A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

1603

Hamlet is extant in three forms – the Folio, which is evidently a stage copy considerably shortened for acting purposes; the 1604 Quarto, which is a very fair transcript of the author's complete copy, with a few omissions; and the 1603 Quarto, imperfect and inaccurate. The date of the perfect play is certainly 1603. In ii 2. 346, &c., we find that the tragedians of the city —i. e., Shakespeare's company – are "travelling," and that "their inhibition comes of the late innovation." This has been interpreted in various ways, the most absurd being that which regards the establishment of the Revels children in 1604 as the innovation: hardly less so is Malone's notion that the putting down of the Curtain players in 1600 is the inhibition referred to. The Globe company travelled in 1601 in consequence of Essex' attempt at political innovation, and their acting Richard II. in connection therewith; they travelled again in 1603, the theatres being shut because of the plague: this latter is the time referred to in the final version, for in the latter part of that year the Puritan party had by millenary petitions at Hampton Court conferences, and so forth, attempted a religious "innovation;" and their anxiety to avoid this charge is evident in their continual protests that it was a reformation, not an innovation, that they wanted (see Fuller, Church History, under 1603-4 passim). The immediately succeeding passage, l. 351-379, however, which also occurs in the earlier version, distinctly points to 1601. The "berattling of the common stages by the aery of little eyases," the controversy between poet and player, ended in that year; these lines are not contained in the second Quarto. The words "if they should grow themselves to common players," indicate a possible date of writing c. 1610, when Ostler and Underwood, Chapel boys in 1601, had grown up and been taken into the King's men; but the use of the present tense in the preceding paragraph shows that the same Chapel children who had been engaged in the Jonson and Marston quarrel were still on the stage, and that the date of writing is anterior to their replacement by the Revels boys in January 1604. The growing to common players then must be taken generally, not specifically; unless we suppose a still further revision c. 1610, which on other grounds is not unlikely. It may be worth noting that the play of Dido, in rivalry of which the player's speech in ii. 2 is recited, belonged to these same Chapel children. In like manner the Pyrgus in Jonson's Poetaster recites bits of The Battle of Alcazar in rivalry with Dekker's Captain Stukeley. But although the date of the perfect play is almost certainly 1603, Hamlet had certainly been on the stage some years at that time. Tucca in Satiromastix (1601) says, "My name's Hamlet Revenge," and he comes on, "his boy after him, with two pictures under his cloak." In Marston's Malcontent (1601), "Illo, ho, ho, ho! art thou there, old Truepenny?" must refer to Hamlet. In iii. 2. 42, "Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them," refers, I think, to extemporising Kempe, who left Shakespeare's company in 1599. Florio's Montaigne, which is implicitly referred to throughout the play (see Mr. Feis, Shakespeare and Montaigne, 1884), was entered S. R. 4th June 1600. On the title-page of the first Quarto it is said that the play had been acted in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere; i. e., in the travelling of 1601. It is pretty clear, then, that 1601 was the date of its production. Polonius (iii. 2. 108) had already played Julius Cæsar in the University, which could hardly have been before 1601; and Hamlet was entered by Roberts 26th July 1602, in S. R., "as it was lately acted." Plays thus produced during "travels," were almost always hurried and careless performances; indeed, this form of Hamlet seems to have been an unfinished refashioning of the old play by Kyd, that had so long been performed by the Chamberlain's men. The names Corambis and Montano for Polonius and Reynaldo, and a good deal of Acts iii. and iv., seem to be remnants of this old play. The name Corambus is found in the German version, which probably dates c. 1592. It also occurs in All's Well, iv. 3. 185. The first Quarto is in this instance, as in those of Romeo, Henry V., and Merry Wives, in my opinion, printed from a partly revised prompter's copy of the 1601 play, which became useless when the fuller version was made. In this instance there are traces of alterations having been made on this copy similar to that in Romeo, iii. 5. 177. The usual explanation of the peculiar text of imperfect Quartos is, that notes were taken in shorthand at the theatre, which, eked out by the vampings of some playdresser, made up a saleable version, however incorrect. The stronghold of this theory is the soliloquy in iii. 1. 56, &c. The minor errors of "right done" for "write down," i. 2. 222; "invenom'd speech" for "in venom steept," ii. 2. 533; "honor" for "owner," v. 1. 121; and the like, can be easily paralleled in the most authentic copies of printed plays of the period. But a careful examination of the text of that speech of Hamlet's in the first Quarto, shows that its present meaningless shape arises from the displacement of two lines only, an error which is most unlikely to have occurred in shorthand notes, and is completely subversive of the hack play-writing botcher hypothesis. I append this soliloquy, as I suppose it to have stood in the MS. of the prompter's copy, after the partial 1601 correction:

"To be, or not to be? Ay, there's the point.To die – to sleep – is that all? Ay. All? No.To sleep – to dream – ay, marry, there it goes.For in that dream of death when we, awake,Are doom'd before an everlasting Judge,The happy smile and the accurst are damn'd.But for the joyful hope of this, who'ld bearThe scorns and flattery of the world, the rightScorn'd by the rich, the rich curst of the poor,The widow being opprest, the orphan wrong'd,The taste of hunger, or a tyrant's reign,And thousand more calamities besides,When that he may his full quietus makeWith a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,But for a hope of something after death,The undiscover'd country, from whose bourneNo passenger has e'er return'd? Ay thatPuzzles the brain and doth confound the sense;Which makes us rather bear the ills we have,Than fly to others that we know not of.This consciënce makes cowards of us all."

I have put in italics in the text the marginal corrections of "proof" as shown above, inserted in their proper places; a comparison with the first Quarto will show how the printer, not the shorthand man or playdresser, by inserting them in the wrong places, has produced the nonsense that has caused so many groundless hypotheses.

"When we awake,

And borne before an everlasting Judge,

From whence no passenger ever return'd

The undiscover'd country, at whose sight

The happy smile," &c.

And farther on:

"Ay that O this conscience," &c.

The erroneous notions with regard to these imperfect Quartos arise, in a great measure, from their being compared with the carefully edited later versions; were they also edited and emended the differences would appear much smaller than they do now. The earlier (1601) form of this play was evidently hurriedly prepared during the journey to Scotland, in which the company visited the universities, at a time when the public taste for revenge-plays had been revived by the reproduction of Kyd's Jeronymo (Spanish Tragedy) by the Chapel children, probably at Jonson's suggestion; a new version of Kyd's Hamlet naturally followed. Other such plays were: Marston's Antonio and Mellida (Paul's, 1599-1600); Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar (1600); Chettle and Heywood's Hoffman, or Revenge for a Father, also called Like quits Like (Admiral's, January 1603): Chapman's Revenge of Bussy is of later date. A passage in Ram Alley (c. 1609), v. 1, "The custom of thy sin so lulls thy sense," &c., is apparently imitated from iii. 4. 161, &c., a passage not found in the Folio. This would lead to the conjecture that the Folio abridgment was made after 1609; on the other hand, the re-insertion in it of ii. 2. 350-379 points to a date, about 1610, when Underwood and Ostler had "grown to common players," and were admitted among the King's men. It was probably made then by Shakespeare himself. It is indeed most unlikely, that were it not so, its text should have been preferred, by the editors of the Folio, to the fuller one of the Quarto, which lay ready printed to their hands. We have, then, in the forms of this play, an example of Shakespeare's hurried revision of the work of an earlier writer, but it must be remembered in a most mutilated form; of the full working out of his own conception, in the shape fittest for private reading; and finally, of his practical adaptation of it to the requirements of the stage. The date of the printing of the first Quarto, and, therefore, of the revision made in the second, is after 19th May 1603, as the actors are called "King's servants" in the title-page. I. 1. 107-125, which surely allude to the death of Elizabeth, are omitted in the Folio. In iii. 2. 177, iv. 5. 77, alternative readings —

{"For women fear too much even as they love","And women's fear and love hold quantity,"{"And now behold""O Gertrard, Gertrard" —

are printed side by side, a sure mark of revision.

1604

Measure for Measure was written, in my opinion, in rivalry to Marston's The Fawn, which was printed March 1606, but produced 1603-4. It was also subsequent to Chettle and Heywood's Like quits Like, 14th January 1603; v. 1. 416. All the allusions in it suit 1604. The avoidance of publicity by James I. (i. 1. 68-71; ii. 4. 27-30); the existing war and expected peace (i. 2. 4. 83); the stabbers – four out of ten prisoners – in iv. 3; the stuffed hose, to which Pompey's name is appropriate, all agree in this; peace was concluded in the autumn; the "Act of Stabbing" was passed in this year, the bombasted breeches revived with the new reign. But these are more valuable in showing what reliance can be placed on such allusions than in fixing the date of the play; for it was acted at Court, 26th December 1604. The title was probably taken from a line in 3 Henry VI., ii. 6. 55; the plot is like All's Well in the substitution of Mariana, Twelfth Night in the Duke's love declaration at the end. It is founded on Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1582). An order was made in 1603, that no new houses should be built in the suburbs of London. Compare i. 2. 104.

1604

Othello was acted at Court 1st November 1604, being, no doubt, like Measure for Measure, 26th December, a new play that year. The Merry Wives, 4th November, and Henry V., 7th January, were revised for the same Revels. The Errors, 28th December, Loves Labour's Lost, between New Year and Twelfth Day, and The Merchant of Venice, January 10, 12, were also reproduced. The document in the Record Office containing these details is a modern forgery, but Malone possessed a transcript of the genuine entry in the Revels accounts. It was a bold thing for Shakespeare to have performed before James I. in two plays on unfounded jealousy, at a time when the King was so jealous of the relations of the Queen with Lord Southampton. The 1622 Quarto copy of this play is abridged for stage reasons; by whom we cannot say. The allusion to the "huge eclipse" (v. 2. 99), points to the total eclipse of 2d October 1605. Shakespeare had probably been reading Harvey's Discoursive Problem concerning Prophesies (1588), in which he speaks of "a huge fearful eclipse of the sun" as to happen on that day. The likeness of this play in small details to Measure for Measure indicates close contemporaneity of date, e. g., the name Angelo (i. 3. 16); the word "grange" (i. 1. 106), and "seeming" (iii. 3. 209). This play was again acted at Court in 1613. It was founded on Cinthio's novel Hecatomithi, Third Decad, Novel 3. The "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" (i. 3. 145) came from Raleigh's narrative of The Discovery of Guyana (1600). He was "resolved" of their credibility. In The Patient Man, by Dekker, S. R. 9th November 1604, there is a distinct reference to Othello —

"Thou kill'st her now again,

And art more savage than a barbarous Moor" (i. 1).

1605

King Lear was probably on the stage when the old play of Leir on which it was founded was published. This latter was entered on S. R. 8th May, as "The Tragical History of King Leir and his three daughters, as it was lately acted," but was published as "The true Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters, &c., as it hath been divers and sundry times lately acted." It is not tragical in any sense, and ends happily. Shakespeare was the first person who, in opposition to the chronicles, made a tragedy on this story. There can be no doubt that Stafford, the publisher, meant to pass the old play as Shakespeare's; the last trace we have of it on the stage is in April 1594, when it was acted at the Rose by the Queen's and Sussex' men, who almost immediately afterwards broke up. That Shakespeare's play remained on the stage till the end of 1605 is evident from the words "these late eclipses" (i. 2. 112) which clearly refer to the huge eclipse of the sun in October 1605, and the immediately preceding eclipse of the moon in September. The word "late" could not be used, whether in the original text or by subsequent insertion, till October. That Shakespeare had been probably reading Harvey on the subject I have noticed under the preceding play, to which the present is every way closely allied. Compare, for instance, the characters of Iago and Edmund. The Quarto of 1608, entered S. R. 26th November 1607 as acted at Whitehall St. Stephen's Day, i. e., 26th December 1606, is abridged and slightly altered for Court representation and carelessly printed; the Folio is, on the other hand, somewhat shortened for the public stage. The names of the spirits in iii. 4 are from Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. The two lines at the end of Act i. and the Merlin's Prophecy (iii. 2. 79-95) are not in Shakespeare's manner; they are mere gag, inserted by the Fool-actor to raise a laugh among the groundlings. The story of Gloster and his sons is probably founded on Sidney's Arcadia, ii. 133-138, ed. 1598.

1606

Macbeth, as we have it, is abridged for the stage in an unusual degree. Nevertheless it contains one scene, iii. 5, and a few lines, iv. i. 39-43, which are not by Shakespeare. The character of Hecate, and the songs in these passages (Black spirits and white, and Come away), are from Middleton's Witch, acted 1621-22. The insertions in Macbeth must have been made in 1622; they were probably merely intended to introduce a little singing and music then popular; and music has ever since been an essential ingredient in the stage representations. Omitting these forty lines, we have ample evidence of the date of the play as Shakespeare left it. In the Porter's speech, ii. 3. 1-23, 26-46, the "expectation of plenty" refers to the abundance of corn in 1606; the allusions to equivocation certainly allude to the trial of Garnet and other Jesuits in the spring of that year: the "stealing out of a French hose" agrees with the short and strait fashion then in vogue, when "the tailors took more than enough for the new fashion sake" (A. Nixon's Black Year, 1606); the touching for the King's evil, iv. 3. 140-159, implies that James was on the throne. Camden, in his Remains (1605), a book certainly known to Shakespeare, refers to it as a "gift hereditary." The "double balls and treble sceptres" in iv. 1. 119-122, necessitate a time of writing subsequent to 24th October 1604, when the constitution was changed. The applicability of the circumstances of the play to the Gowry conspiracy would be especially pleasing to James, and the predictions of the weyward sisters had already been presented to the King at Oxford in Latin in 1605. Warner added an account of Macbeth to his new edition of Albion's England in 1606, but the absolute argument against this being a new play when Forman saw it performed 20th April 1610, lies in the distinct allusion in The Puritan by Middleton, acted 1606 – "instead of a jester, we'll ha' th' ghost in a white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table." This was Shakespeare's first play without a jester, and Banquo's ghost sits in Macbeth's place at the upper end. There is little doubt that Malone was right in assigning the visit of the King of Denmark in July and August 1606 as the occasion for the production of this play at Court. But was this the date of its first production on the stage? All the evidences for it are gathered from ii. 3. 1-23, 26-46; iv. 1. 119-122; iv. 3. 140-159; every one of which passages bears evident marks of being an addition to the original text. The description of Cawdor's death is remarkably like that of the Earl of Essex in Stow (by Howes, p. 793), who minutely describes "his asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold." Steevens (ii. 4) reminds us of corresponding passages in Hamlet and Cæsar, to which plays Macbeth is throughout more closely allied than to Lear or Timon. The references to Antony, i. 3. 84, iii. 1. 57, are just what might be expected from one who had recently read Plutarch's life of Antony for writing Julius Cæsar. Shakespeare's company were in Scotland in 1601, and were appointed the King's Servants; Laurence Fletcher being admitted burgess of the guild of the borough of Aberdeen, 22d October 1601. This, I think, is the date of production of Macbeth on the stage, 1606 being that of the revised play at Court. But there are traces of a still earlier play. In 1596, August 27, there is, says Mr. Collier, an entry in S. R. (I suppose in that portion relating to fines, &c., which Mr. Arber has not been allowed to reprint) referring to two ballads, one on Macdobeth, the other on The Taming of a Shrew. Kempe, in his Dance from London to Norwich (1600), refers to this ballad as made by "a penny poet whose first making was the miserable stolen story of Mac-do-el or Mac-do-beth or Mac somewhat, for I am sure a Mac it was, though I never had the maw to see it;" he bids the writer "leave writing these beastly ballads; make not good wenches prophetesses, for little or no profit." This ballad was in all probability founded on a play, as its companion was; a play probably written some year or two before. That Shakespeare had some connection with this early play, is rendered probable by iv. 1. 94-101, in which Dunsin'ane is accented in the southern manner; in the rest of the play it is always, as in Scotland, Dunsina'ne. This passage, in which Macbeth speaks of himself in the third person, and rhymes in a manner which strongly reminds us of the pre-Shakespearian stage, suggests that the old play of c. 1593-4 was used by Shakespeare in making his 1601 version. I may ask the reader who doubts the remarkable alterations to which this play has been subjected, to examine the following incomplete lines at points where compression by omission seems to have taken place, i. 3. 103; i. 4. 35; ii. 1. 16; ii. 1. 24; ii. 3. 120; iii. 2. 155; iv. 3. 15; and to compare the later alterations by Davenant and others, as given in my article in Anglia, vol. vii.

1606-7

Timon of Athens unquestionably contains much matter from another hand. The Shakespearian part is so like Lear in matter, and Anthony and Cleopatra in metre, that the conjectural date here assigned to it cannot be far wrong. It was founded on the passage in North's Plutarch (Life of Antony), and perhaps on the story as told in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, with a hint or two from Lucian's Dialogues (? at second hand; no translation of that time is known). It would be out of proportion in this work to reproduce my 1868 essay on the authorship, which awaits some slight corrections from recent investigation. It will be found in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions for 1874. I can only here point out the parts that are certainly not Shakespeare's, namely, ii. 1; ii. 2. 194-204; iii. 1; iii. 2; iii. 3; iii. 4 (in great part); iii. 5; iii. 6. 116-131; iv. 2; iv. 3. 70-74, 103-106, 464-545; v. i. 157; v. 3. Delius and Elze say the second author was George Wilkins. Perhaps so; but they are certainly wrong in regarding the play as an alteration made by Shakespeare of another man's work. Whether Wilkins completed the unfinished sketch by Shakespeare, or the actors eked it out with matter taken from a previous play by him, I cannot tell: but Shakespeare's part is a whole totus teres atque rotundus. There is no trace of his ever working in conjunction with any author after 1594, although in this play, in The Shrew, and Pericles there is evidence of his writing portions of dramas which were fitted into the work of other men. Wilkins left the King's men in 1607 and wrote for the Queen's. This migration to an inferior company is so unusual as to indicate some rupture on unfriendly terms. Perhaps the insertion of Shakespeare's work in his play offended him. The unShakespearian characters in the play are three Lords – Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius; three Servants – Flavius (Steward always in the Shakespeare part), Flaminius, and Servilius; three Strangers; three Creditors – Hortensius, Philotus, and 2d Varro; three Masquers; and the Soldier. I have not here assigned to Wilkins all parts of the play that have been suspected, but only those with regard to which the evidence is definite, with entire exclusion of merely æsthetic opinion.

1607

Anthony and Cleopatra was entered on S. R. 20th May 1608; and no doubt was written not much more than a year before that date. Where-ever we find plays entered but not printed in their author's lifetime, it is pretty safe to conclude that they were then still on the stage: compare, for Shakespeare, the instances of The Merchant of Venice, Troylus and Cressida, and As You Like it.

1608

Coriolanus in all probability was produced not long after Anthony. There is no external evidence available. Both these Roman plays are founded on North's Plutarch.

1608

Pericles as we now have it was probably on the stage in 1608, when Wilkins published his prose version of "the play, as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient poet John Gower." He was probably annoyed by the adoption of Shakespeare's version of the Marina story in place of his own. The rest of the play as it stands —i. e., Acts i. ii. and Gower chorus to Act iii. – are by Wilkins, in whose novel the only distinctly traceable piece of Shakespeare's is from iii. 1. 28-31, which is repeated almost verbatim. The play was published in 1609, probably as an answer to Wilkins; whose unaltered play must have been on the stage as early as 1606, seeing that The Puritan, acted that year, contains a distinct parody of the scene of Thaisa's recovery. This original form of the play was founded on Gower's Confessio Amantis and Twine's novel of Prince Apollonius, which was probably, in consequence of the popularity of the play, reprinted in 1607. It was, I think, this Wilkins' play that was entered in S. R. along with Anthony and Cleopatra 20th May 1608, and the publication of which was stayed. There is no trace of any transfer of Blount's interest as so entered to Gosson, who published the altered play. To the popularity of this drama there are many allusions, notably one in Pimlico, or Run Redcap (1609).

1609

Cymbeline was probably produced after the Roman plays and before Winters Tale; and the Iachimo part was doubtless then written. There is, however, strong internal evidence that the part derived from Holinshed, viz., the story of Cymbeline and his sons, the tribute, &c., in the last three acts, was written at an earlier time, in 1606 I think, just after Lear and Macbeth, for which the same chronicler had been used. All this older work will be found in the scenes in which Lucius and Bellarius enter. A marked instance in the change of treatment will be found in the character of Cloten. In the later version he is a mere fool (see i. 3; ii. 1); but in the earlier parts he is by no means deficient in manliness, and the lack of his "counsel" is regretted by the King in iv. 3. Especially should iii. 5 be examined from this point of view, in which the prose part is a subsequent insertion, having some slight discrepancies with the older parts of the scene. Philaster, which contains some passages suggested by this play, was written in 1611. The Iachimo story is found in Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 11, Novel 9. The verse of the vision, v. 4. 30-122, is palpably by an inferior hand, and was probably inserted for some Court performance after Shakespeare had left the stage. Of course the stage directions for the dumb show are genuine. This would not have been worth mentioning but for the silly arguments of some who defend the Shakespearian authorship of these lines, and maintain that the play would be maimed without them. Forman saw this play acted c. 1610-11; which gives our only posterior limit of date.