Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 Part 6

This play was originally written late in 1591, but was drastically revised late in 1594, or early in 1595, after Shakespeare had read Chapman's _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_; and again, in 1598. The reference to the Academy was evidently introduced at the time of its first revision.

Mr. Simpson recognises the fact that most of the Chrisoga.n.u.s pa.s.sages, especially those in the earlier portions of _Histriomastix_, pertain to the play in its original form. If the reader will take the trouble to read Chapman's _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_ (1594), his poem to Thomas Harriot, and his _Tears of Peace_, and compare their mental att.i.tude and verbal characteristics with the "Chrisoga.n.u.s" and "Peace" pa.s.sages of _Histriomastix_, Chapman's authors.h.i.+p of the latter will become apparent. The following parallels from four of Chapman's poems are convincing, and they can be extended indefinitely:

_Histriomastix_--

"Have always borne themselves in G.o.dlike State With lofty foreheade higher than the stars."

_De Guiana, Carmen Epic.u.m_--

"Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars."

_Histriomastix_--

"Consume whole groves and standing fields of corn In thy wild rage and make the proud earth groan."

_The Shadow of Night_--

"Convert the violent courses of thy floods, Remove whole fields of corn and highest woods."

_Histriomastix_--

"Whose glory which thy solid virtues won Shall honour Europe while there s.h.i.+nes a sun."

_Poem to Harriot_--

"When thy true wisdom by thy learning won Shall honour learning while there s.h.i.+nes a sun."

Chapman in several instances in this play echoes Greene's slurs against Shakespeare and, in the same manner as Peele in the _Honour of the Garter_, repeats the actual phrases and epithets used by Greene and Nashe.

_Histriomastix_--

"I scorn a scoffing fool about my throne-- An artless idiot (that like aesop's daw Plumes fairer feathered birds)."

These lines evince Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's phrase "idiot art-master," and of Greene's "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," and clearly pertain to the play in its earlier form (1593) when Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_ (published late in 1592) was still a new publication. In fact, it is not improbable that Nashe collaborated with Chapman in the early form of this play.

Again when Chapman writes the following lines:

_Histriomastix_--

"O age, when every Scriveners boy shall dippe Profaning quills into Thessalies spring; When every artist prentice that hath read The pleasant pantry of conceipts shall dare To write as confident as Hercules; When every ballad-monger boldly writes," etc.

It is apparent that he again echoes Nashe's and Greene's attacks upon Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, all of which, however, he appears to have thought (as have later critics) were directed against Shakespeare.

The lines quoted above evidently reflect Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's preface to Greene's _Menaphon_ in the expressions "Scriveners boy,"

"artist prentice," and "ballad-monger," while the words

"shall dippe Profaning quills into Thessalies spring"

refer to Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, and the lines from Ovid with which he heads that poem.

In 1593 when, as I have indicated, _Histriomastix_ in its early form was written, Shakespeare had published _Venus and Adonis_ and dedicated it to the Earl of Southampton. In the composition of this poem Shakespeare undoubtedly worked from Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. He prefixed to the poem two lines from Ovid's fifteenth Elegy:

"Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua";

which are rendered in Marlowe's translation:

"Let base conceited wits admire vile things, Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses springs."

In _The Shadow of Night_, published in the following year, Chapman again resents the fact that one of Shakespeare's "small Latin and less Greek"

should invade the cla.s.sical preserves of the scholars for his poetical and dramatic subjects:

"Then you that exercise the virgin court Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort, Making her drunken with Gorgonean dews, And therewith all your ecstasies infuse, That she may reach the topless starry brows Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring (As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind, And in her force, the forces of the mind: An argument to ravish and refine An earthly soul and make it more devine.

Sing then with all, her palace brightness bright, The dazzle-sun perfection of her light; Circling her face with glories, sing the walks, Where in her heavenly magic mood she stalks, Her arbours, thickets, and her wondrous game, (A huntress being never match'd in fame,) _Presume not then ye flesh-confounded souls, That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls_, Which sever mounting spirits from the senses, _To look into this deep fount for thy pretenses_."

In these lines, besides indicating Shakespeare's recent Ovidian excursion in _Venus and Adonis_ by his reference to "Castalian bowls,"

Chapman shows knowledge of Shakespeare's intention, in the composition of _Love's Labour's Lost_, of exhibiting Queen Elizabeth as a huntress.

Chapman's Cynthia of _The Shadow of Night_ is plainly a rhapsodised idealisation of the Queen. Later on I shall elaborate the fact that _Love's Labour's Lost_ was written late in 1591, or early in 1592, as a reflection of the Queen's progress to Cowdray House, the home of the Earl of Southampton's maternal grandfather, Viscount Montague, and that the shooting of deer by the Princess and her ladies fancifully records phases of the entertainments arranged for the Queen during her visit.

a.s.suming, then, from the foregoing evidence and inferences that Chapman composed the early _Histriomastix_ in 1593, let us examine the play further in order to trace its fuller application to Shakespeare and his affairs in that year.

Though _Histriomastix_ was revised as an attack upon Shakespeare in 1599 by Chapman and Marston, who had commenced to collaborate in dramatic work in the previous year, its original plot and action remain practically unaltered. In its revision its early anti-Shakespearean intention was merely amplified and brought up to date by a few topical allusions, fitting circ.u.mstances in the lives of the persons caricatured, pertaining to the later period. The subst.i.tution of _Troilus and Cressida_ for _The Prodigal Child_, as the play within the play presented by Sir Oliver Owlet's company, is also due to the period of revision. All of the pa.s.sages of the play which are suggestive of the period of revision are palpably in the style of John Marston.

Among the persons of the early play is Chrisoga.n.u.s, a scholar and mathematician, who has set up an academy to expound the seven liberal Sciences: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, all of which are introduced as persons in the first act.

Chrisoga.n.u.s was undoubtedly intended for Chapman's friend Thomas Harriot, the mathematician and astronomer, who was so prominent in the academical movement of 1592-93. The name Chrisoga.n.u.s is evidently a reflection of Harriot's _Ephemeris Chrisometra_, a MS. copy of which is preserved in Zion College. Chapman's poem to Harriot, prefixed to his _Achilles s.h.i.+eld_ (1599), expresses many of the same ideas voiced in _Histriomastix_ and in much the same language, and indicates Chapman's collaboration with Marston in the revision of the play in that year.

In the early _Histriomastix_ Chapman represents himself in the character of Peace. When the utterances of Peace are compared with certain of Chapman's poems, such as his _Euthymia Raptus_, or _The Tears of Peace_ (1609), his poem to Harriot (1598), _The Shadow of Night_ (1594), and _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ (1595), in all of which he breaks away from his subject-matter at intervals to extol his own virtues and bewail his poverty and his neglect by patrons, it becomes evident that he transfigures himself in _Histriomastix_ as Peace; which character acts as a chorus to, or running commentary on, the action of the play.

The whole spirit and purpose of this play is reproduced in _The Tears of Peace_, which is a dialogue between Peace and an interlocutor, who discuss at great length exactly the same ideas and subjects, dramatically treated, in _Histriomastix_, _i.e._ the neglect of learning and the learned, and "the pursuit of wealth, glory, greatness, pleasure, and fas.h.i.+on" by "plebian and lord alike," as well as the unaccountable success of an ignorant playwright who writes plays on any subject that comes into his head:

"And how they trot out in their lines the ring With idly iterating oft one thing, A new fought combat, an affair at sea, A marriage or progress or a plea.

No news but fits them as if made for them, Though it be forged but of a woman's dream."

The plays of no other dramatist of that period match the description of the subjects of the plays given here. The "progress," mentioned by Chapman, is undoubtedly a reference to _Love's Labour's Lost_; "A marriage," _Midsummer Night's Dream_; "a plea," _The Merchant of Venice_; "A new fought combat," _Henry V._--as a reflection of the military services of Southampton and Ess.e.x in Ireland in 1599; "an affair at sea," _Twelfth Night_, _The Merchant of Venice_, etc.

In the second scene of _Histriomastix_, to Peace, the Arts, and Chrisoga.n.u.s, come Mavortius and a group of his friends representing the n.o.bility whom the academicians endeavour to win to their attendance and support. Mavortius and his followers refuse to cultivate Chrisoga.n.u.s and the Arts, preferring a life of dalliance and pleasure, and to patronise plays and players instead. Other characters are introduced representing the Law, the Army, and Merchandise, who also neglect the Arts and live for pastime and sport.

The company of players patronised by Mavortius performs under the licence of Sir Oliver Owlet, and under the leaders.h.i.+p of Posthaste, an erstwhile ballad maker, who writes plays for the company and who threatens to return to ballad making when playing proves unprofitable.

One of Mavortius' followers, Landulpho, an Italian lord, criticises the play presented by Posthaste and his fellows, and lauds the Italian drama.

A period of peace and prosperity, during which Chrisoga.n.u.s and the Arts are neglected by the extravagant and pleasure-seeking lords and populace, is followed by war with an aftermath of poverty when Sir Oliver Owlet's company of players is disrupted, and the actors are compelled to "p.a.w.n their apparel for their charges."

_Enter_ CONSTABLE.]

HOST. Master Constable, ho! these players will not pay their shot.

POST. Faith, sir, war hath so pinch'd us we must p.a.w.n.

CONST. Alas, poor players! Hostess, what comes it to?