No More Learning

And Chettle's supposed apology is absolutely, and, it
would seem, studiously, anonymous. The one solid ground on
which we can take our stand is supplied by Ben Jonson's famous, but
mainly undated, references. They form the main external evidence
for the two propositions which have been ventured above; to
them, as to a magnetic centre, fly and cling all the contemporary,
and shortly subsequent, scraps of evidence that are true metal;
they supply the foundation piece on which a structure, built out
of internal evidence, may be cautiously, but safely, constructed.
Next to them, though in a different kind, comes Meres's Palladis
Tamia passage in 1598. The publication dates of Venus and
Adonis, of Lucrece, of the Sonnets, as well as the fact and date of
the purchase of New Place, are tolerably fast-driven piles; the
death date is another; the publication of the first folio yet
another. We are not, therefore, in a mere whirl of drifting atoms,
a wash of conflicting tides; but we may be more exposed to such
a whirl or wash than men who like solid ground could desire.
No biography of Shakespeare, therefore, which deserves any
confidence, has ever been constructed without a large infusion of
the tell-tale words 'apparently,' 'probably,' 'there can be little
doubt'; and no small infusion of the still more tell-tale 'perhaps,'
‘it would be natural,' 'according to what was usual at the time'
and so forth. The following summary will give the certain facts,
with those which are generally accepted as the most probable,
distinguishing the two classes, so far as is possible, without
cumbrous saving clauses, but avoiding altogether mere guesswork,
unless it has assumed such proportions in ordinary accounts that
it cannot be passed by.
The name of Shakespeare appears to have been very common,
especially in the west midlands; and there was a William Shake-
speare hanged (cf. his namesake's 'Hang-hog is Latin for bacon ')


## p. 167 (#191) ############################################

Family and Education
167
as early as 1248, not far from Stratford itself. In the sixteenth
century, the name seems to have been particularly common; and
there were at least two John Shakespeares who were citizens of the
town about the time of the poet's birth. It has, however, been
one of the accepted things that his father was a John Shakespeare
(son of Richard), who, at one time, was a 'prosperous gentleman'-
or, at any rate, a prosperous man of business as woolstapler, fell-
monger and so forth, thinking himself gentleman enough to make
repeated applications for coat armour, which, at last, were granted.
This John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, an heiress of a good
yeomanly family, but as to whose connection with a more dis-
tinguished one of the same name there remains much room for
doubt. The uncertainty of the poet's birthday is one of the best
known things about him. He was baptised on 26 April 1564;
and probability, reinforced by sentiment, has decided on the 23rd,
St George's day, for the earlier initiation. He would seem to
have had three brothers and two sisters.
There was a free grammar school at Stratford, to which, as the
son of his father, he would have been entitled to admission; and
it has been supposed that he went there. Aubrey, who is almost
entirely unsupported, even says that he was a schoolmaster himself.
The point is only of importance, first in regard to Jonson’s famous
ascription to him of small Latin and less Greek'; secondly, and
much more, in relation to the difficulty which has been raised as
to a person of no, or little, education having written the plays.
The first count matters little-many schoolboys and some school-
masters have answered to Ben's description. The second matters
much for it seems to be the ground upon which some persons of
wit have joined the many of none who are ‘Baconians' or at least
against 'the Stratforder,' as certain anti-Shakespearean Germans
call him.
The difficulty comes from a surprising mixture of ignorance
and innocence. A lawyer of moderate intelligence and no extra-
ordinary education will get up, on his brief, at a few days' notice,
more knowledge of an extremely technical kind than Shakespeare
shows on any one point, and will repeat the process in regard to
almost any subject. A journalist of no greater intelligence and
education will, at a few hours' or minutes' notice, deceive the very
elect in the same way. Omniscience, no doubt, is divine ; but
multiscience--especially multiscience a little scratched and ad-
mitting through the scratches a sea-coast to Bohemia and know-
ledge of Aristotle in Ulysses—is quite human. What is wonderful


## p. 168 (#192) ############################################

168
Shakespeare
is not what, in the book sense, Shakespeare knew, but what he
did and was. And the man—whoever he was—who wrote what
Shakespeare wrote would have had not the slightest difficulty in
knowing what Shakespeare knew.
The stories of his apprenticeship (to a butcher or otherwise)
are, again, late, very uncertain and, in part—such as his making
speeches to the calves he was to kill—infinitely childish, even
when quite possibly true. The story of his marriage, though
starting from some positive and contemporary facts, is a very
spider's web of unsubstantial evolution. On 28 November 1582,
two husbandmen of Stratford, named Sandells and Richardson,
became sureties for £40 in the consistory court of Worcester to
free the bishop from liability in case of lawful impediment, by pre-
contract or consanguinity, to the marriage of 'William Shagspeare
and Anne Hathwey' which might proceed hereupon with only
one publication of banns. On 26 May 1583, Shakespeare's eldest
daughter, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. Moreover (a much
more surprising thing than this juxtaposition), on the very day
before the signing of the bond, a regular licence was issued for the
marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Whateley—a coinci-
dence extraordinary in any case, most extraordinary if we note
the extreme closeness of the names Hathwey and Whateley
and remember that Anne Hathaway is not otherwise traceable,
though Agnes Hathaway (the two names are in practice confused)
is. This mystery, however, has been less dwelt on than the
irregular character of the 'bond' marriage and its still more
irregular chronological adjustment to the birth of Susanna. On
this, on the apparent fact that the wife was eight years older than
the husband, who was only eighteen, on his long absences from
Stratford and on the solitary bequest (and that an afterthought)
of his second-best bed to his wife, have been founded romances
moralisings, censures, defences, hypotheses of formal antenuptial
contract, every possible symptomatic extravagance of the lues
commentatoria, every conceivable excursion and alarum of the
hunt after mares' nests. The only rational course of conduct
is to decline to solve a problem for which we have no sufficient
data ; and which, very likely, is no problem at all. Only, as
Shakespeare's works have been ransacked for references to dis-
approval of marriages in which the bride is older than the
husband, and to anticipations of marriage privileges, let us
once more appeal to the evidence of those works themselves.
Ņo writer of any time—and his own time was certainly not one


## p. 169 (#193) ############################################

Guesswork and Evidence
169
а
of special respect for marriage—has represented it so constantly
as not only 'good' but 'delightful,' to retort La Rochefou-
cauld's injurious distinction. Except Goneril and Regan, who,
designedly, are monsters, there is hardly a bad wife in Shakespeare
-there are no unloving, few unloved, ones. It is not merely in
his objects of courtship-Juliet, Viola, Rosalind, Portia, Miranda
—that he is a woman-worshipper. Even Gertrude—a questionable
widow-seems not to have been an unsatisfactory wife to Hamlet
the elder as she certainly was not to his brother. One might
hesitate a little as to Lady Macbeth as a hostess-certainly not as
a wife. From the novice sketch of Adriana in the Errors to the
unmatchable triumph of Imogen, from the buxom honesty of
Mistress Ford to the wronged innocence and queenly grace of
Hermione, Shakespeare has nothing but the beau rôle for wives.
And if, in this invariable gynaecolatry, he was actuated by dis-
appointment in his own wife or repentance for his own marriage, he
must either have been the best good Christian, or the most pigeon-
livered philosopher, or the most cryptic and incomprehensible
ironist, that the world has ever seen. Indeed, he might be all
these things, and feel nothing of the kind. For the next incident
of the biographic legend—the deerstealing and consequent flight
to London—there is, it has been said, no real evidence. It is not
impossible, though the passage in The Merry Wives of Windsor
which has been supposed to be a reference to the fact is at least
equally likely to be the source of the fiction. That Shakespeare
went to London somehow there can be no doubt; how, and when,
and for what reason, he went, there can be no certainty. If the
Greene reference be accepted, he must have been there long
enough to have made a reputation for himself in 1592; by next
year, 1593, the year of Venus and Adonis, he had begun his
unquestionable literary career, and made the acquaintance of lord
Southampton; and, by next year again (1594) (though at the end
of it), we first find him a member of the famous company of which
he became a leader, and which included Burbage, Heminge, Condell
and other persons famous in connection with him.
How long the career—which emerges from obscurity, perhaps
with the first, certainly with the second and third of these dates
and facts—had been going on is, again, guesswork. Casting back,
however, we get a reasonable terminus ante quem non, if not a certain
terminus a quo, in the birth of twins (Hamnet, who died young and
Judith, who lived) to him and his wife, before 2 February 1585,
when they were baptised. Four years later, again, than 1594, the
a


## p. 170 (#194) ############################################

170
Shakespeare
Meres list of 1598 shows to Shakespeare's name, besides Venus and
A donis and Lucrece (1594), the goodly list of plays which will be
seen presently, and the as yet unprinted Sonnets, while Shake-
speare had also become at least a competent actor-a business
not to be learnt in a day-and had acquired money enough to
buy, in 1597, the famous New Place, the largest house in his
native town.
The literary progress of these nine or thirteen years, according
as we take the first theatrical record or the Meres list for goal,
can be assigned, in some cases, with certainty: of the life, hardly
anything whatever is known. Legends about horse-holding at
theatres, in the first place; of the organisation of a brigade of
horse-boys, in the second ; of promotion to callboy and to actor-
are legends. William Shakespeare's name seems to occur, in April
1587, in a deed relating to some property in which his family were
interested. Otherwise, all positive statements in biographies of
credit will be found qualified with the 'doubtless' or the ‘probably,'
the 'may have and the 'would have,' until we find him taking
part in the Christmas entertainments presented to the queen at
Greenwich on St Stephen's day and Innocents' day 1594. Then,
and then only, does the mist disappear; though it hardly leaves
him in a very lively 'habit as he lived. But we have mentions of
houses in London and (before the New Place purchase) at Stratford;
details of financial disaster to his father which seems to have been
repaired, and of the subsequent application for arms, in his father's
name, which was at last granted in 1599; suits about the property
in dispute ten years earlier--a good many business details, in short,
but little more that is satisfying.
But the nature of commentators abhors a vacuum : and this
vacuum has been filled up (excluding for the present the various
arrangements of the Works) from two different sides. In the first
place, we have a series of conjectures dealing with the progress of
Shakespeare's novitiate as actor and playwright, and his relations to
his immediate predecessors in the latter capacity. In the second, we
have the application of hypothetical hermeneutics to the Sonnets!
The first is guesswork pure and unadulterated; or, to speak
with more correctness, adulteration without any purity, except in
so far as concerns the orks themselves—which are reserved for
the moment. From them, it derives whatever shadow of substance
it possesses. We do not know that Shakespeare ever personally
knew a single one of the university wits. ' The Greene reference,
1 For the poetical aspect of these, see the following chapter.


## p. 171 (#195) ############################################

Personal and Local Association
171
taken at its fullest possible, is, distinctly, against personal knowledge.
The Chettle reference, from its obvious and definite disclaimer
of personal knowledge, strengthens the counter-evidence. The
(probably much later) passages in The Returne from Pernassus
give no support to it. Parodies of phrasings universal in
Elizabethan drama go for practically nothing. And the famous
and beautiful appeal to the 'Dead Shepherd' in As You Like It
contains as little to indicate that, wherever Shakespeare was and
whatever he did, from 1585 to 1593, his circle and that of the
'wits' anywhere overlapped.
So, also, the present writer can see no valid evidence of any
personal connection with Spenser. 'Our pleasant Willy' has, almost
necessarily, been given up: the connection of 'Aetion' with
Shakespeare appears to be wholly gratuitous. “No doubt,' as is
pointed out, Shakespeare's company, if he belonged to any before
1594, probably, and, after that, certainly, 'toured in the provinces';
but there is no evidence that he ever was, and no necessity that he
ever should have been, in Germany or Scotland or Denmark ; nor
any reason of either kind why he should have surveyed the battle-
fields of Towton or of Shrewsbury or of Bosworth any more than
those of Actium or Pharsalia. London and Stratford are the only
places in which, from evidence, we can place him. Excepting his
family, business folk in the two places mentioned, lord Southampton
and Ben Jonson, there are hardly any persons with whom, on
evidence, we can associate him.
This manner of handling the subject must, of course, be pro-
foundly unsatisfactory to those who think that, in consequence
of the long discussions of biographical facts and fictions by
scholars, 'final judgments’ should be possible on such points as
Shakespeare's marriage, his religious views, his knowledge of
law, his conduct in business relations and the like. It seems
to be impossible to get a very large number of presumably
educated and not unintelligent people to perceive the difference
between proof and opinion. In all the instances just given, we
have no basis for proof; and, as to all of them, opinion can
never be final, because every person of fair intelligence and
education has a right to his own. Of such argument as that
Shakespeare's father could not have been a butcher because he
was a glover and guild rules forbade the combination, there can
be no end. Those who love it may follow it in its endless
course; it cannot be too peremptorily asserted that those who
do not love it are entitled to reject it entirely and to say 'fight


## p. 172 (#196) ############################################

172
Shakespeare
6
Tradition: fight Presumption' to this shadowy dog and that un-
substantial bear.
The solid fact, however, of Meres's mention of the Sonnets, two
of which (though the whole collection was not published till ten
years later) appeared surreptitiously, it would seem, next year
(1599), introduces another range of hypothetical exercise in
biography, which has sometimes been followed in opposition to
the former method, but has been more frequently combined with
it so as to permit of even more luxuriant and wilder expatiation.
This is the autobiographic reading of Shakespeare's work; and,
more particularly, of the Sonnets themselves. The extravagances
of this ‘method' are a by-word; yet it may be questioned whether
almost everybody-sometimes in the very act of protesting against
them—has not been caught in the mazy meshes. Are we to say to
John Shakespeare ‘Thou art this man,' when we read about testy
and platitudinous fathers like old Capulet and Egeus and Polonius?
Should we substitute the 'best silver bowl' argument for the
‘second-best bed' argument and, calling in The Tempest, see
Judith Quiney, to whom that bowl was left, in Miranda Criticism,
it is to be feared, shakes its head and observes that the colours'
of different ages date from long before Aristotle ; and that, doubt-
less, there were charming girls even before Nausicaa.
It may, however, be fully admitted that the Sonnets stand in a
very different category from that of the plays. Not only does the
poet of this kind speak ex professo from his heart, while the
dramatist speaks ex professo as an outside observer and 'repre-
senter, but there is no poetry of this kind which approaches
Shakespeare's Sonnets in apparent vehemence and intensity of
feeling. There is even hardly any which mingles, with the expression
of that feeling, so many concrete hints, suggesting so broadly a
whole romance of personal experience, as they do. How are we to
take all this?
One of the best known things in Shakespearean study-even to
those who have hardly dabbled in it—is that one of the ways in
which it has been taken is an endless series of earnest and almost
frantic attempts to reconstruct this romance as a history. The
personality of the Mr W. H. to whom the complete edition of 1609
is dedicated, though perhaps the chief, is but one, of the points of
dispute. The reality and identity of the fair young man and the
dark lady who are by turns or together concerned in the Sonnets
themselves come next, and, with some enquirers, first; while the
incidents and sentiments, expressed, implied, commemorated, in


## p. 173 (#197) ############################################

-
Biographical Aspects of the Sonnets 173
them, have occupied a not small library of discussion, appreciation,
attack, defence and so forth.
The extravagance of much of this has always been perceptible
to impartial observers; and, perhaps, the extravagance of most of
it-except the particular theory to which they are themselves
inclined—has been clear enough even to the theorists themselves.
Sometimes—and of late with especial learning and elaboration by
Sidney Lee—a sort of general caveat has been entered on the
ground of the peculiarly traditional and conventional character of
sonnet writing, especially at this particular time. Sometimes, all
attempts to interpret have been shaken off, angrily, contemptuously
or critically, according to temperament. And it may be suspected
that some people who would confess it, and more who would not,
have always inclined to Hallam's curious but courageous wish that
Shakespeare ‘had never written them. '
But he did write them—there is hardly a thing of his as to the
authorship of which-what with Meres's early ascription, the publi-
cation with his name seven years before his death and the entire
absence of denial, counter-claim, or challenge of any kind—we can
be so certain. And, probably, there is no lover of poetry as poetry
who would not wish that anything else ‘had never been written,' so
that these might be saved. But, undoubtedly, the mean is very
hard to hit in the interpretation of these poems. Although it is
quite certain that the sonnet tradition, starting from Petrarch and
continued through generations of Italian, French and English
practitioners, had resulted in a vast and complicated 'common
form' of expression-a huge mass of publica materies of which the
individual builder took his store, sometimes directly from other
individuals, sometimes indirectly—it is possible to lay too much
stress on this. After all, even if the sonnet thoughts and phrases
were as stereotyped as the figures of a pack of cards—and they
were not quite this—there is infinite shuffling possible with a pack
of cards, infinite varieties of general game and still more of
personal play, above all, infinite varieties of purpose and stake.
You may play 'for love' in one sense or ‘for love' in another and
a very different one. You may play for trifles or for your last
penny-to show your skill, or merely to win, or to pass the time, or
from many other motives. That Shakespeare was the Deschapelles
or Clay of sonnet whist is pretty certain. But that he did not
play merely for pastime is almost more so to any one who takes the
advice of Sidney's 'Look in thy heart' and applies it to reading,
not writing.


## p. 174 (#198) ############################################

174
Shakespeare
>
>
The Sonnets, then, are great poetry, that is to say, in a certain
sense, great fiction; and they are intense expressions of feeling,
that is to say, in another certain sense, great facts. But to what
extent and degree are this fiction and this fact dosed and propor-
tioned ? How are we to separate them? How do they colour and
react upon one another? Here, no doubt, is the rub-and it is a
rub which it seems to the present writer impossible to remove or
lubricate. Once more, to those who have accustomed themselves
really to weigh evidence, it is impossible to accept it either as
proved or disproved that ‘Mr W. H. ' was Pembroke, or South-
ampton, or any other friend-patron of Shakespeare, or merely
somebody concerned with the publication, or, in fact, a 'personage'
of any kind in this play. Nor is it possible to extricate, from the
obscurity in which, to all appearance designedly, they were involved,
either the other dramatis personae or even, save to the vaguest
extent, the scenario itself. Friendship and love-bene velle and
amare-exchange parts, combine, divorce, sublimate or materialise
themselves and each other in too Protean a fashion to be
caught and fixed in any form. The least unreasonable of all the
extravagant exegeses would be that the whole is a phantasmagoria
of love itself, of all its possible transformations, exaltations,
agonies, degradations, victories, defeats. The most reasonable
explanation, perhaps, and certainly not the least Shakespearean,
is that it is partly this—but partly, also, in degree impossible to
isolate, a record of actual experience. And it is not unimportant
to observe that the Sonnets, a lock in themselves, become a key
(Dryden would have recognised the catachresis) to the plays. How
far they reveal Shakespeare's facts may be doubtful; his method of
treating fact, his own or others, is clear in them.
Before generalising on what this is, we may turn to the individual
plays themselves, to which we have now come in well grounded
chronological advance. The Meres list is well known; it is as
follows: Gentlemen of Verona, [Comedy of] Errors, Love
labors Lost, Love labours wonne, Midsummer night dreame,
Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King
John, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet. Of these, we know
all-for the proposed rejection of Titus Andronicus will be dealt
with presently-except Love's Labour's Won, which has been
identified, as plausibly as mere conjecture can identify anything,
with Al's Well that Ends Well. It is, however, all-important
to observe that Meres gives no order on sequence; and that so large
a bulk of work as this, greater than the whole theatre of some


## p. 175 (#199) ############################################

External Evidence as to Order of Plays 175
considerable dramatists, must have taken no short time to write,
especially when we consider that the writer, during four years un-
questionably and, beyond reasonable doubt, for a good deal longer,
had been busily employed in acting. Twelve years possibly, since
the baptism of Hamnet and Judith, six at least, if 'we accept the
Greene reference, may be suggested as not conjectural items in
the problem; eight or ten as a plausible splitting of the difference.
To the fruits of this time we may add, fairly enough, if no certainty
be insisted upon, Shakespeare's part, whatever it was, in Henry VI
(see below and the chapter on the doubtful plays) as well as
portions or first sketches of others and, perhaps, some whole plays.
But the Meres list, from its solidity, affords such an invaluable
basis for investigation and classification that it is wise, in the first
place, not to travel outside of it in quest of either external or
internal evidence of order, or characteristics of quality.
The external evidence is of the smallest. No one of the plays
except Titus was published till the year before Meres wrote,
and some not till the folio of 1623. A Comedy of Errors was
acted near the close of 1594. The Greene reference quotes a line
of Henry VI-not a Meres play. Several, Romeo and Juliet,
Richard II, Richard III, were printed in 1597; Love's Labour's
Lost (with alterations) in the next year. Titus Andronicus was
acted in January 1593/4 and printed in the latter year, in which
The Merchant of Venice, as The Venetian Comedy, may have
appeared. This is all ; and it will be observed, first, that much of
it comes close up to the Meres date itself; secondly, that it con-
cerns only a few of the plays. We have, therefore, to fall back on
internal evidence, as it is called. But internal evidence is of very
different kinds; and it is important to distinguish them from each
other with the greatest possible care. One kind-or, rather, group
of kinds-has figured very largely, indeed, in Shakespearean study.
It is based on what may be broadly called 'allusions'-passages in
the plays which seem to refer to contemporaneous and known
events, coincidence of the general subject of them with such
events, or, sometimes, references in other more or less certainly
dated work to them. It cannot be too strongly asserted, from the
point of view of the present survey, that this class of evidence is
open to the gravest suspicion. It ought not, of course, to be
judged from its caricatures, as in the case where the mention of
'pepper' is supposed to be connected with a known capture of
a large cargo of that comforting spice. But, in almost all cases,
it is exceedingly difficult to be sure that the coincidences are not


## p. 176 (#200) ############################################

176
Shakespeare
purely imaginary. Nor is this the worst part of the matter. Admit
that they are not purely imaginary—that the actual cited passages
may have had some connection with the actual known events.
How are we possibly to be certain that these passages were parts
of the play as originally acted, much more as originally written?
“Those who live to please must please to live': the topical insertion
or 'gag' is one of the best known features of theatrical composition
and is probably as old as Thespis in ancient times or Boileau's
imaginary pilgrims in modern. Some of Shakespeare's plays, we
know, were not printed till nearly thirty years after they were
first acted; it is not impossible that, in some cases, the interval
may have been even longer. Even if you can date the passage, it
will give you no right whatever to date the play accordingly. , If,
therefore, this whole class of evidence' is not to be ruled out
bodily, it must be relegated to the utmost margin-kept strictly in
the court of the Gentiles.
The other kind of internal evidence is not itself quite homo-
geneous, except that it is, or should be, always and entirely
concerned with literary matters—with the quality, style, con-
struction, form, character generally, of the work. Even here,
there are dangers—and quite as fantastic tricks have been played
in this way as in the other. By judging piecemeal, by adopting
arbitrary standards of judgment and, above all, by considering,
not what Shakespeare wrote but what we should like Shakespeare
to have written, or think he ought to have written, it is possible to
go as far wrong in this as in any way whatever. In no way, how-
ever, is it possible to reach so far and so safely, if due precaution
be observed and if there be brought to the enterprise, in the first
place, a sufficient study of the whole of Shakespeare's work, and,
in the second, a competent knowledge of preceding and contem-
porary English literature.
The invaluableness of the Meres statement is that it provides
us with a trustworthy and far reaching criterion between Shake-
speare's earlier and his later work. It is, of course, possible that
Meres may not have known of some early pieces or may have
omitted them by accident; but in a list already so considerable as
his and, as in the case of the Sonnets, showing knowledge of a more
than merely outside character, it is very improbable that he omitted
much that was completed, publicly performed and notoriously
Shakespeare's. On the other hand, we have this early body of
.
work. coted' and named as early. If we can discover any charac-
teristics of the kind least likely to deceive the characteristics of


## p. 177 (#201) ############################################

The Earliest Group
177
construction, style, prosody—which differ remarkably as wholes
from those of the plays not named, or most of them, this will
give us light of the most important and illuminative kind. If we
can perceive that, in these same respects, the plays of the early
list differ from each other singly or in groups—that there is
evidence of the same progress and achievement inside the
group as there is between it and plays like Hamlet, As You Like
It, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello-we may almost know that we
are in the right path. And we may branch from it, though with
caution and almost with fear and trembling, into comparison of
the same kind with immediately preceding or contemporary writers,
to obtain additional illustration and illumination.
By the steady carrying out of all these processes—the com-
parison of the Meres list with the other plays; the comparison of
the plays in that list with each other; and the comparison of the
work of the Marlowe group, of Lyly and of a few other known
or unknown writers—the least hasty or fanciful of critics will
probably be induced to mark off from the Meres list of un-
doubtedly early plays a smaller group of almost undoubtedly earlier
and, perhaps, a smaller still of probably earliest. From this last,
he will probably be wise in refusing to select an 'earliest of all,'
because the marks of earliness in them are not quite the same.
They are all such as would characterise a genius in its novitiate;
but it would be an exceedingly rash person who should undertake
to say that, of the various kinds of literary measles which they
show, one would be likely to attack the patient sooner than another.
The group in question consists, as it seems to the present writer,
of three plays, which, to mention them in the unquestion-begging
order of the folio, are The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's
Lost and Titus Andronicus. The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
which, in the same notoriously haphazard order, comes before
them all, is, in this order of criticism, very near them as a whole,
but with perhaps later qualities; and so is Meres's probable Love's
Labour's Won (All's Well that Ends Well). Let us take the five
in order and the three, together and separately, first. That The
Comedy of Errors is, in substance, a mere adaptation of the
Menaechmi of Plautus would, in itself, have very little to do with
probable earliness or lateness; for it is a point so well known as
to require no discussion, explanation, apology or even frequent
statement, that Shakespeare never gave himself the slightest
trouble to be 'original. ' Its earliness is shown by the comparative
absence of character, by the mixed and rough-hewn quality
12
>
E. L. V.
CH, VIII.


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178
Shakespeare
of the prosody (a connected view of Shakespeare's versification
will be given later) and, last and most of all, by the inordinate
allowance of the poorest, the most irrelevant and, occasionally, the
most uncomely wordplay and 'foolery. This last characteristic
has, of course, been charged against Shakespeare generally, and
the charge will have to be dealt with in general. It need only be
said now that in no play or passage from The Tempest to Pericles
is there anything to which, as it seems to the present writer, the
words above used can be applied as they can to passage after
passage between the Dromios and their masters. He does not
therefore think, as would some, that Shakespeare did not write
these latter passages ; he does think that Shakespeare wrote them
before he knew better. But that Shakespeare was certain to know
better before long is proved in this very play by the fine, though
stiff, tirades of the opening scene, by the extremely beautiful
poetry of Adriana and her sister, as well as by touches of nascent
power over character in both of them, and by numerous flashes
here and there in which the spirit, not quite fullgrown as yet,
hurries itself through the bonds of imperfect training in speech
and metre. It is, however, on the whole, the crudest and most
immature of all the plays, and may well have been the earliest.
That position has more commonly been assigned to Love's Labour's
Lost, and here, too, the assignment has justifications, though they
are different. The play exhibits not so much (though there is
something of this) the inability of youth to finish, as its prodigality
and want of selection. The poet cannot make up his mind what
metre to select : blank verse, couplets, stanzas, fourteeners more
or less doggerel-he tries them all by turns and does them all with
a delightful improvisation. He has a real plot-partly borrowed,
of course—but he overloads it in every direction with incident and
character. Of the latter, in hasty but astonishingly creative forms,
he is the most prodigal of younkers. Nobody is a mere figure-
head: Biron, Armado, Holofernes, Costard, Rosaline, even Sir
Nathaniel, are of the true Shakespearean family; and the exquisite
Shakespearean lyric makes its appearance. There is almost every-
thing in the piece but measure and polish; and one is almost
tempted to say: ‘Measure and polish are most excellent things;
but they can wait or we can wait for them. '
Titus Andronicus, as we have it, has been denied to Shakespeare,
but this denial really passes the bounds of all rational literary
criticism. The play, we know, was acted and published in
1594; it is included with Shakespeare's by Meres in 1598; it is


## p. 179 (#203) ############################################

Titus Andronicus
179
included in the folio by Shakespeare's intimates and dramatic
associates in 1623. If we are to disregard a three-fold cord of
evidence like this, the whole process of literary history becomes
a mere absurdity—a game of All Fools, with the prize for the
craziest topsyturvyfier, as Thackeray would say, of actual fact.
It
is, of course, possible—almost everything is possible—that the
wrong play got into the folio, that Meres was mistaken, that the
piece acted and printed in 1594 was not Shakespeare's; but it is also
possible that all the world is mad, except the inhabitants of lunatic
asylums. As it happens, too, there are reasons given for the
denial; and these reasons are valueless. Titus is the one play of
Shakespeare which is assuredly of the Marlowe school; the one play,
too, which is almost wholly what is called 'repulsive' throughout;
the one play in which (see below) the stiff 'single moulded' blank
verse line hardly ever—but not never-ruffles itself and grows social.
Granted: but this is exactly what we should expect as one very
probable result of the novitiate in such a case as Shakespeare's.
Considering the shreds and patches in the same style which are
actually to be found in his work up to Macbeth and King Lear,
not to say Hamlet; considering, further, the genuinely Shake-
spearean character of Aaron, and the genuinely Shakespearean
poetry of more than one or two passages—the internal evidence
would be strong. Joined to the external, it is simply irresistible.
But the novitiate on another side is equally unmistakable here:
though the novice, scholar, tiro, explorer (call him what you will)
is in a different mood. He is playing a particular game--the game
of the tragedy with horror as itş main motive and a stately, but
monotonous and verbally ‘bombasted,' blank verse as its vehicle.
In a certain sense, it is the complement of The Comedy of Errors
and might be called The Tragedy of Horrors-outrage and blood-
shed taking the place of horseplay and buffoonery for stuff,
rhetorical and conceited diction that of wordplay and coarseness
for language. And, as there, so here, the novice, though he cannot
keep his identity and quality wholly invisible, cramps and curbs
them in order to play somebody else's game. In the order of
thought, perhaps, Love's Labour's Lost should come later-as a
burst of relief, an incoherent but untrammelled exercise in the
writer's own game or games for his own pleasure. But even a
Shakespeare is unlikely to write two plays like Love's Labour's
Lost; or, rather, a Shakespeare is least likely of all men to write
them. He will do better or worse, accordingly as he pays more or
less attention to parts of his composition, while improving that
12-2


## p. 180 (#204) ############################################

180
Shakespeare
composition itself. He will have more of the picture and less
of the panorama or kaleidoscope; but it does not follow that his
whole picture will, for a time at least, have as much charm.
And this is the state of things that we actually find in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona and All's Well that Ends Well. Julia, in the
former, as a serious character, and Parolles, in the latter, as a comic
personage, are much above anything that Shakespeare had hitherto
done in the way of live human figures. The plot, though ‘romantic'
enough in both, is much closer knit and more thoroughly carried
out by the dramatis personae than the shuffle of stock characters
in the Errors, the sanguinary dream procession of Titus, or the
masque-like intricacies of Love's Labour's Lost. The verse, still
of the same general character, is settling down towards blank
verse only and that blank verse free. But the progress is not
like that of a faultless and hopeless schoolboy, who proceeds with
even excellence from one class to another. There are relapses, as,
at least, in part (not all) of the business of Launce and his dog,
in The Two Gentlemen; there are failures to advance or even
thoroughly to know where he is,' as in that part of Helena which
has been very differently judged. It does not matter very much
whether those are right who consider her a touching example of
a wronged and loving woman, conquering through constancy and
wisdom, or those who think her ‘Shakespeare's only disagreeable
heroine'-one who makes confusion of marriage and something
very different, who practically swindles a man into indissoluble
connection with her, and who, in short, when we contrast her,
say, with Cleopatra, is the more really vicious of the pair. Either
view may be right; but, if this play were of a later date, Shake-
speare would have taken more care to prevent the uncertainty-or
would, at any rate, have left the worse interpretation on the
shoulders of the interpreters, as he has done in the case of Ophelia.
Still, there are great things in both these plays, though, emphati-
cally, they are experiments still, and experiments in which the ill
success is more conspicuous from the very fact that they aim higher.
The poetical beauties in The Two Gentlemen are, occasionally, of
all but the very highest kind, while in All's Well there is much fine
verse, Lafeu is a comic, not burlesque, character of great interest,
and there is a further advance towards the Shakespearean clown
proper.
There is, however, another candidate for the alias of Love's
Labour's Won which seems to have much less claim to it, but
which, undoubtedly, is early-in fact, in all probability, one of


## p. 181 (#205) ############################################

6
The Remaining Meres Plays 181
Shakespeare's earliest adaptations of other men's work. This
is the popular, and, in parts, very amusing, but only in parts
original, Taming of the Shrew. A play entitled The Taming
of a Shrew appeared in 1594, and, from this, the Shakespearean
piece is adapted, with not a little of his own sauce,' as
Mrs Tibbs would say, in the main or Petruchio portion, an addition
in the shape of the doubly contrasted sister Bianca, and some
very curious local allusions (in the induction) to Shakespeare's
own country. The Bianca part of the subject had been taken
from the Italian much earlier by Gascoigne. The story was sure
to catch the public taste, and the play was actually taken up long
afterwards by Fletcher for the purpose of reversing it and showing
'the tamer tamed. ' The situations, though in the farcical division
of comedy, are of general appeal, and Shakespeare has made the
very utmost of them-indeed, there are few more remarkable
instances of his power of transforming marionettes into men and
women than Petruchio and Katharine. But much of the verse,
even in the added portions, is of quite early 'university wit'
character—singly-moulded lines, the trick of repetition of the
speaker's own name instead of 'I,'‘my,' and so forth, Latin tags and
the like. Indeed, some have questioned whether this part of the
addition is Shakespeare's at all. In any case, what is his cannot
be late; and, as the original play appears not to be older than
1594, the rehandling, if it be rehandling, must have followed very
quickly. And there is very little to say for the identification with
Love's Labour's Won Petruchio's is an odd 'labour of love,' and
Lucentio seems to be a rather doubtful winner.
As to the other seven named plays in the Meres list, there are
practically no means of certain chronological arrangement. Those
who choose to do so may, of course, observe that, in Romeo and
Juliet, the nurse says ''Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,'
discover that there was an earthquake in 1580 and point to 1591.
There was, doubtless, also salmons caught in both years. So, also,
in dealing with The Merchant of Venice, it has been observed
that the queen's physician, Lopez, of Jewish descent, was tried and
executed in 1594. And there is an o in Lopez and an o in
Shylock; likewise an l in both. There were marriages in 1595, and
there are marriages in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Let
these things appeal to those to whom they do appeal. Others, per-
haps, more happily, may be content to abide by Meres and 'before
1598,' except in so far as--without positiveness but making
suggestions for what they may be worth--they rely on the kind


## p. 182 (#206) ############################################

182
Shakespeare
of internal evidence already outlined. For reasons of convenience,
we may take the three plays just mentioned first, leaving the
histories for the moment.
For all reasons, Romeo and Juliet seems likely to be the
earliest. It has not, indeed, quite such a mixture of metres as
A Midsummer Night's Dream has, and the mere ‘picture of young
love' may easily deceive us. But, on the other hand, there is
much of Marlowe's 'single-moulded' line; and, together with
many things among the most magnificent in Shakespeare, there
are crudities and inequalities of the kind natural to a beginner.
On the other hand, such a beginner as this is not frequent in
literature; and he is already far, in more than one or two respects,
from his beginnings. Already, we have seen something of that
astonishing power of vivification which distinguishes him from all
his predecessors; already, the characters have begun to take the
play into their own hands, as it were, and to work it out, not
regardless of the story, by any means, but in a way that gives to
that story a tenfold power and interest. But it has been only in
touches-the whole story has never been treated in this way,
still less have all the characters undergone this peculiar trans-
forming influence. In Romeo and Juliet, much further advance
has been made. As before—as always—Shakespeare takes a given
story and does not vary the mere incidents much, or add very
much to them. But the personages become persons; and this
personality extends throughout the drama. Independently of
Romeo and Juliet themselves—the very opposites and contradic-
tions of the stock hero and the stock heroine of Mercutio and
the nurse, the whole houses of Montague and Capulet almost
down to Antony and Potpan, are alive. There is hardly a figure
in the play, except, perhaps, the unfortunate count Paris, to
whom Shakespeare has not communicated this vivacity: and Paris
had to be a contrast to Romeo. Here, too, not for the first time-
for we have seen it in Love's Labour's Lost, in The Two Gentle-
men and even in Titus Andronicus—but in far larger measure and
intenser form, is the splendid poetry which Shakespeare puts at
the service of the drama, as (save in a few flashes of Marlowe and
Peele) it had not been put since the great days of Greek tragedy.
There is hardly less of this in A Midsummer Night's Dream;
though, as comports with comedy, it is of a less poignant and
transporting nature. And this play, as was remarked above, is
more of an olio of metres. But, in certain respects, it still marks
progress. If not in all parts, in the whole, it is the most original


## p. 183 (#207) ############################################

The Merchant of Venice
183
of Shakespeare's plays in point of subject up to this time; in fact,
it is one of the most original of all in that respect. And this
subject is worked up into action with a skill not yet displayed-
indeed, Shakespeare here depends more on incident than on cha-
racter. It is not always fully recognised how artfully the several
motives--the Theseus and Hippolyta story, the quarrel of Oberon
and Titania, the fortunes of the lovers and the 'tedious brief play'-
work into each other and work out each other. Popular as fairy
mythology had, in a manner, been, nobody had made anything like
this use of it; it is only necessary to name Gloriana and Titania, in
order to prove any rapprochement of Spenser and Shakespeare on
this head to be out of the question. Puck 'was feared in field and
town' long before Shakespeare; but Shakespeare's Puck is some-
thing very different from a mere ‘lob of spirits. ' The multiplicity
of the interests and beauties in this short play is almost bewilder-
ing: there is the stuff of half a dozen poetical comedies in it,
yet not in the least confusedly disposed.
The Merchant of Venice presents a somewhat different pro-
blem. Here, also, there are many actions: nor, perhaps, are they
much less well connected than those of the Dream, though they
lack the subtle excuse for rapid and interfluent metamorphosis
which the very title ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream supplies in the
other case. There need be no cavilling on this score-in fact, on
the 'relief' system, the system of tragic and comic interchange and
conflict which makes English drama, the chequers are even better
placed. The plot of Shylock against Antonio, the casket scenes,
the trial and the trick on the husbands, with the Lorenzo and
Jessica 'trace-horse' or 'outrigger' interest, provide a vivid wave-
like change of intensity and relief, which even the fierce vexa-
tion of Puck’s persecution of the midsummer lovers does not give.
But, from another point of view, the Merchant is less mature
than the Dream; or, rather, some of its parts are. The Morocco
and Arragon sections, at least, of the casket scenes are quite of
the Marlowe period in verse, and, to some extent, in handling; the
bantering of the lovers behind their backs, part of the Gobbo
business and other things belong to the unripe clowning which is
at its greenest in the Errors and has ripened consummately in, say,
As You Like It. On the other hand, the trial is admittedly among
the apices of dramatic poetry; and the whole characters of Shy-
lock and Portia are among the dramatis personae of eternity.
To the present writer, it has for many years been a moral certainty
that these different parts are of different dates, and that a similar


## p. 184 (#208) ############################################

184
Shakespeare
difference prevails much more largely in Shakespeare's work than
is sometimes thought. The single-plot drama, with its begin-
ning, middle and end, could, perhaps, not easily be written in
this
way. But the drama which, though not patchwork, is inter-
woven, can be thus written.
The chronicle plays, King John, Richard II and III and
Henry IV, which are certainly early because mentioned by Meres,
introduce a new division of Shakespeare's work, to which we shall
take the liberty of adding Henry VI pro tanto. In the opinion
of the present writer, the tantum is considerable; but something
has already been said in the preceding chapter as to the author-
ship of The Contention and The True Tragedie, on which Parts
II and III of Henry VI were based. In the case of all these
plays, with the possible exception of Richard II (both the
Richards were actually published in 1597), there were previously
existing pieces on the subject; whether in all cases these were
the actual pieces that we have is another question. But in
no kind of drama would the specially Shakespearean method find
better exercise than in the chronicle history. That remarkable
species, though it was to receive its perfect development only in
England, and (in absolute perfection) only at the hands of Shake-
speare himself, had, as has been seen, made its appearance as a
modernised and practicalised development of the mystery and
morality, much earlier in the sixteenth century. The advantages of
the species, when it discards allegory altogether and at least affects
to be frankly historical, are obvious : subjects that 'come home,'
copiousness and variety of interest, given outlines of striking figures,
and the like. Its dangers-hardly less obvious—are those of the
prosaic and the promiscuous; of a mere decoction of chronicle facts
and speeches, fortified by bombast and frothed with stock horseplay.
And these are abundantly exemplified in the earliest Elizabethan
specimens, while they are by no means absent from the curious later
attempts of Dekker, Middleton and others to combine a more or
less historical mainplot with a purely fictitious underplot, romantic
or classical. Now, Shakespeare's two greatest gifts, that of sheer
poetic expression and that of character creation, were exactly
what was needed to turn these 'formless agglomerations' into real
organisms, possessing life and beauty. If Richard II be quite
original (which, as has been hinted, it would not be wise to assume
too absolutely) it must be a good deal earlier than its publication,
but later than Titus Andronicus, with which, however, it may be
1 See ante, obap. VII.


## p. 185 (#209) ############################################

King John and Richard III
185
classed as exhibiting the Marlowe influence more strongly than
anything else, save some parts of Henry VI, which one would be
inclined to place between them. In yet other respects, Richard II
makes a very fair pair with Romeo and Juliet in its far different
division. The curious immature splendour of the conception of the
title part is like nothing else in Shakespeare. The parallel with, and
the suggestion given by, Marlowe's Edward II are, of course,
unmistakable. But, where Marlowe has given three Edwards, not
perhaps irreconcilable with each other but not actually reconciled,
Shakespeare's Richard sibi constat throughout, in weakness as in
strength-he is sincere in his insincerity. Still, the part is not
well supported-even of 'time-honoured Lancaster' it may be said
that he rather makes great speeches than is a great character;
and so of others. The chronicle sequence, encroaching rather on
dramatic connection, is also noticeable; as is the fact (especially
to be considered in view of Titus Andronicus and Marlowe)
that there is practically no comic element whatever. Of the ex-
treme beauty of the poetry (almost always, however, of the 'purple
patch' or 'fringe' kind and, it would seem, purposely so) in the
king's part, it is almost unnecessary to speak.
King John and Richard III, on the other hand, are'examples—
documented, as we may say, and almost acknowledged—of adapta-
tion, of the working up of existing materials. But not many
impartial and competent critics will adopt Greene's very unkind
simile of the crow and the feathers. It is much rather a case of
grafting the fairest and most luscious fruit on a crab-tree or a
sloe, though no metaphor of the kind can be satisfactory. The pro-
cesses and results of the adaptation, however, are rather different
in the two cases. In King John, Shakespeare took and kept
more of the original; but he heightened the presentation incom-
parably. The famous part of Constance is almost wholly his own;
he has done much to the king, not a little to the bastard, hardly
less to Arthur and Hubert. Above all, he has (to quote an absurd
boast of another person a century later) 'made it a play'-a piece
of life and not a sample of chronicling. Hardly anywhere will the
student find better examples of Shakespeare's craftsmanship in
verse and phrase-of the way in which, by slightly adding, can-
celling, smoothing, inspiriting, he turns a lame line or passage into
a beautiful one than in King John, compared with its original.
Richard III, on the other hand, bears very much less re-
semblance to its predecessor, The True Tragedie of Richard III,
and some have regarded it as almost an independent following


## p. 186 (#210) ############################################

186
Shakespeare
of Marlowe's Edward II. It certainly resembles that play in
bursts of poetry of a somewhat rhetorical kind, in the absence of
purely comic episodes or scenes and in the concentration of cha-
racter interest on the hero. Not quite, however, in this latter
point. For the character of Margaret (which seems to the present
writer to be definitely connected with the Angevin princess's part
in Henry VI, and Shakespearean throughout) is greater than
any secondary part in Edward II. Richard III, too, in the
famous wooing scene, has a scene of character, as distinguished
from a mere display of it, which is unmatched elsewhere. And,
perhaps, as a whole, the play has been too much and too commonly
regarded as a mere melodrama or popular blood-and-thunder piece,
with Clarence's dream and some other placebos thrown in. It is,
at any rate, full of life—with nothing in it either of the peculiar
dream quality of Marlowe or of the woodenness of certain other
early playwrights.
As was above observed, the part due to Shakespeare in
Henry VI cannot be minutely discussed here. It seems to
the present writer to be probably large. There is, at least, no
.
doubt that many of the passages which it used to be the fashion
to dole out to the university wits, like beef bones at a buttery
door in ancient days, are quite like those in Shakespeare's plays.
of the period which we have already surveyed. And it may seem
to some that many scenes-some of them, no doubt, not wholly
or originally from his pen—many of the battle pieces, French and
English; the starting of the rose dispute; the quarrel of Win-
chester and Gloucester and the deaths of both; all, as has been
said, of the scenes where Margaret appears; much of the Cade
part; the deaths, again, of York and Clifford; of prince Edward
and king Henry-smack of Shakespeare in their altered forms.
But it would be altogether uncritical to be positive here. It may
be sufficient to say that Part I exhibits least change; Part II
most; and Part III somewhat less than Part II, but still a very
considerable amount; while, independently of positive changes, the
whole composition of Part I is very much less Shakespearean,
even as compared with his earliest probable work, than that of
the other two. At any rate, we may safely return to the position
that, in this chronicle work, Shakespeare had new and admirable
opportunities for developing his grasp of character and for getting
into complete working order that remarkable and, in fact, unique,
conception of the loose, many-centred drama kept together by
character itself, which was to be his--and ours.


## p. 187 (#211) ############################################

Henry IV.
IV. Plays not mentioned by Meres 187
Last of the Meres-warranted batch comes Henry IV, like the
others worked up from an earlier production, The Famous Victories
of Henry the fifth, but more remarkable than any of them, if
not for passages of pure poetry (for which its theme gives but rare
opportunity), for complete transformation of the merest brute
material into magnificent art. The first assignment of the world-
famous part of Falstaff-one of the very greatest of dramatic
creations, and practically a creation, in the precise sense of the
word—to the luckless Lollard Oldcastle was a mistake; but it was
speedily rectified—though not without further protest on the part of
the prosaic in favour of the historical warrior Fastolf. The actual
play (for its two parts are practically one) is, undoubtedly, with the
reservation above stated, one of Shakespeare's very greatest
achievements; and, seeing that he had already proved himself able
to supply pure poetry in unlimited quantities and in any required
degree of strength, no drawback or shortcoming could possibly
be urged. The entwining and enforcing of the purely historical
part receives, and, probably, has always received, less attention from
readers and spectators; but it is wonderful in itself. The prince
(the famous key-soliloquy, 'I know you all’ and the other on the
crown excepted) is designedly kept undeveloped in his public
capacity. But the king, the Percies, Glendower, the younger
princes and wiser noblemen, are all vivified and spirited up in the
inscrutable Shakespearean manner. Still, 'the general are not
wrong in preferring to dwell on the Bohemian society of which
the prince is the rather Mephistophelian centre, but of which
Falstaff is the real master and king. Not a member of it, male
or female, but has the certain, vital touches. “Bowdlerising' is
seldom less justified of its works than when it here prevents
readers from appreciating the curious and universal humanity of
Shakespeare's portraiture, and its contrast with the artificial efforts
of modern realism. The supremacy of Falstaff does not disparage
the exemplary virtue of Pistol or the modest adequacy of Bardolph
and of Nym; and, in the same way, Nell and Doll make each the
other deformitate formosam videri. Everyone has noticed how, in
this most genial, if not most poetical, of his cycles (anticipating,
for a moment, The Merry Wives), Shakespeare has been prodigal
of home memories-of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire detail.
But everybody, perhaps, has not noticed the singular fashion in
which, once more, this yoking of almost domestic minutiae with
public affairs passes itself off, in contrast with the strident dis-
cord of Poetaster and The Mayor of Quinborough. Shallow,


## p. 188 (#212) ############################################

188
Shakespeare
immortal in his own way, is a planet in a greater system only; and
all the parts combine to work this out.
We are now deprived of the safe, if not in all ways definite,
assistance of Meres in respect of chronology; and, for the rest of
the contents of the folio as well as for Pericles (the single play
outside of it which will be considered in the present chapter) we
have, in a majority of cases, nothing but guesswork to guide us.
But, using the same general principles as heretofore-the internal
evidence of versification and dramatic craftsmanship, with such
positive aids as may bear investigation, we can continue this history
of Shakespeare's work on the same general lines. Only, it will be
desirable to adhere to the usual folio order with one single ex-
ception, that of The Tempest, which, in accordance with general
practice (to be critically examined later) we shall keep to the end,
putting Pericles, which has no folio order, in its place, though by no
means asserting that it certainly deserves priority over all the others.
That the whole of Pericles is not Shakespeare's is extremely
probable; but the allocation of parts to other dramatists, named or
unnamed, is as hazardous a piece of 'hariolation 'as has been tried
even in this hazardous game. It is not too much to say that there
is no part which might not be his; the very choruses which
have been denied him are extremely Shakespearean, and group
excellently with similar things in A Midsummer Night's Dream
and As You Like It. The brothel scenes can be similarly, if not
so completely, paired with passages in the Errors and in Measure
for Measure; and divers examples of stiff Marlowe verse and hand-
ling with others in Titus Andronicus and the early chronicles and
elsewhere. On the other hand, some of the best things throughout
the play are aut Shakespeare aut Diabolus, and it must have been
a most superior fiend who forged the shipwreck passage. Still,
nothing is heard of the play till 1606, when it was licensed; and
it is pretty certain that, whether the whole was written by Shake-
speare or not, the whole was not written by Shakespeare at or near
that time. The present writer would be prepared to take either
side on the question : ‘Did Shakespeare about this time complete
an early immature sketch of his own; or did he furnish, voluntarily
or involuntarily, scenes to one which was vamped up and botched off
by another or others ? ' But he rather inclines to the first alter-
native, because of the distinct similarity of the phenomena to those
shown in others of Shakespeare's plays actually contained in the
folio. That the scheme of the play is not of a mature period is
shown by the fact that it has little character, and that what it has


## p. 189 (#213) ############################################

The Merry Wives. Measure for Measure 189
is still less concerned with the working out of the action. The
contrast here, not merely with A Winter's Tale but with the much
abused Cymbeline, is remarkable.
To cast back to the earlier, but not yet discussed, plays of the
canon, The Merry Wives of Windsor, as most people know, is a
play with a legend—that the queen wished to see Falstaff 'in love,'
and that it was written in fourteen days to please her. This, how-
ever (the later part of which is one of the curious Shakespeare-
Molière coincidences), comes only from Dennis, a hundred years
after date. The play was actually licensed in 1601, and imperfectly
printed next year-dates which suit well enough with the inclusion
of Henry IV in the Meres list of 1598 and its completion by
Henry V in that year or 1599. With his usual preference of
artistic convenience to prosaic exactitude, Shakespeare has not
troubled himself about niching this episode very carefully in his
precedent history of the fat knight. Shallow appears duly, but
.
Slender replaces Silence; "the wild prince and Poins' are referred
to, but vaguely. You neither need, nor are you intended, to make a
'harmony' of the four pieces. So, too, it seems to be lost labour
and idle sentimentality to lament the decadence and defeat of
Falstaff. Men are generally decadent, and frequently defeated,
.
when dealing with women in such circumstances; and Falstaff's
overthrow does not make him fall very hard after all. On the
other hand, the vis comica of the piece is perfect; its exuberant
invention and variety are unsurpassed; and the actual construction
is more careful than usual. In character and dialogue, it is not
surpassed by the very greatest of the plays, allowance being made
for kind and atmosphere. Everybody is alive and everything is
vividly illuminated-not with the extra-natural, if not non-natural,
Congreve rockets, but with a lambent easy light of air. Sir Hugh
Evans must have been meant as a brother in dramatic arms to
Fluellen, and it is difficult to prefer Roland to Oliver or vice versa.
The attractive grace—though given in outline merely—of sweet
Anne Page is masterly; and, in her mother and Mistress Ford,
Shakespeare has given, as hardly another writer has ever succeeded
in doing, in bourgeois condition and deliberately prosaised tone,
the same high but perfectly human standard of wifeliness which,
elsewhere, he has carried to the court of poetical quintessence in
Hermione and in Imogen. There are few things more amusing to
a liberally catholic student of literature than the half patronising,
half apologetic, tone adopted, sometimes, towards The Merry Wives,
as a 'farce. ' And, here again, one is reminded of Molière.
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190
Shakespeare
Measure for Measure is a more difficult play-one not so
liable to be undervalued from inability to perceive that a comic
microcosm may be thoroughly cosmic, but more apt to disconcert,
if not actually to disgust, by reason of its singular apparent
discords, its unusual scheme of conduct and character and its
scant reconcilableness with that un-puritan, but fairly severe,
system of poetical justice which Shakespeare generally maintains.
Its 'disagreeableness'—to use a word often laughed at but expres-
sive and without a synonym—is less to some tastes than that of
Als Well that Ends Well; but, to a certain extent, it exists. On
the other hand, its power is unquestionable, and it contains some of
the greatest things in Shakespeare. It was certainly (or almost
certainly) performed in 1604, and it has been customary to accept
that year as the approximate date of the composition. To the
present writer, this seems very improbable, and he would select
Measure for Measure as the strongest instance of the suggested
earliness, in a more or less incomplete form, of many more plays than
are contained in Meres's list. Shakespeare, indeed, has improved
immensely on the original Italian story and on Whetstone's two
English versions, in novel and drama. He has not only added the
magnificent scenes between Isabella and Angelo, and Isabella and
her brother, and the character (dramatically important, inasmuch as
it helps to save Isabella and provides a dénouement) of 'Mariana in
the moated grange'; he has lavished his nepenthe of poetry on a not
particularly attractive theme. But, in the first place, it seems very
unlikely that he would have chosen that theme so late ; and, in the
second, it is nearly certain that, if he had, he would have worked
it up with different results. His seventeenth century plays
generally contain nothing so crude as the cruder parts of Measure
for Measure, while these are very like parts of the early certainties
and of Pericles. Moreover, even if Pompey and Lucio were
cleaner-mouthed, they would still be unfinished studies, com-
panions of Launce and Launcelot, not of Touchstone and Feste.
The play, as a whole, gives one the idea of an early, half finished
piece which the writer has resumed, which he has improved
immensely, but on which he has rather hung additional and
separate jewels than spent the full labour of thorough refashion-
ing and refounding. Had it come straight from the hands of the
Shakespeare of 1604, we should surely have had a much more
defensible and, in fact, intelligible duke, than the person who runs
his state and his servants into difficulties in order that he may come
to the rescue as a rather shabby Providence- an Angelo more of


## p. 191 (#215) ############################################

Much Ado and its Successors
191
a piece, less improbably repentant (not to say so improbably
flagitious) and less flagrantly let off. ' If one cared to conjecture, it
might be possible to show a strong case for an original intention to
adopt the story in its blackest shape, Titus fashion; a disgust with
this leading to the abandonment of the thing for a time; an
inspiration to create a 'Saint Isabel' and a consequent adapta-
tion and transformation to 'happy ending' and poetical injustice.
But even a Shakespeare cannot reshape ends in a manner entirely
contrary to their rough-hewing, without some loss of accomplish-
ment, verisimilitude and effect.
Measure for Measure was never printed in Shakespeare's life-
time; Much Ado about Nothing, which (with the much earlier
Errors between them) follows it in the folio and which, like it, is
founded on an Italian story, had been actually printed four years
before the alleged date of Measure for Measure and is thought to
have been written even a year earlier than this. Here, there is
neither necessity nor probability for any theory of partial composi-
tion. The play is all of a piece; and the best things in it are
entirely original. The trick played on Hero had appeared both in
Bandello's prose and in Ariosto's verse; and there seems actually
to have been an English play on the subject so early as 1583. But
Shakespeare added Benedick and Beatrice; he added Dogberry
and Verges and he made the whole thing into one of the most
remarkable instances of the kind of tragicomedy where no actual
tragedy is permitted, but where it is only just avoided, and where
tragic motives are allowed to work freely. The play is of extra-
ordinary merit, and Shakespeare has only left one loose stitch-
a stitch which he might have picked up with very little trouble-
in the entirely unexplained, and very nearly inexplicable, behaviour
of Margaret, who, being certainly not a traitress and as certainly
not a fool, first lends herself to a proceeding obviously prejudicial
to her mistress, and then holds her tongue about it. Except in
this point, the play works with perfect ease of action; and, if one
does not envy Hero her husband, and does grudge her very much
to him, that is no uncommon case.
As for Benedick and Beatrice,
they are, perhaps, as good touchstones as any in Shakespeare. No
one but an 'innocent' can possibly fail to like them; no one but
a charlatan will ever pretend not to do so.
The authorities of
Messina are more ‘farcical”; but the farce, again, is superfarcical.
It might well have been thought that nothing better in the way
of romantic comedy would be written. But this was to be triumph-
antly contradicted by two plays, As You Like It and Twelfth Night,
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192
Shakespeare
which are believed to have followed Much Ado very quickly, and
which, in the folio (with plays already mentioned intervening),
observe the order in which they have been named.