Part 9 (2/2)
the University wits ”and Ben Jonson too.” The date is not earlier than that of Ben's satiric play on the poets, The Poetaster (1601), to which reference is made. Since Kempe is to be represented as wholly ignorant, his opinion of Shakespeare's pre-eminent merit only proves, as in the case of Gullio, that the University wits decried the excellences of Shakespeare. In him they saw no scholar.
The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author.
All this ”is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare was a pseudonym,” {147a} says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is NOT consistent with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, that HE thought that KEMPE thought, that his fellow player was the author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge play.
In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia credits Shakespeare with Venus and Adonis, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions ”negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a nom de plume is not apparent,” says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised.
Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author of Venus, Lucrece, Romeo, Richard, ”more whose names I know not.” Davies (1610) calls him ”our English Terence” (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having ”played some Kingly parts in sport.” Freeman (1614) credits him with Venus and Lucrece. ”Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander.” I repeat Heywood's evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play, A Woman Killed with Kindness, was, from the old days of Henslowe, in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, ”Jack Fletcher,” ”Frank Beaumont,” ”Kit Marlowe,” ”Tom Nash,” he says,
”Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and pa.s.sion, was but 'Will.'”
Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve against the evidence.
We need not pursue the allusions later than Shakespeare's death, or invoke, at present, Ben Jonson's panegyric of 1623. As to Davies, his dull and obscure epigram is addressed ”To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare.” He accosts Shakespeare as ”Good Will.” He remarks that, ”as some say,” if Will ”had not played some Kingly parts in sport,” he had been ”a companion for a KING,” and ”been a King among the meaner sort.” n.o.body, now, can see the allusion and the joke. Shakespeare's company, in 1604, acted a play on the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600. King James suppressed the play after the second night, as, of course, he was brought on the stage throughout the action: and in very droll and dreadful situations. Did Will take the King's part, and annoy gentle King Jamie, ”as some say”? n.o.body knows. But Mr. Greenwood, to disable Davies's recognition of Mr.
Will as a playwright, ”Our English Terence,” quotes, from Florio's Montaigne, a silly old piece of Roman literary gossip, Terence's plays were written by Scipio and Laelius. In fact, Terence alludes in his prologue to the Adelphi, to a spiteful report that he was aided by great persons. The prologue may be the source of the fable- -that does not matter. Davies might get the fable in Montaigne, and, knowing that some Great One wrote Will's plays, might therefore, in irony, address him as ”Our English Terence.” This is a pretty free conjecture! In Roman comedy he had only two names known to him to choose from; he took Terence, not Plautus. But if Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have shared le Secret de Polichinelle. Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that Davies KNEW, and used ”Terence” as a gibe. {149a}
The allusions, even the few selected, cannot prove that the actor wrote the plays, but do prove that he was believed to have done so, and therefore that he was not so ignorant and bookless as to demonstrate that he was incapable of the poetry and the knowledge displayed in his works. Mr. Greenwood himself observes that a Baconian critic goes too far when he makes Will incapable of writing.
Such a Will could deceive no mortal. {150a} But does Mr. Greenwood, who finds in the Author of the plays ”much learning, and remarkable cla.s.sical attainments,” or ”a wide familiarity with the cla.s.sics,”
{150b} suppose that his absolutely bookless Will could have persuaded his intimates that he was the author of plays exhibiting ”a wide familiarity with the cla.s.sics,” or ”remarkable cla.s.sical attainments.” The thing is wholly impossible.
I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare speaks of him as ”learned,” erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The epithets for him are ”sweet,” ”gentle,” ”honeyed,” ”sugared,” ”honey- tongued”--this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote L'Allegro just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare ”sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,” with ”native wood-notes wild”; and gives to Jonson ”the LEARNED sock.” Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare's works appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller's remark that Shakespeare's ”learning was very little,” that, if alive, he would confess himself ”to be never any scholar.” {151a} I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare's generation, such as Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins's view be correct, the men of Shakespeare's and of Milton's generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.
CHAPTER VIII: ”THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”
When Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, ”Ah, but you cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor.” We have seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet (”Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief,” quoth Jonson), as author of Venus and Adonis, and as a sonneteer. ”All this does nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems alluded to,” says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again. {155a}
The allusions, I repeat, DO prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is found to have been conspicuously before the town. ”There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolns.h.i.+re, had any personal knowledge of Shakespeare.” There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolns.h.i.+re, had any personal knowledge of nine- tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he mentions.
”On the question--who was Shakespeare?--he throws no light.” He ”throws no light on the question” ”who was?” any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this ”sad repeated air,”--”critics who praise Shakespeare do not say WHO SHAKESPEARE was,”--would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,--otherwise he would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any critic to tell his public ”who Shakespeare was.”
As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is alluded to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the account-book of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender, p.a.w.n-broker, purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare is NOT mentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled, may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money to several actors, some of them of Shakespeare's company, ”The Lord Chamberlain's.” There is no such note of a loan to Shakespeare. Does this prove that he was not an actor? If so, Burbage was not an actor; Henslowe never names him.
There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes THE NAME OF SHAKESPEARE IS NEVER ONCE MENTIONED AS THE AUTHOR OF ANY PLAY. How weird! But in THESE notes the names of the authors of the plays acted are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays?
On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money to authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs, threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and nine authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also Ben Jonson (1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, authors in Henslowe's pay. BUT THE SAME OF SHAKESPEARE NEVER APPEARS. Mysterious! The other men's names, writes Dr. Furness, occur ”because they were all writers for Henslowe's theatre, but we must wait at all events for the discovery of some other similar record, before we can produce corresponding memoranda regarding Shaksper” (sic) ”and his productions.” {157a}
The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying, ”Henslowe records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because he lent him no money. He records no payments for plays to Shakespeare the author-actor, because to Henslowe the actor sold no plays.” That is the whole explanation of the Silence of Philip Henslowe. If Shakspere did sell a play to Henslowe, why should that financier omit the fact from his accounts? Suppose that the actor was illiterate as Baconians fervently believe, and sold Bacon's plays, what prevented him from selling a play of Bacon's (under his own name, as usual) to Henslowe? To obtain a Baconian reply you must wander into conjecture, and imagine that Bacon forbade the transaction. Then WHY did he forbid it? Because he could get a better price from Shakspere's company? The same cause would produce the same effect on Shakspere himself; whether he were the author, or were Bacon's, or any man's go-between. On any score but that of money, why was Henslowe good enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and Webster, and not good enough for Bacon, who did not appear in the matter at all, but was represented in it by the actor, Will? As a gentleman and a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much discredited if he were known to sell (for 6 pounds on an average) his n.o.ble works to the Lord Chamberlain's Company, as if he sold them to Henslowe.
I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and philosopher is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a commission on his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole sum in each case. I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a sum down for his (or Bacon's) plays, or whether Will received a double share, or other, or any share of the profits on them, as Henslowe did when he let a house to the players. n.o.body knows any of these things.
”If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf.” {159a} Henslowe would, if he could have got the ”copy” cheap enough. Was any one of ”the others,” the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shakspere WAS a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe's so-called ”Diary,” mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham.
{159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists and playwrights.
It appears to me that Shakspere's company would be likely, as his plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him, and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,--whether the wares were his own--or Bacon's. He was a keen man of business.
In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe's pittance. He had a better market. The plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, and he did not dispose of them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot mention him in his accounts. That is all.
Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr.
Greenwood cites the circ.u.mstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn's papers ”there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades.” {160a} If this means that Shakspere is not mentioned by Alleyn among actors, are we to infer that William was not an actor? Even Baconians insist that he was an actor. ”How strange, how more than strange,” cries Mr. Greenwood, ”that Henslowe should make no mention in all this long diary, embracing all the time from 1591 to 1609, of the actor-author . . . No matter. Credo quia impossibile!” {160b} Credo what? and what is IMPOSSIBLE? Henslowe's volume is no Diary; he does not tell a single anecdote of any description; he merely enters loans, gains, payments. Does Henslowe mention, say, Ben Jonson, WHEN HE IS NOT DOING BUSINESS WITH BEN? Does he mention any actor or author except in connection with money matters? Then, if he did no business with Shakspere the actor, in borrowing or lending, and did no business with Shakespeare the author, in borrowing, lending, buying or selling, ”How strange, how more than strange” it would be if Henslowe DID mention Shakespeare! He was not keeping a journal of literary and dramatic jottings. He was keeping an account of his expenses and receipts. He never names Richard Burbage any more than he mentions Shakespeare.
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