A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

Frederick Gard Fleay

A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare Player, Poet, and Playmaker

To him, whose craft, so subtly terse,(While lesser minds, for music's sake,From single thoughts whole cantos make),Includes a poem in a verse; —To him, whose penetrative art,With spheric knowledge only his,Dissects by keen analysisThe wiliest secrets of the heart; —To him, who rounds us perfect wholes,Where wisdom, wit, and love combine;Chief praise be this: – he wrote no lineThat could cause pain in childlike souls.

INTRODUCTION

It is due to the reader of a new work on a subject already so often handled as the Life of Shakespeare to tell him at the outset what he may expect to find therein, and to state the reasons for which I have thought it worth while to devote nearly ten years to its production. Previous investigators have with industrious minuteness already ascertained for us every detail that can reasonably be expected of Shakespeare's private life. With laborious research they have raked together the records of petty debts, of parish assessments, of scandalous traditions, of idle gossip; and they have shown beyond doubt that Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, was married, had three children, left his home, made money as an actor and play-maker in London, returned to his native town, invested his savings there, and died. I do not think that when stript of verbiage, and what the slang of the day calls padding, much more than this can be claimed as the result of the voluminous writings on this side of his career. For one I am thankful that things are so; I have little sympathy with the modern inquisitiveness that peeps over the garden wall to see in what array the great man smokes his pipe, and chronicles the shape and colour of his head-covering. But on the public side of Shakespeare's career little has been adequately ascertained; and with this we are deeply concerned. Not for a mere personal interest, but in its bearings on the history of English literature, we ought to ascertain so far as is possible what companies of actors Shakespeare belonged to, at what theatres they acted, in what plays besides his own he was a performer, what authors this brought him into personal contact with, what influence he exerted on or received from them, what relations, friendly or unfriendly, they had with rival companies, and finally, in what order his own works were produced, and what if any share other hands had in their production. All these matters have been treated carelessly and inaccurately by biographers of the peeping school; and in the last of these we are gravely referred for the chronology of Shakespeare's plays to a schoolboy compilation the author of which is so ignorant as to speak of Lust's Dominion as a play of Jonson's, the News from Hell as a play of Dekker's, and Achilles as Laertes' son. This marvel of inefficiency we are told is the best work on the subject; and this while Malone and Drake are accessible to any student. In the present treatise this hitherto neglected side of Shakespeare's career has been chiefly dwelt on. The facts of his private life are also given; but not the documents on which they are founded, these having been excellently well collected and arranged in the recent Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, F.R.S., F.S.A., Hon. M.R.S.L., Hon. M.R.I.A. This book is a treasure-house of documents, and it is greatly to be regretted that they are not published by themselves, apart from hypotheses founded on idle rumour or fallacious mis-reasoning. I do not know any work so full of fanciful theories and "ignes fatui" likely to entice "a deluded traveller out of the beaten path into strange quagmires."1 There is much else besides documents not given in the present treatise; discussions as to who might have been Shakespeare's schoolmaster, whether he was apprenticed to a butcher, whether he stole a deer out of a non-existent park, whether he held horses at the theatre door or "was employed in any other equine capacity," whether he went to Denmark or to Venice, and whether Lord Bacon wrote his plays for him. On all these points I must refer to earlier and less sceptical treatises. What the reader will find here is – (1.) A continuous narrative in which the statements are mostly taken for granted in accordance with my own view of the evidence accessible to us; (2.) Annals or chronological arrangement of the same facts, with discussion of their mutual interrelations; (3.) Discussion of the evidence on which the chronological succession of Shakespeare's plays is based; (4.) Similar discussions for plays in which he was not main author but only "coadjutor, novice, journeyman, tutor," or even merely one of the possible actors; (5.) A few remarks on the German versions of his plays acted on the Continent; and (6.) Tables of quarto editions of his plays, &c., with a list of all plays entered on the Stationers' Registers from the first opening of theatres to their closing in 1640-42. This last item may seem to be somewhat beyond the scope of this book, but it is greatly needed, and it is better that so difficult a task should be performed by one acquainted with dramatic literature than by some scissors-and-paste compiler who cannot distinguish a play from a prose tract. As to the preparation for the whole work it has been to me a labour of love, not, I trust, altogether lost. I have read and re-read for it every play accessible to me that dates earlier than 1640, have compiled annals for every known writer of that period and discussions of the dates of his plays, and have compared the results and corrected and re-corrected until a consistent whole has been obtained. Of this whole only the part relating to Shakespeare is here issued. I have to thank the editors of Anglia Englische Studien and Shakespeariana for enabling me to print some portions relating to other authors, which will, however, require some minor corrections. I have also to thank Dr. Furnivall and Mr. Swinburne for some wholesome criticism upon my earlier work; Dr. Ingleby, Miss Lee, Mr. Boyle, Mr. A. H. Bullen, and especially Dr. H. H. Furness, for kindly sympathy and copies of their own writings, some of which might otherwise have escaped my notice; and above all Mr. P. A. Daniel, for ever-ready help when asked for, and for judicious strictures on received hypotheses or points debatable. The main regret for the earnest student is that so many of these still exist; as any attempt to give a biography of Shakespeare the form which is æsthetically its due must fail so long as the true order of the facts on which it rests is still esteemed matter of argument. If the reader would wish to judge before proceeding further of the quality of such argument in the present work I would refer him to the discussion on Mucedorus or that on Henry VI. in subsequent Sections.

One other point requires notice, if not apology. The plan followed in this volume requires much repetition in order that the separate arguments as to the chronological succession of the plays, and as to the order of events in Shakespeare's life, should be presented in intelligible sequence. This is an evil only to be avoided either by mixing up the two, as is usually done, or by numerous cross-references. Either of these methods leads to greater evils, both by interrupting the logical connection of each series (for unfortunately the evidences are mostly independent of each other), and, which is still more important, by obliterating the mutual support given to the arguments in the twofold lines of evidence by their leading in each division to compatible results. The inconvenience of these repetitions has therefore been submitted to.

SECTION I.

THE PUBLIC CAREER OF SHAKESPEARE

On or about Saturday 22d April 1564, William Shakespeare, son of John Shakespeare, glover and dealer in wool, and his wife Mary, née Arden, was born in Henley Street, Stratford-on-Avon, and was baptized on the 26th. Nothing whatever is known of his early life, and the few meagre details ascertained as to the condition of his family will be found in a subsequent division of this work. Tradition and imagination have supplied untrustworthy materials, with which his biographers have endeavoured to fill up the gap in our information; but it is not until 28th November 1582 that we find any further reliable fact established concerning him. On that day his marriage bond is dated, he being in his nineteenth year, and his bride, Anne Hathaway, in her twenty-sixth. Their first child, Susanna, was baptized 26th May 1583. To account for this young lady's premature arrival a pre-contract is assumed, but not proved, by recent writers. On 2d February 1585 their twin children, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized; and in 1587, in the spring, Shakespeare gave his assent to a proposed settlement of a mortgage on his mother's Asbies estate. For ten years after there is no vestige of any communication with his family. It is at this point that his public life begins.

In 1587 Leicester's players visited Stratford for the first time. The company, under the same name, that had performed there in 1576 had as well as Warwick's been dissolved in 1583, in order that the Queen's men might be selected from them. In 1586, during the prevalence of the plague in London, this more recent company had been travelling on the Continent, and on their return to England made a provincial tour. Shakespeare probably joined them during or immediately after their visit to Stratford, and during their travels received his earliest instruction in comic acting from Kempe and Pope, who soon after became noted performers; Bryan also belonged to the company at this date. They probably acted mere interludes, not regular five-act plays. On 4th September 1588 the Earl of Leicester died; and his players soon after found a new patron in Lord Strange. They then settled in London, and acted at the Cross Keys in Bishopsgate Street. The head of the company, in its altered constitution, was "Famous Ned Allen," who on 3d January 1588-9 bought up for £37, 10s. Richard Jones' share of "playing apparels, play-books, instruments, &c.," in order to set up his new company. These properties had belonged to Worcester's men under Robert Brown, and were no longer needed by him, as he and his players were about to visit the Continent.

It was in this way that Shakespeare came to London as a poor strolling player, but nevertheless his position was not without its advantages; he was associated already with the most noted comedians of the time, Kempe and Pope; and in Alleyn he had the advantage of studying the method of the greatest tragic actor that had yet trod the English stage. But he did not remain content with merely acting; he now commenced as author. In order to ascertain under what conditions, it will be necessary to briefly state what was the position of the companies and authors in London in 1589.

At that date there were two theatres in London: the better of the two, the Theater, was occupied by the Queen's men, for whom Greene was the principal play-writer. Marlowe, Kyd, and R. Wilson had also contributed plays to their repertoire, but just at this time left them and joined Pembroke's, which, like Leicester's, had been a strolling company, but were now settling in London. On the other hand, Peele and Lodge, who had previously written for the Admiral's company, acting at the other theatre, the Curtain, had also joined, and still remained with, the Queen's. Nearly all these writers, if not quite all, were actors as well as authors. Greene, the Johannes Factotum of the Queen's men, had evidently expected to establish a monopoly of play-acting in their favour, and was indignant at the arrival of vagrant troops of Thespians from the country, just when he had practically succeeded in crippling the rival company in London, by enlisting some of their best authors in the service of his own. Hence on 23d August 1589 his publication of Menaphon, with Nash's address, containing a virulent attack on Kyd and Marlowe, then writing for Pembroke's men, together with a glorification of Peele, then writing in conjunction with Greene. The absence of any allusion in this tract to Shakespeare or Lord Strange's company conclusively proves that they were not as yet dangerous rivals to the Queen's. Pembroke's men were, and there is indirect evidence that they had from their first settlement in London obtained possession of the second theatre, the Curtain. This evidence is connected with the first direct mention which is extant of Shakespeare's company. For in this same year, 1589, the Martinist controversy had been raging in London; Lyly, Nash, Greene, Monday, and Cooper were the anti-Martinist champions; the Martinists had been ridiculed on the stage in April, probably by Greene at the Theater, possibly by the Paul's children in some play of Lyly's, or by the Earl of Oxford's boys in one of Monday's. The authorities did not interfere. But in November certain players "within the city," to wit, Lord Strange's and the Admiral's, were silenced for "abuses or indecent reflexions" (Strype). A comparison of the worthies in Love's Labour's Lost with the anti-Martinist writers, of the Euphuist Armado with Lyly, the boy-satirist Mote with Nash, the curate with the Reverend Robert Greene, the schoolmaster-pedant with the pedagogue Cooper, and Antony Dull with Antony Monday, will I think confirm the theory developed by me in a separate essay, that this was the play suppressed on this occasion. It is characteristic of the independence of action shown by Shakespeare's company throughout the reign of Elizabeth that they refused to obey the injunction, and went and played at the Cross-Keys that same afternoon, while the subservient Admiral's company dutifully submitted. I do not suppose, however, that the play as then performed was in all parts from the hand of Shakespeare. It is extremely unlikely that he should have commenced his career by independent writing, and there is not a play of his that can be referred even on the rashest conjecture to a date anterior to 1594, which does not bear the plainest internal evidence to its having been refashioned at a later time. In all probability he began to compose plays, as we know so many of his contemporaries did, as an assistant to some experienced dramatist. It may seem idle, in the absence of any positive evidence, to guess who was his original tutor in composition, and yet, as the careers of Peele, Greene, and Marlowe conclusively show that none of them were in 1589 connected with Lord Strange's company, I venture to suggest that it was Robert Wilson. That dramatist is not heard of in connection with Pembroke's or any other company after August 1589, and he certainly continued to write for the stage. That Shakespeare was greatly influenced by him and Peele is evident from the metrical character of Shakespeare's earliest work, which abounds in heroic rhyme like Peele's in tragedy, and in doggerel and stanza like Wilson's in comedy. It is not till the Historic plays that the influence of Marlowe's blank verse is fully perceptible, and in the earliest of these, Richard II., rhyme is still dominant. Wilson was in this view a better teacher for the inexperienced Shakespeare than a greater man. Marlowe, for instance, might have biassed him on the tragic side, and deferred or prevented his comedy from its earlier pastoral development. Love's Labour's Won must have been written at about the same time as Love's Labour's Lost, and before the end of 1590 The Comedy of Errors probably appeared in its original form. In this same year was produced a play in which, although I cannot detect Shakespeare's hand as coadjutor with its probable author, R. Wilson, he most likely appeared as an actor —Fair Em; and that this comedy contained a satirical attack on Greene is evident from the offence he took at it, as shown in his virulent address prefixed to his Farewell to Folly. Up to this date Greene's chief attacks had been directed against Kyd in Menaphon and in Never too late, but as yet there has been found no allusion to Shakespeare in his writings anterior to 1592. Yet Shakespeare must have been known to him as at least part author of the plays acted by Lord Strange's men in 1589 and 1590. Of Romeo and Juliet, originally acted in 1591, we also possess a version anterior to Shakespeare's final remodelling, which palpably contains scenes not written by him. These scenes, however, seem due to a finer artist than Kyd, and there is independent evidence that George Peele had by 1591 also become a playwright for Lord Strange's men. One of the plays acted by them in this year was probably Peele's Edward I., here mentioned on account of a curious allusion which would seem to fix the character performed by Shakespeare. In scene 3 Elinor says to Baliol —

"Shake [thou] thy spear in honour of his nameUnder whose royalty thou wear'st the same."

Shakespeare is known to have acted "kingly parts," and this of Edward I. was probably one of them. To this same year may probably be assigned the original production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

The Court festivities of Christmas 1591-2 mark an important epoch in the fortunes of Lord Strange's company, and consequently of Shakespeare, now rapidly coming to the front as their chief writer. During the period we have been considering, 1587-1591, the Queen's and the Admiral's were the only men's companies who performed at Court, but at Christmas 1591-2 the Admiral's did not act at all, and the Queen's, after one performance, gave place to Lord Strange's, and until the death of that nobleman in 1594, his players enjoyed almost a monopoly of Court performances. One presentation by the Earl of Hertford's men, of whom nothing else is recorded, one by the Earl of Sussex', and two by the Earl of Pembroke's, are all that can be balanced with six by Lord Strange's in 1591-2, and three in 1592-3. This pre-eminence at Court was retained by the company under all its changes of constitution far beyond Shakespeare's time, until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Possibly the influence of Lord Southampton, who had come to town and entered at Gray's Inn in 1590, and was stepson to Sir Thomas Heneage, the treasurer, may have had something to do with this. He does not yet, however, appear to have come into direct communication with Shakespeare.

Immediately after this first appearance at Court, Alleyn arranged with Henslow, his father-in-law, to give his company a local habitation in a permanent theatre. This was of no small importance to them; they had hitherto had to play in the inn-yard at the Cross-Keys. Henslow's new theatre was the Rose on the Bankside, which opened in February 1591-2. The singular fact that every old play (i. e., every play that had been previously performed) there acted in this season had been with one possible exception derived from the Queen's players, shows that the hitherto most successful company were reduced to sell their copies, and were probably on the verge of bankruptcy. Among these we find Greene's Orlando and Friar Bacon, Greene and Lodge's Looking-glass for London, Marlowe's Jew of Malta, and Kyd's two plays of Jeronymo. The only play traceable to another company is Peele's Battle of Alcazar, called by Henslow Mulomorco. In fact, the Queen's company were now practically without a play-writer. Of their formerly numerous staff Marlowe was writing for Pembroke's men, Kyd and Peele for Lord Strange's, Lodge was abroad, Wilson had left them, and Greene had also quitted them for the Earl of Sussex'. Besides the plays above enumerated, Lord Strange's players acted a dozen others of which only the titles are known, and produced as new plays the following: – On March 3, Henry VI. (a re-fashioning by Shakespeare of an old Queen's play, into which he introduced the Talbot scenes, celebrated by Nash, which drew such crowded audiences); on April 11, Titus and Vespasian (a version of the Andronicus story extant in a German translation, and probably written by Kyd); on April 28, the second part of Tamburlane (not extant); on June 10, A Merry Knack to Know a Knave (probably by Peele and Wilson); and after an interval, during which the theatres were closed on account of the plague, on 5th January 1592-3, The Jealous Comedy (probably The Merry Wives of Windsor); and finally, January 30, The Guise (Marlowe's Massacre of Paris).

I have brought together this enumeration of the new plays of Strange's men that the reader may better appreciate the often quoted but sadly misunderstood address by Greene to his fellow-dramatists in his Groatsworth of Wit, not published till September after its author's death, but manifestly written and probably circulated in manuscript in the early months of 1592. Its aim is directed against a company of players, "burs, puppets, antics, apes, grooms, painted monsters, peasants," among whom is "an upstart crow, a Johannes Factotum, a Shakescene," who supposes he can bombast out a blank verse. This is palpably directed against Shakespeare and Lord Strange's players, for whom he was then writing and with whom he was then acting. But Greene also says that they had all been beholding to him and to his fellow writers whom he addresses; that is, to Marlowe, Peele, "young Juvenal" (Lodge), and two more (Kyd and Wilson) "that both have writ," whom he might "insert against these buckram gentlemen." This can only apply to the Queen's players, for which company alone Greene had written up to 1591, having supplied them with a play every quarter and purveyed more plays for them than the other four (Marlowe, Peele, Kyd, and Lodge), as Nash tells us in his Piers Penniless. There must then have been an amalgamation of the better portions of the two companies, the Queen's and Lord Strange's, just before the opening of the Rose Theatre, a conclusion confirmed by the fact that the Queen's plays had passed into the hands of the other company, and, as will be seen when I treat of the Henry VI. plays, deduced by me on other and independent grounds. This attack of Greene's was, I think, answered by Shakespeare in his Midsummer Night's Dream, produced in its first form c. June 1592. Bottom and his scratch company have long been recognised as a personal satire, and the following marks would seem to indicate that Greene and the Sussex' company were the butts at which it was aimed. Bottom is a Johannes Factotum who expects a pension for his playing; his comrades are unlettered rustics who once obtain an audience at Theseus' court. The Earl of Sussex' men were so inferior a company that they acted at Court but once, viz., in January 1591-2, and the only new play which can be traced to them at this date is George a Greene, in which Greene acted the part of the Pinner himself. This only shows that the circumstances of the fictitious and real events are not discrepant; but when we find Bottom saying that he will get a ballad written on his adventure, and "it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom" (iv. i. 212) and that peradventure he shall "sing it at her (?) death," we surely may infer an allusion to Greene's Maiden's Dream (S. R. 6th December 1591), apparently so called because it hath no maiden in it, and sung at the death of Sir Christopher Hatton. This play of Midsummer Night's Dream was produced after the closing of the theatres, c. 12th June 1592, on account of the plague; it and the Jealous Comedy, produced 5th January 1592-3, when the theatres reopened for that month only, were almost the last in which Shakespeare worked as a journeyman or with a coadjutor. When he revived these earlier plays for the Chamberlain's men he carefully replaced in almost every instance the work of his quondam companions by other and certainly not weaker lines of his own. Some of his own work of this date, apparently left unfinished on account of the sudden closure of the playhouses, he appears to have taken up and completed in his 1601-2 plays. But no doubt the greater part of this autumn was occupied in writing Venus and Adonis, dedicated to Lord Southampton (S. R. 18th April 1593) as "the first heir of his invention," a product of "idle hours: " idle because during the plague no new plays were required of him, nor even rehearsals; the players travelled and acted old plays only. In these circuits a whole company did not usually journey together; it was more profitable to separate into parties of half-a-dozen, and of course to cut down their plays so as to be capable of representation by this small body of actors. One part of Lord Strange's men, consisting of Alleyn, Pope, Bryan, Hemings, Phillips, and Kempe, so travelled in 1593; but no document has been preserved respecting the remainder of the company, which included probably Burbadge, Sly, Condell, Holland, Cowley, and Shakespeare. It appears from Alleyn's correspondence that Cowley was the bearer of a letter to him from London to Bristol; that his section of the company had been at Chelmsford in May, were at Bristol in August, and afterwards visited Shrewsbury, Chester, and York. Meanwhile, on June 1, Marlowe had been killed in a brawl, and his version of the Andronicus story was acted by Sussex' men at the Rose, 23d January 1594. From their hands this play passed to Pembroke's men c. 8th February, when Sussex' company broke up and went into the country, and from them to the Earl of Derby's before 16th April. But this company of Derby's was no other than Lord Strange's. After Henry Earl of Derby died, 25th September 1593, Ferdinand, his son, who succeeded him, and who had previously borne the title of Lord Strange, was called either Strange or Derby indifferently, he having no son to whom the title of Lord Strange could be, in accordance with custom, assigned in courtesy, although by strict right this title appertained to the Earls of Derby and not to their sons. Along with this Andronicus play the following can be traced as passing from Pembroke's company to Lord Strange's at this date: The Taming of a Shrew, Edward III., Hamlet, 3 Henry VI.; and besides this transfer of playbooks there was also a partial transfer of the company itself. Beeston, Cooke, Sinkler, Holland, and others were among these new members. The cause of this arrangement was no doubt poverty; already on 28th September 1593 they could not "save their charges to travel, and were fain to pawn their apparel." So writes Henslowe to Alleyn.