A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

If the above conclusions are well founded, 2 Henry VI. was originally written for the Queen's men as a continuation of 1 Henry VI., and, like the latter-mentioned play, passed into the hands of Lord Strange's men in 1591-2, but was not, like it, then revised; or it may, like George a Greene, have passed to Sussex' men; from them, like Titus Andronicus, to Pembroke's; and thence to the Chamberlain's. It is noticeable that although published in Quarto by the same person, Millington, who published 3 Henry VI. as the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York in 1595, he put no name of acting company on the former play, as he did that of Pembroke's on the latter. This distinctly shows that the original companies for whom these plays were written were not identical, and that that of 2 Henry VI. was probably unknown to Millington. As to the authorship of 2 Henry VI., it will be well to make F. the basis of investigation, always having in mind the possibility of passages having been inserted by the ultimate reviser. The corruption and omission in Q. caused by the shortening for stage purposes have been so great, that the usual plan of beginning with Q. becomes altogether misleading. The example of 1 Henry VI. induces me to attach great weight to the chronological arrangement of the historical facts. Henry's marriage in 1445 forms the subject of i. 1, evidently written by Greene originally. The word "alderliefest" in 1. 28 should specially be noted: it is used by Greene in his Mourning Garment, and "aldertruest" in his James IV. Such words are not found in Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, or Shakespeare; yet here one occurs in a passage found in F. but not in Q., plainly indicating omission in Q., not addition in F. The next portion, i. 2-ii. 4, is concerned with the banishment of the Duchess of Gloster, 1441, and the story of Saunder Simcox, 1441, with which is incorporated the accusation of the armourer for high treason, 1446. This part (except i. 3. 45-103) is mainly by George Peele, but much altered in the F. revision. Peele his mark, "sandy plains," occurs in i. 4. 39. The Simcox anecdote, however, ii. 1. 59-153, which is quite unconnected with the rest of the play, is more like Kyd's work than Peele's, and may have been written by him. The exceptional bit, i. 3. 45-103, to the conversation in which no historical date can be assigned, is manifest Marlowe; a preparation for iii. 1-iv. 1, which is beyond question by him. The events in this section are (iii. 1a) the accusation and (iii. 2) murder of Gloster in 1447; (iii. 3) the banishment of Suffolk, 1447; (iii. 3) the death of Winchester in 1447; (iii. 1b) the Irish insurrection in 1449; and, finally, (iv. 1) the death of Suffolk in 1450. These scenes are the salt of the play. The opening lines of iv. 1, the description in iii. 2. 160, &c., the awful pathos of the death of Winchester, are from the same hand as the end of Doctor Faustus. The differences of Q. and F. in this portion are mostly due to omissions in Q.: iii. 3, for instance, could not have been left in the state in which Q. has it by the meanest of the authors of the play: it is cut down by some illiterate actor. That revision there has been is, however, plain from the singular circumstance that in iii. 2 Elianor is given for Margaret as the Queen's name. This is probably due to Marlowe's almost simultaneous work on the older John, in which Queen Elianor is a prominent character. It would seem that the revisor missed this scene, although correcting Margaret properly in the others. It is no printer's error; for in l. 26 we have "Nell," for which some modern editors euphoniously substitute "Meg." The rest of the play, iv. 2-v. 3, is by one hand, and that hand Lodge's. The notion that Greene wrote it arises from want of discriminating Greene's work from Lodge's in The Looking-glass for London, all the better part of which is by Lodge. I fear that those who underrate the powers of this elegant and (in his own line) powerful writer estimate him by his earliest dramatic effort, Marius and Sylla. He should be read in his Glaucus and Rosalynde; and his evident wish to avoid being known as a dramatic writer should be taken into account. That he did continue to write plays for many years, I have no doubt, but the evidence is too extensive to be given here. This part of the play includes Cade's insurrection, 1450, and the battle of St. Albans, 1455.

As regards the date, &c., of revision, see under the next play.

3 Henry VI. is of very different character from the two preceding plays. If read in the F. version, no change of authorship is perceptible; all is consistent; and if the Q. version had not come down to us, no one would have suspected a second author. It is plainly by Marlowe, but the Marlowe of Edward II., not of Faustus, later in date than 2 Henry VI. F. is nearly if not quite identical with the original play. Q. is not, as in the case of the preceding play, an abridgment for the stage made by the actors, but one made for the same purpose, carefully and accurately, apparently by the author himself. The reason for this difference in the treatment of the plays is manifest. 3 Henry VI. was, as we know from the title-page, acted by Pembroke's men, and F. is printed from a prompter's copy, in which the names of Gabriel [Spenser], Humphrey [Jeffes], and [John] Sinkler appear in the stage directions; and they were actors for that company. There is not a particle of evidence that this stage copy was ever altered in any way after the Chamberlain's company acquired it. A careful examination of such passages as ii. 5, the stronghold of the revision theory, shows too much coincidence between Q. and F. for any likelihood of rewriting having taken place, except by way of abridgment in Q. But in 2 Henry VI. things are quite different: the Greene and Marlowe parts are merely abridged in Q., and the Peele a good deal revised in F. as well as abridged in Q.; but the Lodge part at the end is absolutely rewritten in the St. Alban's battle, and the very names of the actors are changed in the Cade insurrection. Who could have done this but Shakespeare? Here, and here only, can we find an explanation of the inclusion of these plays in the Folio edition of his works in 1623. In my opinion the history of the plays is this: About 1588-9, Marlowe plotted, and, in conjunction with Kyd (or Greene), Peele, and Lodge, wrote 1 Henry VI. for the Queen's men. About 1589 the same authors wrote 2 Henry VI.; in that year I have ascertained that Marlowe left the Queen's men, and in 1590 joined Pembroke's, for whom he alone wrote 3 Henry VI. In 1591-2 the Queen's men were in distress, and sold, among other plays, 1 Henry VI. to Lord Strange's men, who produced it in 1592 with Shakespeare's Talbot additions as a new play. In the autumn of that year or in 1593-4, when the companies travelled on account of the plague, they cut down their plays for country representation; among others, 2 Henry VI. (altered by some illiterate) and 3 Henry VI. (abridged by Marlowe himself). On this point compare the parallel instances of abridged plays, Hamlet, Orlando, and The Guise. In May 1593 2 Henry VI. passed to the Sussex' men with Leir, &c., when the Queen's men broke up; in February 1594 with Andronicus to Pembroke's; in April, when Pembroke's company partly dissolved, all three plays were reunited in the hands of the Chamberlain's men; and for them 2 Henry VI. was, c. 1600, after Lodge had retired, remodelled by Shakespeare, and 3 Henry VI. corrected – the other authors, Peele, Marlowe, (Kyd?), and Greene, having died before 1598. Meanwhile Millington published 2 Henry VI. Q. as York and Lancaster, and 3 Henry VI. Q. as Richard Duke of York, these abridged copies having become useless to Pembroke's men on the ceasing of the plague and of their travels.

I have not noticed here the many parallel passages from the works of Marlowe and others which confirm the assignment of authorship now advocated. It would be out of all proportion to give them here unless imperfectly: the reader will find some in Dyce's Marlowe, and more in my edition of Edward II. Nor have I noticed the schoolboy interpretation that explains "their" in Henry V., Epil. l. 13, as referring to 2 and 3 Henry VI.: "their," more Shakespeariano, like "they" in the previous line, refers in form to the "many" of l. 12, but in meaning to the actors of 1 Henry VI., in which play, and not in 3 Henry VI., the loss of France is treated of. It is also most unlikely that the 1600 edition of The Duke of York should have been issued as played by Pembroke's servants if the play had been previously acted by the Chamberlain's. Compare the parallel case of Andronicus. Miss Lee's statement, "Greene wrote, Nash tells us," more than four others "for Lord Pembroke's company," is absolutely without foundation. Nash says "the company" (Apology, 1593), and evidently alludes to the Queen's men, for whom Orlando, Bacon, Selimus, and The Looking-glass were written. In fact, Greene's only known connection with any other company was his fraudulent selling of Orlando a second time to the Admiral's. Marlowe, and he alone, is known as a writer for Pembroke's: Kyd may have been, however, and in my opinion was, a contributor to their stage.

Richard III. is closely connected with 3 Henry VI., and written with direct reference to it. In i. 2. 158, iv. 2. 98, iv. 4. 275, scenes in that play are plainly alluded to. Nor is it possible, if the two plays be read in immediate sequence, to avoid the feeling that they have a common authorship. On the other hand, a closer analysis shows that in Richard the Latin quotations, classical allusions, and peculiar animal similes which are characteristic of Henry have entirely disappeared. There are also discrepancies, such as Gray's fighting for the Lancastrians, i. 3. 130, whereas in 3 Henry VI., iii. 2. 2, he is represented as a Yorkist, which shows a different hand in the two plays. Richard III. has always been regarded as entirely Shakespeare's, and its likeness to 3 Henry VI. has more than anything else kept alive the untenable belief that this last-named play was also, in part or wholly, written by our greatest dramatist. Yet the unlikeness of Richard III. to the other historical plays of Shakespeare, and the impracticability of finding a definite position for it, metrically or æsthetically, in any chronological arrangement, have made themselves felt. Even cautious Mr. Halliwell says, "There are slight traces of an older play to be observed, passages which belong to an inferior hand;" and again, "To the circumstance of an anterior work having been used do we owe some of its weakness and excessively turbulent character" (Outlines, 94). A careful examination of the editions will be found to confirm and extend this conclusion. The 1597 Quarto Q1, which is evidently an abridged version made for the stage, and which no doubt was the version acted during nearly all Elizabeth's reign, differs from the Folio in a way not to be paralleled in any other Shakespearian play. Minute alterations have been made in almost every speech, in a fashion which could not have been customary with him who uttered his thoughts so easily as scarcely to make a blot (i. e. alteration) in his papers. The question of anteriority of the Q. and F. versions has been hotly debated on æsthetic grounds; but the mere expurgation of oaths and metrical emendations in F. are enough to show that it is the later version, probably made c. 1602; while the fact that it was preferred by the editors of the 1623 Folio shows that they considered it the authentic copy of Shakespeare's work. In other instances, Macbeth, The Tempest, &c., they have indeed given us abridged editions; but there is neither proof nor likelihood that any other were accessible. We do not know what original copies were destroyed in the Globe fire of 1613, and should be thankful for such versions as we have, which were probably the acting versions used at Blackfriars. But in this case the editors had at hand the Quartos, and unless they thought the Folio more authentic, I cannot see why they preferred it. Furthermore, the F. version appears to have been defective in some places; for v. 3. 50, end of play, and iii. 1. 17-165, are certainly printed from Q3 (1602). This has been controverted, but on very insufficient grounds. Now directly we compare the Folio and Quarto versions, we meet with evidence that alteration and correction have been largely used in both of them. For instance, Derby is found as a character in the play in i. 1, ii. 1, 2, iv. 5, v. 5, in both versions; in iii. 1. 2, iv. 1, v. 2, he is called Stanley. This shows correction by a second hand. In iv. 1, while Stanley has been inserted in the text, Derby remains in the prefixes; v. 3 is only partially corrected, and both names occur. The names were not used indifferently, for in iv. 2, 4, we find Stanley in F. but Derby in Q. This shows a progressive correction in which Q. precedes F. It may be noticed that Darby is the original author's spelling. In like manner, Gloster, the original prefix, has in i. 1, 2, 3, ii. 1. 2, iii. 4, 5, 7, been replaced in F. by Richard, but in iii. 1, in the part printed from Q3, and there only, Gloster remains. So again Margaret is indicated in the older version by Qu. Mar., Qu. M., &c., but never Mar., as in F. iv. 4. In F. i. 3 we find by side of Mar. a remainder of the older form in Q. M. This is not an exhaustive statement, but sufficient I think to show that alterations were made, as I suggest. There can be little doubt that in this, as in John, Shakespeare derived his plot and part of his text from an anterior play, the difference in the two cases being that in Richard III. he adopted much more of his predecessor's text. I believe that the anterior play was Marlowe's, partly written for Lord Strange's company in 1593, but left unfinished at Marlowe's death, and completed and altered by Shakespeare in 1594. It was no doubt on the stage when, on 19th June 1594, the older play on Richard III., "with the conjunction of the two Houses of Lancaster and York," was entered S. R. That was acted by the Queen's players. The unhistorical but grandly classical conception of Margaret, the Cassandra prophetess, the Helen-Ate of the House of Lancaster, which binds the whole tetralogy into one work, is evidently due to Marlowe, and the consummate skill with which he has fused the heterogeneous contributions of his coadjutors in the two earlier Henry VI. plays is no less worthy of admiration. I do not think it possible to separate Marlowe's work from Shakespeare's in this play – it is worked in with too cunning a hand; but wherever we find Darby, Qu. M., Glo., &c., we may be sure that some of his handiwork is left. Could any critic, if the older John were destroyed, tell us which lines had been adopted in the later play? Nor can I enter, unless in a special monograph, on the relations of the Quartos to each other. The question is of no importance, and I need only say that the usual corruptions take place from Q1 to Q5, and that in Q6 (1622) many readings are found agreeing with F. which are not in the other Quartos. The same phenomenon is observed in the 1619 edition of The Whole Contention, and far too much has been made of it. It merely indicates correction by attendance at the theatre and picking up a few words during the action. The only Quartos deserving special notice are Q1, as containing Shakespeare's first "additions," and Q3, as having been used in printing part of F. I do not think the allusion in Weever's Epigrams, written 1595-6, is to this play. It may be so.

Titus Andronicus.– That this play is not by Shakespeare is pretty certain from internal evidence. The Latin quotations, classical allusions, use of pour as prefix in iv. 1, manner of versification, and above all the introduction of rape as a subject for the stage, would be sufficient to disprove his authorship. Fortunately we know that it was produced by the Earl of Sussex' men, 23d January 1594, and Shakespeare belonged then to Derby's (Lord Strange's). It was afterwards, on the breaking up of that company, acted by Pembroke's and Derby's before 16th April, when Lord Derby died. Enlargement in the Folio or abridgment in the Quarto, 1600 (we have no copy extant of the first edition, entered S. R. February 1594), appears in iii. 2, found in F., not in Q., and there is a distinct continuity between Acts i. and ii.; at the end of Act i. we have "manet Moore," not Exeunt simply. Whether this play got into the Folio by some confusion with Titus and Vespasian, played by Lord Strange's men 11th April 1592, which was, as we know from a German version extant, written on the same subject, and in which Shakespeare may have had some share, we cannot tell; but it was certainly played and revised (there was another edition in 1611), while the other play has perished. That it was written by Marlowe I incline to think. What other mind but the author of The Jew of Malta could have conceived Aaron the Moor? Mr. Dyce has warned us against attributing too many plays to the short career of Marlowe, but he did not consider that Marlowe probably wrote two plays a year from 1587-1593, and that we have only at present seven acknowledged as his. Those now attributed to him, in whole or part, by me will raise the number to a baker's dozen; but in some of these, as the older John and 1 and 2 Henry VI., his share was comparatively slight. Nevertheless, I think the opinion that Kyd wrote this play of Andronicus worth the examination, although, with such evidence as has yet been adduced, Marlowe has certainly the better claim. Shakespeare probably never touched this play unless by inserting iii. 2, which is possible.

Edward III. The Shakespearian part of this play, i. 3, ii. 1. 2 (beginning at "What, are the stealing foxes"), which contains lines from the then unpublished Sonnets, ii. 1. 10, 450, and an allusion to the recently published Lucreece, ii. 2. 194, was clearly acted in 1594, after 9th May, when Lucreece was entered on S. R. Edward III. was entered 1st December 1595. This love-story part is from Painter's Palace of Pleasure. The original play is by Marlowe, and was acted in 1590 and is thus alluded to in Greene's Never too Late, c. December in that year: "Why, Roscius, art thou proud with Æsop's crow, being prankt with the glory of others' feathers? Of thyself thou canst say nothing; and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say Ave Cæsar, disdain not thy tutor because thou pratest in a king's chamber." Ave Cæsar occurs in i. 1. 164, but not in any other play of this date have I been able to find it. There are many similarities between the Marlowe part of this play and Henry VI. As the Roscius in Greene's pamphlet was the player who had interpreted the puppets for seven years, who induced Greene to write for the stage, and had himself written The Moral of Man's Wit and The Dialogue of Dives, there can be no doubt that Robert Wilson is Roscius, and that he was an actor in Edward III. in 1590. It was acted by Pembroke's company, and must have been acquired by Lord Strange's men with the other Pembroke plays in 1594.

SECTION VI.

ON THE PLAYS BY OTHER AUTHORS ACTED BY SHAKESPEARE'S COMPANY

During Shakespeare's career, 1589-1611, we only know of some two dozen plays having been produced by his "fellows," in addition to the three dozen included in his works; and of these, about two-fifths are anonymous, and have been at some time or other ascribed, in whole or part, to the great master. It is evident that he had the management of the playwriting for his house pretty nearly in his own hands, and that his method was the polar opposite to that of which we know most, viz., Henslowe's. While the latter employed twelve poets in a year, who produced for the Admiral's men a new play every fortnight or so, the Chamberlain's company depended almost entirely on two poets at a time, and produced not more than four new plays a year. Hence the explanation of the vastly higher character of the Globe plays as compared with the Fortune: hence also the explanation of the small pay and needy condition of the latter, and their jealousy of the rapid advancement in wealth and position of Shakespeare, who had virtually a monopoly of play-providing for his company. It would be out of place to discuss at length the plays written for it by Jonson, Dekker, &c., but fuller notice of the anonymous plays is due to the reader. They have, strange to say, never yet been treated as a complete group; and yet surely as much may be learned by considering Shakespeare's theatrical surroundings, the plays in which he acted, and which he probably had more or less suggested, supervised, or revised, as by elaborately working out the debtor and creditor details of his malt-bills. I will treat of these plays in nearly chronological order.

1590

Fair Em is the earliest play we certainly know of as acted by Lord Strange's company. It is alluded to by Greene in his address prefixed to his Farewell to Folly. He quotes as abusing of Scripture, "A man's conscience is a thousand witnesses," and "Love covereth the multitude of sins," and says these words were used by "two lovers on the stage arguing one another of unkindness." Greene's tract was written and entered S. R. 1st June 1587, but not published till 1591, when the address which mentions his Mourning Garment (S. R. November 2, 1590) was added. Fair Em dates, therefore, late in 1590. It was probably written by R. Wilson, and is certainly not a romantic, but a satirical play; else why should Greene have been offended at it?

In Sc. 14 of The Three Ladies of London, produced before 1584, Wilson uses the expression, "I, Conscience, am a thousand witnesses," and in his Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, acted at Court, Christmas 1588-9, Sc. 2, "Love doth cover heaps of cumbrous evils." In order to explain the nature of the satire in Fair Em, it is necessary to investigate a hitherto unnoticed identification of Worcester's 1586 company with the Admiral's, of the highest importance for stage history as determining the actors in Marlowe's early plays. On Twelfth Day 1585-6, "the servants of the Admiral and the Lord Chamberlain" acted at Court, i. e. the players of Lord Charles Howard, who held both these offices. Mr. Halliwell (Illustrations, p. 31) confused this Chamberlain with Lord Hunsdon, and takes the entry to refer to two companies. I sent him a correction of these and many other blunders, which he has never rectified, years ago – a fact which I should not notice had he not publicly complained that, with one or two exceptions, of whom I am not one, he had received no help of this kind. Of this Admiral's company in the plague year, 1586, there is no trace in London; but in that year, and that year only, a company travelled under the protection of the Earl of Worcester. They were licensed for this travel on 14th January, and were at Leicester in the course of the year (Shakespeare Society's Papers, iv.); their names were R. Browne, J. Tunstall (Dunstan), E. Allen, W. Harryson, T. Cooke, R. Jones, E. Browne, R. Andrews; all of whom were licensed, together with hired men, T. Powlton and W. Paterson, "Lord Harbard's man," i. e. a member of the company of Herbert Earl of Pembroke: a scratch company evidently, but containing names of celebrated London actors. In 1587 and 1588, the Admiral's men acted in London publicly, and at Christmas 1588-9 at Court. On 3d January 1588-9, Alleyn and Jones (acting evidently for the company) dissolved partnership, and Alleyn bought up their properties and play-books. In November the Admiral's men were playing about the City, and not at the Curtain, where they had probably produced Tamberlain, Faustus, Orlando, Alcazar, and Marius and Sylla; and in their Court performance on 23d December were reduced to showing "feats of activity." In 1590 R. Brown and Jones went abroad and acted at Leyden in October. They returned, and on December 27 and February 16 the Admiral's men acted at Court for the last time before the reconstitution of their company in 1594. Already R. Brown, J. Broadstreet, T. Sackville, and R. Jones had obtained a pass from Lord C. Howard, the Admiral, their patron, to travel to Germany by way of Holland, and a company acted there till 1617 under Sackville. Jones returned to England and joined the reconstituted Admiral's company under Allen in 1594. Alleyn had never relinquished the title of Admiral's servant, even when in Lord Strange's service in 1593. Putting these facts together, can there be any doubt that the service under Worcester was merely temporary, and that in the list of 1586 we have that of the principal actors in the Admiral's company? Mr. R. Simpson, to whom we owe so much as a discoverer of problems to be solved, and so little for their solution, rightly stated that Fair Em was a satirical play, and that Manvile (or Mandeville, the lying traveller) meant Greene, and Mounteney the aspiring Marlowe. He was wrong in identifying Valingford with Shakespeare – he was Peele (valing, an old castle or peele —Camden) – and doubly wrong in making William Conqueror Kempe. Robert of Windsor, his travelling name, points to Robert Browne; and it was to Browne's company that Marlowe and Peele had been attached, not to Kempe's. The names William Conqueror and Marquess Lubeck were probably names of characters which had been acted by Browne and Jones, perhaps in the play of William Conqueror, which was on the stage as an old play in 1593. Fair Em of Manchester is no doubt, as Mr. Simpson says, Lord Strange's company of players.