No More Learning

I
am henceforth still more to be pitied, because I have made the
habit of seeing you necessary to me. It seems to me that I did
not embrace you enough when we parted: why should I have
refrained? I have never told you often enough what happiness
your tenderness gives me. I have never enough commended you
to M. de Grignan, nor thanked him enough for all his courtesy
and friendship towards me. In a word, I only live for you, my
child. God give me the grace some day to love him as I love
you. Adieu, my beloved child: love me always. Alas! we must
be content now with letters.
VII
PARIS, Friday, December 8th, 1673.
I
MUST begin, my dear child, with the death of the Comte de
Guiche, which is the interest of the day. The poor boy died
of disease and weakness, in M. de Turenne's army; the news
was received on Tuesday morning. Father Bourdaloue announced
it to the Maréchal de Gramont, who suspected it, knowing the
desperate condition of his son. He sent every one out of his
he was in a small apartment which he has in the Capu-
chin monastery. When he was alone with the Father, he threw
himself on his neck, saying that he well knew what he had
to tell him; that it was his death-blow; that he would receive
it as from the hand of God; that he had lost the only, sole, and
true object of his tenderness and of his natural affection; that
room
―


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13164
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
he had never experienced real happiness or violent grief save
through this son, who had admirable qualities. He threw him-
self upon the bed, unable to say more, but not weeping; for in
that condition one cannot weep. The Father wept, and had as
yet said nothing; but at last he spoke of God, as you know he
can speak. They were six hours together; and then the Father,
to have him complete his sacrifice, led him to the church of
these good Capuchins, where vigils were being said for this dear
son. The Maréchal entered tottering, trembling, rather carried
and pushed than on his own limbs, his face no longer recogniza-
ble. M. le Duc saw him in this state, and wept in telling us
about it at Madame de La Fayette's house.
The poor Maréchal at last returned to his little room; he is
like a condemned man; the King has written to him; no one
sees him. Madame de Monaco is entirely inconsolable; as is also
Madame de Louvigny, but it is because she is not at all afflicted.
Do you not admire the happiness of the latter? Madame La
Chancelière is transported with joy. The Comtesse de Guiche
behaves very well. She weeps when told of the kind words and
the excuses uttered by her husband when dying.
She says:
"He was lovable; I should have loved him passionately, if he
could have loved me a little. I have endured his contempt with
regret; his death touches my heart and awakens my pity.
was always hoping that his feelings towards me would change. "
This is all true, and not a farce. Madame de Verneuil is genu-
inely touched by it.
The good D'Hacqueville has gone
to Frazé, thirty leagues distant, to announce the tidings to the
Maréchale de Gramont, and to deliver to her a letter from the
poor boy, in which he tries to make an honorable apology for
his past life,-repenting of it and asking pardon publicly. He
begged Vardes to forgive him; and told him many things which
may be useful to him. Finally, he ended the play very well, and
has left a rich and happy widow.
.
·
VERY
MONDAY, DECEMBER 25TH, 1673.
VERY well! very well! Lamentations over the Comte de Guiche!
Alas! my poor child, here we think no longer of him;
not even the Maréchal, who has returned to his occupation
as courtier. As for your princesse [de Monaco], as you cleverly
remark, “After all that she has forgotten, there need be no
anxiety as to the effects of her emotion. " Madame de Louvigny


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MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
13165
and her husband are beside themselves with joy. The Comtesse
de Guiche is not disposed to remarry, but a tabouret may tempt
her. There is nobody but the Maréchale who is dying of grief.
VIII
PARIS, Friday, January 5th, 1674.
M.
tain.
DE GRIGNAN is right in saying that Madame de Thiange
no longer wears rouge or low dresses. You would hardly
recognize her in this disguise, but nothing is more cer-
She is often with Madame de Longueville, and quite on
the higher plane of devotion. She is always very good company,
and not at all a recluse. The other day I was near her at din-
ner: a servant handed her a large glass of wine; she said to me,
"Madame, this man does not know that I am religious," — which
made us all laugh. She speaks very naturally of her good inten-
tions, and of her change of mind; takes care of what she says of
her neighbor, and when some unkind word escapes her, she stops
short, and cries out against her evil habit. As for me, I find her
more amiable than ever. People are willing to wager that the
Princesse d'Harcourt will not be dévote a year from now,—hav-
ing been made lady of the palace,- and that she will use rouge
again; for rouge is the law and the prophets,— Christianity itself
turns upon rouge.
As for the Duchesse d'Aumont, her fad is to
bury the dead: it is said that on the frontier, the Duchesse de
Charost killed people for her with her badly compounded rem-
edies, and that the other promptly buried them. The Marquise
d'Auxelles is very amusing in relating all that, but La Marans
is better still. I met Madame de Schomberg, who told me very
seriously that she was a dévote of the first rank, both as regards
retreats and penitence: going no longer into society, and even
declining religious amusements. This is what is called "worship-
ing God in spirit and in truth," with the simplicity of the Early
Church.
The ladies of the palace are under strict discipline. the King
has had an explanation with them, and desires that the Queen
should always have them in attendance. Madame de Richelieu,
although she no longer waits at table, is always present at the
Queen's dinner, with four ladies who serve in turn. The Com-
tesse d'Ayen, the sixth, is in dread of this office, and of not going


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13166
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
•
every day to vespers, to the sermon, or to salut. Indeed, nothing
in this world is so saintly.
so saintly. As to the Marquise de Castelnau,
she is fair, fresh, and consoled. L'Eclair, people say, has only
changed apartments, at which the first floor is ill pleased. Ma-
dame de Louvigny does not seem sufficiently pleased with her
good fortune. She cannot be pardoned for not loving her husband
as much as she did at first,-which is certainly the first occasion
on which the public has been scandalized at such a fault. Madame
de Brissac is lovely, and dwells in the shadow of the late Prin-
cesse de Conti. Her affairs with her father are in arbitration;
and poor M. d'Arnusson says he has never seen a woman so
honest and so frank. Madame de Cresqueu is very much as you
have seen her. She has had made a skirt of black velvet, with
heavy embroidery of gold and silver, and a mantle of flame-
colored tissue, with gold and silver. This costume cost enor-
mous sums: but although she was really resplendent, people
thought her dressed like an actress; and she was so unmercifully
laughed at that she did not dare to wear it again.
La Manierosa is somewhat chagrined at not being lady of the
palace. Madame de Dura, who does not wish the honor, ridicules
her. La Troche is, as you have known her, passionately devoted
to your interests. The ladies of the palace have been slandered
in a way that made me laugh. I said, "Let us revenge our-
selves by abusing them. " Guilleragues said yesterday that Pelis-
son abused the privilege which men possess of being ugly.


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1
1
1
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Good FREND Toe less SAKE FOR BEARE
TO DICC HE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE
BLESE BE MAN SIRES THES STONES
AND EVRST BE HEY MOVES MY BONES
TOMB OF SHAKESPEARE
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH
STRATFORD-ON-AVON
48
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13167
-
SHAKESPEARE
BY EDWARD DOWDEN
F AN Academy of Immortals chosen from all ages could be
formed, there is no doubt that a plébiscite of the English-
speaking peoples would send Shakespeare as their chief rep-
resentative to that august assembly. He alone could speak on their
behalf of life and its joys in the presence of Homer, of death and its
mysteries in Dante's presence; he alone could respond to the wis-
dom of Goethe with a broader and a sunnier wisdom; he alone could
match the laughter of Molière with a laughter as human and more
divine. There is a grace in literature which corresponds to the
theological grace of charity: he who loses his life in his vision of
the world shall save it; he who does not lamor, or assert himself,
or thrust forward his individuality, yet is forever operating over the
entire field of nature like light,-illuminating, interpreting, kindling,
fructifying, he it is who while remaining unknown is of all men.
best known. We are familiar with the thews and bulk of Shake-
speare's great contemporary Ben Jonson; we stand in his shadow
and are oppressed by his magnitude; we know him as a huge and
impressive, if somewhat ungainly, object. Shakespeare disappears
from view, because he plays around us like the intangible air and
sunshine, and has entered into us and become a portion of our own
life.
He came at a fortunate time, when it was possible to view the
world in a liberal spirit, free from the harshness of the ascetic and
the narrowness of the sectary. A mediæval Shakespeare might have
found that seriousness implied severity, or that mirth meant revolt
and mockery; he might have been forced to regard the mundane
and the supermundane as hostile powers; he might have staggered
under a burden of theology, or have thrown it off and become mili-
tant and aggressive in his vindication of the natural man. Had he
lived when Milton lived, he could hardly have stood neutral between
two parties which divided the people of England: yet transformed to
a political combatant, Shakespeare must have given to party some-
thing that was meant for mankind; the deep human problems which
interest him might have been replaced or obscured by temporary
questions urgent for the moment, by theories of government, of pop-
ular rights, of ecclesiastical organization, of ceremony and ordinance,
of Divine decrees, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, as formulated in
dogma. Born in the eighteenth century, Shakespeare would have


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13168
SHAKESPEARE
breathed with difficulty: for the higher enthusiasm of poetry, the
age of Addison was like an exhausted receiver; the nobler wisdom
of Elizabethan days had cooled and contracted into good sense. Even
as a contemporary of Byron and of Wordsworth he would have been
at a disadvantage: the poetry of social movement was turbid with
passion or doctrinaire in its theories of revolution; serenity was
attainable, as Wordsworth proved, but it was to be attained rather
through the spirit of contemplation than by dealing with the insur-
gent forces of modern life.
In the age of Bacon and Spenser and Shakespeare, three great
streams, afterwards to be parted, had united to form a broad and
exultant flood. The new ideals of the Renaissance, the new sense
of the worth of life on earth, the new delight in beauty, had been
deepened and enriched by the seriousness of the Reformation; the
sense of national power, the pride of country,-suddenly enhanced
by the overthrow of the naval might of Papal Spain,- had coalesced
with these. For the imagination, the glories of Italy and of ancient
Greece and Rome; for the conscience, the words of Hebrew prophets
and singers and Christian teachers; for the heart,
"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. "
During one brief period, Englishmen discovered that gravity might
be gay and gayety might be serious, while both gayety and grav-
ity were supported by an energy of will which enabled them to do
great things; they could be stern without moroseness, and could
laugh aloud because such laughter was a part of strength, and of
their strenuous acceptance of the world as good.
It was
a fortunate moment for a dramatic artist.
The epic
breadth and the moral purport of the medieval religious drama had
not been lost; but they had submitted to the new and happier forms
of Renaissance literature. Italian and classical models had served
to make tragedy and comedy shapely, organic, vertebrate. But the
pedantry of scholars had not suppressed the instincts of popular
pleasure. The spectators of the theatre included both a cultured
minority, and the ruder mass that desired strong appeals to pity and
terror, and a frank invitation to mirth. The court favored but did
not dominate the theatre; the stage remained essentially popular, but
it showed how a common pleasure could be ennobled and refined.
Shakespeare's predecessors had prepared the way for him in tragedy,
comedy, and chronicle play. He received from Marlowe that majestic
instrument of poetic expression, blank verse; it was his triumph
to discover in time how to extend the keyboard, and to touch its
various stops. The years from 1590 to 1610 were the high midsum-
mer of the English drama, when the fruitage was maturing from its


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SHAKESPEARE
13169
early crudities, and was still untouched by that overripeness which
streaked and spotted the later Jacobean and Caroline drama, and
gave it the sick-sweet odor of decay. Nor as yet, in the struggle
for existence between literary species, had the novel entered into com-
petition with the drama. When it did so, in the eighteenth century,
the high tragedy of the age was Richardson's 'Pamela,' the most
genial comedy was Fielding's 'Tom Jones. '
These advantages Shakespeare gained from his environment and
from the moment when he appeared; all else that contributed to his
work may be assigned to his own genius. If he became the most
learned man of his generation, the most learned man of all genera-
tions, in one department,— the lore of the passions,-it was not
because he was born in this age or in that. It was because he
possessed the genius of discovery; he directed his prow across the
voyageable ocean of the human heart, and from a floating weed he
could infer America. Each man contains all humanity in his own
breast; the microcosm exhibits the macrocosm in little: but most
men cherish what is peculiar to themselves, what is individual; and
if they express themselves in song they are apt to tell of their
private joys and griefs: we capture from them what is theirs, and
appropriate it to our own uses. Shakespeare used his private expe-
rience as a chink through which he saw the world. Did he feel a
momentary pang of jealous affection? There was the opening, as of
an eyelet-hole, through which to discover the vast spasms of Othello's
anguish. An experience no larger than a mustard-seed, a sense for
all the obscure affinities of things, imagination with its dilating and
its divining powers-these were the sources of 'Hamlet' and 'King
Lear,' rather than Saxo Grammaticus and Holinshed. As Goethe
in a leaf could recognize the type of plant life and start upon his
research into all its metamorphoses, so Shakespeare, discovering in
what seems insignificant the type of a passion, could trace it through
its varieties by the divining power of the imagination. He observed
himself and he observed the world, and each served to interpret
the other. Not that which bulked largest in his external life was
necessarily of most significance for his art: that which contained a
vital germ, to be fostered by his imagination, was of capital import-
ance. The attempts that have been made to connect the creations
of such a man of genius as Shakespeare with incidents in his career
are often labor spent in vain: what looks considerable from an ex-
ternal point of view may have been an aggregation of insignificant
accidents-mere dross of life; the true career was invisible: some
momentary joy or pain, of which we shall never hear, may have
involved, as in a seed, the blossoms and the fruit of art. We all con-
tain within us the ova of a spiritual population,- philosophers, saints,
heroes, lovers, humorists, fantasticoes, traitors, cowards, assassins, - else
XXII-824


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13170
SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare were unintelligible to us: but with us the germs remain
mere protoplasm; with the man of genius they may mature to a
Hamlet, a Jaques, a Romeo, a Rosalind, an Imogen, a Cleopatra.
Shakespeare's outward life-of which we know more than of the
life of any other Elizabethan dramatist, except perhaps Ben Jonson-
shows him to us as passionate and as eminently prudent. His mar-
riage at nineteen with a woman probably uneducated, several years
his elder and of inferior social position, was rash; he fled from Strat-
ford under a cloud, to avoid the consequences of a youthful escapade;
if we accept as historical the story outlined in the 'Sonnets,' we
must believe that he was capable of extravagant devotion to a dis-
loyal friend, and was for a time, against his better judgment, the
victim of feminine wiles and of his own intemperate heart. But
Shakespeare returned to Stratford, wealthy, honored, and beloved; he
did not wreck his life, like some of his fellow-dramatists, on the rocks
or quicksands of London; he never gave offense to the authorities as
Jonson and others did, by indiscreet references to public persons or
events; he had no part in the quarrels of authors; he neither lavished
praises on his contemporaries nor stung them with epigram and sat-
ire; he neither bribed nor bullied; his amiability and high breeding
earned him the epithet "gentle "; he desired the ease and freedom
which worldly substance brings, and by pursuing his own way with
steadfastness and good sense he attained his object. Below his bust
in Stratford Church he is characterized as "in judgment a Nestor, in
genius a Socrates. "
He lived in two worlds, -the extended world of the imagination,
and the contracted world of his individual material life. Which was
the more real? Perhaps the positive, material life was the dream:
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. "
But he would dream the dream well. And is it after all a dream?
Was it not something to possess his soul in sanity, to dismiss his
airy spirits, to break his magic staff, and moving amid his fellow-
townsmen, by the side of his wife and daughters, to be only a man?
Only a man, but enjoying within himself the light and wisdom won
through his great adventures of the imagination. His book of magic,
not sunk like Prospero's below the waves deeper than ever plummet
sounded, was for all the world. His personal life was for himself
and those whom he loved. And even for his art, was it not well
that he should be attentive to the lesser things of worldly wisdom?
He had a vast burden of thoughts and visions to carry, and he must
needs carry it steadily. Were it better if he had confused his art
with the feverish and mean anxieties that attend on reckless living?


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SHAKESPEARE
13171
No: let the two lives aid each other; let his life as an imaginative
creator effect a secondary and subordinate purpose in rendering his
material life secure and substantial; let his life in the positive world
be such as to set free, rather than pull down or embarrass, his life
of the imagination. He might play the two games together, and
play both with success.
What moved within the great brain and the great heart of the
prosperous Stratford gentleman,- more deep and wise perhaps than
all his tragedies and comedies, - we shall never know: it was a mat-
ter for himself, and he kept his secret with the taciturnity of Nature.
But we can follow his adventures in the realms of fancy. In these
also there was a wise economy of power: he did not dash into deep
water, as has often been the way with youthful poets, before he had
learnt to swim. At first he was content to take lessons in his craft:
he put forth no ambitious manifestoes; he did not pose as a leader
of revolt, or belabor the public, in Ben Jonson's fashion, with a doc-
trine of dramatic reform; he did not read lessons in ethics to his
age: he began by trying to please, he ended by trying to please in a
nobler manner; he taught a generation which had laughed at 'The
Comedy of Errors' how to smile with Prospero in The Tempest';
he taught a generation which had snuffed up the reek of blood from
'Titus Andronicus' how, with pity lost in beautiful pride and sense
of victory, to gaze upon the dead body of Cordelia. The great work
of his life was to show how pleasure can be converted into a noble
exercise of the soul; how mirth can be enriched by wisdom; how the
primitive brute cry of pain may be transformed into a pure voice
bearing a part in the majestic symphony of the world's mourners;
how the terror that arises at the sight of violated law may be puri-
fied from gross alarms, and appear as one of the dread pillars of
order which sustain the fabric of God's world.
The English people need, perhaps in a special degree, wise school-
ing in the pleasures. They are not lacking in seriousness; but they
are prone to leave their pleasures pawing in the mire like Milton's
half-created beasts, or to avert their eyes sourly and walk past in
self-complacent respectability. Even Emerson, who uttered admira-
ble sentences in his discourse on Shakespeare as the representative
poet, laments the fact that he employed his lofty powers so meanly,
"leading an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public
amusement; " "he converted the elements that waited on his com-
mand into entertainments; he was master of the revels to mankind. "
But what if Shakespeare proved that the revels may be sacred mys-
teries? The service of joy in such art as his, at its highest, is
something more than amusement. In Sandro Botticelli's 'Nativity'
the angels circle above the manger in the gracefulest of dances; but
are they only amusing themselves? In the old Italian pictures of


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13172
SHAKESPEARE
Paradise, the celestial company are not engaged in attending to a ser-
mon on theology or a lecture on ethics: they are better employed in
touching their harps or breathing through loud uplifted trumpets.
Shakespeare's highest work does not resemble this "undisturbed song
of pure concent" sung before "the sapphire-colored throne"; but it
expresses the music of the earth- with adagio and allegro, discords
resolved into harmony, imperious suspensions, rain of laughters, rain
of tears more adequately than the work of any other master. Does
it lessen his service to the world that such work is also a beautiful
play?
-
Shakespeare's attainment was not snatched in haste: it was won
through long and strenuous endeavor. In his early comedies he
moves brightly over the surface of life. 'Love's Labour's Lost' is
a young man's good-humored and confident satire of the follies and
affectations of the day. How are we to learn our lesson, he asks, in
the high-school of the world? Not through the pedantries of erudi-
tion, not through the fantastical subtleties of romance, not through
a high-flying philosophy which disdains the plain old lore of mother
Earth: such methods will only make ingenious fools. There is a
better way, simple in appearance, yet really needing all our strength
and skill: to accept the teaching of life itself in a manly spirit, to let
both head and heart task themselves in studying the book of nature;
to laugh and love; but also to temper the laughter and joy of youth
by acquaintance with the sorrows of the world. Biron, the courageous
jester, with seriousness beneath his mirth, is dismissed for a twelve-
month to try how mocks and flouts will sound among the speechless
sick and groaning wretches of a hospital. He will laugh at the end
of his period of probation, but it will be with a wiser, a braver, and
a kindlier laughter. He will love the better for a year's instruction
in the lessons of pain. "This side is Hiems, Winter, this Ver, the
Spring": the song of the cuckoo and the song of the owl are alike
songs of the earth; let us cheerfully attend to both.
Such was Shakespeare's starting-point. He was a scholar, in love
with the book of life, and in time he would understand its meaning.
But as he turned the pages he found obscure and awful things, and
it may be that for a while his vision grew perplexed. When 'Meas-
ure for Measure' was written, it seems as if he moved in some valley
of the shadow of sin and death, amid encompassing gloom, and could
sustain his courage only by the presence of strength, severe and vir-
ginal but not joyous, as seen in the person of Isabella. In Troilus
and Cressida,' - the comedy of disillusion,- he gazes on life with a
bitter irony, finding young love a fraud, and pretentious heroes
only vulgar egoists beneath their glittering armor: if there is virtue
anywhere, it must be sought in such worldly wisdom as that of Ulys-
ses; the penetration and insight of a Machiavelli is indeed a kind


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SHAKESPEARE
13173
of virtue amid sham splendors, mercenary wiles, and the deceits of
sensual passion.
(
But Shakespeare could not remain content with the poor philoso-
phy of disenchantment. Vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valu-
ations, self-deceptive imaginations,- he had come to know them all;
but he could not accept as final the shrunken wisdom of such a dis-
covery. Nor would he retreat to the untenable refuge of a shallow
optimism. He went forward courageously to a deeper inquisition of
evil. He ceased for a time from comedy: one great tragedy-'Julius
Cæsar,' 'Hamlet,' 'Othello,' Lear,' 'Macbeth,' 'Antony and Cleo-
patra, Coriolanus,' Timon of Athens' - succeeded another. And
searching profoundly into the mystery of evil, he rediscovered, and in
a deeper way than ever before, the mystery of good. Cordelia suffers
a shameful death; but she has given her life as a free gift, to win a
victory of love. Othello, in the blinding simoon of passion, has struck
her whom he best loved, and Desdemona lies on the bed "pale as
her smock" but her spirit has conquered the malignant spirit of
Iago; and Othello enters into a great calm as he pronounces the
doom of a justiciary against himself, and falls where his lips can give
his wronged wife the last kiss of union.
Into such a calm, but serener and more bright, Shakespeare him-
self passed after he had completed his studies of terror and pity.
The serenity of the latest dramas, beautiful romances rather than
comedies, the plays of Prospero and Imogen and Hermione, - has
in it something of the pellucid atmosphere of early autumn days; the
air is bright and transparent, but below its calm there is a touch of
surrender and detachment: the harvest is well-nigh gathered; the
songs of spring and the vivifying midsummer ardors are withdrawn:
yet the peace that is present is a vivid peace; and Shakespeare in
these plays sees the spectacle of life-its joys of youth, its victories
of mature wisdom and the patience of hope with a sympathy deeper
and more pure than that of his earlier exultant years:-
-
―――
«Uranian clearness, come!
Give me to breathe in peace and in surprise
The light-thrilled ether of your rarest skies,
Till inmost absolution start
The welling in the grateful eyes,
The heaving in the heart. "
These are the dramas of reconcilement; like the masque of his great
enchanter, "harmonious charmingly. " It is as if Shakespeare had
solved the riddle at last, had found the secret; or not having found
it, but assured that its meaning is good, could be content to wait.
Edward Dowden.


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13174
SHAKESPEARE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THE MAN AND THE ACTOR
(1564-1616)
BY JOHN MALONE
THE life records of the actor-poet Shakespeare are not less ample
than those of his contemporaries not in public life. The place of
his birth and something of his family are known,-more than can
be said of Spenser, Chapman, or Ben Jonson. Though of the marvel-
ous industry of his pen there be only five signatures of his name to
witness, yet not that can be said of Sydenham, whose works are the
study of all who have a care for the health of men. It is a con-
vincing testimony to the gentle worth and modesty of the man that
the earliest notices of his life, except such as are of purely domestic
character, are the results of envy and detraction. Had not William
Shakespeare been early a victim to that hurt of all true and simple-
hearted great ones, the sting of venomed slander, the admirers of
his incomparable genius had not known how to fix with certainty the
first lights of his unfading day.
"He was not of an age but for all time. " Shrewd old Ben Jonson
never wrote a phrase which contributes more to his own immortality
than this, in which he describes Will Shakespeare's greatness, and
foretells his everlasting fame. It is one of the evidences of the con-
viction with which true personal character forces itself upon the mind,
that Jonson, who bore such a relation to Shakespeare in the affairs
of their every day that he could not help expressing his jealousy
during the time the latter lived, was yet willing, after Shakespeare's
death, to admit all the truth and greatness of the gentle-minded man
against whom, living, he had been willing to practice the art and
cunning of a court-favor-seeking rival.
This "mighty line" of rare old Ben is true both of the man and
of his work. Drama is not an invention: it is innate in the heart of
man; it began under the roof-tree of the first family, and its life will
last so long as there shall be prattling of children upon the earth.
Knowledge of Shakespeare as a man and an actor is the best
starting-point for earnest study of his work. From failure to begin
their survey from this point, most of those who have voluminously
written about him have floundered into the bogs and quicksand of
mistake and misrepresentation.
It is a plain and simple tale:-
Born in the year 1564 at or near Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwick-
shire, England, he was married in 1582 and had three children, born


## p. 13175 (#623) ##########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13175
within the early years of his wedded life. He left Stratford sud-
denly, and became an actor and writer of plays famous enough to be
noticed by detraction in 1589, and cited amongst the foremost men of
letters in England in 1592. He followed the calling of an actor in
honor and eminence from early youth until a period as late as three
years before his death. He made money and accumulated property
both in London and in Stratford; was the companion, associate, and
friend of the greatest and wisest men of his day, and was admired
and beloved by them. Finally, while yet in active life, he died in
the quiet of Stratford in his prime of years and fame, in the year
1616, and was buried there in the chancel of the parish church of
the Holy Trinity.
Beyond these facts all that we are told of the man Shakespeare is
inference, more or less valuable according to its logical method; yet
much do we know by invincible deduction from a strong array of
known and recorded facts. What is positively told of him by the liv-
ing witnesses of his own time may be written within the space of a
visiting-card. What may be warrantably offered as logical presump-
tions from the circumstances of his life and times extend that space
to volumes. As with all men, some of the most useful presumptions.
going to show his character and place in life spring from his family
relations.
The natural fortress or dune upon which stands the modern Castle
of Warwick was in the Roman time a præsidium or camp of guard, on
the wooded frontier beyond which the free Britons had taken refuge.
In the time of William of Normandy there was in the possession of
this stronghold a certain Turkhill of that free race, called Turkhill of
Warwick. He took no part in the contest between Harold and the
Norman, and believed, upon the accession of the Conqueror, that he
would be allowed to retain his possessions in peace. William, when
making his 'Domesday Boke,' set down the fact that nearly all of
the property in Warwickshire was held from Turkhill; but sent out
his own Earl of Warwick, William of Newburg, and Turkhill was dis-
possessed of all his holdings, except some inconsiderable properties in
what was known as Hemlingford Hundred, in the centre of the for-
est. To this small estate he retired, relinquishing the name of War-
wick; and was thereafter known, himself and his successors, by the
name of "Arden," or "of the wood Arden," signifying high or great
forest. "This is the forest of Arden;" and Mary Arden, of Turkhill's
- a woman of gentle and loving character,- was the mother
of our poet and a careful and devoted spouse to her husband John,
called by home people "Shaxper. " It was the officers of heraldry
who made invention of a punning meaning for this name; which like
its woodland neighbor "Shuckborough" came evidently from the old
race,
-


## p. 13176 (#624) ##########################################

13176
SHAKESPEARE
British combination of "Shacks". a word well known to woodmen
who use split timber for their shelter-with the term used for a set-
tlement or colony. The shortening of this termination has analogy in
the use of "Kesper" for Kexborough in Yorkshire. When John and
Mary Shakespeare were married in 1555 or 1556, the father of Mary
Shakespeare, Robert Arden of Wilmecot, was a substantial farmer,
owning several homesteads; of one of which the father of John
Shakespeare, Richard, was tenant.
Upon Robert Arden's death, Mary Shakespeare inherited two of
these farms,-one called Asbies, and a smaller one in the little town
of Snitterfield. John Shakespeare had given up the life of a husband-
man to which he was born; and having entered into business in the
market town of Stratford, was at the time of his marriage an active,
prudent, and money-making man.
When William, the first son, was born in 1564, the neighborhood of
Stratford was afflicted by the plague, and many of the inhabitants
were carried away; but that wise Providence which watches the fall
of a sparrow sheltered the life of the infant who was to become the
greatest poet of our tongue.
John Shakespeare, in addition to his business, which was that of a
glover and wool merchant, occupied an important position in the gov-
ernment of the borough. In the year 1558 he was appointed to one
of the minor offices of his town, and passed through several years of
service as an able alderman; until he became on September 4th, 1568,
the chief magistrate or High Bailiff of the borough. It was at this
period that he obtained from the Herald's Office the right to bear a
coat of arms,- a gold shield with a spear in bend impaled with the
arms of the family of Arden. The crest assigned him was a falcon
holding a spear erect. About the year 1578 he ceased to perform
any of the functions of his office of alderman; and finally, in the year
1584, after having been for nearly six years absent from the meetings
of the board, though frequently requested to appear, his name was
removed from the roll of alderman, and his friend John Sadler was
elected in his place. This removal of John Shakespeare from the
board of town governors of Stratford, which was in fact a resignation,
has been attributed by many writers to a sudden and inexplicable
condition of poverty. It was in 1578 that the Oath of Supremacy was
enforced upon all persons holding office, and the right to be sworn
according to the custom of the borough abrogated. As John Shake-
speare was and remained a recusant, it must be concluded that his
absence from the board of aldermen was a direct consequence of the
prohibition established by law.
That John Shakespeare was a member of that class of persons who
desired to practice the old religion, and that he lived in the respect
-


## p. 13177 (#625) ##########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13177
of his neighbors, under the protection of some one powerful enough
to prevent the application of the penal law in its severity, is clearly
established by the Warwickshire Book of Recusants' made up by
Sir Thomas Lucy and others, the Queen's Commissioners, in 1592.
Traditions must be very carefully studied before being let into
the company of facts. About William Shakespeare's youth there are
several stories of a very misty kind. When we consider that there
were in and around Stratford three other William Shakespeares in
his time, but little faith is due to statements made half a century
after his death about deer-stealing, lying drunk under roadside trees,
and other tales of the simple country folk who but repeated hearsay.
Whatever the cause for that single but not ill-natured instance of
ridicule of his neighbor, indulged in by the gentle actor who made
Justice Shallow and Sir Thomas Lucy twin laughing-stocks, it cer-
tainly was not all the memory of a merited punishment for wild and
boyish pranks.
In October of the year 1583, John Somerville, a gentleman living
at the manor-house of Edston, within three miles of Stratford, was
arrested for some inflammatory words uttered by him against Queen
Elizabeth. As this was a time when plots were rife in England
for the release of Mary Queen of Scots, and the advocacy of her
claim to the throne of England, every individual who had any sym-
pathy for her was most jealously watched. Somerville had been
known to express himself strongly in favor of the claims of Mary; and
when he gave voice to strong language against Queen Elizabeth, he
was immediately arrested, sent up to London, and a commission was
appointed from the Privy Council to go into Warwickshire for the
arrest of all persons related to, or in any way connected with, the
Somerville family. Somerville's wife was the daughter of Edward
Arden of Park Hall, the head of the family of Shakespeare's mother.
This commission held its sittings in Sir Thomas Lucy's house of
Charlecote, and Sir Thomas was himself most active in securing the
arrest and prosecution of all persons connected with the accused.
Amongst others brought before him was a boy, companion or confiden-
tial page to Somerville, not mentioned by name in any of the records,
but who is referred to as having written down over his own hand an
account of the proceedings of the day upon which Somerville was
arrested. He must therefore have been a boy of more than common
education, and of a family in a condition of life above the common
sort. Somerville was about twenty years of age at this time, and
was most carefully watched by his family because of his tendency
to "midsummer madness. " His family preserved a tradition that
William Somerville, his brother, who after John's death in prison,
while under sentence for treason, became the head of the family,


## p. 13178 (#626) ##########################################

13178
SHAKESPEARE
and was High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1610,- had an exquisite
miniature of Shakespeare painted, which he transmitted to his de-
scendants as a precious heirloom of the affection which existed
between himself and our gentle Will. This miniature, the only
portrait of Shakespeare which has lawful evidence to support its
character, is now in the possession of a gentleman in London. The
family, which guarded it sacredly to the opening of this century, has
so far passed away that one of the most celebrated of the dormant
peerage cases has waited long to put one of the race in possession of
the title of Lord Somerville.
From Charlecote, Mrs. Somerville, her sister-in-law Elizabeth, Mary
Arden, daughter of Sir George Throckmorton and wife of Edward
Arden, with all their servants and dependents, were sent up to
London. Edward Arden had been previously taken there, and was
hanged at Tyburn on November 23d. Somerville died in Newgate, it
was said upon the rack. The others were kept in prison for weary
months. Of the household of Mrs. Somerville was one whom Thomas
Wilkes, the clerk of the council, writes down "Wm. Chacker. "
Our young poet,-at this time but nineteen years of age, newly
married to a neighbor, Anne Hathaway, and father of an infant daugh-
ter, Susanna,- a close kinsman of these Ardens, was liable to be sud-
denly and most unexpectedly obliged to answer the serious charge of
aiding and abetting an overt act of treason; and in consequence
of that charge to be sent, through the ministration of Sir Thomas
Lucy as committing magistrate of the county, to one of the many
prisons in London in which at that time all persons charged with
these political offenses were confined, and from which many of them
were from time to time taken out to execution. The natural disposi-
tion of all persons who were friendly to the family would impel the
neighbors and friends on such an occasion to endeavor to cover or
hide the real reason; and out of this, some boyish prank, which had
perhaps excited the temporary anger of Sir Thomas Lucy, was made
the traditionary cause of William Shakespeare leaving his home at
this time.
-
-
Evidences of the date of Shakespeare's marriage are entirely
inductive. The only fact positively known is, that in February 1582
he made an application to the Bishop of Worcester for a dispensation
from the usual publication of the banns, which, upon his giving bond
against impediments, was granted; but whether the marriage took
place before or after this dispensation, no one at present knows.
It
was common custom at this time, and for long before and after, to
marry privately without asking dispensation, and even without going
to the parish church or having the marriage registered. The presence
of "old priests," as they were called, who lived in Arden in hiding,


## p. 13179 (#627) ##########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13179
or went from house to house as tutors of the young, made such mar-
riages easy. In the face of such patent facts, the notion that there
was anything irregular in Shakespeare's marriage is vicious.
The family of Shakespeare, at the time of his separation from his
native home, consisted of his wife Anne Hathaway; his daughter
Susanna, born in 1582; his twin son and daughter Hamnet (or as the
name was altered in Warwickshire speech, Hamlet) and Judith, born
in 1584; his father and mother; a brother Gilbert, born October 1566;
a sister Joan, born April 1569; and a brother Edmund, who, born in
May 1580, afterward became a player with him in London.
There are vague traditions which tend to explain the disposition
of the young stranger towards the theatre when he found himself in
London city. It is said that he began in a humble capacity by
holding horses at the door. He is said to have been expert in the
rudiments of acting, expressed in what was a common country sport
known as "killing the calf. " This was a homely exercise of dramatic
effort, which consisted in standing behind a screen and imitating the
talk of a farmer (who had brought a calf to market) with the butcher
to whom it was sold, and by whom it was killed, - interspersed with
the bleatings of the victim as it went through the various stages of
transport and transfer. That-
'Twas a brute part of him
To kill so capital a calf there,”
he had remembered as the best compliment of his fitness for the
actors' calling before he looked up his former companions, then
engaged in the fascinating work of the theatre under the patronage
of such powerful men as the Earl of Leicester, Lord Strange, the
Earl of Pembroke, and Philip, Earl of Arundel.
It is an important fact that Shakespeare's companions of the
theatre were Warwickshire men. Many of them had been boys, who,
before the monasteries at and about Coventry were secularized in
Henry VIII. 's time, learned the rudiments of dramatic art under
the guidance of the monks of those institutions. The Burbages, the
Fields, the Greenes, the Underhills, are mentioned frequently in the
records of the dramatic entertainments given in Coventry, in Ches-
ter, in Stratford, in Leicester, and in other neighboring towns, by
companies traveling under the protection and patronage of different
members of the county gentry. Most and the best of the companies
of players were made up of West of England men.
Their patrons,
with the exception of the Earl of Arundel, were all from that part of
the country. In 1574 James Burbage, joiner and actor, had builded
The Theatre in the fields between the city of London and Shore-
ditch; and had established a company there under the patronage of
Robert, Earl of Leicester, and the warrant of a royal license.


## p. 13180 (#628) ##########################################

13180
SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare himself, ten years of age in 1574, could have been a
witness of the gorgeous pageants at Kenilworth, which were arranged
and conducted by the Earl of Leicester, with the assistance of musi-
cians and actors whom he was proud to protect, and who in their
association bore the name of his servants and wore his livery. There
might this wonderful boy have been himself an actor, and acquired
the impulse of that dramatic spirit which has given us the inestima-
ble privilege of enjoying in our generation the greatest of all human
works of the dramatic character. If not there, in the entertainments
given by the Leicester company, or by the company of the Earl of
Derby, or by the Lord Chamberlain's company in the Guildhall at
Stratford, under his father's patronage, he might well have taken
part, and formed acquaintance with the playfellows of his after life,
and established a reputation as a player which stood him in good
stead when he was subsequently obliged to take shelter in the busy
city of London from the danger of persecution in his own home.
The silence of contemporary record as to Shakespeare's educa-
tion is apt to mislead those who do not realize how easy it was, in
the unsettled social condition of the England of his y, to obtain
an education without attendance at the schools. The old Oxford and
Cambridge men- men who had studied at Padua and Rome and
Paris and Salamanca - were scattered all over England in the houses
of the great and low: in forest cells, in shops, in farm-houses, and
in fishing-cots, ostensibly following the work of the poor, but in
reality teaching the young in secret. The papers of the Record
Office are filled with accounts of the huntings of them. When the
history of the society and letters of England shall have been rewrit-
ten, as it must be, it will be known that the best of England's
schools were sometimes in the hidden recluse's cell. To conclude
that Shakespeare was an ignorant country lad, without the rudiments
of polite learning, is only possible to those who ignore this living
social power of his, and after, times. The very wood of Arden was
filled with men who had been dishoused in the general secularization
of religious establishments in Henry VIII. 's time, and who earnel
their bread by teaching the children of families connected with them
by blood or by old association. Shakespeare gives us an intimation
of this in the play of 'As You Like It. ' When Orlando and Rosa-
lind meet in Arden wood, and Orlando, finding the strange youth
quick of wit and sharp of tongue, says that his speech savors rather
of the city and the court than of the country, her answer is, "I have
been told so of many, but indeed an old religious uncle of mine here in
the forest taught me to speak. " Shakespeare himself was not with-
out an old religious uncle. Many of his name were connected with
the religious institutions of Warwickshire. Isabella Shakespeare, per-
haps namesake of the sweet nun of 'Measure for Measure,' had been


## p. 13181 (#629) ##########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13181
prioress of Wraxhall Convent, to which a Shakespeare had been
bailiff. Roger Shakespeare, at the dissolution of the monastery of
Baddeley, in Gloucestershire, a neighbor county to Warwick, retired
upon a pension of forty shillings in the year 1553, eleven years
before the poet's birth.
Be it as it may for the means, it is sure that before 1589 William
Shakespeare had proved himself the foremost master of English
speech. It is to be noted here that but four of those who professed
play-making at this time were older than the Warwickshire boy.
George Peele was born in 1552, John Lilly in 1553, George Chapman
in 1559, and Robert Greene in 1561. Marlowe, who is most often
referred to as a predecessor of Shakespeare, was only two months
his elder, and did not leave his college at Cambridge until 1587.
Marlowe, who was affectionately remembered by Shakespeare in 'As
You Like It,' began in London as an actor, and if likelihoods are to
be considered, was rather a pupil than a master. Shakespeare, like
all simply great men, was the maker of the school of his time. He
struck at once and unaided into the perfectest way of expression,—
that sublime mastery of drama which was no man's before, and will
be no man's again. He knew intuitively the purpose of playing. He
became at once what he will always be, and what his actor ought to
be,- champion of English speech.
It was then considered the duty of every scholar who could obtain
the means, to travel in Italy for the purpose of finishing his educa-
tion in that language, which it was believed would displace all other
languages of Continental Europe, and rival Latin in the struggle to
restore a universal tongue. English was the language of the common
people. Many of the best writers of Elizabeth's time had no faith in
the perpetuity of English as a literary language. The common
speech was left to the actor, and his drudge the play-poet. But
Sackville the courtier, by grafting the blank verse-and the poet
Spenser the sonnet of Italy to the sturdy English stock, had shown
a way which Shakespeare the actor made safe and sure for the gen-
erations coming after, to keep all exotics from the garden of their
thoughts.
The power of the drama of Elizabeth's day is never fully under-
stood by the student of mere literature or history. Drama is a dis-
tinct thing, bearing such a relation to literature as the moving and
speaking man does to an outline sketch of him. The trained actor
is the only maker of drama. This Will Shakespeare well understood,
as he understood most things; and so he went on with patience in
his chosen work, while Greene, Marlowe, and Nash made faces at
him, and called him rude and unlettered because he was nearer the
great heart of nature than they were.
―


## p. 13182 (#630) ##########################################

13182
SHAKESPEARE
Drama had, in 1492, been established under royal patronage in
Spain by Isabella of Castile; and one of the earliest English com-
panies of players (1530), not tradesmen or minstrels, was that of the
Lady Princess, her granddaughter, afterwards Queen Mary. The
method of establishing a distinct guild of players came from Spanish
example. It was the custom of the actors to divide their gains
according to certain interests which were called shares. Thus James
Burbage, the owner of the first established theatre, and his rival
Philip Henslowe, - who set up at The Curtain,' so called because
built in that part of the ruin of the old monastery of Holywell which
was called the Curtain, just across the field from Burbage's Theatre,
-paid the actors in their companies by giving certain of them a
lease for a term of years of a share of the receipts. Burbage's house,
a spacious playing-place, was built of wood in octagonal form, with a
stage projecting from one of the sides into the middle of the yard, as
the inclosed space was called. There were two galleries or stories
which were roofed over. The stage was also partly roofed, and the
yard was open to the sky for air and light; for performances were
given only in the afternoon from one to three o'clock. There were
but two doors to the structure: one at which the public entered, and
the other to the actors' tiring or dressing room. There being no
women actors, the common dressing-room of the theatre was a very
exclusive sort of club. The stairs to the galleries or rooms were on
the inside; and a fee of twopence was paid for the privilege of going
above the place of the groundlings, and sixpence for a seat. To the
boxes or lords' rooms, which were next the stage on either side, en-
trance was obtained from the stage itself or through the tiring-room.
At first the actors had only a moiety of the money that was paid at
the doors. As the fees were only twopence for entrance at the pub-
lic door, and a shilling for the more exclusive privilege of passing
through the actors' private way, it will readily be seen that the man-
ager or owner had quite the best of the count. Yet out of their
store the actors paid all costs of running the house, including the
price of poets, - the least considerable of expenses, for no play was
worth more than five pounds. The wages of the minor actors, called
the hirelings, as well as those of the minstrels and mechanicians, were
also paid by the actors. Perspectives, as scenes were then called,
-painted cloths, curtains, tombs, houses, mounds, and rocks, as well
as the flies or cloths which hung from the roof of the stage, to imi-
tate sky and conceal the ropes by which the various machines used
for the descent of gods or goblins were lowered from the property
man's quarters in a little house on the roof of the stage, — belonged
to the owner of the house and were provided by him. Yet a share
in a company of players was highly valued, and was often divided


## p. 13183 (#631) ##########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13183
into many fractions, and made the subject of profitable barter. This
kind of share must be kept in mind apart from another sharing first
introduced by the sons of James Burbage, when they built the Globe
Theatre in 1599, at which time they divided the leasehold into six-
teen shares, eight of which they disposed of to Shakespeare, Heminge,
Condell, and Philips.
To enter such a company in any capacity except as a hireling was
impossible except by purchase of some part of a share; and shares
could only be obtained by him who could show merit and experience.
Even with such influence as would flow from boyhood acquaintance,
and a known ability to "pen a part," the boy Shakespeare must have
spent some years in the condition of apprenticeship before he could
seriously be considered a person important enough to be a sharer.
When therefore, in 1589, it is found by Nash's petulan preface to
Greene's 'Menaphon' that some skilled and formidable actor-poet had
incurred the writer's sarcasm by putting forth a play called 'Hamlet,'
instead of sticking to the trade of noverint or scrivener to which he
was born, we have to remember that there was but one Hamlet,'
Shakespeare's; and that Arden Waferer
a lawyer of London and
counsel to Edward Arden in 1584- was in the same degree of kin-
dred to Walter Arden, their common ancestor, as William Shake-
speare. 'Hamlet' was sold by Shakespeare to the players before he
became a member of the company of the Lord Chamberlain, with
which he had been some time identified when 'Romeo and Juliet'
was published in 1597. The Lord Admiral's Company, which was
under the management of Philip Henslow in 1589, owned Hamlet'
in 1603, when they became the Prince's (his Highness's) players.
This then old play was no longer of sufficient value as dramatic
property to prevent its being published as a History "diverse times
acted" in the city of London, at Cambridge and Oxford Universities,
and elsewhere. New plays were plentiful, and public appetite for
novelty as keen as now. There was no copyright; and a play once
printed, the actors no longer held exclusive right over it.
This con-
sideration is of the first importance, and too often ignored in dealing
with the history of Shakespeare's work.
The long continuance of the plague in 1593-4 gave occasion for
the publication of 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece. ' Shakespeare's
days were days of a very busy life, wherein the study and playing
of a multitude of new parts was blithely done, while he was forming
the strange and bodiless creatures of imagination which sing to the
ages the glory of his name. The habit of such days gave way in
1593 to an idle seclusion. In that time Shakespeare busied himself
by getting out his version of old Ovid's wildwood song of 'Adonis,
a thing done in his own boyhood, "the first heir of his invention,"
―
1


## p. 13184 (#632) ##########################################

13184
SHAKESPEARE
and to it he wrote a companion poem on the story of the Roman
matron.
Francis Meres tells us the "Sugard Sonnets" were known as
early as 1598 amongst Shakespeare's private friends. They were the
whimsical recreations of a busy brain, done in the fashionable spirit
of the time, to amuse himself and to please and assist his compan-
ions. That they were gathered up for a publisher eleven years
after Meres first praised them, gives no reason to think they were
addressed to any one person. The printer applied the sentiment of
one of the sonnets to Master W. H. , who had helped him to obtain
them. William Hewes, a popular singer, had been the favorite min-
strel of the old Earl of Essex; and to a man of his name Sonnet 20
seems to have been addressed.
Looking then from 1589 and 1592, when we get the first glimpses
of his work, we must find the personal history of Shakespeare in the
practice of the actor's calling. That he was of the company which
went with Lord Leicester to the Low Countries in 1585, and traveled
to Denmark, Germany, and it may be to Italy, are fascinating con-
jectures, but valueless at present for want of evidence. That he was
one of the young players who went to various patrons during the
first decade of his career is certain. 'Titus Andronicus,' one of the
first of his plays to be printed (1594), and consequently old in public
favor, was written for the company which had been Lord Derby's.
'Henry VI. ' and 'The Taming of the Shrew' were written for the
Earl of Pembroke's, - the company to which James Burbage belonged
before 1585.
To 'Henry VI. ' we owe the best evidence of Shakespeare's early
industry and reputation as an actor. In 1592 Robert Greene, who, on
account of dissipated habits and disregard for his obligations, had
failed in his efforts to obtain recognition as a writer of plays, uttered
his disappointment in the most rancorous terms, designating the play-
ers as "burrs, puppets, antic crows, apes, rude grooms, buckram gen-
tlemen, peasants, and painted monsters. " Following these extravagant
terms, and urging his companions, scholars of the university like
himself, to cease writing for the stage, he says:-
"For unto none of you like me sought those burrs to cleave, those
puppets (I mean) that speak from our mouths, those antics garnished
in our colors. Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow beau-
tified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a play-
er's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse
as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his
own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. "
The expression "his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide" is
an unequivocal reference to a play written by Shakespeare, in which


## p. 13185 (#633) ##########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13185
a similar line occurs: the
History of Henry VI. ,' in the third part
of which occurs the line spoken by the Duke of York to Queen Mar-
garet:-
"O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide. »
The scene in which this line occurs is one of the most dramatic
in the scope of Shakespearean work. It is the description of the
humiliation of the Duke of York after his capture by Queen Marga-
ret, in one of the latest battles of the long series of bloody contests
of the Wars of the Roses. This history, as arranged to suit the
situations of the stage, was already old enough in 1594-5 to go into
print as the 'Contention' (2 Henry VI. ) and 'The True Tragedy'
(3 Henry VI. ).
That Jonson spoke truly when he said of Shakespeare that it was
necessary to suppress much that he wrote is true in fact, but not in
the inference spitefully left by him. A clear-headed study of the early
prints of Shakespeare's plays shows that these greatly misunderstood.
works were acting copies made by Shakespeare himself from the
longer and therefore unplayable originals. Hamlet,' 'Henry VI. ,'
'Richard III. ,' cannot even to-day,- when a patient public will give
three instead of two hours to the theatre,- be played in their en-
tirety. The use of unnecessary speech, a fault of the young Shake-
speare, was avoided, as experience of his calling gave the actor
mastery of every element of his art.
In the study of his plays for actual performance, it will be found
that they show abundant corroboration of this fact. A few show
plainly the marks of the author's own cutting, merciless to mere
making of speeches, but always enhancing dramatic force. In the
present condition of evidences it is useless to apply to them any
other test of chronological order.
The slander uttered by poor Greene produced an evidence of the
integrity of Shakespeare's life, as well as a further record of the fact
that he was at this early period of his career known and recognized
as an actor. Chettle, who had published Greene's 'Groatsworth of
Wit' in 1594, very soon afterward published a pamphlet called
'Kind Heart's Dream,' in the preface to which he took occasion to
apologize for the harshness of Greene's attack upon Shakespeare. He
spoke of Shakespeare in these words: -
"The other, whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish
I had: for that as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have
used my own discretion,- especially in such a case, the author being dead,-
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 than he excellent in the
XXII-825
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