Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 Part 7

HOST. The Sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The hirelings--pence.

POST. What, sixpence an egg, and two and two an egg?

HOST. Faith, famine affords no more.

POST. Fellows, bring out the hamper. Chose somewhat out o'th stock.

_Enter the Players._

What will you have this cloak to p.a.w.n? What think you its worth?

HOST. Some fewer groats.

ONIN. The pox is in this age; here's a brave world fellows!

POST. You may see what it is to laugh at the audience.

HOST. Well, it shall serve for a p.a.w.n.

The further development of this narrative will make it evident beyond any reasonable doubt that Posthaste, the poet-actor, is intended to caricature Shakespeare, and Sir Oliver Owlet's company and its misfortunes to reflect the Earl of Pembroke's company in similar circ.u.mstances in 1593; that Mavortius is the young Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated _Venus and Adonis_ in 1593, and _Lucrece_ in the year following; that Landulpho, the Italian lord, represents John Florio, who, in 1591, in his _Second Fruites_, criticised English historical drama and praised Italian plays, and who, at about the same time as teacher of languages entered into the pay and patronage of the Earl of Southampton, a connection which his odd and interesting personality enabled him to hold thereafterwards for several years. The part which Landulpho takes in the play was somewhat developed by Marston in 1599, at which time it shall later on be shown that the relations between Florio and Shakespeare had reached a heated stage. The play of _The Prodigal Child_, which was the play within the play acted by Posthaste and his fellows in the earlier form of _Histriomastix_, did not, in my opinion, represent the English original of the translated German play of _The Prodigal Son_ which Mr. Simpson presents as the possible original, but was meant to indicate Shakespeare's _Love's Labours Won_, which was written late in the preceding year as a reflection of Southampton's intimacy with Florio, and the beginning of his affair with Mistress Davenant,[25] the Oxford tavern keeper's wife.

The expression _The Prodigal Child_ differs from that of _The Prodigal Son_ in meaning, in that the word "Child" at that period meant a young n.o.bleman. There is nothing whatever suggestive of Shakespeare's work in the translated German play, and it was merely the similarity of t.i.tle that led Mr. Simpson to propose it as the play indicated. The play satirised by Chapman under the t.i.tle of _The Prodigal Child_ was undoubtedly written by Shakespeare, and it is no more likely that Chapman would use the actual name of the play at which he points than that he would use the actual names of the various persons or of the company of players whose actions and work he caricatures.

In 1594 George Chapman published _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_, and in 1595 his _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ and _A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, dedicating both publications to his friend Matthew Roydon.

The dedication of these poems to Roydon was an afterthought; they were not primarily written with Roydon in mind.[26] It has been made evident that Chapman had first submitted these poems to the Earl of Southampton in an endeavour to win his patronage, and failing to do so dedicated them to Roydon and attacked Shakespeare in the dedications, where he refers to him in the capacity of reader to the Earl of Southampton, and imputes to his adverse influence his ill-success in his attempt. In the dedication to _The Shadow of Night_ he writes:

"How then may a man stay his marvailing to see pa.s.sion-driven men reading but to curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with affection to great men's fancies take upon them as killing censures as if they were judgements butchers or as if the life of truth lay tottering in their verdicts.

"Now what supererogation in wit this is to think skill so mightily pierced with their loves that she should prost.i.tutely shew them her secrets when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar. Why then should our _Intonsi Catones_ with their profit ravished gravity esteem her true favours such questionless vanities as with what part soever thereof they seem to be something delighted they queamishly commend it for a pretty toy. Good Lord how serious and eternal are their idolatrous platts for riches."

The expression "pa.s.sion-driven," as applied by Chapman to Shakespeare in 1594, especially in a dedication written to Matthew Roydon,--who in this same year published _Willobie his Avisa_,--plainly refers to Shakespeare's relations at that time with Mistress Davenant, who was the original for the figure now known as the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, as well as for the Avisa of _Willobie his Avisa_. The words "reading but to curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with affection to great men's fancies," refer to Shakespeare in the capacity of reader to the Earl of Southampton. In an attack which John Florio makes upon Shakespeare in 1598, he also makes a similar reference to him in this capacity. The expression "judgements butcher," like Nashe's "killcow,"

indicates Shakespeare's father's trade of butcher.

It was the obvious parallel between Chapman's, "when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar," and Shakespeare's allusion, in Sonnet 86, to a poet who attempted to supplant him in Southampton's favour--

"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 filled up his line, Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine"--

that led Professor Minto to suggest Chapman as the rival poet of the Sonnets. In a former essay I have demonstrated the truth of Professor Minto's suggestion.

Chapman's _Intonsi Catones_, or "Unshorn Catos," refers to the peculiar manner in which Shakespeare wore his hair, which Greene describes as "harsh and curled like a horse-mane," and is also a reference to his provincial breeding and, presumed, lack of culture.

There are a number of indications in the few facts we possess of Shakespeare's life in 1594, and also in his own and contemporary publications, to warrant the a.s.sumption that the Earl of Southampton bestowed some unusual evidence of his bounty upon him in this year. If ever there was a period in his London career in which Shakespeare needed financial a.s.sistance more than at other times it was in this year. Lord Strange's company had now been acting under Henslowe's management for two years. The financial condition of both Burbage and Shakespeare must at this time have been at a low ebb. The plague had prevented Pembroke's company playing in London for nearly a year, and we have seen that their attempts to play in the provinces had resulted in failure and loss. In about the middle of 1594, however, Lord Strange's players (now the Lord Chamberlain's men) return to Burbage and the Theatre, when Shakespeare becomes not only a member of the company, but, from the fact that his name is mentioned with that of Kempe and Richard Burbage in the Court records of the payment for performances in December 1594, it is evident that he was then also a leading sharer in the company.

In parting from Henslowe and reorganising under Burbage in 1594 it is apparent that the reorganisers of the Lord Chamberlain's men would need considerable capital if we may judge the financial affairs of this company by those of the Lord Admiral's company (subsequently Lord Nottingham's men) while under Henslowe's management. On 13th October 1599 Henslowe records in his _Diary_: "Received with the company of my Lord of Nottingham's men to this place, beinge the 13th of October 1599, and it doth appeare that I have received of the debte which they owe unto me three hundred fifty and eight pounds." This was only a partial payment of this company's debt, which evidently was considerably in excess of this amount. It is unlikely, then, that Lord Strange's company was free of debt to him at the end of their term under his management.

Shakespeare's earliest biographer, Nicholas Rowe, records, on the authority of Sir William Davenant, "that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." Whatever truth there may be as to the amount of money here mentioned, it is apparent that Southampton evidenced his bounty to Shakespeare in 1594 in some substantial manner, which quickly became noised abroad among the poets and writers who sought patronage. Several of these poets in approaching Southampton refer inferentially to his munificence to Shakespeare. In 1594 Barnabe Barnes writes:

"Vouchsafe right virtuous Lord with gracious eyes _Those heavenly lamps which give the muses light_ To view my muse with your judicial sight," etc.

The words italicised evidently refer to Southampton's acceptance of _Venus and Adonis_ in the preceding year. Later in 1594, Thomas Nashe dedicated _The Life of Jack Wilton_ to Southampton, and in a dedicatory Sonnet to a poem preserved in the Rawlinson MS. in the Bodleian Library, ent.i.tled _The Choice of Valentines_, Nashe apologises for the salacious nature of the poem, and in an appended Sonnet evidently refers to Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_ in the line italicised below:

"Thus hath my pen presumed to please my friend, Oh might'st thou likewise please Apollo's eye; No, honor brooks no such impietie, _Yet Ovids Wanton Muse did not offend_, He is the fountain whence my streams do flow, Forgive me if I speak as I were taught."

In 1595 Gervase Markham, in a Sonnet prefixed to his poem on Richard Grenville's fight in the _Revenge_, addresses Southampton as:

"Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill, _Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen_, Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men."

The line italicised not only refers to Shakespeare but gives evidence also of the a.s.sured standing among poets which he had now attained in unbiased judgments.

In addition to these evidences of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, we have the poet's own acknowledgment of the recent receipt of a valuable gift in the _Lucrece_ dedication: "_The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it a.s.sured of acceptance_."

In his _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_ (1594) and its dedication, Chapman complains of his lack of patronage and refers to what he designates as Shakespeare's "_idol atrous platts for riches_."[27] In the body of the poem he writes:

"Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices, Wisdom conforms herself to all earth's guises, _Good gifts are often given to men past good And n.o.blesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood_."

In view of the general knowledge of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, and of the anti-Shakespearean intention which I have demonstrated in Chapman's poem, it is apparent that these lines refer to the n.o.bleman's gift as well as to the intimacy between the peer and the player at this period.

In this same year (1594) the scholars devised a plan to disrupt the intimacy between Shakespeare and Southampton by producing and publis.h.i.+ng a scandalous poem satirising their relations, ent.i.tled _Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest maid and a chaste and constant wife_. In this poem Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is represented as "Henry Willobie a young man and a scholar of very good hope," while Shakespeare is indicated as "W.S.," an "old actor." "W.S."

is depicted as aiding and abetting Henry Willobie in a love affair with Avisa, the wife of an Oxford tavern keeper who conducts a tavern described as follows:

"See yonder house where hangs the badge Of England's saint when captains cry Victorious land to conquering rage."

In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long before had tryed the courtesy of the like pa.s.sion and was now newly recovered of the like infection." _Willobie his Avisa_ in some measure reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authors.h.i.+p as well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem.

In 1595 George Chapman published his _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ and his _A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, in both of which poems, as well as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as definitely establis.h.i.+ng the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to Shakespeare as well as his ident.i.ty as the rival poet of the Sonnets.[28]

Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in 1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and literary prestige.

The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friends.h.i.+p and patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.

Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when _Venus and Adonis_ was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two years before that date.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: _English Dramatic Companies_, 1558-1641, by John Tucker Murray.]

[Footnote 21: In 1594 Cuthbert Burbie published a play ent.i.tled _The Cobbler's Prophecy_, the authors.h.i.+p of which is ascribed to "R. Wilson"

on the t.i.tle-page. The textual resemblances between this play, _The Pedlar's Prophecy_, _The Three Ladies of London_, and _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, and certain parallels between the two latter and _Fair Em_, all of which plays were published anonymously, led Mr. Fleay to credit all of them to Wilson, in which--excluding _Fair Em_--he was probably correct. All of these plays, with the exception of _The Pedlar's Prophecy_, were either Burbage's or Admiral's properties. _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_ was published for Richard Jones in 1590, and _The Cobblers Prophecy_ for Cuthbert Burbie in 1594. All plays published for Richard Jones were formerly old Admiral's properties, and nearly all the early plays published for Cuthbert Burbie old Burbage properties. _Fair Em_, while not published until 1631, records on the t.i.tle-page that it was acted by Lord Strange's company. _The Pedlar's Prophecy_ was, however, published by Thomas Creede, all of whose publications Mr. Fleay has found were old Queen's properties. Admitting, then, that all of these plays were written by Robert Wilson, the latter play must have been written by him for the Queen's company later than 1582-83, when he left Leicester's company. It appears probable also that the earlier plays--_The Three Ladies_ and _The Cobbler's Prophecy_--were written for Leicester's company before that date, and retained by Burbage when he severed his connection with Leicester's men, or else, that they were retained by Leicester's men as company properties and brought to Strange's men in 1588-89 by Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, when their old company disbanded. It is evident, then, _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, which Mr. Fleay admits is merely an amplification of the old play of _The Three Ladies_, which he dates as being first published in 1584, was a revision made when all these plays became Strange's properties, and that the scriptural parallels between _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, _The Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_, which are quite absent in _The Pedlar's Prophecy_--the only one of these plays ascribed in the publication itself to Wilson--are due to the revisionary efforts of the "theological poet" referred to by Greene as doing such work for Strange's company, and as having had a hand in _Fair Em_, which was acted in about 1590, in which year _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, which shows similar scriptural characteristics, was published. From a time reference in the earlier form of this play--_The Three Ladies_--in the first scene, "not much more than twenty-six years, it was in Queen Mary's time," Mr. Fleay arbitrarily dates from the last year of Mary's reign, and concludes that it may have been acted by the Queen's company in 1584. He admits, however, that it does not appear in the list of the Queen's men's plays for this year, and later on infers from other evidence that the allusion to twenty-six years from Queen Mary's time probably referred to the first date of publication, which is unknown, but which he places, tentatively, in 1584. "That it was played by the Queen's men," he writes, "is shown under the next play,--_The Three Lords and Three Ladies_,--which is an amplification of the preceding play performed shortly after Tarleton's death in about 1588." Mr. Fleay writes further: "If I rightly understand the allusions, Tarleton acted in _Wit and Will_ in 1567-68. The allusion to Tarleton's picture shows that _Tarleton's Jests_, in which his picture appears, had already been published. The statement that Simplicity (probably acted by Wilson himself), Wit, and Will had acted with Tarleton, proves that the present play was acted by the Queen's men."

In arguing to place Robert Wilson as a member of Strange's company in 1588-89, Mr. Fleay borrows both premises and inference from the facts to support his theory. He is no doubt right in dating the original composition of _The Three Ladies of London_ before 1584, and probably also in attributing all of these plays to Wilson, but, seeing that they were all Burbage properties in 1589-90, is it not evident that _The Three Ladies of London_ was an old Leicester play produced by Wilson before 1582-83, when he and Burbage left that company, and either that Burbage then retained possession of it, or, that it was brought to Strange's men by Pope, Kempe, and Bryan in 1589? Mr. Fleay admits that _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_ is merely an amplification of _The Three Ladies_ made after Tarleton's death, which occurred in 1588. It seems apparent, then, that the scriptural phraseology noticeable in _The Three Ladies_, _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_, which led Mr. Fleay to impute the last to Wilson's pen, and also to connect him as a writer and an actor with Lord Strange's company in 1589-90, is the work of the "theological poet" indicated by Greene and Nashe as having had a hand in _Fair Em_ in 1589. It is also evident that the actors who took the parts of Simplicity, Wit, and Will,--in _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_,--who had formerly acted with Tarleton, were Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, Strange's men, who were all formerly Leicester's men. It is much more likely that these old members of Leicester's company, who in Tarleton's time would have been juniors in the company, would recall and boast of their old connection, than that his late a.s.sociates in the Queen's company would do so within a year or two of his death.]

[Footnote 22: Bentley was a Queen's player in 1584, and probably came from Suss.e.x's company to the Queen's upon the organisation of that company in 1583.]

[Footnote 23: This letter and the verses are printed in _Henslowe's Papers_, p. 32, W.W. Greg, 1907, and in the works of several earlier editors.]

[Footnote 24: "The two more" here indicated by Greene are, I believe, Lodge and Matthew Roydon, both of whom are mentioned by Nashe in his address "To the Gentlemen of the two Universities" prefixed to Greene's _Menaphon_. I have elsewhere shown that Roydon was a prolific ballad writer who invariably wrote anonymously, or under pen names, and have made evident his authors.h.i.+p of _Willobie his Avisa_, as well as its anti-Shakespearean intention. Roydon also wrote plays as well as ballads, and was possibly one of the "theological poets" referred to by Greene in the introduction to his _Farewell to Folly_, who, he intimates, were averse "for their calling and gravity" to have their names appear as the authors of ballads or plays, and so secured "some other batillus to set their names to their verses." Roydon's affected anonymity is referred to by several other contemporary writers. Robert Arnim writes of him as "a light that s.h.i.+nes not in the world as it is wished, but yet the worth of his l.u.s.tre is known." Roydon was a curate of the Established Church. Shakespeare's lack of respect for Church of England curates, which is several times exhibited in his plays, was, no doubt, due in some degree to his dislike of Roydon.]

[Footnote 25: Since the publication of _Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets_, in 1913, I have learned that John Davenant was married twice. Roydon's _Willobie his Avisa_ refers to his first wife, who was Anne Birde, daughter of Mayor William Birde of Bristol, whom he married before July 1592. I have also found that his second wife was Jane Shepherd of Durham. This matter will be fully elucidated in a forthcoming publication.]