Part 7 (2/2)
From Ben's Poetaster, which bristles with envy of the players, Mr.
Greenwood also quotes a railing address by a copper captain to Histrio, a poor actor, ”There are some of you players honest, gentlemanlike scoundrels, and suspected to ha' some wit, as well as your poets, both at drinking and breaking of jests; AND ARE COMPANIONS FOR GALLANTS. A man may skelder ye, now and then, of half a dozen s.h.i.+llings or so.” {107a} We think of Nigel Olifaunt in The Fortunes of Nigel; but better gallants might choose to have some acquaintance with Shakespeare.
To suppose that young men of position would not form a playhouse acquaintances.h.i.+p with an amusing and interesting actor seems to me to show misunderstanding of human nature. The players were, when unprotected by men of rank, ”vagabonds.” The citizens of London, mainly Puritans, hated them mortally, but the young gallants were not Puritans. The Court patronised the actors who performed Masques in palaces and great houses. The wealth and splendid attire of the actors, their acquisition of land and of coats of arms infuriated the sweated playwrights. Envy of the actors appears in the Cambridge ”Parna.s.sus” plays of c. 1600-2. In the mouth of Will Kempe, who acted Dogberry in Shakespeare's company, and was in favour, says Heywood, with Queen Elizabeth, the Cambridge authors put this brag: ”For Londoners, who of more report than d.i.c.k Burbage and Will Kempe?
He is not counted a gentleman that knows not d.i.c.k Burbage and Will Kempe.” It is not my opinion that Shakespeare was, as Ben Jonson came to be, as much ”in Society” as is possible for a mere literary man. I do not, in fancy, see him wooing a Maid of Honour. He was a man's man, a peer might be interested in him as easily as in a jockey, a fencer, a tennis-player, a musician, que scais-je?
Southampton, discovering his qualities, may have been more interested, interested in a better way.
In such circ.u.mstances which are certainly in accordance with human nature, I suppose the actor to have been noticed by the young, handsome, popular Earl of Southampton; who found him interesting, and interested himself in the poet. There followed the dedication to the Earl of Venus and Adonis; a poem likely to please any young amorist (1693).
Mr. Greenwood cries out at the audacity of a player dedicating to an Earl, without even saying that he has asked leave to dedicate. The mere fact that the dedication was accepted, and followed by that of Lucrece, proves that the Earl did not share the surprise of Mr.
Greenwood. He, conceivably, will argue that the Earl knew the real concealed author, and the secret of the pseudonym. But of the hypothesis of such a choice of a pseudonym, enough has been said.
Whatever happened, whatever the Earl knew, if it were discreditable to be dedicated to by an actor, Southampton was discredited; for we are to prove that all in the world of letters and theatre who have left any notice of Shakespeare identified the actor with the poet.
This appears to me to be the natural way of looking at the affair.
But, says Mr. Greenwood, of this intimacy or ”patronage” of Southampton ”not a sc.r.a.p of evidence exists.” {109a} Where would Mr.
Greenwood expect to find a sc.r.a.p of evidence? In literary anecdote?
Of contemporary literary anecdote about Shakespeare, as about Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman, Heywood, and Fletcher, there is none, or next to none. There is the tradition that Southampton gave the poet 1000 pounds towards a purchase to which he had a mind. (Rowe seems to have got this from Davenant,--through Betterton.) In what doc.u.ments would the critic expect to find a sc.r.a.p of evidence?
Perhaps in Southampton's book of his expenditure, and that does not exist. It is in the accounts of Prince Charlie that I find him, poor as he was, giving money to Jean Jacques Rousseau.
As to the chances of an actor's knowing ”smart people,” Heywood, who knew all that world, tells us {109b} that ”Tarleton, in his time, was gracious with the Queen, his sovereign,” Queen Elizabeth. ”Will Kempe was in the favour of his sovereign.”
THEY had advantages, they were not literary men, but low comedians.
I am not pretending that, though his
”flights upon the banks of Thames So did take Eliza and our James,”
Will Shakspere ”was gracious with the Queen.”
We may compare the dedication of the Folio of 1623; here two players address the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. They have the audacity to say nothing about having asked and received permission to dedicate. They say that the Earls ”have prosecuted both the plays and their authour living” (while in life) ”with much favour.” They ”have collected and published the works of 'the dead' . . . only to keep alive the memory of so worthy a Friend, and Fellow” (a.s.sociate) ”as was our Shakespeare, 'your servant Shakespeare.'”
Nothing can possibly be more explicit, both as to the actor's authors.h.i.+p of the plays, and as to the favour in which the two Earls held him. Mr. Greenwood {110a} supposes that Jonson wrote the Preface, which contains an allusion to a well-known ode of Horace, and to a phrase of Pliny. Be that as it may, the Preface signed by the two players speaks to Pembroke and Montgomery. To THEM it cannot lie; THEY know whether they patronised the actor or not; whether they believed, or not, that the plays were their ”servant's.” How is Mr.
Greenwood to overcome this certain testimony of the Actors, to the ident.i.ty of their late ”Fellow” the player, with the author; and to the patronage which the Earls bestowed on him and his compositions?
Mr. Greenwood says nothing except that we may reasonably suppose Ben to have written the dedication which the players signed. {111a}
Whether or not the two Earls had a personal knowledge of Shakespeare, the dedication does not say in so many words. They had seen his plays and had ”favoured” both him and them, with so much favour, had ”used indulgence” to the author. That is not nearly explicit enough for the precise Baconians. But the Earls knew whether what was said were true or false. I am not sure whether the Baconians regard them as having been duped as to the authors.h.i.+p, or as fellow-conspirators with Ben in the great Baconian joke and mystery--that ”William Shakespeare” the author is not the actor whose Stratford friend, Collyns, has his name written in legal doc.u.ments as ”William Shakespeare.”
Anyone, however, may prefer to believe that, while William Shakspere was acting in a company (1592-3), Bacon, or who you please, wrote Venus and Adonis, and, signing ”W. Shakspeare,” dedicated it to his young friend, the Earl, promising to add ”some graver labour,” a promise fulfilled in Lucrece. In 1593, Bacon was chiefly occupied, we shall see, with the affairs of a young and beautiful Earl--the Earl of Ess.e.x, not of Southampton: to Ess.e.x he did not dedicate his two poems (if Venus and Lucrece were his). He ”did nothing but ruminate” (he tells the world) on Ess.e.x. How Mr. Greenwood's Unknown was occupied in 1593-4, of course we cannot possibly be aware.
I have thus tried to show that Will Shakspere, if he had as much schooling as I suggest; and if he had four or five years of life in London, about the theatre, and, above all, had genius, might, by 1592, be the rising player-author alluded to as ”Shakescene.” There remains a difficulty. By 1592 Will had not time to be guilty of THIRTEEN plays, or even of six. But I have not credited him with the authors.h.i.+p, between, say, 1587 and 1593, of eleven plays, namely, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, t.i.tus Andronicus, Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, King John, the three plays of Henry VI, and The Taming of the Shrew. Mr. Greenwood {112a} cites Judge Webb for the fact that between the end of 1587 and the end of 1592 ”some half-dozen Shakespearean dramas had been written,” and for Dr. Furnivall's opinion that eleven had been composed.
If I believed that half a dozen, or eleven Shakespearean plays, as we have them, had been written or composed, between 1587 and 1592, I should be obliged to say that, in my opinion, they were not composed, in these five years, by Will. Mr. Greenwood writes, ”Some of the dates are disputable”; and, for himself, would omit ”t.i.tus Andronicus, the three plays of Henry VI, and possibly also The Taming of the Shrew, while the reference to Hamlet also is, as I have elsewhere shown, of very doubtful force.” {113a} This leaves us with six of Dr. Furnivall's list of earliest plays put out of action. The miracle is decomposing, but plays numerous enough to stagger my credulity remain.
I cannot believe that the author even of the five plays before 1592-3 was the ex-butcher's boy. Meanwhile these five plays, written by somebody before 1593, meet the reader on the threshold of Mr.
Greenwood's book {113b} with Dr. Furnivall's eleven; and they fairly frighten him, if he be a ”Stratfordian.” ”Will, even Will,” says the Stratfordian, ”could not have composed the five, much less the eleven, much less Mr. Edwin Reed's thirteen 'before 1592.'” {113c} But, at the close of his work {113d} Mr. Greenwood reviews and disbands that unlucky troop of thirteen Shakespearean plays ”before 1592” as mustered by Mr. Reed, a Baconian of whom Mr. Collins wrote in terms worthy of feu Mr. Bludyer of The Tomahawk.
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