256 15 Progres sive quality of his work. increased, and apart from external evidence as to the date of production or publication of his plays, the discerning critic can determine from the versification, and from the general handling of his theme, to what period in his life each composition belongs. All the differences discernible in Shakespeare's plays clearly prove the gradual but steady development of dramatic power and temper; they separate with definiteness early from late work. The comedies of Shakespeare's younger days often trench upon the domains of farce; those of his middle and later life approach the domain of tragedy. Tragedy in his hands markedly grew, as his years advanced, in subtlety and intensity. His tragic themes became more and more complex, and betrayed deeper and deeper knowledge of the workings of human passion. Finally the storm and stress of tragedy yielded to the placid pathos of romance. All the evidence shows that, when his years of probation ended, he mastered in steady though rapid succession every degree and phase of excellence in the sphere of drama, from the phantasy of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the unmatchable humour of Falstaff, from the passionate tragedies of King Lear and Othello to the romantic pathos of Cymbeline and The Tempest. VII poet and His prac tical hand ling of Another side of Shakespeare's character and biography deserves attention. He was not merely a great dramatist, endowed with imagination without rival or parallel in human history; he was a practical man of the world. His work proves that his unique intuition was not merely that of a man of imaginative genius, but that of a man who was deeply interested and well versed in the affairs of everyday life. With that practi cal sense, which commonly characterises the man of the world, Shakespeare economised his powers and spared his inventive energy, despite its abundance, wherever his purpose could be served by levying loans on the writings of others. He rarely put himself to the pains of inventing a plot for his dramas; he borrowed his fables from popular current literature, such as Holinshed's Chronicles, North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, widely read romances, or even plays that had already met with more or less success on the stage. It was not merely airy nothings' and 'forms of things unknown' the creatures of his imagination—that found in his dramas a local habitation and a name'; he depended very often on the solid fruit of serious reading. By such a method he harboured his strength, at the same time as he deliberately increased his hold on popular taste. He diminished the risk of failure to satisfy the standard of public culture. Naturally he altered his borrowed plots as his sense of artistic fitness dictated, or refashioned them altogether. From rough ore he usually extracted pure gold, but there was business aptitude in his mode of gathering the ore. In like manner the amount of work he accomplished in the twenty years of his active professional career amply proves his steady power of application, and the regularity with which he pursued his literary vocation. Appreciation of his practical mode of literary work should leave no room for surprise at the discovery that he engaged with success in the practical affairs of life which lay outside the sphere of his art. As soon as the popularity of his work for the theatre was assured, and he had acquired by way of reward a valuable and profitable share in the profits of the company to which he was attached, Shakespeare returned to his native place, filled with the ambition of establishing his family there on a sure The return to Stratford. footing. His father's debts had grown in his absence, and his wife had had to borrow money for her support. But his return in prosperous circumstances finally relieved his kindred of pecuniary anxiety. He purchased the largest house in the town, New Place, and, like other actors of the day, faced a long series of obstacles in an effort to obtain for his family a coat of arms. He invested money in real estate at Stratford; he acquired arable land as well as pasture. His Stratford neighbours, who had known him as a poor lad, now appealed to him for loans or gifts of money in their need, and for the exercise of his influence in their behalf in London. He proved himself a rigorous man in all business matters with his neighbours, asserting his legal rights in all financial relations in the local courts, where he often appeared as plaintiff, and usually came off victorious. His average income in later life was reputed by his neighbours to exceed a thousand pounds a year. His finan petence. No mystery attaches to Shakespeare's financial competency. It is easily traceable to his professional earnings—as author, actor, and theatrical shareholder-and to his shrewd handling of his revenues. Shakespeare's cial comultimate financial position differs little from that which his fellow theatrical managers and actors made for themselves. The profession of the theatre flourished conspicuously in his day, and brought fortunes to most of those who shared in theatrical management. Shakespeare's professional friends and colleagues-leading actors and managers of the playhouses-were in late life men of substance. Like him, they had residences in both town and country; they owned houses and lands; and laid questionable claim to coat armour.1 Edward Alleyn, an actor 1 A manuscript tract, entitled 'A brief discourse of the causes of the discord amongst the officers of Arms and of the great abuses and absurdi ន and playhouse manager, began life in much the same way as Shakespeare, and was only two years his junior; at the munificent expense of ten thousand pounds he endowed out of his theatrical earnings, after making due provision for his family, the great College of God's Gift, with almshouses attached, at Dulwich, within four miles of the theatrical quarter of Southwark. The explanation of such wealth is not far to seek. The fascination of novelty still hung about the theatre even when Shakespeare retired from work. The Elizabethans, and the men and women in Jacobean England, were excepting those of an ultra-pious disposition-enthusiastic playgoers and seekers after amusement, and the stirring recreation which the playhouse provided was generously and even extravagantly remunerated. There is nothing ties committed to the prejudice and hindrance of the office,' was recently lent me by its owner. It is in the handwriting of one of the smaller officials of the College of Arms, William Smith, rouge dragon pursuivant, and throws curious light on the passion for heraldry which infested Shakespeare's actor-colleagues. Rouge-dragon specially mentions in illustration of his theme two of Shakespeare's professional colleagues, namely Augustine Phillipps and Thomas Pope, both of whose names are enshrined in that leaf of the great First Folio which enumerates the principal actors of Shakespeare's plays during his lifetime. Augustine Phillipps was an especially close friend, and left Shakespeare by his will a thirty shilling piece in gold. Both these men, Pope and Phillipps, according to the manuscript, spared no effort to obtain and display that hall-mark of gentility-a coat of arms. Both made unjustifiable claim to be connected with persons of high rank. When applying for coat-armour to the College of Arms, 'Pope the player,' we are told, would have no other arms than those of Sir Thomas Pope, a courtier and privy councillor, who died early in Elizabeth's reign, and perpetuated his name by founding a college at Oxford, Trinity College. The only genuine tie between him and the player was identity of a not uncommon surname. Phillipps the player claimed similar relations with a remoter hero, one Sir William Phillipps, a warrior who won renown at Agincourt, and who was allowed to bear his father-in-law's title of Lord Bardolph -a title very familiar to readers of Shakespeare in a different connection. The actor Phillipps, to the disgust of the heraldic critic, caused the arms of this spurious ancestor, Sir William Phillipps, Lord Bardolph, to be engraved with due quarterings on a gold ring. The critic tells how he went with a colleague to a small graver's shop in Foster Lane, in the City, and saw the ring that had been engraved for the player. exceptional either in the amount of the profits which Shakespeare derived from connection with theatrical enterprise or in the manner in which he spent them. VIII Finally, about 1611, Shakespeare made Stratford his permanent home. He retired from the active exercise of his profession, in order to enjoy those honours and His last privileges which, according to the prevailing social days. code, wealth only brought in full measure to a playwright after he ceased actively to follow his career. Shakespeare practically admitted that his final aim was what at the outset of his days he had defined as the aim of all': "The aim of all is but to nurse this life Unto honour, wealth, and ease in waning age.' Shakespeare probably paid occasional visits to London in the five years that intervened between his retirement from active life and his death. In 1613 he purchased a house in Blackfriars, apparently merely by way of investment. He then seems, too, to have disposed of his theatrical shares. For the work of his life was over, and he devoted the evening of his days to rest in his native place, and to the undisturbed tenure of the respect of his neighbours. He was on good terms with the leading citizens of Stratford, and occasionally invited literary friends from London to be his guests. In local politics he took a very modest part. There he figured on the side of the wealthy, and showed little regard for popular rights, especially when they menaced property. At length, early in 1616, when his fifty-second year was closing, his health began to fail, and he died in his great house at Stratford on Tuesday, April 23, 1616, probably on his fiftysecond birthday. |