear in the play itself, but to sing and dance his jig at +the end of it, even after a tragedy, in order to soften the painful +impression—(Camden Society Papers)—Kemp’s jig of ‘The Kitchen Stuff +Woman’ was a screaming farce of rude verses, some spoken, others sung; +of good and bad witticism; of extravagant acting and dancing. In the +art of comic dancing Kemp was immoderately loved and admired. He paid +professional visits to all the German and Italian courts, and was even +summoned to dance his morris-dance before the Emperor Rudolph himself +at Augsburg. + +“Kemp combined shrewdness with his rough humor. With a view to +extending his reputation and his profits, he announced in 1599, his +intention of dancing a morris-dance from London to Norwich; but to his +annoyance, every inaccurate report of his gambols was hawked about in +publication at the time by book-sellers or ballad-makers, like Kemp’s +farewell to the tune of ‘Kerry Merry Buff.’ In order to check the +circulation of falsehood, Kemp offered, he tells us, his first pamphlet +to the press (though at the time he was thought to have had a hand in +writing the Anti-Martinist plays and pamphlets—five pieces erroneously +attributed to his pen). The only copy known is in the Bodleian +Library. The title ran ‘Kemp’s Nine Days Wonder,’ the wonder referred +to being performed in a dance from London to Norwich then written by +himself to satisfy his friends. A woodcut on the title page shows +Kemp in elaborate costume with bells about his knees playing to the +accompaniment of a drum and tabor, which a man at his side is playing. +This pamphlet was entered in the Stationers Book April 22, 1600. The +dedicatory salutation to Anna Fritton, one of her Majesty’s maids of +honor, shows us how arrogant and conceited he must have been. + +“Kemp started at seven o’clock in the morning on the first Monday in +Lent, the starting point being in front of the Lord Mayor’s house, +and half London was astir to see the beginning of the great exploit. +His suite consisted of his taborer, Thomas Sly; his servant, William +Bee; and his overseer or umpire, George Sprat, who was to see that +everything was performed according to promise. According to custom, he +put out a sum of money before his departure on condition of receiving +thrice the amount on his safe return. His own fatigues caused him +many delays and he did not arrive in Norwich until twenty-three days +after his departure. He spent only nine days in actual dancing on the +road. Kemp himself on this occasion contributed nothing to the music +except the sound of the bells, which were attached to his gaiters. In +Norwich thousands waited to receive him in the open market-place with +an official concert. Kemp, as guest of the town, was entertained at +its expense and received handsome presents from the Mayor who arranged +a triumphal entry for him. The freedom of the Merchant Adventures +Company was also conferred upon him, thereby assuring him a share in +the yearly income to the amount of forty shillings—a pension for life. +The very buskins in which he had performed his dance were nailed to +the wall in the Norwich Guild Hall and preserved in perpetual memory +of the exploit, which was long remembered in popular literature. In an +epilogue Kemp announced that he was shortly to set forward as merrily +as I may; whither, I myself know not,” and begged ballad makers to +abstain from disseminating lying statements about him. Kemp’s humble +request to the impudent generation of ballad-makers, as he terms +them, reads in part, “My notable Shake-rags, the effect of my suit +is discovered in the title of my supplication, but for your better +understanding for that I know you to be a sort of witless bettle-heads +that can understand nothing but that is knocked into your scalp; so +farewell and crosse me no more with thy rabble of bold rhymes lest at +my return I set a crosse on thy forehead that all men may know that +for a fool.” It seems certain that Kemp kept his word in exhibiting his +dancing powers on the continent. In Week’s “Ayers” (1688) mention is +made of Kemp’s skipping into France. A ballad entitled “An Excellent +New Medley” (dated about 1600) refers to his return from Rome. In the +Elizabethan play “Jack Drum’s Entertainment” (1616), however, there is +introduced a song to which Kemp’s morris dance is performed. Heywood, +writing at this period, in his “Apology for Actors” (1612), says +William Kemp was a comic actor of high reputation, as well in the favor +of Her Majesty as in the opinion of the general audience. There is also +a tribute from the pen of Richard Rathway (1618). Ben Jonson, William +Rowley and John Marston also make mention of him. + +Pretty much all that relates to the gambols of sportive Kemp in the +foregoing pages is a mere transcription from the “Camden Society +Papers.” + +Our prime object is to establish Kemp’s eligibility as claimant for +Greene’s censure, before alluded to. We are content to advance the +claim of another if found more decisive. We would elect to name +Robert Wilson, senior, an old enemy, doubtless, of Robert Greene, if +we did not think that Kemp has the better claim to that distinction. +According to Collier, Wilson was not only an excellent performer, but +also a talented dramatist, especially renowned for his ready repartee. +Some writers affirm that the authors of the dramas “Faire Emm” and +“Martin Marsixtus” were one and the same person, and that this person +was Robert Wilson, senior, author of “Three Ladies of London” and +“Three Lords and Ladies of London,” the first published in 1584, and +the other in 1590. “Faire Emm” and “Martin Marsixtus” having been +posthumously printed, Greene was severe on the author of the former +for his blasphemous introduction of quotations from the Bible into his +love passages. “We know that the author attacked Greene’s own works +in return and called them lascivious.” He had not read the works, but, +then, an anonymous writer may not very scrupulously confine himself to +the truth. “Loth I was to display myself to the world but for that I +hope to dance under a mask and bluster out like the wind, which, though +every man heareth yet none can in sight descrie.” “I must answer in +print what they have offered on the stage” are the words of Greene. + +Robert Wilson may be advanced as claimant for Greene’s reproof by some +persons who are of the opinion that “upstart crow” was both actor and +playwright. Supposition says Kemp also wrote pamphlets and plays, +although at this time he had not given his first and only work to the +press. It matters little at whom he aimed, Kemp or Wilson, so long as +Shakespere was not the object of the aimer. In the Parish Register of +St. Giles, Cripplegate, we read, “Buried, Robert Wilson, yeoman, a +player, 20 Nov., 1600.” + +These facts and concurring events in the life of William Kemp +convince us that Shakspere was not, and Kemp very probably was, the +person at whom Greene leveled his satire by bearing witness to his +(Kemp’s) extemporizing power and his haughty and insolent demeanor in +introducing improvisions and interpolations of his “own wit into poet’s +plays.” + +From the foregoing, it is evident that, at the time the letter was +written, William Kemp enjoyed an unequaled and wide spread notoriety +and transient fame, extending not only throughout England, but into +foreign countries as well. + +And further, by reason of his great prominence, in a calling which +Greene loathed, and despised, he was brought easily within the range of +the latter’s contemptuous designation, of “upstart crow.” + + + + +III + + +We have now reached the crucial matter of the address which, according +to the speculative opinion of many of Shakspere’s biographers, contains +all the words and sentences which they hope, when racked, may be made +to yield support to their tramp conjecture that Robert Greene was the +first to discover Shakspere as a writer of plays, or the amender of the +works of other poets. The identifiable words, so called, are contained +in the following sentences: “Yes, trust them not; for there is an +upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tyger’s +heart wrapt in a Player’s hide.” + +“Upstart Crow” in Elizabethan English meant in general, one who assumed +a lofty or arrogant tone, a bragging, boastful, swaggerer suddenly +raised to prominence and power, as was Kemp after the death of Richard +Tarlton (1589). In an epistle prefixed to Greene’s “Arcadia” (1587), +Thomas Nash speaks of actors “As a company of taffaty fools with their +feathers;” and “The players decked with poets’ feathers like Aesop’s +Crow” (R. B.); and again, “That with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a +Player’s hide.” Tiger in the plain language of the day stood for bully, +a noisy, insolent man, who habitually sought to overbear by clamors, +or by threats. These characteristics are identifiable with Kemp; but +the biographers of Shakspere are content to conjecture that Robert +Greene’s parody on the line “Oh Tyger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide” +is not only a contumelious reference to actor, William Shakspere, but +also a declaration of his authorial integrity by their assignment of +“Henry VI. Part III,” which was in action at the “Rose,” when Greene’s +celebrated address was written. + +There is _prima-facie_ evidence that Greene authored the line, which he +semi-parodied in the address, which is found in two places. It appears +in its initial form “Oh Tyger’s heart wrapt in a serpent’s hide” in +the play called, “The Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York,” and “The Death +of Good King Henry the Sixth,” and later with “woman” substituted for +“serpent,” again, it is found in the third part of “Henry VI.”, founded +on the true tragedy, which was acted by Lord Pembroke’s company, of +which, as Nash tells us, Greene was chief agent, and for which he wrote +more than four other plays. “Henry VI. Part III” is generally admitted +to be the work of Greene, Marlowe and perhaps Peele. Furthermore, +the catchwords in the lines parodied betray their author, which is +a confirmatory fact. To borrow a citation from the pages of Dr. A. +Grosart, “Every one who knows his Greene knows that over and over again +he returns on anything of his that caught on, sometimes abridging +and sometimes expanding;” and in semi-parodying his own lines, wrapt +“Tyger’s heart” in several kinds of hides. It was William Kemp, the +comic actor and dancer, not Shakspere, whom Greene wanted to hit. +He did not consider as an author at all the “upstart crow” with his +“Tyger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide,” who bombasted orally his own +improvisions and interpolations out in blank verse. + +In their great desire to discover Shakspere as the author, the +words “bombast out in blank verse” are seized upon by Shakspere’s +commentators with evident greediness. But these words yield nothing +in support of author-craft, for bombast or bombastry, in the idiom of +the time, stood for high sounding words which might have proceeded +from the mouth of a buffoon, clown, jester, montebank or actor, whose +profession was to amuse spectators by low antics and tricks, and +whose improvisions and extemporizings were destitute of rhyme, but +possessed of a musical rhythm called “blank verse.” The words “blank +verse” were doubtless intended for the ear of Marlowe, the great +innovator, who was thus reminded that the notorious jig-dancer and +clown, William Kemp, declaimed his own improvisions and interpolations +in the “swelling bombast of a bragging blank-verse,” as Nash called +it, and was an absolute “Johannes Factotum in his own conceit”—that +is, a person employed to do many things. Who could do more “in his own +conceit” than Kemp, who spent his life in mad jigs, as he says? Who +but Kemp, the chief actor in the low comedy scenes, who angered the +academic play-writers by introducing “his own wit into their plays and +make a merriment of them?” + +Greene’s address to his fellow craftsmen does not convey plagiary, +or a furbishable, imputation, nor give color to, nor the slightest +circumstance for, the conjecture that Shakspere’s authorial career +had been begun as the amender of other poet’s plays anterior to the +putative authorship of “Venus and Adonis.” Halliwell-Phillips, the +most indefatigable and reliable member of the Congress of Speculative +Biographers, says that not one such play has been found revised, or +amended, by Shakspere in his early career. Still in their extremity, +Shakspere’s commentators give hospitality to stupid conjectures that +are not reasonable inferences from concurrent facts, and construe +Greene’s censure of Kemp, (inferentially) as the first literary notice +of Shakspere. It shows an irrepressible desire without proof to confer +authorship upon Shakspere one hundred and fifty years after his death. +The Shakspere votaries cannot point to a single word, or sentence, +in this celebrated address of Robert Greene which connects the +contumelious name “Shake-scene” (dance-scene) with the characteristics +of either the true, or the traditional, Shakspere. + +The biographers of Shakspere never grow weary of charging Robert +Greene with professional jealousy and envy. The charge has no +argumentative value, even if granting Shakspere’s early productivity +as a play-maker, or the amender of the works of other men, for Greene’s +activities ran in other lines; play-making was of minor importance, +a sort of by-production of his resourceful and versatile pen. The +biographers of Shakspere are unfortunate in having taken on this +impression, because there is _prima-facie_ evidence that Greene had +forsworn writing for the stage a considerable time before the letter +was written; thus he followed his friend Lodge, who in 1589 “vows to +write no more of that whence shame doth grow.” + +The biographers and commentators, agreeing in their asperities, +charge Robert Greene with that worst of passions, envy, basing it +conjecturally on the assumption of Shakspere’s proficiency as a +drama-maker, notwithstanding the sincere and earnest words contained +in his most pathetic letter, addressed to three friends, in which he +counsels them to give up play writing, which he regarded as degrading, +placing their very necessities in the power of grasping shareholding +actors, and rendering it no longer a fit occupation for gentlemen. They +fail to see the dying should be granted immunity from this ignoble and +base passion. Our own rule of law admits as good evidence the testimony +of a man who believes himself to be dying, and so the letter states, +“desirous that you should live though himself be dying.” + +Robert Greene’s charge against “upstart crow” stands unshaken. Henry +Chettle, the hack writer, and self admitted transcriber of the letter, +does not retract Greene’s statement. He denies nothing on behalf of an +“upstart crow” (Kemp); for the author of “Kind Hearts Dreams” does not +identify “Shake-scene” (dance-scene) with Shakspere, or Shakespeare, +who was not one of those who took offense. It is expressly stated that +there were two of the three fellow dramatists, addressed by Greene +(Marlowe, Nash and Peele). Still we are told by Shakespearean writers +that the dying genius was pained at witnessing the proficiency of +another in the very activity (play-making), which he had come to regard +as congruous with strolling vagabondism. He enjoined his friends to +seek better masters “for it is a pittie men of such rare wit should be +subject to the pleasure of such rude groomes, painted monsters, apes, +burrs, peasants, puppets,” not play-makers, but actors, who had been +beholden to him and his fellow craftsmen whom he addressed. + +There is another aspect in which the charge of professional jealousy +presents itself to the mind of the reader; those who covet that which +another possesses, or envies success, popularity or fortune. To charge +Greene with envy is most uncharitable by reason of his versatility. +Now what was there in the possession of William Shakspere in 1592 that +could have awakened in the mind of Robert Greene so base a passion +as envy. The name Shakspere had no commercial value in 1592, for +Shakspere of the stage is described many years after this date as +merely a “man player” and “a deserving man.” Note this admission by Dr. +Ingleby: “Assuredly no one during the century had any suspicion that +the genius of Shakespeare was unique.” “His immediate contemporaries +expressed no great admiration for either him, or his works.” There +is not a particle of evidence to show that Robert Greene was envious +of any writer of his time; nor had he cause to be; but the way his +contemporaries and successors robbed and plundered him proves the +reverse to be true. + + “Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his fame, + Purloynde his plumes; can they deny the same?” + +The fact is, Shakspere passed through and out of life without +having attained the distinction, or celebrity, won by Greene in his +brief literary career of but nine short years. The more truthful of +Shakspere’s biographers concede that the subject of their memoirs +was not, in his day, highly regarded, and that his obscurity in 1592 +is obvious. There was not the least danger of the author of “Hamlet” +“driving to penury” the dean of English novelists, Robert Greene, who +was supreme in prose romance, a species of literature, which appealed +to the better class of the reading public. Rival-hating envy! Robert +Greene cannot be brought within the scope of such a charge, for in +1592, he was not striving to obtain the same object which play writers +were pursuing. + +The fame of Robert Greene during his lifetime eclipsed that of his +contemporaries. “He was in fact the popular author of the day. His +contemporaries applauded the facility with which he turned his talents +to account.” “In a night and a day,” says Nash, “would he have yearked +up a pamphlet as well as in seven years, and glad was that printer that +might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit.” +Even Ben Jonson, “the greatest man of the last age,” according to +Dryden, had no such assurance in his day, if we may judge from his own +account of his literary life, which shows that he had to struggle for +a subsistence, as no printer was found glad, or felt himself blest, to +pay him dear for the cream, much less the very “dregs of his wit.” He +told Drummond that the half of his comedies were not in print, and that +he had cleared but 200 pounds by all his labor for the public theatre. +It has been said by one: “In the breadth of his dramatic quality, his +range over every kind of poetic excellence, Jonson was excelled by +Shakespeare alone.” (p. 437, “A Short History of the English People.”) +When not subsidized by the court he was driven by want to write for +the London theatres; he lived in a hovel in an alley, where he took +service with the notorious play broker. To such as he, reference is +made by Henslow, who in his diary records “the grinding toil and the +starvation wages of his hungry and drudging bondsmen,” who were +struggling for the meanest necessities of life. This Titan of a giant +brood of playwrights, in the days of his declension wrote mendicant +epistles for bread, and, doubtless, in his extremity recalled Robert +Greene, the admonisher of three brother poets “that spend their wits in +making plaies.” “Base minded men, all three of you! if by my miseries +ye be not warned, for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to +cleave, those puppits, I mean that speak from our mouths those antics +garnisht in our colors. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have +been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both at +once of them forsaken?... O that I might intreate your rare wits to +be employed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate +your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired +inventions.” + +It was one of this breed of puppets, we are told, who awakened +incarnate envy in the breast of Robert Greene, and engendered rivalship +against William Shakspere, whose votaries, in their dreams of fancy, +see him revising the dramatic writings of Robert Greene, the most +resourceful, versatile, tireless and prolific of literary men. He was +a writer of greatest discernment from the viewpoint of the people of +his time, “for he possessed the ability to write in any vein that would +sell.” He only, of all the writers of his time, gave promise of being +able to gain a competence by the pen alone, a thing which no writer +did, or could do, in that day, by writing for the stage alone. Hon. +Cushman K. Davis in “The Law in Shakespeare” says, “He (Shakspere) +is the first English author who made a fortune with his pen.” In the +absence of credible evidence, Mr. Davis assumes that the young man +who came up from Stratford was the author of the plays. The senator +does not seem aware of the fact that Shakspere of Stratford was a +shareholding actor, receiving a share in the theatre, or its profits, +in 1599; a partner in one or more of the chief companies; a play broker +who purchased and mounted the plays of other men; and that he, like +Burbage, Henslowe and Alleyn, speculated in real estate. He was shrewd +in money matters and became very wealthy, but not by writing plays. +Suppose that William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon had authored all +the plays associated with his name, that alone would not have made him +wealthy. The price of a play varied from four to ten pounds, and all +Shakspere’s labors for the public theatre would have brought no more +than five hundred pounds. The diary of Philip Henslowe makes it clear +that up to the year 1600 the highest price he ever paid was six pounds. +The Shakespeare plays were not exceptionally popular in that day, not +being then as now, “the talk of the town.” Not one of them equalled in +popularity Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy,” or Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus.” + +Shakespeare was soon superseded by Fletcher in popular regard. Only one +of the Shakespeare tragedies, one historical play, and eight comedies +were presented at the Court of James First, who reigned twenty-two +years. Plays, written by such hack writers as Dearborn, or Chettle, +were quite as acceptable to princes. + +Robert Greene’s romances were “a bower of delight,” a kind of writing +held in high favor by all classes. Sir Thomas Overbury describes his +chambermaid as reading Greene’s works over and over again. It is a +pleasure to see in the elder time Greene’s writings in hands so full +of household cares, since he labored to make young lives happy. Robert +Greene’s works express every variation in the changing conditions of +life. The poetry of his pastoral landscapes are vivid word pictures +of English sylvan scenes. The western sky on amorous autumn days is +mantled with sheets of burnished gold. The soft and gentle zephyr +blows over castled crag and fairy glen fragrant with the breath of +flowers. + +In the manuals of our literature great prominence is given to the +fact that Greene led a dissolute, or irregular, life, as if the +debauchment of the author was transmitted by his writings. There are +no indecencies in his works to attest the passage of a debauchee. +Like many persons born to, and nurtured by, religious parents, Greene +doubtless exaggerated his own vices. He was bad, but not altogether +bad. It may truly be said of him that, in regard to all that pertains +to penitence and self abasement, he spares not himself, but like John +Bunyan, he was given to selfupbraiding. He (Bunyan) declares that it +is true that he let loose the reins on the neck of his lust; that he +delighted in all transgressions against the divine law; and that he was +the ring leader of the youth of Elstow in all vice. But, when those +who wished him ill, accused him of licentious amours, he called God +and the angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, +earth, or hell, could charge him with having ever made any improper +advances to her. Blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking seem to have been +Bunyan’s only transgression after all. In Robert Greene’s writings, we +have the reverse of “Herrick’s shameful pleading that if his verse was +impure, his life was chaste.” Unlike Herrick, Greene did not minister +to the unchaste appetite of readers for tainted literature, either in +his day, or in the after time. Powerless to condemn Greene’s writings, +Shakspere’s votaries would desecrate his ashes. + +Deplore as we must his dissolute living, it was of short duration, +for he went from earth at the age of two and thirty, and the evil +effects have been lost in Time’s abatements. His associates, doubtless +were as dissolute as he himself. Nash wrote: “With any notorious +crime I never knew him tainted, and he inherited more virtues than +vices.” The reader, at any rate, will give but little credence to +the accusations of such a hyena-dog as Gabriel Harvey. Robert Greene +was not “lip-holy,” nor heart-hollow, for, in regard to his wife and +their separation, “he took to himself all blame, breathed never a word +against her, and did not squander all of his earnings in dissipation, +but sent part of his income to the good woman, the wife of his youth, +and addressed to her in loving trust the last letter he wrote.” Gabriel +Harvey, drenched in hate, could not rob the “Sweet-wife letter of its +pathos.” + +In all the galleries of noble women, Greene’s heroines deserve a +foremost place, for all the gracious types of womanhood belonged to +Greene, before they became Shakespeare’s. “Robert Greene is the first +of our play-writers to represent upon the public stage the purity +and sweetness of wife and maiden.” Unselfish love and maternity are +sketched with feminine delicacy and minuteness of touch in all the +tenderness of its purity. His writings have assuaged the sorrow of +the self-sacrificing mother, who is always a queen uncrowned, long +suffering and faithful. Robert Green “is always on the side of the +angels.” When loud mouthed detraction calls him badhearted, we should +not forget that this confessedly dissolute man could, and did, keep +inviolate the purity of his imagination; few have left a wealthier +legacy in feminine models of moral and physical beauty. What is most +characteristic in the pages of Greene is the absence of the indecencies +which attest the passage of the author of “Lear,” “the damnable scenes +which raised the anger of Swinburne and which Coleridge attempted in +vain to palliate.” + +Little is known of Greene’s life; and into the little we do know, +his malignant enemy, Gabriel Harvey, has attempted to inject a +deadly virus. The inaccurate figurative expressions in his reputed +posthumously printed works (an alleged description of his manner +of life) cannot be interpreted literally, “but may be resolved in +a large measure into morbid self-upbraidings like the confession +made by the revival convert who sees and paints his past in its +very darkest colors.” But why should the modern reader linger over +the irregularities of dissolute-living authors like Greene and Poe, +whose writings are exceptionally clean. Remember Robert Burns’ noble +words, “What done we partly may compute but know not what resisted.” +The commentators and pharisaic critics, who have written concerning +Greene, are mere computists of the poet’s vices; ministers of hate, +who burlesque the poet’s soul stiffening with despair, and display +their ghoulish instincts “in travestying so pathetic and tragical a +deathbed as Greene’s.” Students of Elizabethan literature know that +Robert Greene resisted the temptation to write in the best paying vein +of the age, that of ministering to the unchaste appetites of readers +for ribaldries. “To his undying honor Robert Greene, equally with James +Thompson, left scarcely a line, that, dying, he need have wished to +blot out.” + +There is no record extant of his living likeness. Chettle gives this +pleasant description of his personal appearance, “With him was the +fifth, a man of indifferent years; of face, amiable; of body, well +proportioned; his attire after the habit of scholar-like gentleman, +only his hair was somewhat long, whom I supposed to be Robert Greene, +Master of Arts.” Nash notices his tawny beard, “a jolly long red +peake like the spire of a steeple which he cherished continually +without cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and +pendant.” Harvey, who had never seen Greene, says that he wore such +long hair as was only worn by thieves and cutthroats, and taunts Nash +with wearing the same “unseemly superfluity.” The habit of wearing the +hair long is not unusual with poets. John Milton “cherished the same +superfluity” as does also Joaquin Miller. + +Robert Greene expired on the third of September, 1592. When the dead +genius was in his grave, Harvey gloated and leered with hellish glee, +and wrote of Greene’s “most woeful and rascal estate, how the wretched +fellow or, shall I say, the prince of beggars, laid all to gage fore +some few shillings and was attended by lice.” This is one of Harvey’s +malignant, vitriolic, discharges in his attempt to spatter the memory +and deface the monument of the dead. “Achilles tortured the dead +body of Hector, and, as Antonious and his wife, Fulva, tormented the +lifeless corpse of Cicero, so Gabriel Harvey hath showed the same +inhumanities to Greene that lies low in his grave.” The testimony of +Gabriel Harvey, whose malignant attacks on the memory of Greene by +monstrously exaggerated statement, is vitiated by his own statement +that “he was cheated out of an action for libel against Greene by his +death.” + +Harvey was vulgarly ostentatious, courting notoriety by the +gorgeousness of his apparel; currying favor with the great, and aping +Venetian gentility after his return from Italy. He was a dabbler +in astrology, a prognosticator of earthquakes, and constructor of +prophetic almanacs. The failure of his predictions subjected him to +much bitter ridicule. His inordinate vanity is best shown by his +publication of everything spoken or written in commendation of himself, +by his obsequious friends and flatterers, who snickered with the public +generally, as he was an object of ridicule, the butt on which to crack +their jokes. + +In one of those fanciful studies in Elizabethan literature, which +we now hold in our hand, we may read, in a work called “A Snip for +an Upstart Courtier or A Quaint Dispute Between Velvet-breeches and +Cloth-breeches,” that Greene has very vulgarly libeled Harvey’s +ancestry; but, when we turn to Greene’s book we learn that the +vulgarity consists in calling Gabriel Harvey’s father a ropemaker. +Only a snob would regard any honest employment as a degradation, and +furthermore, the passage does not point contumeliously and spitefully +at Gabriel Harvey’s father, for the reference is very slight. “How is +he (Gabriel’s father) abused?” writes Nash, “Instead of his name he is +called by the craft he gets his living with.” Still the lines which so +mortally offended Gabriel were suppressed by Greene. Notwithstanding +this, those biographers and critics whose sole object is to blacken +the poet’s memory, conceal from the reader the fact of the detachment +of all reference to a rope-maker. Harvey was extremely anxious to +push himself among the aristocracy in order to conceal his humble +antecedents. + +With all his faults, there was nothing of this weakness or snobbishness +in Robert Greene, who had himself sprung from the common people, +though born to good condition. Robert Burton, a contemporary, writing +in “The Spacious Time of the Great Elizabeth” says that idleness was +the mark of the nobility, and to earn money in any kind of trade was +despicable. Gabriel Harvey flung in Greene’s face the fact that he made +a living by his pen. Had young Greene lived a longer life, with all its +wealth of bud and bloom, we should now have in fruition a luxuriance of +imagination and versatility of diction possessed by few. With longer +life he would doubtless “have gained mastery of himself, when he +would have gone forward on the path of moral regeneration;” for there +was in the poet’s strivings, during the last few years of his life, +the promise and prophecy of a glorious future. His soul enlarged, he +battled for the commonweal; his heart was with the lowly and his voice +was for the right when freedom’s friends were few. + +In his play “The Pinner of Wakefield,” first printed in 1599, Robert +Greene makes a hero, and a very strenuous one, of a mere pound-keeper +who proudly refuses knighthood at the hands of the king. In the sketch +given by Professor J. M. Brown we read, “In the first scene of the play +when Sir Nicolas Mannering appears in Wakefield with his commission +from the rebel, Earl of Kendal, and demands victuals for the rebel +army, the stalwart pound-keeper steps forward, makes the knight eat +his words and then his seal! ‘What! are you in choler? I will give you +pills to cool your stomach. Seest thou these seals? Now by my father’s +soul, which was a yeoman’s when he was alive, eat them or eat my +dagger’s point, proud squire!’ The Earl of Kendal and other noblemen +next appear in disguise and send their horses into the Pinner’s corn to +brave him. The pound-keeper approaches and after altercation strikes +the Earl. Lord Bondfield says, ‘Villain, what hast thou done? Thou +hast struck an Earl.’ Pinner answers, ‘Why, what care I? A poor man +that is true is better than an earl if he be false’.” A yeoman boxing +or cuffing the ear of an earl! This has all the breezy freshness of +American democracy. + +“How different from this is Shakespeare’s conception of the place of +the working-man in society. In King Lear, a good servant protests +against the cruelty of Regan and Cornwall toward Gloucester, and is +killed for his courage.” “Give me my sword,” cries Regan, “a peasant +stand up thus!” The voice of the yeoman is often heard in Greene’s +drama, not as buffoon and lackey, as in Shakespeare, but as freeman +whose voice is echoed at Naseby and Marston’s gory fields of glory, +where the sturdy yeomanry of England strove to do and to dare for the +eternal right—soldiers who never cowered from “sheen of spear,” nor +blanched at flashing steel. With Greene rank is never the measure of +merit as with Shakespeare. To peer and yeoman alike, he gave equal +hospitality; for Robin Greene, as his friends called him, was as +friendly to the poor man’s rags as to the purple Robe of King. Greene +in his popular sympathies is thoroughly with the working classes, +the common people, of whom Lincoln says, “God loves most, otherwise +he would not have made so many of them.” His heroes and heroines are +taken, many of them, from humble life. In his Pinner of Wakefield there +is a very clear discernment of democratic principle in the struggle +against prerogative. Half of those plays of Greene’s which we still +possess, are devoted to the representation of the life of the common +people which gave lineage to Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and +John Bunyan. If these are any guide to his character, his is one +distinguished both by his amicable and by his amiable qualities. + +We have in the “Coney-catching series” Greene’s exposure of the +practice of sharpers and knaves, who were fleecing the country people +who came to London. The author of these tracts shows great courage +in his effort to abate fool-catching. Greene’s life was threatened, +and it required the utmost exertion of his friends to prevent his +assassination. The Coney-catching knaves, who felt the halter being +drawn about their necks, threatened to cut off his hand if he would not +desist. Greene, notwithstanding these threats, would not be swerved +from his noble aim, but met them like a true Roman, single-handed and +alone, while his literary enemies took advantage of this opportunity to +blacken his good name. “Greene made these revelations for the good of +the commonwealth, and displayed great courage in facing all risks in so +doing. No books are more out-and-out sincere.” + +Greene’s account of the repentance and reformation of a fallen woman, +told in a way that discloses the poet’s kindness of heart and fullness +of humanitarian spirit, reveals his better self. “He assured his +readers, in the words of the woman herself, that her first false step +gradually led her on to complete ruin, so heavy-burdened with grief and +shame that death seemed to her a benefaction, and the grave the only +place for perfect rest.” Not a few there may have been, who, on reading +Greene’s account of the reformation and redemption of this unfortunate +woman, were started on the path of regeneration, while the dim-eyed +critic can see nothing but the blurred reputation of the poet. But who +shall estimate Robert Greene’s influence on individual happiness? Who +shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better +by a writer who held out a kind and friendly hand, and had a heart +as true behind it? His statue would crown Trafalgar’s towering shaft +more worthily than the statue of England’s greatest naval hero does; +for there is more true honor and merit in the man who wrote purely to +bring back from evil courses to a state of moral rectitude, than in a +monument for the victory over many enemies. + +Greene’s non-dramatic works are the largest contribution left by +any Elizabethan writer to the novel literature of the day. “He was +at once the most versatile and the most laborious of literary men.” +Famous, witty, and brilliant, he was one of the founders of English +fiction, and is conceded to be the author of half a dozen plays for the +theatre. In them we have the mere “flotsam and jetsam” of his prolific +pen. What would we not give for all the plays of Robert Greene from +whom his contemporaries and successors purloyned plumes! According +to Ben Jonson, it was as safe to pillage from Greene in his day, as +it is to persecute his reputation in ours. He was a graduate of both +universities, was a man of genius, but did not live to do his talents +full justice. A born story teller, like Sir Walter Scott, he could do +good work easily and quickly. + +We glean the following from the pages of “The English Novel in the +Time of Shakespeare,” by J. J. Jusserand, “Greene’s prose tale, +‘Pandosto, the Triumph of Time,’ had an extraordinary success, while +Shakspere’s drama ‘Winter’s Tale’ founded on Greene’s Pandosto was not +printed, either in authentic or pirated shape, before the appearance +of the 1623 folio, while Greene’s prose story was published in 1588 +and was renamed half a century later, ‘The History of Dorostus and +Fawnia.’ So popular was it that it was printed again and again. We +know of at least seventeen editions, and in all likelihood there were +more throughout the seventeenth century, and even under one shape or +another throughout the eighteenth. It was printed as a chap-book during +this last period and in this costume began a new life. It was turned +into verse in 1672, but the highest and most extraordinary compliment +of Greene’s performance was its translation into French, not only once +but twice. The first time was at a moment when the English language +and literature were practically unknown and as good as non-existent to +French readers. In fact every thing from Greene’s pen sold. All of his +writings enjoyed great popularity in their day, and, after the lapse of +three centuries, have been deemed worthy of publication, insuring the +rehabilitation of Greene’s splendid genius.” + +We are content to believe that almost all of the so-called posthumous +writings of Robert Greene are spurious, and that but few genuine chips +were found in the literary work-shop of the poet after his death. +We accept the very striking and impressive address to his brother +play-wrights, the after-words to a “Groats Worth of Wit.” We also may +shyly accept the sweet wife letter as the authentic product of the +poet’s mind, heart and hand. Of this letter, there are two versions, +neither of which are very trustworthy, as both are from posthumed +pamphlets. One, which we believe to be a forgery, is found in “The +Repentance.” The other is found in a pamphlet written by his malignant +enemy, Harvey, which contains an account of the poet’s last illness and +death. Nash writes about Harvey, “From the lousy circumstance of his +poverty before his death and sending that miserable writt to his wife, +it cannot be but thou lyest, learned Gabriel.” We would not set down as +auto-biographical the posthumous pamphlets, even though of unquestioned +authenticity, for in the repentance Greene is made to say, “I need not +make long discourse of my parents who for their gravitie and honest +life are well known and esteemed among their neighbors, namely in the +citie of Norwich where I was bred and borne;” and then he is made to +contradict all this in “Groats Worth of Wit,” where the father is +called Gorinius, a despicable miser. “Greene is not known to have had a +brother to be the victim of his cozenage.” + +As “there is a soul of truth in things erroneous,” there may be a soul +of truth in the following letter contained in “The Repentance”: + + “Sweet wife, if ever there was any good will or friendship between + thee and me, see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt. I owe + him tenne pounds and but for him I had perished in the streetes. + Forget and forgive my wrongs done unto thee and Almighty God have + mercie on my soule. Farewell till we meet in heaven for on earth thou + shalt never see me more. + + “This 2nd day of Sept., 1592. + + “Written by thy dying husband, + + “ROBERT GREENE.” + +The reader will notice the statement in the posthumed letter that the +poet had contracted a debt to the sum of ten pounds, equal to $400 +present money, but there is nothing whatever about leaving many papers +in sundry bookseller’s hands which Chettle averred in the address “To +the Gentlemen Readers Kind Hearts Dreame.” If this were a fact, the +bookseller doubtless would have been called upon; “see this bearer (my +host) satisfied of his debt,” and sweet wife would not have bourne the +burden while booksellers felt themselves blest to pay dear for the very +dregs of her husband’s wit. + +Those writers who express no doubt of the authenticity of the posthumed +pamphlets, leave their readers to set down as auto-biographical +whatever portions of those pieces he may think proper. At the same +time the trend of impulse is given the reader by the critics that he +may not fail to read the story of the poet’s life out of characters +devoid of all faith in honesty and in virtue, while the author (Greene) +is anxious evidently to point a moral by them and reprove vice. These +forged pamphlets and so-called auto-biographical pamphlets make Greene +accuse himself of crimes which he surely did not commit, such as the +crime of theft and murder. He says, “I exceeded all others in these +kinds of sinnes,” and he is represented as the most atrocious villain +that ever walked the earth. There is not an atom of evidence adduced +to show Francisco in “Never Too Late” was intended by the author for +a picture of himself, and we do not believe that Greene wrote the +pamphlet in which Roberto, in “Groats Worth of Wit” is one of the +despicable characters. + +Very little is known with any degree of certainty concerning the +personal life of Robert Greene, and very little, if anything, in +regard to his family or ancestry, although much prominence is given by +imaginary writers to the history of his person in the manuals of our +literature. These writers attach an auto-biographical reality to their +dreams of fancy. They take advantage of Greene’s unbounded sincerity +and his own too candid confession in the address to the play-writers, +and of his irrepressible desire to sermonize, whether in plays or +pamphlets, with all the fervor of a devout Methodist having a license +to exhort. The closest analogy to Greene’s position, in fact, is that +of the revival preacher—as Prof. Storojenko puts it—“who, to make the +picture of the present as telling as possible, sees and paints his +past in its very blackest colors. This self-flagellation is strongly +connected with a really attractive feature of Greene’s character; we +mean his sincerity, a boundless sincerity which never allowed him to +spare himself. Robert Greene was incapable of posing and pretending to +be what he was not. This is why we may fearlessly believe him when he +speaks of the anguish of his soul and the sincerity of his repentance. +A man whose deflection from the path of virtue cost him so much moral +suffering cannot, of course, be measured by the same standard as the +man who acts basely, remains at peace with himself and defends his +faults by all kinds of sophistry. Speaking further of his literary +labors, he never dealt in personalities in exposing some of the crying +nuisances of London and is perfectly silent as to the moral change in +his own character, which was the fruit of his dealing with them. In a +word, he conceals all that might, in his opinion, modify the sentence +that he pronounces on his own life for the edification of others.” + + + + +IV + + +There is a commendative piece of writing which should be read in +connection with Greene’s letter to “divers play-makers.” We refer +to the preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams,” written by Henry Chettle, +which was registered December 8, 1592. Chettle says, “About three +months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry +book-seller’s hands, among others, his ‘Groats Worth of Wit’ in which +a letter written to diverse play-makers is offensively by one or +two of them taken.” Chettle’s statement about many papers in sundry +book-sellers hands may be discredited because of the poet’s urgent +necessities, and the strong desire on the part of book-sellers to +publish Greene’s writings. Of this we may be sure, that the letter was +not placed in book-sellers hands by Greene or for him. He would not +have called his friends to repentance in that way, for it would have +given publicity to the defects in the lives of his friends as well as +his own. + +The letter evidences the fact of its having been written as a private +letter to three of the poet’s friends (Marlowe, Nash and Peele). +If sent, it did not reach them, but was surreptitiously procured, +doubtless, by some hack-writer, (inferentially, Henry Chettle, who +transcribed it.) Gabriel Harvey may have been accessory to its +procurement, as his ghoulish instinct led him to visit the poor +shoemaker’s house where Greene died, on the day following the poet’s +funeral in search of matter foul and defamatory, and with ink of +slander to blacken the poet’s memory. This snobbish ape of gentility, +Gabriel Harvey, hated Greene because he called his father by “the craft +he gets his living with.” However, when Greene learned that Harvey +was ashamed of his father’s humble employment, that of ropemaker, +he straightway canceled the offensive allusion, but Harvey still +continued to manifest the same hateful malignity and venomous spite. +The letter is a fine character study of the three poets addressed. +Greene drew out the true feature of every distinguishing mark or trait, +both mental and moral, of these, his fellow-craftsmen, who, though he +did not name them, are asserted to be Marlowe, Nash and Peele. Greene +characterized them individually, and twice he collectively admonished +them thus, “Base minded men all three of you, if by my miseries ye be +not warned,” and, in the concluding part of the letter, “But now return +I again to you three, knowing my miseries is to you no news and let me +heartily entreat you to be warned by my harmes.” + +All of Shakspere’s biographers and commentators aver that Shakspere was +not one of the three persons addressed. How then could Chettle’s words +bear witness to his (Shakspere’s) civil demeanor or factitious grace +in writing. Mr. Fleay stated many years ago (1886) that there was an +entire misconception of Chettle’s language that Shakspere was not one +of those who took offense. They are expressly stated to have been two +of the three authors addressed by Greene. The recent Shakespearean +writers have evidently mistaken Chettle’s placation of Nash or Peele, +or either of the three play-makers addressed by Greene, it does not +matter which, for an apology to Shakspere, who was not the object of +Greene’s satire or Chettle’s placation for were not Nash, Marlowe and +Peele each “excellent in the quality he professes?” Had they not lived +in an age of compliment they would have merited these complimental +phrases of Henry Chettle? For their names were in the trump of fame. + +Christopher Marlowe, the first great English poet, was the father of +English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse. He is, by +general consent, identified with the first person addressed by Greene, +“With thee will I first begin, thou famous gracer of tragedians, who +hath said in his heart there is no God. Why should thy excellent wit, +His gift, be so blinded that thou should give no glory to the giver?” +The second person referred to is identifiable with Thomas Nash, “With +thee I join, young juvenall, that byting satyrist,” though not with +equal accord, as the first with Marlowe, as some few persons prefer to +name Thomas Lodge. This predilection for Lodge is based on their having +been co-authors in the making of a play (“That lastlie with me together +writ a comedie”). This fact, however, signifies very little, for it +is generally conceded that Marlowe, Nash, Peele, Lodge and Greene +mobilized their literary activities in the production of not a few of +the earlier plays called Shakspere’s. + +We are convinced that Lodge was not the person addressed by Greene as +young juvenall. He was absent from England at the date of Greene’s +letter, having left in 1591 and did not return till 1593. Moreover, +he had declared his intention long before to write no more for the +theatre. In 1589 he vowed “to write no more of that whence shame doth +grow.” At Christmas time in 1592 he was in the Straits of Magellan. +Born in 1550, Lodge led a virtuous and quiet life. He was seventeen +years older than Nash, and four years older than Greene, who would +not, in addressing one four years his senior, have used these words, +“Sweet boy might I advise thee.” The youthfulness of Nash fits well. +He was boyish in appearance. Born in Nov., 1567, he was seven years +younger than Greene, and was the youngest member of their fellowship. +The mild reproof “for his too much liberty of speech” contained in the +letter, justifies the belief that Thomas Nash was referred to as “young +juvenall, that byting satyrist, who had vexed scholars with bitter +lines.” + +The equal unanimity and general consent which identifies the first with +Marlowe, identifies the third and last person, who had been co-worker +in drama making of the same fellowship, with George Peele, “and thou +no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing +inferior” driven (as myself) to “extreame shifts, a little have I to +say to thee.” Chettle could, however, have bourne witness to Peele +“his civil demeanor and factitious grace in writing.” Peele held the +situation of city poet and conductor of pageants for the court. His +first pageant bears the date of 1585, his earliest known play, “The +Arraignment of Paris” was acted before 1584. “Peele was the object of +patronage of noblemen for addressing literary tributes for payment. The +Earl of Northumberland seems to have presented him with a fee of three +pounds. In May, 1591, when Queen Elizabeth visited Lord Burleigh’s +seat of Theabald, Peele was employed to compose certain speeches +addressed to the queen, which deftly excused the absence of the master +of the house, by describing in blank verse in his ‘Polyphymnic,’ +the honorable triumph at tilt. Her majesty was received by the +Right Honorable the Earl of Cumberland.” In January, 1595, George +Peele, Master of Arts, presented his “Tale of Troy” to the great Lord +Treasurer through a simple messenger, his eldest daughter, “necessities +servant.” Peele was a practised rhetorician, who embellished his +writings with elegantly adorned sentences and choice fancies. He was +a man of polished intellect and social gifts, and possessed of a very +winsome personality. “His soft, caressing woman voice” low, sweet and +soothing, may have had a considerable effect upon Chettle, and could +not have been unduly honored by Chettle’s apology in witnessing “his +civil demeanor and factitious grace in writing.” + +As Henry Chettle had been brought into some discredit by the +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.” + +It was not the least of John Shakspere’s misfortunes that in November, +1582, his eldest son, William, added to his embarrassments, by +premature and forced marriage. It is the practice of Shakespere’s +biographers to pass hurriedly over this event in the young man’s life, +for there is nothing commendable in his marital relations. There +is expressed in it irregularity of conduct and probable desertion +on his part; pressure was brought to bear on the young man by his +wife’s relations, and he was forced to marry the woman whom he had +wronged. Who can believe that their marriage was a happy one, when +the only written words contained in his will are not words expressive +of connubial endearment, such as “dear wife” or “sweet wife,” but “my +wife?” He had forgotten her, but by an interlineation in the final +draft, she received his second best bed with its furniture. This was +the sole bequest made to her. + +We are by no means sure of the identity of his wife. We do not know +that she and Shakespere ever went through the actual ceremony of +marriage, unless her identity is traceable through Anne Wateley, as a +regular license was issued for the marriage of William Shaxpere and +Anne Wateley of Temple Grafton, November 27, 1583. Richard Hathaway, +the reputed father of Shakspere’s wife, Anne, in his will dated +September 1, 1581, bequeathed his property to seven children, his +daughters being Catherin, Margaret and Agnes. No Anne was mentioned. +The first published notice of the name of William Shakspere’s +(supposed) wife appears in Rowe’s “Life of Shakespere” (1709), wherein +it is stated that she “was the daughter of one Hathaway said to have +been a substantial yeoman in the neighborhood of Stratford.” This +was all that Betterton, the actor Rowe’s informant, could learn at +the time of his visit to Stratford-on-Avon. The exact time of this +visit is unknown, but it was probably about the year 1690. This lack +of knowledge in regard to the Hathaways shows that the locality of +Anne Hathaway’s residence, or that of her parents, was not known at +Stratford. The house at Shottery, now known as Anne Hathaway’s cottage, +and reached from Stratford by fieldpaths, may have been the home of +Anne Hathaway, wife of William Shakspere, before his marriage, but of +this there is no proof. + +Shakspere was married under the name “Shagspere,” but the place of +marriage is unknown, as his place of residence is not mentioned in +the bond. In the registry of the bishop of the diocese (Worcester) +is contained a deed wherein Sandells and Richardson, husbandmen of +Stratford, bound themselves in the bishop’s consistory court on +November 28, 1582, as a surety for forty pounds, to free the bishop +of all liability should any lawful impediment, by reason of any +precontract, or consanguinity, be subsequently disclosed to imperil +the validity of the contemplated marriage of William Shakspere with +Anne Hathaway. Provided, that Anne obtained the consent of her friends, +the marriage might proceed with at once proclaiming the bans of +matrimony. The wording of the bond shows that, despite the fact that +the bridegroom was a minor by nearly three years, the consent of his +parents was neither called for, nor obtained, though necessary “for +strictly regular procedure.” Sandells and Richardson, representing +the lady’s family, ignored the bridegroom’s family completely. In +having secured the deed, they forced Shakspere to marry their friend’s +daughter in order to save her reputation. Soon afterwards—within six +months—a daughter was born. Moreover, the whole circumstances of +the case render it highly probable that Shakspere had no thought of +marriage, for the waning fortune of his father had made him acquainted +with the “cares of bread.” He was a penniless youth, not yet of age, +having neither trade, nor means of livelihood, and was forced by her +friends into marrying her—a woman eight years older than himself. In +1585 she presented him with twins. + +When he left Stratford for London we do not know positively, but the +advent of the twins is the approximate date of the youth’s Hegira. +He lived apart from his wife for more than twenty-five years. The +breath of slander never touched the good name of Anne (or Agnes), the +neglected wife of William Shakspere. There is _prima-facie_ evidence +that the playbroker’s wife fared in his absence no better than his +father and mother, who, dying intestate in 1601 and 1608, respectively, +were buried somewhere by the Stratford church, but there is no trace +of any sepulchral monument, or memorial. If anything of the kind had +been set up by their wealthy son, William Shakspere, it would certainly +have been found by someone. The only contemporary mention made of the +wife of Shakspere, between her marriage in 1582 and her husband’s +death in 1616, was as the borrower, at an unascertained date, of forty +shillings from Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her father’s +shepherd. The money was unpaid when Whittington died in 1601, and his +executor was directed to recover the sum from Shakspere and distribute +it among the poor of Stratford. There is disclosed in this pecuniary +transaction, coupled with the slight mention of her in the will and the +barring of her dower, _prima facie_ evidence of William Shakspere’s +indifference to, and neglect of, if not dislike for, his wife. All +this is in striking contrast with the conduct of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom +the biographers of Shakespere have attempted to disparage, and whose +endearment for his wife is so feelingly expressed in his will. And, in +contrast also, is the conduct of Edward Alleyn, famous as an actor, and +as the founder of Dulwich College, who lived with his wife in London, +and called her “sweet mouse.” + +The tangibility of this Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon is very much in +evidence along pecuniary lines, especially as money lender, land-owner, +speculator and litigant. In 1597 he bought New Place in Stratford +for sixty pounds; also mentioned as a holder of grain at Stratford X +quarters. The following entry is in Chamberlain’s accounts at Stratford +in 1598: “Paid to Mr. Shaxpere for one lode of stone xd;” in the same +year Richard Quiney wrote to William Shakspere for a loan of thirty or +forty pounds; in 1599 William Shakspere was taken into the new Globe +Theatre Company as partner; in 1602 Shakspere bought one hundred seven +acres of arable land at Stratford for three hundred two pounds (in +his absence the conveyance was given over to his brother, Gilbert); +in the same year he bought a house with barns, orchards, and gardens, +from Hercules Underhill for sixty pounds; also a cottage close to his +house, New Place; in 1605 Shakspere bought the thirty-two-year lease of +half Stratford tithes for four hundred forty pounds; in 1613 Shakspere +bought a house near Blackfriars’ Theatre for one hundred and forty +pounds, and mortgaged it next day for sixty pounds; in 1612 Shakspere +is mentioned in a law suit brought before Lord Ellsimore about +Stratford tithes; in 1611 Hamnet, his only son, died at Stratford at +the age of eleven and half years. The father, however, set up no stone +to tell where the boy lay. + +In the autumn of the year 1614 Shakspere became implicated with the +landowners, William Combe and Arthur Mannering, in the conspiracy to +enclose the common field in the vicinity of Stratford. The success of +this rapacious scheme would have advantaged Shakspere in his freehold +interest, but might have affected adversely his interest in the tithes, +so he secured himself against all possible loss by obtaining from +Riplingham, Combe’s agent, in October, 1614, a deed of indemnification; +then, in the spirit of his agreement, he acted in unison with the two +greedy land-sharks to rob the poor people of their ancient rights of +pasturage. The unholy coalition caused great excitement. The humble +citizens of Stratford were thoroughly aroused, and the town corporation +put up a sharp and vigorous opposition to the scheme, for enclosure +would have caused decay of tillage, idleness, penury, depopulation, and +the subversion of homes. Happily, the three greedy cormorants Combe, +Mannering and Shakspere failed in their efforts and the common field +was unenclosed. + +Shakspere is thought to have been penurious for his litigious strivings +point in that direction, but this feature of his character was not +disclosed in 1596 and 1599, when he sought to have his family enrolled +among the gentry, as shown by his extravagance in bribing the officers +of the Herald College to issue a grant of arms to his father, “a +transaction which involved,” says Dr. Farmer, “the falsehood and +venality of the father, the son and two kings-at-arms, and did not +escape protest, for if ever a coat was cut from whole cloth we may be +sure that this coat-of-arms was the one.” Shakspere himself was not in +a position to apply for a coat-of-arms—“a player stood far too low in +the social scale for the cognizance of heraldry.” Nevertheless, recent +writers on the subject of Shakespeare stamp this bogus coat-of-arms on +the covers of their books. We know that the Shaksperes did not belong +to the Armigerous part of the population, and that they stood somewhat +lower in the social scale than either the Halls or Quineys, who bore +marital relations with them. + +Shakspere’s son-in-law, John Hall, was a master of arts and an eminent +physician. He was summoned more than once to attend the Earl and +Countess of Northampton at Ludlow Castle. He was of the French Court +School, and was opposed to the indiscriminate process of bleeding. On +June 5, 1607, Dr. Hall was married at Stratford-on-Avon to Shakspere’s +eldest daughter, Susanna. Stratford then contained about fifteen +hundred inhabitants. One hundred sixty-two years later, Garrick gave +his unsavory description of Stratford-on-Avon as “the most dirty, +unseemly, ill-paved, wretched-looking town in all Britain.” Cottages of +that day in Stratford consisted of mud walls and thatched roofs. “At +this period and for many generations afterwards the sanitary conditions +of the thoroughfares of Stratford-on-Avon were simply terrible.” + +On February 10, 1616, Thomas Quiney, a vintner, and also an +accomplished scholar and penman, was married at Stratford church to +Judith, Shakspere’s younger daughter, who could neither read nor write. +The marriage ceremony took place without a license or proclaiming the +bans. For this breach of ecclesiastical procedure both the parties were +summoned to the court at Worcester and threatened with excommunication. +When the fortune hunter goes forth to woe, and is determined to win, +he is content to wade through reeking refuse and muckheaps to marry a +rich heiress and does not much care if her histrionic father by XXXIX +Elizabeth were a vagabond. + +If “there is a soul of truth in things erroneous,” so there may be a +soul of truth in the creditableness of the Shakspere traditions, for +in them are revealed the environment in which they had their genesis, +and the character of the inventor or fabricator. All of the traditions +are comparatively recent or modern, and were made current by people +who were, with few exceptions, coarse and densely ignorant. These +apocryphal accounts serve to show also how little educated people knew, +or cared, about writing with literary or historical accuracy when +Shakspere was the subject. Unfortunately all of the traditions about +Shakspere are of a degrading character. + +The poaching escapade of his having robbed a park is one of the +invented stories of fancy-mongers. There is very little likelihood +that the young husband, with a wife and three babies to support, would +voluntarily place himself in a position where he would have to flee +from Sir Thomas Lucy’s prosecution; thereby degrading the lowermost +rank of life by bringing disgrace upon himself, his wife and children, +while his parents in straitened circumstances were struggling to keep +the wolf from the door. The records show that Sir Thomas Lucy had no +park either at Charlecote or Fulbroke, still the Lucys of a later day +were not anxious to lose the honor of having spanked Shakspere for +poaching on the ancestral preserves. + +England was called in those days “The toper’s paradise,” and tradition +informs us that Shakspere was one of the Bedford topers. However, +we should not infer from this that William Shakspere, a firm man of +business, was at any time a drunken sot. The only story recorded during +Shakspere’s life is contained in John Manningham’s note-book. It savors +strongly of the tavern, the diarist criminating Shakspere’s morals. +This entry was made on March 13, 1601, the reference being to player +Shakspere. + +No wonder that such eminent votaries of Shakspere as Stevens, Hallam, +Dyce and Emerson are disappointed and perplexed, for, while the +record concerning the life of the player, money-lender, landowner, +play-broker, speculator and litigant are ample, they disclose nothing +of a literary character; but the pecuniary litigation evidence, growing +out of Shakspere’s devotion to money-getting in London and Stratford, +does unfold his true life and character. The records do not furnish a +single instance of friendship, kindness or generosity, but upon the +delinquent borrower of money he rigidly evoked the law, which gave a +generous advantage to the creditor, and its vile prison to the debtor. + +In 1600 Shakspere brought action against John Clayton for seven pounds +and got judgment in his favor. He sued Philip Rogers, a neighbor in +Stratford Court, for one pound, fifteen shillings and six pence due +for malt sold, and two shillings loaned. In August, 1608, Shakspere +prosecuted John Addenbroke to recover a debt of six pounds. He +prosecuted this last suit for a couple of years until he got the +defendant into prison. The prisoner was bailed out by Horneby. +Addenbroke, running away, escaped from the clutches of his tormentor, +who then bore down on his security, Horneby. + +“The pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of imprisoning him, +and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts and supporting +his family, grate upon our feelings,” says Richard Grant White, “and,” +adds this eminent Shakspearean, “we hunger and we receive these husks, +we open our mouths for food and we break our teeth against these +stones.” We may be sure that there was left in the impoverished home +of John Addenbroke little more palatable than husks and stones, when +the father fled to escape from the clutches of his insistent creditor, +William Shakspere of Stratford. + +The paltry suits he brought to recover debts do not tend to disclose +this Shakspere’s “radiant temperament,” or fit him to receive the +adjective, “gentle,” except in contumely for his claim to gentility. It +is not known that Shakspere ever gave hospitality to the necessities +of the poor of his native shire, for whom, it appears, there beat no +pulse of tenderness. A man of scanty sensibilities he must have been. +The poor working people of Stratford, we may be sure, shed no tear at +this Shakspere’s departure from the world. + +We do not envy the man, who can regard these harsh pecuniary practices +in this Shakspere, as commendable traits of his worldly wisdom, for +he was shrewd in money matters, and could have invested his money in +London and Stratford so as not to have brought sorrow and distress upon +his poor neighbors. These matters are small in themselves, but they +suggest a good deal, for they bear witness to sorrow-stricken mothers, +hungry children and fathers in loathsome prisons, powerless to provide +food, warmth and light for the home. The diary, or note-book, of Philip +Henslowe, the theatrical manager and play-broker, shows that Henslowe +was himself a very penurious and grasping man, who, taking advantage +of starving play-makers’ necessities, became very wealthy. William +Shakspere, of Stratford-on-Avon, as a theatrical manager, became rich +also, but his note-book has not been preserved, so nothing is known +of his business methods in dealing with the poor play-makers; but the +literary antiquarians, by ransacking corporations’ records and other +public archives, have proven that Shakspere was very much such a man as +the old pawnbroker and play-broker, Philip Henslowe, of a rival house. + +The biographers should record these facts, and not strive to shun +them, for the literary antiquaries have unearthed and brought them +forward, and they tell the true story of Shakspere’s life, though we +do not linger lovingly over them, for, like Hallam, “we as little feel +the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, +was afterward an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired +to his native place in middle life, with the author of ‘Macbeth’ and +‘Lear,’” for the Stratford records are as barren of literary matter as +the lodgings in Silver street, London. Not a crumb for the literary +biographer in either place! + +Professor Wallace has added another non-literary document in the matter +of Shakspere’s deposition in the case of Bellot vs. Mountjoy, which he +discovered in the public record office, but it in no way contributes to +a literary biography. The truth is that, with all their industry, the +antiquarians have in this regard not brought to light a single proven +fact to sustain the claim that this Shakespere was either the author of +poems or plays. This bit of new knowledge gives us a glimpse of this +William Shakspere as an evasive witness, having a conveniently short +memory. These depositions disclose his intermediation in the matter of +making two hearts happy, but not the faintest glimpse of the author +of poems or plays. When the claim of authorship is challenged, new +particulars of the life of Shakspere, such as this and others that have +been unearthed by antiquarians, whether in the public record office +or corporation archives, are alike worthless so far as establishing +the poet Shakspere’s identity. They fail to confirm the identity of +the actor Shakspere with the author of the plays and poems that are +associated with his name. There are no family traditions, no books, +manuscripts, or letters, addressed to him, or by him, to poet, peer +or peasant. The credible evidence supplied by contemporaneous, or +antiquarian, research do not identify the player and landowner with the +author of “Hamlet,” “Lear” and “Othello.” + +Our belief in the pseudonymity of the author of the poems and +plays, called Shakespeare, is strengthened by the absence of verse +commemorative of concurrent events, such as the strivings of his +boldest countrymen in the great Elizabethan age. There is, from +his pen, neither word of cheer, nor sympathy, with the daring +and suffering warriors and adventurers of that time, although his +contemporaries versified eulogies to the heroes of those days for their +stirring deeds. There is, in the poems and plays, no elegiac lay in +memory of Elizabeth, “the glorious daughter of the illustrious Henry,” +as Robert Greene calls her, nor is there one line of mourning verse at +the death of Prince Henry, the noblest among the children of the king, +by a writer who was always a strenuous and consistent supporter of +prerogative against the conception of freedom. This is another evidence +of the secrecy maintained as to the authorship of the poems and plays. +We cannot discover a single laudatory poem or commendatory verse, +or a line of praise of any publication, or writer of his time. All +this is in contrast with his contemporaries, whose personalities are +identifiable with their literary work, and, so liberal of commendation +were they, that they literally showered commendatory verses on literary +works of merit, or those thought to have merit. Of these, thirty-five +were bestowed on Fletcher, a score or more on Beaumont, Chapman and +Ford, while Massinger received nineteen. Ben Jonson’s published works +contain thirty-seven pieces of commendation. His Roman tragedy, +“Sejanus,” was acclaimed by ten contemporary poets. In praise of his +comedy, “Volpone,” there are seven poems. The versified compliments +bestowed on him by his fellow craftsmen embrace many of the most +celebrated names antecedent to his death, which occurred in 1637. Early +in 1638 a collection of some thirty elegies were published under the +title of “Jonsonus Virbius,” or “The Memory of Ben Jonson,” in which +nearly all the leading poets of the day, except Milton, took part. + +It must appear strange to the votaries of Shakspere that Jonson should +have received so many crowns of mourning verse, while for Shakspere +of Stratford-on-Avon, the reputed author of “Hamlet,” “Lear” and +“Macbeth,” there wailed no dirge. Not a single commendatory verse +was bestowed by a contemporary poet antecedent to his death, nor +was a single elegiac poem written of him in the year of his death, +1616. Already in that fatal year there had been mourning for Francis +Beaumont, who received immediate posthumous honors by many poets, in +memorial odes, sighing forth the requiem to his name in mournful elegy. + +Eight and forty days after the death of Francis Beaumont, all that was +mortal of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was buried in the +chancel of his parish church, in which, as part owner of the tithes and +consequently one of the lay rectors, he had the right of interment. +Over the spot where his body was laid, there was placed a slab with the +inscription imprecating a curse on the man who should disturb his bones, + + “Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare + To digg the dust enclosed here + Bless be ye man yt spares this stown + And curst be he yt moves my bones.” + +This rude, absurd and ignorant epitaph has given much trouble to +writers on the subject of Shakespeare. The usual explanation of the +threat is given that the Puritans thought that the church had been +profaned by the ashes of an actor. These ignorant words could not have +been written as a deterrent to the Puritans, for they did not belong to +the ignorant section of the population, but to the middle class, nor +would they have been deterred from invading Shakspere’s tomb by the +superstitious fear of a threat contained in doggerel verse cut on the +tomb. There was not the least danger that the actor’s grave would be +violated by the Puritans, for Dr. John Hall, Shakspere’s son-in-law, +was a Puritan. If he had had this warning epitaph cut on the tomb it +would have been written in scholarly English. The doggerel lines, rude +as they are, satisfied, doubtless, the widow and daughters, themselves +ignorant. The most pleasing epitaph, it seems to us, would have been +one expressing a known wish of their “dear departed” in words, when +read by others, that would best suit their understandings, for the +Shakspere family were uncultured. They could not read the stupid +epitaph on his tomb, and so their hearts were not saddened as they +gazed upon an inscription of barbaric rudeness. + +Some slight circumstance may have given rise to William Hall’s +conjecture, during his visit to Stratford, in 1694, that Shakspere +authored his own epitaph, and that these lines were written to suit +the capacity of clerks and sextons, who, according to Hall, in course +of time would have removed Shakspere’s dust to the bone house. This is +not improbable from the point of view taken by those who believe that +Shakspere of Stratford wrote the doggerel epigram on John Combe, money +lender, and the vituperative ballad abusing the gentleman whose park he +(Shakspere) robbed, for the three compositions are of the same grade +of ignorant nonsense. But we do know that had the author of “Hamlet” +written his own epitaph, it would have been as deathless as the one +over the Countess of Pembroke: + + “Underneath this sable hearst + Lies the subject of all verse + Sidney’s sister—Pembroke’s mother + Death, ere thou hast slain another + Learned and fair and good as she + Time shall throw a dart at thee.” + +It should be borne in mind that clerks and sextons were not the only +ignorant people in and about Stratford. There were some that had a +grievance, or thought they had, which parish clerks and sextons had +not. We have reference to the poor debtors, who regarded Shakspere of +Stratford as a grasping usurer, hard upon poor people in his power, so +the curse inscribed slab was placed over Shakspere’s grave as a shield +to protect his ashes from those who would not hesitate to invade the +tomb of one whose memory had become hateful to them. If in pressing +his claim the money lender elects to be a tormentor, his name will be +execrated while living and a hateful memory when dead. + +One thing is evidenced by the maledictory epitaph; that the one who +wrote it was afraid the tomb might be violated by the removal of the +bones to the charnel house. Who were they that would most likely +invade Shakspere’s tomb? Obviously those, we repeat, who regarded him +as a hard-hearted man, who pressed poor debtors with all the rigor of +the law to enforce the payment of petty sums; the man who had shown +himself supremely selfish in an attempt to enclose the Stratford common +field; the man who would be made “a gentleman” by misrepresentation, +fraud and falsehood. The foregoing facts, and the legal and municipal +evidence bound up in dusty records, a bogus coat-of-arms, and a rude +epitaph, tell the true story of the life of William Shakspere of +Stratford-on-Avon. + +There is no record of any pretended living likeness of Shakspere better +representing him than the Stratford bust. This bust is erected on the +north side of the chancel of Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-on-Avon. +On the floor of the chancel in front of the monument are the graves of +Shakspere and his family. We have no means of ascertaining when the +monument and bust were erected. The first folio edition of his reputed +works was published in 1623. It contained words from Leonard Diggs +prefatory lines “and time dissolves thy Stratford moniment,” monument +being used interchangeably with tomb; but these words do not prove that +the bust was set up before 1623. His image was rudely cut, sensual and +clownish in appearance. + +There is not a tittle of evidence adduced to show that a knowledge +of Shakspere’s putative authorship of poems and plays was current +at Stratford when the first folio edition of his reputed works +was published in 1623. The records attest that Shakspere’s fame +reputatively as writer is posterior to this event. How strange it +must seem to those who claim for Shakspere an established reputation +as poet and dramatist of repute anterior to the first folio edition in +1623, that Dr. Hall, himself an author and most advantaged of all the +heirs by Shakspere’s death, should fail to mention his father-in-law in +his “cure-book” or observations! The earliest dated cure is 1617, the +year following Shakspere’s death, but there are undated ones. In “Obs. +XIX.” Hall mentions without date an illness of his wife, Mrs. Hall; +and we find him making a note long afterwards in reference to his only +daughter, Elizabeth, who was saved by her father’s skill and patience. +“Thus was she delivered from death and deadly diseases and was well +for many years.” The illness of Drayton is recorded without date in +“Obs. XXII.,” with its wee bit of a literary biography, and he is +referred to as “Mr. Drayton, an excellent poet.” Had Shakspere received +a like mention as a poet or writer by one who knew him so intimately, +what a delicious morsel it would have been to all those who have +followed the literary antiquarian through the dreary barren waste of +Shakespearean research. We have found nothing but husks, and these, +eulogists of Shakespeare—Hallam, Stevens and Emerson—refused to crunch! +For nearly three centuries the Stratford archives have contained all +matters concerning Shakspere’s life and character, and have given us +full knowledge of the man; nothing has been lost; but of his alleged +literary life, there is not a crumb, no family traditions, no books, +no manuscripts, no letters, no commendatory verses, plays, masques or +anthology. + +The biographers of Shakespeare have none of the material out of +which poets and dramatists are made, but only those facts which are +congruous with money lenders, land speculators, play-brokers and +actors; also, a good assortment of apocryphal stores and gossipy yarns +which have become traditional currency. According to Mark Twain there +is something more. He says, “When we find a vague file of chipmunk +tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village we know that +Hercules has been along.” Again he proceeds, “The bust, too, there in +the Stratford church, the precious bust, the calm bust with a dandy +mustache, and the putty face unseamed with care—that face which has +looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty +years, and will look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more with +the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.” + +Not having found the slightest trace of Shakespeare in 1592 as writer +of plays, or as adapter or elaborator of other men’s work, his +advent into literature must have been at a later date, if at all. In +1593 “Venus and Adonis” appeared in print with a dedication to Lord +Southampton, and signed “William Shakespeare.” In 1594 appeared another +poem, “Lucrece,” also with a dedication to Lord Southampton. The +poems bore no name of an author on the title page. Here is literary +tangibility, but does it establish the identity of their author, or +attest the responsibility of the young Stratford man for the poems +which were published under the name of Shakespeare? This was the first +mention of the now famous name? Was it a pseudonym, or was it the +true name of the author of the poem? The enthusiastic reception of +the poems awakens a suspicion when we learn that their popularity was +due to a belief in their lasciviency; and that the dedicatee was the +rakish Henry Wriothesley, third Earle of Southampton; and, furthermore, +that the name of the dedicator, “Shakespeare,” was one of a class of +nicknames which in 1593 still retained in some measure that which was +derisive in them. In 1487 a student at Oxford changed his own name of +“Shakespeare” into “Saunders,” because he considered it too expressive +and distinctive of rough manners, and significant of degradation, and +as such was unwilling to aid in its hereditary transmission, when all +that is derisive in the name Shakspere remained fixed and fossilized +in the old meaning. In those unlettered times, lascivious persons +were sometimes branded, so to speak, with the nickname “Shakspere.” +Primarily, the name has no militant signification. There is no such +personal name in any known list of British surnames. They are of the +parvenu class without ancestry. + +Mr. Sidney Lee admits that the Earle of Southampton is the only patron +of Shakspere that is known to biographical research (p. 126). By +what fact, or facts, may we ask, is the authenticity of the Earl’s +friendship or patronage attested? Southampton was the standing patron +of all the poets, the stock-dedicatee of those days. It was the fashion +of the times to pester him with dedications by poets grave and gay. +They were after those five or six pounds, which custom constrained +his Lordship to yield for having his name enshrined in poet’s lines. +All the poets of that age were dependents, and there is, with few +exceptions, the same display of pharisaic sycophancy, greediness, and +on the part of dedicatee an inordinate desire for adulation. Every +student of Elizabethan literature and history should know that the +Southampton-Shakspere friendship cannot be traced biographically. +The Earl of Southampton was a voluminous correspondent, but did not +bear witness to his friendship for Shakspere. A scrutinous inspection +of Southampton’s papers contained in the archives of his family, +descendants and contemporaries, yields nothing in support of the +contention that Southampton’s friendship, or patronage, is known +to biographical research, and it is as attestative as that other +apocryphal story preserved by Rowe “which is fast disappearing from +Shakespearean biography.” + +“There is one instance so singular in its munificence that if we +had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William +Davenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, +we should not venture to have inserted that my Lord Southampton at +one time gave him (Shakspere) a thousand pounds, to enable him to go +through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.” (Davenant +was the man who gave out that he was the natural son of Shakspere). +A present of a thousand pounds which equals at least twenty-five +thousand dollars to-day! The magnitude of the gift discredits the story +nevertheless, the startled Rowe, is the first to make it current, but +does not give his readers the ground for his assurance. Be it what it +may, he could hardly satisfy the modern reader that this man, a son, +who insinuatingly defiles the name and fair fame of his own mother, +is a credible witness, or that such a man is “fit for wolf bait.” +What purchase did Shakspere “go through with?” Not New Place in 1597, +for the purchase money was only sixty pounds. Neither could it have +been the Stratford estate in 1602, for at that time Southampton was a +prisoner in the Tower. In fact, the whole sum expended by Shakspere did +not amount to a thousand pounds in all. The truth is, the social Rules +of Tudor and Jacobin times did not permit peer and peasant to live on +terms of mutual good feeling. Almost all the poets in hope of gain, +penned adulatory sonnets in praise of Lord Southampton. In those times +they had a summary way of dealing with humble citizens. Jonson, Chapman +and Marston, were imprisoned for having displeased the king by a jest +in “Eastward Ho,”— + +“A nobleman to vindicate rank brought an action in the star-chamber +against a person, who had orally addressed him as ‘Goodman Morley.’” +The literati of those days found in scholastic learning, neither +potency, nor promise, to abrogate class distinctions by giving a +passport to high attainment in literature, poetry and philosophy. Ben +Jonson says, “The time was when men were had in price for learning, now +letters only make men vile. He is upbraidingly called a poet as if it +were a contemptible nickname.” + +Mr. Lee tells us, that the state papers and business correspondence +of Southampton were enlivened by references to his literary interest +and his sympathy with the birth of English Drama. (P. 316.). “However, +Mr. Lee has extracted no reference to Shakspere from the paper.” +Southampton’s zest for the theatre is based on the statement contained +in the “Sidney Papers” that he and his friend Lord Rutland “come not +to court but pass away the time merely in going to plays every day.” +When a new library for his old college, St. Johns, was in course +of construction, Southampton collected books to the value of three +hundred and sixty pounds wherewith to furnish it. Southampton’s +literary tastes and sympathy with the drama cannot be drawn from +his gift to the library, for it consisted largely of legends of the +saints and mediaeval chronicles. When and where did William Shakspere +acknowledge his obligations to the only patron of the player? According +to Mr. Lee, who is known to biographical research, not one of the +Shakespearean plays was dedicated to Southampton. The name “Shakspere” +is conspicuously absent from among the distinguished writers of his +day, who in panegyrical speech and song acclaimed Southampton’s release +from prison in 1602. + +Francis Meres, a pedantic schoolmaster and Divinity student, had his +“Palladis Tamia” registered September 7, 1598, and published shortly +after. Meres in his “Tamia” writes of the mellifluous and honey-tongued +Shakespeare, and his “Venus and Adonis,” and his “Lucrece,” and his +sugared sonnets to his friends, and enumerates twelve plays—though +at the time three only had been published with his name. Like others +of his contemporaries, Meres writes tritely of the honey-tongued, +the honey sweet and the sugared. With him, everything written is +mellifluent, but he says nothing of the man. In fact, no contemporary +left on record any definite impression of Shakespeare’s personal +character. Meres asserted that Ben Jonson was one of our best poets +for tragedy, when at that time (1598) Jonson had not written a single +tragedy, and but one comedy. + +Before, we transcribe, in part, “Wits Treasury” by Francis Meres, we +ask the readers’ pardon for this abuse of their patience, for Meres +merely repeats names of Greek, Latin and modern play-makers. “As +these tragic poets flourished in Greece—Aeschylus, Euripides” (in all +seventeen are named and these among the Latin, Accius, M. Attilus, +Seneca and several others). “So these are our best for tragedy; the +Lord Buckhurst, Dr. Leg of Cambridge, Dr. Eds of Oxford, Master Edward +Ferris—the author of the ‘Merriour for Magistrates,’—Marlowe, Peele, +Watson, Kyd, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker and Benjamin Jonson. +The best poets for comedy”—(Meres proceeds with his enumeration, naming +sixteen Greeks and ten Latins, twenty-six in all.) “So the best for +comedy amongst us be Edward, Earl of Oxford; Dr. Lager of Oxford; +Master Rowley; Master Edwards: eloquent and wittie John Lilly; Lodge; +Gascoyne; Greene; Shakespeare; Thomas Nash; Thomas Heywood; Anthony +Munday. Our best plotters: Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathaway and Henry +Chettle.” + +Meres does not seem to have considered it necessary to read before +reviewing. Had he done so he would not have placed the name of Lord +Buckhurst first in his list, giving primacy to this mediocrist, and +the author of “Romeo and Juliet,” whoever he was, ninth in his list of +dramatic poets which he considered best among the English for tragedy; +nor, would he have named for second place on the list Dr. Leg of +Cambridge, instead of the author of “The Jew of Malta” (Marlowe). What +has Dr. Eds of Oxford, whose name stands third in the Meres list, +written that he should have been mentioned in the same connection with +the author of “The White Devil” (Webster) or the author of that classic +“The Conspiracy,” and “The Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron” (Chapman)? +Why this commingling of such insignificant writers as Edward, Earl of +Oxford, Lord Buckhurst, Drs. Lager and Leg, with the giant brotherhood? +The fact is, so far as attesting the responsibility of anybody or +anything, the Meres averments are as worthless as “a musty nut.” What +was said of John Aubrey is also true of Francis Meres, “His brain was +like a hasty pudding whose memory and judgment and fancy were all +stirred together.” Yet this is the writer that many Shakespearean +commentators confidently appeal to, in part, and whose testimony, in +part, they, with equal unanimity impeach. + +The slight mention of Shakespeare by the “judicious Webster,” as Hazlet +calls him, comprehends no more than that Shakspere was one of the hack +writers of the day: “detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance.” For +mine own part I have ever truly cherished “my good opinion of other +men’s worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of +Master Chapman, the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson, +the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master +Beaumont and Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the +right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker +and Master Heywood.” + +These words written by the third greatest of English tragic poets +are very significant, for Webster wrote for the theatre to which +Shakspere, the player and play-broker, belonged; yet industry is +the only distinguishing mark in Shakspere which he must share with +Dekker, and Heywood, hack writers for the stage. Dekker’s many plays +attest his copious industry, when we remember that this writer spent +three years in prison, and Heywood’s industry cannot be doubted for +he claimed to have had a hand and main finger in two hundred twenty +plays. Copious industry signifies to the reader the existence of an +author not utterly unknown, it is true, but it fails to identify him +as the author of the immortal plays. What shall we say then? Were the +works called Shakespeare’s but little known? Shakspere’s biographers +say that they were the talk of the town. If that is true, then the +writer who was commended for industry was not regarded by Webster +as the author of “Hamlet,” “Lear,” and “Macbeth,” for Shakespeare’s +distinctive characteristics are not individualized from those of Dekker +and Heywood, while those of Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are. +In the last four named is perfect interlacement of personality with +authorship, but not so in Shakespeare. + +John Webster’s judgment of his fellow craftsman was just, “I have +ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours.” +Webster never conceals or misrepresents the truth by giving evasive, or +equivocating, evidence. He reveals the judicial trait of his character +in placing Chapman first among the poets then living, assuming that +the name Shakespeare was used by printers and publishers, if not by +writers, as an impersonal name, masking the name of a true poet. +Sidney, Marlowe and Spencer had then descended to the tomb. + +George Chapman’s name has not received due prominence in the modern +hand-books of English literature, but he was a bright torch and +numbered by his own generation, among the greatest of its poets. He, +whom Webster calls the “Prince’s Sweet Homer” and “My Friend,” was not +unduly honored by the “full and heightened style” which Webster makes +characteristic of him. “Our Homer-Lucan,” as he was gracefully termed +by Daniel, is a poet much admired by great men. Edmund Waller never +could read Chapman’s Homer without a degree of transport. Barry is +reputed to have said that when he went into the street after reading +it, men seemed ten feet high; Coleridge declares Chapman’s version of +the Odyssey to be as truly an original poem as the “Faerie Queene.” He +also declares that Chapman in his moral heroic verse stands above Ben +Jonson. “There is more dignity, more lustre, and equal strength.” + +Translation was in those times a new force in literature. By the +indomitable force and fire of genius Chapman has made Homer himself +speak English by translating the genius, and by having chosen that +which prefers the spirit to the letter. It is in his translation that +the “Iliad” is best read as an English book. Out of it there comes a +whiff of the breath of Homer. It is as massive and majestic as Homer +himself would have written in the land of the virgin queen. “He has +added,” says Swinburne, “a monument to the temple which contains the +glories of his native language, the godlike images, and the costly +relics of the past.” “The earnestness and passion,” says Charles Lamb, +“which he has put into every part of these poems would be incredible +to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek zeal for the +honor of his heroes is only paralleled by that fierce spirit of Hebrew +bigotry with which Milton, as if personating one of the zealots of the +old law, clothed himself when he sat down to paint the acts of Samson +against the uncircumcised.” It was the reflected Hellenic radiance of +the grand old Chapman version to the lifted eyes of Keats flooded with +the “light which never was on sea or shore.” This younger poet sang: + + “Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, + And many goodly states and kingdoms seen, + Round many western islands have I been, + Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold; + Oft of one wide expanse had I been told + That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne + Yet did I never breathe its pure serene + Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.” + +The preface to Webster’s tragedy, “The White Devil,” which contains +a slight mention of Shakespeare, was printed in 1612, after all the +immortal plays were written and their reputed author had returned to +Stratford, probably in 1611, in his forty-seventh year, where he lived +idly for five years before his death. John Webster possessed a critical +faculty and an independent judgment, but the way he makes mention of +Shakespeare shows that he knew nothing about the individual man, or +the work, called Shakespeare. + +The generous reference to “The laboured and understanding works of +Master Jonson” gives a clear idea of the main characteristics of the +work of Jonson, who, not having reached the fruition of his renown in +1611, but in the after time, came into Dryden’s view as “The greatest +man of the last age, the most learned and judicious writer any theatre +ever had.” John Webster writes of “the no less worthy composures of +Beaumont and Fletcher” then in the morning of life. They present an +admirable model for purity of vocabulary and simplicity of expression +and were of “loudest fame.” “Two of Beaumont’s and Fletcher’s plays +were acted to one of Shakespeare’s, or Ben Jonson’s,” in Dryden’s time. + +There is strong presumptive proof that printers and publishers in +Elizabethan and Jacobin times were in the habit of selecting names or +titles that would best sell their books. The most popular books or +best sellers they printed were books of songs, love-tales, comedies and +sonnets of the amorous, scented kind, and it mattered not to publishers +if the name printed on the title-page was a personal name, or one +impersonal. Title-pages were not even presumptive proof of authorship +in the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James. The printers chose to +market their publications under the most favorable conditions, and +some writers chose the incognizable name “Shakespeare” which had been +attached to the voluptuous poem “Venus and Adonis.” This was published +by Richard Field, in whose name it had been entered in the Stationer’s +Register in 1593. There was no name of an author on the title-page, but +the dedication was to the Earl of Southampton and was signed “William +Shakespeare.” This was the first appearance of the name “Shakespeare” +in literature, being the non-de-plume, doubtless, of the writer who +gave this erotic poem to the world—“The first heir of my invention.” + +Not finding “Shakespeare” in the anthology of his day, the most +natural inference would be that all those who wrote under the name +“Shakespeare” wrote incognito. We know that Marlowe, Beaumont, Greene, +Drayton and many writers of that age wrote anonymously for the +Elizabethan stage. Many of the anonymous writings have been retrieved; +much, doubtless, remains still to be reclaimed from the siftings of +what are named Early Comedy, Early History, and Pre-Shakespearean +Group of plays. Mr. Spedding had the good fortune to be the first to +demonstrate the theory of a divided authorship of “Henry VIII.,” to +reclaim for Fletcher “Wolsey’s Farewell to all his Greatness.” Thirteen +out of the seventeen scenes of “Henry the Eighth” are attributed by Mr. +Lee (P. 212) to Fletcher. A majority of the best critics now agree with +Miss Jane Lee, in the assignment of the second and third part of Henry +VI. to Marlowe, Greene and Peele. + +The difficulty of identifying Shakespeare, the author poet, with +the young man who came up from Stratford, has induced Shakespearean +scholars to question the unity of authorship. Mr. Swinburne tells us +that no scholar believes in the single authorship of “Andronicus.” +Mr. Lee admits that Shakespeare drew largely on the “Hamlet,” which +he has attributed to Kyd (P. 182). “It is scarcely possible,” says +Mr. Marshall in the “Irving Shakespeare,” “to maintain that the play +‘(Hamlet)’ referred to as well known in 1589, could have been by +Shakspere—that is—by the young actor from Stratford. Surely not. We +see the question of the unity of the author and authorship involves +the question of his identity.” It is evident that the author poet, +whoever he was, had, in his time of initiation, “purloyned plumes” from +Marlowe, Kyd and Greene, and, when nearing the close of his literary +career, according to Prof. A. H. Thorndike, he was a close imitator of +John Fletcher—not so much an innovator as an adapter. + +What do we know of Shakespeare, the author poet, “The Man in a Mask?” +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 + + Drummond Sir William, 39, 166, 167, 173, 176 + + Dearborn, 43 + + Daniel Samuel, 145, 173 + + Davis Cushman K., 41 + + Dowland John, 17 + + Diggs Leonard, 128 + + Dance-Scene, 100, 111, 124, 129 + + Dyce A., 114 + + Davenant Sir William, 135 + + Donne, 174 + + Dekker, 143, 162, 174 + + Drayton, 150, 153, 174 + + + Elizabeth Queen, 53, 157 + + Emerson R. W., 114, 130 + + + Fletcher John, 43, 122, 142, 148, 150, 152, 157 + + Fleay, 70 + + Ford John, 122 + + Farmer Dr., 110 + + Fuller Thomas, 159 + + + Garrick David, 111 + + Grosart A., 30 + + Greene Robert, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, + 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, + 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, + 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, + 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 121, 140, 150, 151 + + Gifford William, 165 + + Groats Worth of Wit, 6, 9, 61, 62, 65, 68, 76, 85, 87, 89 + + Galileo, 79 + + + Hathaway Richard, 102, 103 + + Howell James, 168, 176 + + Hall Dr. John, 100, 111, 124, 129 + + Hathaway Agnes or Anne, 103, 104, 106 + + Herrick, 45 + + Henry VI., 30 + + Henslowe Diary, 17, 19 + + Henslowe Philip, 17, 19, 32, 42, 89, 93, 117, 118, 152, 156 + + Hallam Henry, 114, 118, 130 + + Heywood, 24, 143 + + Halliwell-Phillips, 32, 156 + + Harvey Gabriel, 18, 40, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 62, 69 + + + Ingleby Dr., 37 + + + Jonson Ben, 24, 39, 59, 81, 90, 92, 93, 94, 122, 136, 137, 139, 140, + 142, 143, 145, 148, 152, 153, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, + 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176 + + James First, 43, 147 + + Jusserand J. J., 60 + + Jefferson Thomas, 79 + + + Kemp William, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, + 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 92 + + Kyd, 43, 151 + + Keats John, 146 + + Kind Hearts Dreams, 35, 63, 68, 76, 91 + + + Lucy Sir Thomas, 107, 113, 114 + + Lincoln Abraham, 89 + + Lodge Thomas, 34, 72, 73, 140, 152 + + Lee Sidney, 133, 137, 151 + + London, 15, 20, 21, 105 + + Lee Miss Jane, 150 + + Lucrece, 131, 138 + + Lamb Charles, 146 + + Lander Walter Savage, 153 + + + Marlowe Christopher, 6, 11, 30, 31, 35, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, + 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 144, 150, 151 + + Milton John, 49, 122, 146, 153 + + Mulcaster Richard, 101 + + Miller Joaquin, 50 + + Malone, 94 + + Mannering Arthur, 109, 110 + + Middleton, 174 + + Massinger Phillip, 122 + + Marston John, 24, 136, 162, 174 + + Meres Francis, 138, 139, 140, 141, 155 + + + Nash Thomas, 7, 11, 15, 18, 29, 30, 32, 35, 38, 45, 49, 52, 62, 69, + 70, 71, 72, 73, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 140 + + Napoleon, 96 + + Nicholson Dr., 172 + + Norwich, 20, 22, 62 + + + Overbury Sir Thomas, 43 + + + Peele George, 7, 11, 30, 35, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 83, 86, 151 + + Poe Edgar Allen, 48 + + + Quiney Richard, 108, 111, 112 + + + Rathway Richard, 24 + + Rosebery Lord, 96 + + Rowe N., 103, 134, 135 + + + William Shakspere the Stratfordian, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, + 12, 13, 14, 15, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 45, + 70, 71, 82, 86, 87, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, + 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, + 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, + 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 151, 152, 155, 156, 158, 159, + 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 177 + + Shakespeare the Author Poet, 2, 31, 33, 37, 39, 43, 55, 60, 70, 72, + 90, 124, 130, 131, 132, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, + 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, + 171, 172, 175 + + Shakspere John, 96, 97, 98, 101 + + Shakspere Susana, 100, 111 + + Shakspere Judith, 100, 112 + + Shakspere Hamnet, 108 + + Shake-scene, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 + + Shake-rags, 16, 23 + + Spencer Edmund, 144, 156, 157, 173 + + Stratford-on-Avon, 1, 12, 41, 90, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, + 108 + + Sidney Sir Phillip, 18, 144, 157 + + Stevens George, 2, 114, 130 + + Swinburne A., 47, 96, 146, 151 + + Scott Sir Walter, 59, 157 + + Strojenko Prof., 66 + + Stratford Bust, 128, 131 + + Spedding James, 150 + + Saunders, 132 + + Southampton Earl of, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 149 + + + Tarlton Richard, 15, 114, 130 + + Tyrwhitt Thomas, 9 + + “The Nine Days Wonder”, 16, 21 + + Twain Mark, 130 + + Thompson James, 49 + + Taft William H., 79 + + Taylor John, 175 + + Thorndike A. H., 152 + + Tolstoy Leo, 90 + + + Upstart Crow, 5, 9, 28, 82 + + + Venus and Adonis, 32, 131, 138, 149 + + Voltair, 157 + + + Washington George, 3 + + Wilson Robert, Senior, 25, 26, 27 + + White Richard Grant, 116 + + Wallace Professor, 119 + + Waller Edmund, 145 + + Wately Anna, 102 + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE + + Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been + corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within + the text and consultation of external sources. + + Some hyphen inconsistencies are retained as printed. + + Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, + and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. + + Page 21. “Anti-Martnist” replaced by “Anti-Martinist”. + Page 21. “Bodelean Library” replaced by “Bodleian Library”. + Page 24. “William Rowly” replaced by “William Rowley”. + Page 25. “blamphemous” replaced by “blasphemous”. + Page 28. “amendor” replaced by “amender”. + Page 43. “Kid’s” replaced by “Kyd’s”. + Page 47. “assauged” replaced by “assuaged”. + Page 47. “Swinburn” replaced by “Swinburne”. + Page 49. “harp and pendant” replaced by “sharp and pendant”. + Page 72. “prediliction” replaced by “predilection”. + Page 85. “‘of Wit’” replaced by “of Wit’”. + Page 118. “ramsacking” replaced by “ransacking”. + Page 121. “elegaic” replaced by “elegiac”. + Page 122. ‘“Volpone,” There’ replaced by ‘“Volpone,” there’. + Page 127. “charnal” replaced by “charnel”. + Page 132. “Worthesley” replaced by “Wriothesley”. + Page 138. “Palladin” replaced by “Palladis”. + Page 141. “John Aubury” replaced by “John Aubrey”. + Page 157. “Popuelin” replaced by “Poquelin”. + Page 157. “Moliere.” replaced by “Molière”. + Page 162. ‘“Poetaster on him.”’ replaced by ‘“Poetaster” on him.’. + Page 166. ‘William Shakespeare, “an’ replaced by ‘William Shakespeare, an’. + Page i. “Aubury John” replaced by “Aubrey John”. + Page ii. “Robert Greene” replaced by “Greene Robert”. + Page iv. “Swinburn” replaced by “Swinburne”. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77063 *** |