entitled, "The Tears of the Muses." In it "the golden brood of great Apollo's wit" rehearse their "piteous plaints and sorrowful sad time,” and in her turn Thalia (the muse of comedy) takes up the tale of dole, in a poem which has almost unanimously been regarded as referring to William Shakespere,* and to the occupation of the comic stage by the Marprelate Controversy, 1589-90, to such an extent of personality as to have driven almost all other themes off the stage. Three arguments have been adduced against this interpretation,† viz., "firstly, that Shakespere had not at the time attained a rank such as would justify the encomiums [the lines contain]; secondly, because there is no probability of his having subsided into the condition of inertness described; and, thirdly, because there are grounds for supposing the verses in question were composed before he even began to write." To these objections the following replies might be made:-1st. Though the lines might not apply to they might have been suggested by Shakespere. 2nd. The first argument assumes the very matter in dispute. Its correctness will be considered under date 1598. 3rd. There is a probability shown by the advocates of this inference which has not been disproven; and, moreover, a probability is not absolutely required; for the general idea of the poem must govern the treatment of the particulars brought under it, and this demand for probability would necessarily imply a proof of a general decay in all branches of learning during the reign of Elizabeth, because all the muses have cause to mourn as well as Thalia-and that we think could scarcely be maintained. 4th. No other dramatist can be mentioned, of whom the lines are characteristic. Sir Philip Sidney (whom Todd suggests and Dyer advocates) was not a comic dramatist; and Lily, the euphuist, "a little fellow" Nash calls him, but adds, "He hath one of the best wits in England," was still less so. Malone's conjecture is quite untenable. 5th. The reasons for supposing a distant authorship are not stronger than those which tend to show that the poem was written during Spenser's visit to London in 1590. 6th. If the logic of exclusion is valid at all, every competitor must be set aside * See this matter argued at full length in Charles Knight's "Shakespere : 8 Biography," book iii. chap. iv.; and Chambers' "Knight's Shakespere," vol. xii., "History of Opinion," chap. i.; Halliwell's "Life of Shakespeare," pp. 139–142. † Staunton's "Shakespere's Life," p. 27. when Shakespere's name is given. The gist of the verses may be gained from the following excerpts : "Where be the sweet delights of Learning's treasure, That wont with comic sock to beautify The painted theatres? Oh, all is gone! and all that goodly glee All places they with folly have possest, And with vain toys the vulgar entertain. That whilome wont to wait upon my train, Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced. And those sweet wits, which wont the like to frame, To mock herself, and Truth to imitate, And scornful folly with contempt is crept, But that same gentle spirit from whose pen Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw, Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell, Than so himself to mockery to sell." If this was not Shakespere, who was it? 1591. Shakespere's father, notwithstanding his apparent difficulties, seems not to have been quite done up; for his possession, and perhaps his occupancy of a house in Henley Street is proven by a deed of date 14th August, 1591. It is the conveyance of a tenement in that street, "between the house of Robert Johnson on the one part, and the house of John Shakespere on the other, from Geo. Badger to John Couch." Unless, which is highly improbable, this was John Shakespere the shoemaker. The Diary of Philip Henslowe,", printed for the Shakespere Society, consisting of 269 octavo pages of a copy from a bulky, parchment-bound, ill-spelled note-book about plays, dramatists, loans given to poor playwrights, the proceeds from performances, and the pay given to theatrical authors, extends from 1591 to 1609; and contains entries regarding a multitude of actors and playwrights; but it contains not one word regarding the greatest and best of them all, even in these years of his hard, lowly struggle, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." This is, at least, a sort of negative proof that he held aloof from borrowing and the convenience of getting money in advance; as well as of his seemly conduct, which did not, it appears, drive him into such rash necessities as would have made the help of the pledge-taker of playwrights a blessing and a boon. Ben Jonson and Rowley, Heywood and Chettle, Field, Daborne, and Massinger, Marlowe, Dekkar, Maunday, Haughton, Lodge, Greene, Nash, &c., are there but not Shakespere. 1592. "Henry VI., Part I.," is alluded to by Thomas Nash in his poem of "Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil," published in 1592. Robert Greene, an early dramatist of wonderful fluency and industry, though of low moral character, died on September 3rd, 1592. His executor, Henry Chettle (author of "Patient Grissell," &c.), published, immediately after his death, Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance." In this work, a rival playwright of his day is stigmatized as an upstart crow, beautified in our feathers, that with his tyger's heart wrapped in a player'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 Shakes-scene in a country." In this passage we have evidence that in 1592 Shakespere, the "upstart," was up; and of so much consequence too as to 66 * A parody of "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide," in the Third Part of" Henry VI." act i. sc. iv. 66 excite the scurrilous ire of a disappointed rival. The abuse of opponents is the earliest sign of fame. Moreover, we see that his talents were not confined to one mode of endeavour,—he was an absolute Johannes Factotum,"-his sonnets were getting abroad, as Nash, 1590, confesses; he was an actor and a dramatist, besides being a prudent man. Some have supposed he was a money-lender! Greene's "Pandosto, the Triumph of Time," 1588 (of which work fourteen editions are known to exist), is supposed to have been the source whence Shakespere borrowed the plot of the "Winter's Tale;" and Lodge's "Rosalind, Euphue's Golden Legacy," 1590, has been pretty closely followed in "As You Like It." If we were' to assume that early copies of these plays had been put upon the stage,* and were afterwards improved by their author, we would have at once a satisfactory justification of Greene's charge of plagiarism, "beautified with our feathers," and a plausible means of accounting for Shakespere's manner of living in London, during the early years of his career. Greene had incurred the wrath of Doctor Gabriel Harvey, the college companion and friend of Edmund Spenser; and a few days after the death of the quondam parson and whilome dramatist, "Four Letters and certain Sonnets," from the pen of Harvey, appeared, in which the character of Greene is very severely handled, In the third of these letters the following passages of moment and of intimate bearing on our subject occur, viz. :—“I speak to a poet. Good sweet orator, be a divine poet indeed; and use heavenly eloquence indeed; and employ thy golden talent with amounting usance indeed; and with heroical cantoes honour right virtue indeed; as noble Sir Philip Sidney and gentle Maister Spenser have done with immortal fame and I will bestow more compliments upon thee than ever any bestowed upon them; or this tongue ever afforded; or any Aretinish mountain of huge exaggerations can ever bring forth. . . The right novice of preg. nant and aspiring conceit will not outskip any precious gem of invention, or any beautiful flower of elocution, that may richly adorn or gallantly bedeck the trim garland of his budding style. I * In Nash's "Dido, Queen of Carthage," act iii. sc. iv., published 1594, Eneas says, "Who would not undergo all kinds of toil, To be well stored with such a Winter's Tale?" speak generally to every springing wit, but more specially to a few ; and at this instant singularly to one whom I salute with a hundred blessings, and entreat with as many prayers to love them that love all good wits, and hate none but the devil and his incarnate imps, notoriously professed." As Harvey commends for imitation Spenser, Sidney, Stanihurst, Fraunce, Watson, Daniel, and Nash, it could be none of these; and as the characters of Marlowe and Peele cast them out, who among the poets of that age, whose style was in its bud in 1592, could this be but that one whose “Venus and Adonis," a poem in the verse and rhythm of Spenser's manner, must at this very time have been in the press? The friend of Spenser, like Spenser himself, seems to have gauged Shakespere thoroughly. Though they have not expressly and directly named him, the implication appears to us to be irresistible. But more follows: Chettle, in 1592, published his “ Kind Hart's Dream," five "invectives against reigning abuses," and from the preface to this pamphlet we find that his editorial labours had put him in a false position, out of which he endeavours to extricate himself thus: -"About three months since died Mr. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others his Groatsworth of Wit,' in which a letter written to divers playwriters is offensively by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceits a living author; and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must needs light on me. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them (Marlowe ?) I care not if I never be. The other (Shakespere ?), whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had . . That I did not I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty; and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his wit. I protest it was all Greene's, and not mine, nor Master Nash's, as some have unjustly affirmed." The links now fit pretty closely: Greene's attack, Harvey's advice, and Chettle's apology, show that he (or if not, who?) was, about 1590-1593, known as a comic dramatist, and might, therefore, be praised as such by Spenser then, as he was subsequently in 1595. |