Part 11 (2/2)
I confess to be pa.s.sing weary of the Baconian hatred of Will, which pursues him beyond his death with sneers and fantastic suspicions about his monument and his grave, and asks if he ”died with a curse upon his lips, an imprecation against any man who might MOVE HIS BONES? A mean and vulgar curse indeed!” {188a} And the authority for the circ.u.mstance that he died with a mean and vulgar curse upon his lips?
About 1694, a year after Mr. Dowdall in 1693, and eighty years almost after Shakespeare's death, W. Hall, a Queen's man, Oxford (the W.
Hall, perhaps, who gave the Bodleian Aldine Ovid, with Shakespeare's signature, true or forged, to its unknown owner), went to Stratford, and wrote about his pilgrimage to his friend Mr. Thwaites, a Fellow of Queen's. Mr. Hall heard the story that Shakespeare was the author of the mean and vulgar curse. He adds that there was a great ossuary or bone-house in the church, where all the bones dug up were piled, ”they would load a great number of waggons.” Not desiring this promiscuity, Shakespeare wrote the Curse in a style intelligible to clerks and s.e.xtons, ”for the most part a very ignorant sort of people.”
If Shakespeare DID, that accommodation of himself to his audience was the last stroke of his wisdom, or his wit. {189a} Of course there is no evidence that he wrote the mean and vulgar curse: that he did is only the pious hope of the Baconians and Anti-Willians.
Into the question of the alleged portraits of Shakespeare I cannot enter. Ben spoke well of the engraving prefixed to the First Folio, but Ben, as Mr. Greenwood says, was anxious to give the Folio ”a good send-off.” The engraving is choicely bad; we do not know from what actual portrait, if from any, it was executed. Richard Burbage is known to have amused himself with the art of design; possibly he tried his hand on a likeness of his old friend and fellow-actor. If so, he may have succeeded no better than Mary Stuart's embroiderer, Oudry, in his copy of the portrait of her Majesty.
That Ben Jonson was painted by Honthorst and others, while Shakespeare, as far as we know, was not, has nothing to do with the authors.h.i.+p of the plays. Ben was a scholar, the darling of both Universities; constantly employed about the Court in arranging Masques; his learning and his Scottish blood may have led James I to notice him. Ben, in his later years, was much in society; fas.h.i.+onable and literary. He was the father of the literary ”tribe of Ben.” Thus he naturally sat for his portrait. In the same way George Buchanan has, and had, nothing like the fame of Knox. But as a scholar he was of European reputation; haunted the Court as tutor of his King, and was the ”good pen” of the anti-Marian n.o.bles, Murray, Morton, and the rest. Therefore Buchanan's portrait was painted, while of Knox we have only a woodcut, done, apparently, after his death, from descriptions, for Beza's Icones. The Folio engraving may have no better source. Without much minute research it is hard to find authentic portraits of Mary Stuart, and, just as in Shakespeare's case, {190a} the market, in her own day and in the eighteenth century, was flooded with ”mock-originals,” not even derived (in any case known to me) from genuine and authentic contemporary works.
One thing is certain about the Stratford bust. Baconians will believe that Dugdale's man correctly represented the bust as it was in his time; and that the actual bust is of 1748, in spite of proofs of Dugdale's man's fantastic inaccuracy; in spite of the evidence of style; and in spite of doc.u.mentary evidence that ”the original monument” was not to be destroyed and replaced by the actual monument, but was merely ”repaired and beautified” (painted afresh) by a local painter.
CHAPTER X: ”THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE”
In perusing the copious arguments of the Anti-Shakesperean but Non- Baconian Mr. Greenwood, I am often tempted, in Socratic phrase, to address him thus: Best of men, let me implore you, first, to keep in memory these statements on which you have most eloquently and abundantly insisted, namely, that society in Stratford was not only not literary, but was illiterate. Next pardon me for asking you to remember that the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century did not resemble our fortunate age. Some people read Shakespeare's, Beaumont's, and Fletcher's plays. This exercise is now very rarely practised. But n.o.body cared to chronicle literary gossip about the private lives and personal traits of these and several other Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, in the modern manner. Of Shakespeare (pardon, I mean Shakspere), the actor, there is one contemporary anecdote, in my poor opinion a baseless waggery. Of Beaumont there is none. Of a hand-maid of Fletcher, who drank sack in a tumbler, one anecdote appears at the end of the seventeenth century,--nothing better. Meanwhile of Shakspere the ”traditions”
must be sought either at Stratford or in connection with the London Stage; and in both cases the traditions began to be in demand very late.
As Stratford was not literary, indeed was terribly illiterate, any traditions that survived cannot conceivably have been literary. That is absolutely certain. Natives at Stratford had, by your own hypothesis, scant interest in literary anecdote. Fifty years after Shakespeare's death, no native was likely to cherish tales of any sprouts of wit (though it was remembered in 1649, that he was ”witty”), or any ”wood-notes wild,” which he may have displayed or chirped at an early age.
Such things were of no interest to Stratford. If he made a speech when he killed a calf, or poached, or ran away to town, the circ.u.mstance might descend from one gaffer to another; he might even be remembered as ”the best of his family,”--the least inefficient.
Given your non-literary and illiterate Stratford, and you can expect nothing more, and nothing better, than we receive.
Let me ill.u.s.trate by a modern example. In 1866 I was an undergraduate of a year's standing at Balliol College, Oxford, certainly not an unlettered academy. In that year, the early and the best poems of a considerable Balliol poet were published: he had ”gone down” some eight years before. Being young and green I eagerly sought for traditions about Mr. Swinburne. One of his contemporaries, who took a First in the final Cla.s.sical Schools, told me that ”he was a smug.” Another, that, as Mr. Swinburne and his friend (later a Scotch professor) were not cricketers, they proposed that they should combine to pay but a single subscription to the Cricket Club. A third, a tutor of the highest reputation as a moralist and metaphysician, merely smiled at my early enthusiasm,-- and told me nothing. A white-haired College servant said that ”Mr.
Swinburne was a very quiet gentleman.”
Then you take us to dirty illiterate Stratford, from fifty to eighty years after Shakspere's death,--a Civil War and the Reign of the Saints, a Restoration and a Revolution having intervened,--and ask us to be surprised that no anecdotes of Shakspere's early brilliance, a century before, survived at Stratford.
A very humble parallel may follow. Some foolish person went seeking early anecdotes of myself at my native town, Selkirk on the Ettrick.
From an intelligent townsman he gathered much that was true and interesting about my younger brothers, who delighted in horses and dogs, hunted, shot, and fished, and played cricket; one of them bowled for Gloucesters.h.i.+re and Oxford. But about me the inquiring literary snipe only heard that ”Andra was aye the stupid ane o' the fam'ly.” Yet, I, too, had bowled for the local club, non sine gloria! Even THAT was forgotten.
Try to remember, best of men, that literary anecdotes of a fellow townsman's youth do not dwell in the memories of his neighbours from sixty to a hundred years after date. It is not in human nature that what was incomprehensible to the grandsire should be remembered by the grandson. Go to ”Thrums” and ask for literary memories of the youth of Mr. Barrie.
Yet {198a} the learned Malone seems to have been sorry that little of Shakespeare but the calf-killing and the poaching, and the dying of a fever after drink taken (WHERE, I ask you?), with Ben and Drayton, was remembered, so long after date, at Stratford, of all dirty ignorant places. Bah! how could these people have heard of Drayton and Ben? Remember that we are dealing with human nature, in a peculiarly malodorous and densely ignorant bourgade, where, however, the ”wit” of Shakespeare was not forgotten (in the family) in 1649.
See the epithet on the tomb of his daughter, Mrs. Hall.
You give us the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford (1661-3), who has heard that the actor was ”a natural wit,” and contracted and died of a fever, after a bout with Drayton and Ben. I can scarcely believe that THESE were local traditions. How could these rustauds have an opinion about ”natural wit,” how could they have known the names of Ben and Drayton?
When you come to Aubrey, publis.h.i.+ng in 1680, sixty years after Shakespeare's death, you neglect to trace the steps in the descent of his tradition. As has been stated, Beeston, ”the chronicle of the Stage” (died 1682), gave him the story of the school-mastering; Beeston being the son of a servitor of Phillips, an actor and friend of Shakespeare, who died eleven years before that player. The story of the school-mastering and of Shakespeare ”knowing Latin pretty well,” is of no value to me. I think that he had some knowledge of Latin, as he must have had, if he were what I fancy him to have been, and if (which is mere hypothesis) he went for four years to a Latin School. But the story does not suit you, and you call it ”a mere myth,” which, ”of course, will be believed by those who wish to believe it.” But, most excellent of mortals, will it not, by parity of reasoning, ”of course be disbelieved by those who do NOT wish to believe it”?
And do you want to believe it?
To several stage anecdotes of the actor as an excellent instructor of younger players, you refer slightingly. They do not weigh with me: still, the Stage would remember Shakspere (or Shakespeare) best in stage affairs. In reference to a very elliptic statement that, ”in Hamlet Betterton benefited by Shakespeare's coaching,” you write, ”This is astonis.h.i.+ng, seeing that Shakspere had been in his grave nearly twenty years when Betterton was born. The explanation is that Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, was, according to Sir William Davenant, instructed by Shakspere, and Davenant, who had seen Taylor act, according to Downes, instructed Betterton. There is a similar story about Betterton playing King Henry VIII. Betterton was said to have been instructed by Sir William, who was instructed by Lowen, who was instructed by Shakspere!” {200a}
Why a note of exclamation? Who was Downes, and what were his opportunities of acquiring information? He ”was for many years book- keeper in the Duke's Company, first under Davenant in the old house .
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