Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems Part 4

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhea.r.s.e, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it _his_ spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, As victors, of my silence cannot boast; I was not sick of any fear from thence: But when your countenance fill'd up his line, Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.

That what is there stated as to another poet refers to an actual transaction, and is to be read literally, is recognized, I think, by all critics; and many have thought that the description contained in the Sonnet quoted indicates Chapman, who translated the _Iliad_ about that time. It is in this group of Sonnets, referring to another poet, that we find Sonnet Lx.x.xI. The thought of the entire group is complaint, perhaps jealousy, of a rival poet; and running through them all are allusions or statements which seem to have been intended to strengthen the ties between him and his friend,--to hold him if he meditated going, and to bring him back if he had already strayed. It was obviously for that purpose that Sonnet Lx.x.xI., one of the central Sonnets of that group, was written; and, considered as written for that purpose, how apt and true its language appears! The poet, a.s.serting that his verse is immortal, says to his friend, the immortality it confers is yours; "your name from hence immortal life shall have," but I shall have no share in that fame; "in me each part will be forgotten," and "earth can yield me but a common grave."

Though the Sonnet is in the highest degree poetic, as a bare statement of fact it is perfectly apt and appropriate to that which was the obvious purpose of this group of Sonnets.

It is sometimes claimed that the author of the Shakespearean plays was a lawyer. Certainly he was a logician and a rhetorician. The clash of minds and of speech appearing in _Julius_ _Caesar_, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, in _Henry IV._, and in many other plays, shows a most wonderful facility for stating a case, for presenting an argument. Let us then a.s.sume that the poet was simply stating his own case against a rival poet, presenting his own appeal,--and the verse at once has added dignity and pa.s.sion, and we almost feel the poet's heart throb.

Of course the final question--whether or not the two Sonnets printed at the head of this chapter were founded on the conditions and situations they state, and whether or not they express actual feelings and emotions--must be answered by each from a careful reading of the Sonnets themselves. To me, however, their message of sadness, loneliness, and implied appeal seems as clear and certain as the portrayal of agony in the marble of Laoc.o.o.n.

That Sonnet LV., and perhaps in some degree Sonnet Lx.x.xI., are moulded after verses of Ovid or Horace, is often mentioned. And it is mentioned as though that somehow detracted from their meaning or force. That fact seems to me rather to reinforce that meaning. The words of Ovid are translated as follows:

Now have I brought a work to an end which neither Jove's fierce wrath, Nor sword nor fire nor fretting age with all the force it hath, Are able to abolish quite.[22]

The Ode of Horace has been translated as follows:

A monument on stable base, More strong than Bra.s.s, my Name shall grace; Than Regal Pyramids more high Which Storms and Years unnumber'd shall defy.

My n.o.bler Part shall swiftly rise Above this Earth, and claim the Skies.[23]

Agreeing that the poet had in mind the words of Ovid and of Horace and believed that his productions would outlast bronze or marble, we see that, so far following their thoughts, by a quick transition he says that not he, but his friend, is to have the immortality that his poetry will surely bring. While this comparison with the Latin poems may not much aid an interpretation that seemed clear and certain without it, at least its sudden rending from their thought does not weaken, but strengthens the effect of the statement that the writer was to have no part in the immortality of his own poetry.

It may be said that it is entirely improbable that the author of the greater of the Shakespearean plays should have allowed their guerdon of fame and immortality to pa.s.s to and remain with another. But if we accept the results of the later criticism, we must then agree,--that there were at least three poets who wrought in and for the Shakespearean plays, that two of the three consented that their work should go to the world as that of another, and that at least one of the two was a poet of distinctive excellence. At that time the publication and sale of books was very limited and the relative rights of publishers and authors were such that the author had but little or none of the pecuniary results. The theatre was the most promising and hence the most usual market for literary work, and it seems certain that poets and authors sold their literary productions to the managers of theatres, retaining no t.i.tle or interest in them. However the poet of the Shakespearean plays may have antic.i.p.ated the verdict of posterity, the plays bear most abundant evidence that they were written to be acted, to entertain and please, and to bring patrons and profit to the theatres which were in the London of three hundred years ago.

Boucicault was the publisher and accredited author of one hundred and thirty plays. But no one would deem it improbable that in them is the work of another, or of many other dramatists.

I submit that the argument from probabilities is without force against the clear and unambiguous statements of the Sonnets quoted in this chapter.

Footnotes:

[22] _Ovid's Metamorphoses_, xv., 871-9.

[23] Horace, Book III., Ode x.x.x.

CHAPTER IV

OF THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE AS RELATED TO THE CHARACTER OF THE AUTHOR OF THE SONNETS

The Sonnets certainly reveal their author in an att.i.tude of appeal, more or less open and direct, for the love or favor of his friend. No fervor of compliment or protestation of affection allows him to forget or conceal this purpose. When, as is indicated by Sonnets LXXVII. to XC., he feared that his friend was transferring his favor or patronage to another poet, his anxiety became acute, and in that group he compared not only his poetry, but his flattery and commendation with that of his rival. In Sonnets x.x.xII. to x.x.xVII., portraying his grief at his friend's unkindness, he hastens to forgive; and, as already stated, in Sonnets XL. to XLIII. and CXXVII. to CLII., chiding his friend for having accepted the love of his mistress, he crowns him with poetic garlands of compliment and adulation. Smitten on one cheek, not only does he turn the other, but he bestows kisses and caresses on the hand that gave the blow.

All we know of the character of Shakespeare indicates that he was neither meek and complacent, nor quick and eager in forgiving; but that his character in those aspects was quite the reverse of the character of the author of the Sonnets.

Mr. Lee states the effect or result of the various traditions as to Shakespeare's poaching experiences, and his resentment of the treatment he had received, as follows[24]:

'And his [Shakespeare's] sporting experiences pa.s.sed at times beyond orthodox limits. A poaching adventure, according to a _credible_[25] tradition, was the immediate cause of his long severance from his native place. "He had," wrote Rowe in 1709, "by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and among them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, _as he thought, somewhat too severely_; and, _in order to revenge_ that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, _yet it is said to have been so very bitter_ that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwicks.h.i.+re and shelter himself in London." The independent testimony of Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar of Saperton, Gloucesters.h.i.+re, late in the seventeenth century, is to the effect that Shakespeare "was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native county to his great advancement." The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz., cap. 21) punished deer-stealers with three months' imprisonment and the payment of thrice the amount of the damage done.

The tradition has been challenged on the ground that the Charlecote deer-park was of later date than the sixteenth century. But Sir Thomas Lucy was an extensive game-preserver, and owned at Charlecote a warren in which a few harts or does doubtless found an occasional home. Samuel Ireland was informed in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the deer, not from Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few miles off, and Ireland supplied in his _Views on the Warwicks.h.i.+re Avon_, 1795, an engraving of an old farmhouse in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he a.s.serted that Shakespeare was temporarily imprisoned after his arrest. An adjoining hovel was locally known for some years as Shakespeare's "deer-barn," but no portion of Fulbroke Park, which included the site of these buildings (now removed), was Lucy's property in Elizabeth's reign, and the amended legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems pure invention.

The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have fastened on the park gates of Charlecote, does not, as Rowe acknowledged, survive. No authenticity can be allowed the worthless lines beginning, "A parliament member, a justice of peace," which were represented to be Shakespeare's on the authority of an old man who lived near Stratford and died in 1703. But _such an incident as the tradition reveals has left a distinct impress on Shakespearean drama. Justice Shallow is beyond doubt a reminiscence of the owner of Charlecote._[26] According to Archdeacon Davies of Saperton, Shakespeare's "_revenge_ was so great" that he caricatured Lucy as "Justice Clodpate," who was (Davies adds) represented on the stage as "a great man" and as bearing, in allusion to Lucy's name, "three louses rampant for his arms." Justice Shallow, Davies's "Justice Clodpate," came to birth in the Second Part of _Henry IV._ (1598), and he is represented in the opening scene of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ as having come from Gloucesters.h.i.+re to Windsor to make a Star-Chamber matter of a poaching raid on his estate. The "three luces hauriant argent" were the arms borne by the Charlecote Lucys, and the dramatist's prolonged reference in this scene to the "dozen white luces" on Justice Shallow's "old coat" fully establishes Shallow's ident.i.ty with Lucy.

The poaching episode is best a.s.signed to 1585, but it may be questioned whether Shakespeare, on fleeing from Lucy's persecution, at once sought an asylum in London.'

Halliwell gives the following traditions of Shakespeare's sharp encounters or exchanges of wit[27]:

Mr. Ben Jonson and Mr. Wm. Shakespeare being merry at a tavern, Mr.

Jonson having begun this for his epitaph,--

Here lies Ben Jonson, that was once one,

he gives it to Mr. Shakespeare to make up, who presently writes,

Who while he lived was a slow thing And now being dead is nothing.

Another version is:

Here lies Jonson, Who was one's son He had a little hair on his chin, His name was Benjamin!

an amusing allusion to his personal appearance, as any one may see who will turn to Ben's portrait.

_Jonson._ If but stage actors all the world displays Where shall we find spectators of their plays?

_Shakespeare._ Little or much of what we see we do; We are all both actors and spectators too.

Ten in the hundred lies here ingrav'd; 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved; If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb?

Oh! oh! quoth the devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe.

Who lies in this tomb?

Hough, quoth the devil, 'tis my son, John-Combe.

The tradition is that the subject of the last six lines having died, Shakespeare then composed an epitaph as follows:

Howe'er he lived, judge not, John Combe shall never be forgot, While poor hath memory, for he did gather To make the poor his issue; he their father, As record of his tilth and seed, Did crown him, in his latter need.

This is said to have been composed of a brother of John-a-Combe:

Thin in beard, and thick in purse, Never man beloved worse, He went to the grave with many a curse, The devil and he had both one nurse.