hence; Away; Shift; and by Circumlocution, Rather your Roome than your Companie; Lets see your backe; Come againe when I bid you, when you are called, sent for, intreated, willed, desired, invited; Spare us your place; Another in your stead; A ship of salt for you; Save your credite; You are next the doore; The doore is open for you; There is no body holdeth you; No body teares your sleeve, &c. . . . And in a word, to close up these proofs of our Copiousnesse, look into our imitations of all sorts of Verses affoorded by any other Language, and you shall finde that Sir Philip Sidney, M. Puttenham, M. Stanihurst, and divers more have made use how farre we are within compasse of a fore-imagined possibilitie in that behalfe. I come now to the last and sweetest point, of the sweetnesse of our Tongue, which shall appeare the more plainely if we match it with our Neighboures. The Italian is pleasante, but without Sinews, as a still fleeting Water; the French delicate, but even nice as a Woman, scarce daring to open her Lippes, for feare of marring her Countenance; the Spanish Majestical, but fulsome, running too much on the o, and terrible like the Devil in a Play; the Dutch manlike, but withall very harsh, as one ready at every word to picke a quarrel. Now we, in borrowing from them, give the Strength of Consonants to the Italian, the full Sound of Words to the French, the Varietie of Terminations to the Spanish, and the mollifying of more Vowels to the Dutch; and so, ke Bees, gather the Honey of their good Properties, and leave the Dregs to themselves. And thus when substantialnesse combineth with delightfullnesse, fullnesse with finenesse, seemlinesse with portlinesse, and currantnesse with staidnesse, how can the Language which consisteth of all these sound other than most full of Sweetnesse? Againe, the long wordes that we borrow being intermingled with the short of our owne store, make up a perfect Harmonie, by culling from out which Mixture (with judgment) you may frame your Speech according to the Matter you must worke on, majesticall, pleasant, delicate, or manly, more or lesse, in what sort you please. Adde hereunto, that whatsoever Grace any other Language carrieth in Verse or Prose, in Tropes or Metaphors, in Eccho's and Agnominations, they may all be lively and exactly represented in ours. Will you have Plato's Veine? read Sir Thomas Smith; the Ionicke? Sir Thomas Moore; Cicero's? Ascham; Varro? Chaucer; Demosthenes? Sir John Cheeke; who hath comprised all the Figures of Rhetoricke. Will you read Virgil? take the Earle of Surry; Catullus? Shakspeare, and Barlowes Fragment; Ovid? Daniel; Lucan? Spencer; Martial? Sir John Davies, and others. Will you have all in all for Prose and Verse? take the Miracle of our Age, Sir Philip Sidney. And thus, if mine owne Eies bee not blinded by Affection, I have made yours to see, that the most renowned of all other Nations have laid up as in a Treasure and entrusted the divisos orbe Britannos with the rarest Jewels of the Lips Perfections; whether you respect the Understanding for Significancie, or the Memorie for Easinesse, or the Conceit for Plentifullnesse, or the Eare for Pleasantnesse: wherein if enough be delivered, to add more than enough were superfluous ; if too little, I leave it to be supplied by better stored Capacities; if ought amisse, I submit the same to the Discipline of everie able and impartial Censurer. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554–1628, born at Beauchamp Court, Warwickshire; from Shrewsbury passed to Jesus College, Cambridge ; with his school friend Philip Sidney visited Heidelberg (1577); sat in parliament and held various offices under Elizabeth and James I.; in 1603 was made a Knight of the Bath, and in 1620 Lord Brooke. He was stabbed by an old servant who had found he was not mentioned in his master's will; the man, struck with remorse, then slew himself. Greville's tomb may still be seen in St Mary's Church at Warwick, with the emphatic epitaph written by himself: Fulke Grevill, servant to Queene Elizabeth, conceller to King James, frend to Sir Philip Sidney.' He was a thoughtful, sententious author both in prose and verse, though nearly all his productions were unpublished till after his death. His poems consist of Treatises on Monarchy, Religion, and Humane Learning, two tragedies, 109 sonnets, &c. He also wrote a Life of Sir Philip Sidney (1652), whom, he said, he had lived with and known from a child, 'yet never knew him other than a man.' The whole works of Lord Brooke have been collected and edited by Dr A. B. Grosart (4 vols. 1870), who has also published The Friend of Sir Philip Sidney (1895). A few stanzas from the Treatise on Monarchy describing the prehistoric age will show the dignified style of Fulke Greville's verse: There was a time before the times of Story When Nature raign'd instead of Laws or Arts, And mortal gods, with men made up the glory Of one Republick by united hearts. Earth was the common seat, their conversation In saving love, and our's in adoration. For in those golden days, with Nature's chains Princes with men using no other arts Power then maintaind it self even by those arts Order there equal was; Time courts ordain'd Before this art of Power allay'd the Truth: William Shakespeare.* Shakespeare, the greatest poet and dramatist not merely of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, but of any age or country, was born nearly six years after the accession of Queen Elizabeth. His life extended over fifty-two years, and when he died James I. had occupied the throne of England for thirteen years. Of his elder literary contemporaries, Sir Walter Raleigh was his senior by twelve years; John Lyly and Richard Hooker each by ten years; Robert Greene by four; Francis Bacon by three; and Christopher Marlowe, his tutor in tragedy, by only two months. Of his younger contemporaries, Ben Jonson was his junior by nine years, John Fletcher by eleven, Massinger by nineteen, and Francis Beaumont by twenty. Milton, who, from both chronological and critical points of view, was next Shakespeare the greatest English poet, was born when Shakespeare was forty-four years old, and was only contemporary with him for the first eight years of life. I. The obscurity with which Shakespeare's biography has been long credited is greatly exaggerated.1 The mere biographical information accessible is far more definite and more abundant than that concerning any other dramatist of the day. Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, was a dealer in agricultural produce at Stratford-on-Avon, a prosperous country town in the heart of England. John Shakespeare was himself son of a small farmer residing in the neighbouring village of Snitterfield. The family was of good yeoman stock. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was also daughter of a local farmer who enjoyed somewhat greater wealth and social standing than the poet's father and his kindred. William Shakespeare, the eldest child that survived infancy, was baptised in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon on 26th April 1564. The poet was educated with a younger brother, Gilbert, at the public grammar-school of Stratfordan institution re-established by Edward VI. on a mediæval foundation. The course of study was mainly confined to the Latin classics, and Shakespeare proved his familiarity with the Latin schoolbooks in use at Elizabethan grammar-schools by quoting many phrases from them in his earliest play, Love's Labour's Lost. Until Shakespeare was thirteen years old his father's fortunes prospered. Within that period John Shakespeare took a prominent part in the municipal affairs of Stratford. After holding many inferior offices, he was elected an alderman in 1565, and in 1568 he became bailiff or mayor. But about 1577 his business declined, and he was involved for many years afterwards in a series of pecuniary difficulties. As a consequence his eldest son was removed from school at the early age of thirteen or thereabouts, and was brought into the paternal business to buy and sell agricultural produce. But he was not destined to render his family much assistance in that capacity. In 1582, when eighteen years old, he increased his father's anxieties by marrying. His wife Anne was daughter of Richard Hathaway, a farmer residing in the adjoining hamlet of Shottery. She was no less than eight years her lover's senior. There is good reason to believe that Shakespeare was a reluctant party to the marriage, to which he was driven by the lady's friends in order to protect her reputation. The ceremony took place in November 1582, and a daughter, Susanna, was born in the following May. A year later twins were born, a son and daughter, named respectively Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare had no more children, and it is probable that in 1585 he left his family at Stratford to seek a livelihood elsewhere, and for some twelve years saw little or nothing of his wife and children. A credible tradition assigns the immediate cause of Shakespeare's abandonment of his country home to a poaching adventure in Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlecote, which is situated within five miles of Stratford. It is related that he was caught there in the act of stealing deer and rabbits, and was ordered to be whipped and imprisoned by the owner, Sir Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is reported to have penned bitter verses (which have not survived) on his prosecutor, and Lucy's threat of further punishment is said to have finally driven Shakespeare from Stratford. He subsequently avenged himself on Sir Thomas Lucy by caricaturing him as Justice Shallow in the Second Part of Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor. There is a further tradition that Shakespeare on leaving Stratford served as schoolmaster in an adjacent village. But there is little doubt that at an early date in 1586, when twenty-two years old, he travelled on foot to London, passing through Oxford on the way. It was with the capital city of the country that the flower of his literary life was to be identified. London was chiefly his home during the twenty-three years that elapsed between 1586 and 1609, between the twenty-third and forty-sixth years of his age. Probably only one resident in London was already known to him on his arrival-Richard Field, who some seven years before had left Stratford to be bound apprentice to the London printer Vautrollier. Field subsequently printed for Shakespeare the earliest work that he sent to press. On his settlement in the metropolis Shakespeare sought a living at the theatre. It is said that at first he tended visitors' horses outside a playhouse. In a very short time he was employed inside the playhouse, probably as call-boy; but opportunity of trying his skill as an actor was given him, and he stood * Copyright 1901 by J. B. Lippincott Company. The outline of Shakespeare's career here supplied is based by the present writer on his Life of William Shakespeare, first published in 1898, to which the reader is referred for an exhaustive account of the facts, together with the original sources of information. The illustrated library edition of the work published in 1899 contains the latest corrections and a few additions. A cheaper popular edition, somewhat abbreviated for the use of students and general readers, appeared in 1900. the test sufficiently well to gain speedy admission to one of the chief acting companies of the day. The acting company to which Shakespeare was admitted may with safety be identified with that under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Leicester; on Leicester's death in 1588 the patronage of the company, which implied a merely nominal relationship, passed in succession to Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby (d. 1594); to Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain (d. 1596); to Lord Hunsdon's son, also Lord Chamberlain; and finally, on Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603, to the new king, James I. Thus Shakespeare's company, which at the time he joined it was known as Lord Leicester's players, afterwards bore the successive titles of Lord Strange's company (1588-92), the Lord Chamberlain's company (1592–96), Lord Hunsdon's company (1596–97), again the Lord Chamberlain's company (1597-1603), and finally of the King's company from the accession of James I. in 1603. When he joined the company it was doubtless performing at The Theatre, the earliest playhouse built in England; it was erected in Shoreditch in 1576 by James Burbage, father of the great actor, Richard Burbage. While the company was under Lord Strange's patronage it found new quarters in the Rose, a theatre built in 1592 on the Bankside, Southwark. This was the earliest scene of Shakespeare's conspicuous successes alike as actor and dramatist. During 1594 Shakespeare frequented for a short time the stage of another new theatre at Newington Butts, and between 1595 and 1599 the stages of the oldest playhouses in the kingdom-the Curtain and The Theatre in Shoreditch. In 1599 yet another new theatre was built on the Bankside, Southwark ; this was the famous Globe Theatre, an octagonal wooden structure. With that theatre Shakespeare's professional career was almost exclusively identified for the rest of his life, and in its profits he acquired an important share. At the close of 1609, when his theatrical career was nearing its end, Shakespeare's company occupied a second stage in addition to that of the Globe-the stage of the Blackfriars Theatre. Acting companies in Shakespeare's day seldom remained in London during the summer or early autumn. They toured in the provinces, and it is reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare visited many English towns in his capacity of a travelling and Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic actor in two several comedies or interludes' which were played on St Stephen's Day and on Inno cents' Day (December 27 and 28) at Greenwich Palace before the queen. Shakespeare's appear ance at court for the first time on this occasion in 1594 sufficiently indicates his growing fame in the worlds alike of fashion and the theatre. Subsequently his name heads the list of original performers in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour (1598), and he was one of the original performers in Jonson's Sejanus (1603). The dramatist's early biographer, Nicholas Rowe, recorded the performance by Shakespeare of the Ghost in his own Hamlet, and John Davies of Hereford noted that 'he played some kingly parts in sport.' One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, presumably Gilbert, recalled at a long subsequent date his brother's performance of Adam in As You Like It. In the 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare's 'Works,' his own name headed the prefatory list of the principall actors in these playes.' II. But it is not his histrionic activity that lends real interest to Shakespeare's name or history; it is his unmatchable achievement in dramatic poetry. His earliest experience as a dramatic writer was gained in the way of revising plays by other writers who had sold their works to the manager of his company. Much that thus came from his pen in his early days has possibly remained concealed in plays attributed to other authors. In a few cases, however, his labours as reviser were publicly acknowledged or have been detected by critics; they have usually proved to be so thorough that the revised compositions are entitled to rank among original efforts. It is difficult to fix precisely the date at which his dramatic writing, whether as reviser or independent author, began. It is probable that the whole of it was done between 1591 and 1611. During that time he apparently produced on the average two new or adapted plays each year. The exact order in which Shakespeare's Plays were written cannot be given with any certainty. Only sixteen of the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to him were published in his lifetime, and the date of publication rarely indicates the date of composition: a piece was often published many years after it was written. But the subjectmatter and metre both afford rough clues to the period in the dramatist's lifetime to which the play may be referred. Although Shakespeare's songs and poems prove him a master of lyric verse of varied metres, all but a small fragment of his dramatic work is in blank-verse, and Shakespeare's blank-verse underwent much change in construction in the course of his career. In his earlier years he strictly adhered to formal rules of pause and stress; the lines are clearly marked off from one another by an inevitable rest after the fifth accented syllable. At the same time rhyming couplets are frequent. Fan tastic conceits and puns or plays upon words constantly recur. In Shakespeare's matured work few of these features find a place. The poet ignores the artificial restrictions imposed by the laws of prosody. He varies the pauses of his blank-verse lines indefinitely, in order that they may respond to every call of human feeling. Unemphatic syllables often end the lines, and render stress there impossible. The flexibility or pliancy is increased by the introduction of extrametrical syllables at the end of lines or occasionally in the middle. In later plays rhyme almost entirely disappears. The following passages illustrate the main differences in the character of Shakespeare's early and late blank-verse. The first extract is from Love's Labour's Lost (Act II. sc. i. ll. 9-19): Boyet. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace, As Nature was in making graces dear, When she did starve the general world beside, Princess. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but At this encounter do so much admire, Not a relation for a breakfast, nor At the same time it is noticeable that nearly a third of Shakespeare's dramatic work is in prose, which, commonly lucid and pointed and free from diffuseness or ornament, shows no radical change in character at any period of his career. A study of Shakespeare's prose does not materially help the student in determining the chronology of the plays. The only fact about his use of prose that is of much importance in this connection is that prose figures to a larger extent in the work of middle life than in that of his early or late years. It is not always easy to determine the principles which governed Shakespeare's employment of prose in place of metre, but in the writings of his middle life he almost invariably placed it in the mouths of the humorous or 'low-comedy' characters (e.g. Falstaff), of the spokesmen of mobs, of clowns, fools, and of ladies when they are speaking confidentially to one another; letters and quoted dọcuments are usually in prose. How admirably terse and direct could be Shakespeare's epistolary style may be judged from Macbeth's letter to his wife (Macbeth, Act I. sc. v. l. 1): They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me 'Thane of Cawdor;' by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with Hail, king that shalt be!' This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell. · As in his treatment of metre, so in his choice and handling of subject-matter, differences are discernible in Shakespeare's plays which clearly suggest the gradual but steady development of dramatic power and temper, and separate with some definiteness early from late work. The comedies of Shakespeare's younger days often trench upon the domains of farce; those of his middle and later life approach the domain of tragedy. Tragedy in his hands markedly grew, as his years advanced, in subtlety and intensity. His tragic themes became more and more complex, and betrayed deeper and deeper knowledge of the workings of human passion. In one respect only was Shakespeare's method unchangeable. From first to last it was his habit to borrow his plots, though he freely altered and adapted them to suit his growing sense of artistic fitness. The range of literature which he studied in his search for tales whereon to build his dramas was extraordinarily wide. He consulted not merely chronicles of English history (Ralph Holinshed's, for example), on which he based his English historical plays, but he was widely read in the romances of Italy (mainly in French or English translations), in the biographies of Plutarch, and in the plays and romances of English contemporaries. His Roman plays of Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus closely follow the narratives of the Greek biographer. A romance by his contemporary, Thomas Lodge, suggested the fable of As You Like It. Novels by Bandello are the ultimate sources of the stories of Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado about Nothing, and Twelfth Night. · All's Well that Ends Well and Cymbeline largely rest on foundations laid by Boccaccio; the tales of Othello and Measure for Measure are traceable to Giraldi Cinthio. Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, a collection of French versions of the Italian romances of Bandello, was often in Shakespeare's hands. But although Shakespeare's borrowings were large and open-handed, his debt was greater in appearance than reality. His power of assimilation was exceptionally strong, and the books that he read can only be likened to base ore on which he brought to bear the magic of his genius, with the result that he transmuted it into gold. Love's Labour's Lost, to which may be assigned priority in point of time of all Shakespeare's dramatic productions, may, from internal evidence, be allotted to 1591. It contains 1028 five-measure rhyming lines out of a total of 2789, and puns are very numerous. The names of the chief characters are drawn from the leaders in the civil war in France, which was in progress between 1589 and 1594, and many matters that were then occupying the minds of those who moved in fashionable and political circles are touched upon. The piece is conceived in an airy vein of good-humoured satire, but genuine poetic feeling breaks forth in the speeches of the hero, Biron (cf. Act IV. sc. iii. II. 289-365). The play was revised in 1597, probably for a performance at court, and was first published in the following year. Shakespeare's name there first appeared on a title-page as that of author of a play. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a comedy of love and friendship, belongs to the same period. The story resembles one in the Spanish pastoral romance of Diana, by George de Montemayor. There is much fascinating poetry in the serious portions of the play, but the note is often lyric rather than dramatic-a sure sign of youthful composition. There is a lyrical irrelevancy, for example, in much of Julia's ingenuous plea in favour of letting her love for Proteus have full play (Act II. sc. vii. ll. 24-38): The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns. He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays, With willing sport, to the wild ocean. Then let me go, and hinder not my course: I'll be as patient as a gentle stream, And make a pastime of each weary step, The Two Gentlemen was first published in the first folio edition of the works in 1623. Shakespeare's next play, The Comedy of Errors, also first published in 1623, was for the most part a boisterous farce, resembling in subject-matter the Menæchmi of Plautus. But the impressive dénouement (Act v. sc. i.) in which the shrewish wife Adriana confesses her sins against her hus band, and is solemnly rebuked by the Abbess, is in the finest spirit of sober and restrained comedy. The speech of the Abbess is especially noteworthy (Act v. sc. i. ll. 68–86) : Abbess. The venom clamours of a jealous woman Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. It seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing: And thereof comes it that his head is light. Thou say'st his meat was sauced with thy upbraidings: Unquiet meals make ill digestions; Thereof the raging fire of fever bred; And what's a fever but a fit of madness? . It was after the production of these plays, which show great but not unparalleled ability, that Shakespeare produced his first tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. The work gave conclusive evidence of a poetic and dramatic instinct of unprecedented quality. As a tragic poem on the theme of love it has no rival in any literature. It was based upon a tragic romance of Italian origin, which was already popular in English versions (see pages 262, 263). The date of composition may, perhaps, be gathered from the Nurse's speech, "Tis since the earthquake now eleven years.' No earthquake had been experienced in England in the sixteenth century after 1580, and a few parallelisms with Daniel's Complainte of Rosamond, published in 1591, seem to point to its completion in that year. An anonymous and surreptitious quarto edition was published in 1597 and an authentic quarto appeared in 1599. The speech of Romeo at the tomb of Juliet before he drinks the poison illustrates the intensity of Shakespeare's dramatic feeling and insight at this early stage in his career (Act v. sc. iii. ll. 91-120): O my love! my wife! |