A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

In March 1601 the Chamberlain's company were in disgrace for having publicly acted "the outdated play of Richard II.," no doubt inclusive of the deposition scene (which had been omitted in the published copies, under the censorship of the Master of the Revels), for the entertainment of the Essex conspirators. They consequently "travelled," having previously produced Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well, a considerable portion of which is of much earlier date (c. 1592), but which, in the Parolles scenes, has distinct allusion to Marston's Jack Drum's Entertainment of the preceding year, and to the "war of the theatres," not yet concluded. They also acted the play of Cromwell, Earl of Essex, by W. S., in which the parallel between the careers of Cromwell and the lately executed Earl is strongly brought out. I believe W. S. to have been William Sly, the well-known actor of the Chamberlain's company. In their travels this year the company visited the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where they performed Julius Cæsar and Hamlet. The version of this last play so acted was not the old play by Kyd, but one hurriedly remodelled by Shakespeare, which we possess in an imperfect form in the first Quarto. Among the Shakespearian additions occur passages alluding to the theatrical war and the popularity of the Chapel Children, to which the travelling of the company is attributed. This proves that Shakespeare was one of the strolling detachment. Jonson seized on this defence in his Poetaster, and represented that the travelling was due to the inefficiency of their play-writers, and makes Tucca tell Histrio, the Globe player, that if they will employ Marston, who "pens high lofty in a new stalking strain," they "shall not need to travel with thy pumps full of gravel after a blind jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel-heads to an old cracked trumpet." The travels, however, were not confined to England. In October they had reached Aberdeen, where they received the title of "the King's Servants," and Laurence Fletcher, their manager, was admitted burgess of guild of the borough. In all probability a version of the old Macbeth play was produced before King James – such a version as that of Hamlet acted at the Universities. Its plot would fit more aptly with the circumstances of the Gowry conspiracy of 1600 than that of Richard II. would with Essex, and anything more pleasing to the King and people of Scotland could not have been selected. During the absence of this strolling detachment Jonson's Poetaster was produced, containing a vigorous attack on the Globe company; and they, in Shakespeare's absence, hired Dekker to reply in his Satiromastix, which, with the aid of the Paul's children, they represented in the public theatre of the Globe, and in the private convocation-room of Paul's. During this same absence, on 8th September Shakespeare's father was buried at Stratford. He apparently died intestate. After the return from Scotland, the appearance of Shakespeare's name, as fellow-contributor to Chester's Love's Martyr with Jonson, Marston, and Chapman, marks the conclusion of the theatrical quarrel, and the reconciliation of all the principal combatants, except Dekker. But although this book bears the date 1601, it could not, I think, have been issued earlier than March 1601-2, after the production of Twelfth Night on February 2 at the Middle Temple. Such presentations as this at Inns of Court were usually of new plays; and there is in this play fairly conclusive internal evidence that the theatrical quarrel was not over when it was acted. With regard to Shakespeare's other play of this year, Troylus and Cressida, it was as clearly produced after the reconciliation. The entry in S. R., "as it is acted by the Lord Chamberlain's men," is absolutely conclusive that it was still on the stage on 1st February 1602-3, and was therefore produced, in all probability, in the later half of 1602. In this play the Prologue, the love story of Troylus, and all the scenes after v. 4, are taken from the old play of c. 1593, in which Shakespeare only wrote as a coadjutor. The Prologue and the later scenes – v. 5-10 – are manifestly by the second pen in the main, and printed by mistake, the end of the revised version being shown by the repetition of the lines "Why, but hear you," &c., at the end of v. 3. That the 1602 version of the play was intended to refer to the theatrical quarrel of 1599-1602 is clear from the line "Rank Thersites with his mastick tooth," who is evidently Dekker, of whom Jonson says in the Poetaster (iii. 1), "He has one of the most overflowing rank wits in Rome; he will slander any man that breathes if he disgust him." Dekker had produced the SatiroMASTIX shortly before Troylus was acted; and it has been noted that he was not one of the contributors to Chester's Martyr. I believe the Troylus play to have been the one in which Shakespeare put down all the University men, and purged Ben Jonson's pride, as we learn that he did from the University play of The Return from Parnassus, acted in January 1602-3; the character of Ajax, "Slow as the elephant, into whom nature hath so crowded humours," &c. (i. 2), hits off Jonson exactly, and is a good-humoured reply to Jonson's self-estimate as Crites in Cynthia's Revels (ii. 1), "A creature of a most divine temper, one in whom the elements and humours are peaceably met," &c.

In May 1602 Gilbert Shakespeare (his brother being probably in London) concluded the purchase on his behalf of 107 acres of land in Old Stratford, bought of the Coombes for £320, and on 28th September Walter Getley transferred to him (not in person), at a Court Baron of the Manor of Rowington, a cottage and garden in Chapel Lane. The lady of the manor retained possession until personal completion of the purchase. The Chamberlain's company were re-admitted to act at Court in the winter, not having performed there in 1601-2, probably on account of the Richard II. affair. They acted, however, only two plays. In the following March, 1603, Shakespeare remodelled The Taming of the Shrew by the rewriting of the Katherine and Petruchio scene. The play before he altered it was one written, I think, by Lodge about 1596, and founded on the old Kyd play of 1589 acted by Pembroke's men. On March 29 Queen Elizabeth died, and whether it be due to the different requirements of the new Court, or to a natural development of Shakespeare's mind, there can be no doubt that a marked change of style and method took place at this epoch in his work. It should not be forgotten that the primary object for which theatres were established was that stage-players "might be the better enabled and prepared to show such plays to her [or his] Majesty as they shall be required," and that the "honest recreation" of the citizens was a secondary matter. For proof of this see the Privy Council documents quoted by Collier in his Annals, passim, and specially in i. 309. Hence the succession of a new sovereign had greater influence on the tone of the drama than we can well realise. In Shakespeare's case it inaugurated a period in which Tragedy was predominant in place of Comedy and History. All his greatest tragedies were produced during the next four years 1603-6.

Before quitting the reign of Elizabeth, I call attention to the significant fact that the Chamberlain's company performed at Court before the accession of James exactly twenty-eight plays, and that the number of Shakespeare's plays known to have been produced during the same period by that company is twenty, and of other men's eight. I do not press this exact agreement as showing absolute identity between the two lists; one or two of the Court plays may have been merely revivals, one or two of the stage plays may not have been brought before her Majesty at all, but I think the following inferences justifiable. The Queen, evidently as a general rule, only allowed new plays, or plays so largely reconstructed as to be reckoned as new, to be presented to her. So far as the Chamberlain's company were concerned, these plays consisted on an average of two of Shakespeare's and one of another author's – these numbers, however, being rather exceeded in the earlier years, and diminished in the later. Shakespeare consequently was to this company in the same position as Greene to the Queen's men before his time, purveying to their use "more than four other," which explains his rapid advance in popularity and accumulation of property. And finally, the number of plays supposed to have been lost has been grossly exaggerated by modern critics, who have based their calculations on the Diary of Henslowe, whose policy was quantity rather than quality, and who was continually deceived by his hack-writers presenting to his illiterate ignorance old plays new vamped as if they were completely new.

In 1603 the plague raged in London. In March before the Queen's death, the theatres were closed, and in the license of May 19, which adopted the Chamberlain's men as the King's Servants (a title already conferred on them in Scotland in 1601), a special clause was inserted allowing them to act "when the infection of the plague shall decrease." The infection did not decrease, yet the theatres were reopened, but probably only for a few days. Doubtless the authorities closed them on account of the continuance of the sickness. The plays acted at this reopening were probably The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, by George Wilkins, a new author, which was founded on contemporaneous events in Yorkshire, and certainly the perfected Hamlet as we now have it in the Folio. The older version, which had been entered S. R. on 26th July 1602, was now published, having probably been "stayed," as was frequently the case with plays printed by J. Roberts (for example The Merchant of Venice, Troylus and Cressida), but not till the copyright had been transferred to N. Ling and J. Trundell. In 1604 Ling issued the second Quarto, which in some instances supplies passages omitted in the Folio for stage purposes, and in others presents alternative versions and additions evidently made for the Court performance (one of nine) in the winter 1603-4. It was a common practice to utilise the altered copies of plays acted at Court by allowing their publication. Yet another play acted by the King's men this year was Jonson's Sejanus, for which he was accused of Popery and treason by Northampton. When he published it (2d November 1604, S. R.), he stated that "this book in all numbers is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage; wherein a second pen had good share: in place of which I have rather chosen to put weaker, and no doubt less pleasing of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation." The only known writers for the King's men at this date were Wilkins, W. S. (? Sly), Shakespeare, and possibly Tourneur. Of these there can be no doubt that Shakespeare is the only one that could have been the second pen alluded to. Not that necessarily he was a coadjutor to Jonson in this play. It is more likely that as he acted one of the principal parts in it he inserted or altered scenes in which he himself appeared. It is clear that "the second pen," whoever he was, objected to his share in the play being published, and no wonder, seeing how its main author had been accused on account of it. This probably explains why the book was kept in the press six months, from November 1604 to April 1605. When it was issued Jonson's Volpone was just coming on the stage, and it is noticeable that Shakespeare did not act in that play, and that immediately after Jonson quitted the King's men and joined Chapman and Marston in writing Eastward Ho for the Revels children, in which Hamlet is ridiculed. All this seems to point to a quarrel between Jonson and Shakespeare, and certainly Jonson's behaviour in the Sejanus matter is not, as Gifford calls it, manly. To drag in unnecessarily an allusion to a friend whose personality must have been known to the public of that time, into an address prefixed to a work accused of Popery and sedition was unmanly; and, as his friend had objected to it, was discreditable. No intercourse can be shown between Shakespeare and Jonson after 1603.

On 30th January 1603-4, the new company of the Revels children replaced the Chapel boys at Blackfriars. They were, however, in the main composed of the same actors, and were not unfrequently mentioned under their old name. On March 15, we find that among the King's train, at his entry into London, were nine of the King's company, dressed in the scarlet cloth allowed for the occasion. As these nine are identical with those in the license of 19th May 1603, which is statedly incomplete, they must have been in some way distinguished from the rest of their fellows. They were, no doubt, shareholders in the Globe. Cooke and Lowin, who acted in Sejanus and Volpone, do not appear among them; nor do Tooley, Gough, and Sinkler, who were at this time members of the company. The nine were Shakespeare, Phillips, Fletcher, Hemings, Burbadge, Sly, Lowin, Condell, and Cowley. In July, Shakespeare was in Stratford, recovering in the local court some £2 odd for malt, &c., sold to one Rogers. In August he was summoned to London, the King's men having to attend at Somerset House to play at the reception of the Spanish ambassador. During this year he produced Othello and Measure for Measure, which were acted at Court in the winter festivities, along with five old plays of his, and two of Jonson's. Hamlet does not occur in this list, as it undoubtedly would have done if produced in 1604. It was, in fact, published this year as it had been acted at Court in the previous winter. Another play acted by the King's men was Marston's Malcontent, with an Induction by Webster, in which the reason of its appearance is explained. The Blackfriars children had acted Jeronymo in 1600, an old play of Kyd's, which had passed to the King's men from Lord Strange's, by whom it had been purchased of the Queen's. It had probably been taken from the Chamberlain's men to the Chapel children by Jonson, who in 1601, September 25, transferred it to the Admiral's, and wrote additions to it for Henslowe. This appropriation of their property irritated the Globe players, and when they got the chance, at the reconstitution of the Blackfriars children in 1604, they procured The Malcontent, which had been acted by these pigmies, and produced it on their own stage as "one for another." They also in December acted "the tragedy of Gowry with all action and actors," so Chamberlain writes to Winwood, December 18, "with exceeding concourse of all sorts of people," but he adds, "some great councillors are much displeased with it, and so 'tis thought it shall be forbidden." It probably was forbidden, as the play has disappeared. Another mysterious play is The Spanish Maz, said to have been one of the eleven performed in the winter at Court. Nothing is known of such a play; but much is known of forgery connected with such statements.

In 1605, the tragedy of King Lear was acted about 7th May, when the old Leir, on which it was founded, but which was a comedy, was entered S. R. as a "Tragical History" of Leir, &c., "as it was lately acted." Another play of very dubious authorship was acted by the King's men before 3d July, when the ballad on the same events was entered S. R.; this was The Yorkshire Tragedy. It was a continuation of the story of The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, but treated more realistically and more powerfully. It was published 2d May 1608 as by Shakespeare, as in 1605 The London Prodigal had already been, but in the latter instance the publication was unlicensed and surreptitious, while the Yorkshire Tragedy was entered S. R. as "written by William Shakespeare." The entry, however, was made for T. Pavier, an unscrupulous piratic printer, who on other occasions tried to establish rights in "Shakespeare's plays" which were not Shakespeare's; and no weight can be assigned to his assertions. Another play acted by the King's men, in March 1605, was Jonson's Volpone, or The Fox. This was anterior in production to the plays already mentioned. Immediately afterwards we find Jonson in connection with the Blackfriars children again, and in prison for writing Eastward Ho. Shakespeare did not act in The Fox; perhaps Jonson was offended at this; he at any rate did not return to the King's men till 1610. On 4th May, Phillips, Shakespeare's fellow-actor, made his will, and died shortly after. We learn from this document, which gives us many other valuable particulars respecting the members of the company, that Shakespeare and Condell were the two of "his fellows" whom, next to Hemings, Burbadge, and Sly, his executors, Phillips most highly appreciated; he left them each a 30s. – piece in gold, but to Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cooke, and Tooley a 20s. – piece. He also left legacies to Gilburne and Sands his apprentices, and to Beeston his servant. "His fellows" here means the shareholders in the Globe, as contrasted with the "hired servants," to whom he left "£5 amongst them." There were then in 1605 eleven shareholders, Cooke and Tooley having been added since 15th March 1604. On 24th July Shakespeare invested £40 in a lease of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, as had been suggested to him in 1598. In August King James was at Oxford, and among the entertainments presented to him were speeches by three young men of St. John's, who personated the three Sibyls who had prophesied to Banquo. This interlude would necessarily recall to the King's mind the old Macbeth play, which had been probably presented to him in Scotland by the Globe players, and if, as there is little reason to doubt, he did write an autograph letter to Shakespeare, it was most likely on this occasion, commanding a fuller version of Macbeth. This play was certainly produced at Court, probably at Shrovetide in March 1605-6, but it has been altered since, condensed and interpolated by dances and songs and a new scene with Hecate in it, no doubt by Middleton in 1622, from whose Witch the songs are taken. On 9th October the Globe company acted before the Mayor and Corporation at Oxford, and then, if not from the King, Shakespeare would be sure to hear of the Sybils interlude. In all, ten plays were acted at Court this winter by the Globe company. Among them was a version of Mucedorus, with additions. This version has only come down to us in imprints of 1610 and later; but there was an edition in 1606 mentioned in Beauclerc's Catalogue, 1781, from which the later title-pages were copied. From the title it appears that it had been revived before the King on Shrove-Sunday night at Whitehall. The original play had been acted about the city, and therefore not later than 1594, before the Chamberlain's men settled at the Theater. The additions are directed against Jonson, whose strictures on monopolies, and sneer at "the miraculous effects of the Oglio del Scoto" in Volpone, ii. 1, must have grievously offended James, who had revived the touching for the king's evil. Jonson had subsequently joined Chapman and Marston in writing Eastward Ho for the Chapel boys, in which the Scots were still more severely satirised, and was evidently, as may be seen from the address prefixed to Volpone, at daggers drawn with the Globe men. Hence, in the Mucedorus additions, the allusions to the "meagre cannibal," the "scrambling raven with his meagre beard" (certainly Jonson, the "thin-bearded Hermaphrodite" in Satiromastix), who had, stirred up by Envy, written a comedy for the Globe filled with "dark sentences pleasing to factious brains;" which would have led to their restraint, as Eastward Ho did for the Chapel boys, had not the King's players been staid and discreet, and begged pardon of His Majesty on bended knee "for their unwilling error." The threatened information must have been in the autumn of 1605.

To 1606 no other play than Macbeth can with certainty be traced: and the marked change of metrical style at this epoch points to a period of rest. In all his subsequent plays, many lines end with unemphatic words, such as and, if, which, but and the like, and this change was not introduced gradually but suddenly and decisively. Hence its value as indisputably separating the Fourth Period plays from the preceding. On this ground it is pretty certain that Timon was Shakespeare's next production; he only wrote the chief scenes in it, however, and it was finished for the stage by another hand. At this time also, in my opinion, Shakespeare began to write Cymbeline, which he afterwards completed himself. This arrangement of his work seems natural; Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline closing the series founded on Holinshed, and Timon, Antony, Coriolanus– the series from Plutarch – succeeding them. A minuter examination of the question will be found in a later part of this work. Of other play-writers' contributions to the Globe in 1606 there is only one —Pericles, as originally produced by Wilkins, which was ridiculed in The Puritan by Middleton – acted by the Paul's children of this year. Wilkins left writing for the King's men, and (1607) joined the Queen's men at the Curtain. This was probably rumoured to have been caused by some quarrel with Shakespeare, for on 6th August 1607, S. R., The Puritan Widow was published as by W. S., evidently meaning William Shakespeare. Of all the instances in which Shakespeare's name or initials were fraudulently inserted on title-pages, this play and Sir John Oldcastle were the only two in which they were prefixed to plays not even acted by his company. At the Court in the 1606-7 season three Globe plays were presented to the King of Denmark on the occasion of his visit to England, and nine others in the usual course. Antony and Cleopatra may be confidently assigned to 1607. It was entered for publication S. R. on 20th May 1608 with Pericles(no doubt as originally written by Wilkins), but both plays were stayed; the former as having been on the stage only one year, the latter to be superseded by the issue in 1609 of the version as altered by Shakespeare. On 22d October The Merry Devil of Edmonton was entered S. R. for A. Johnson. The entry for Hunt and Archer on 5th April 1608 is that of the prose story by Thomas Brewer. The initials T. B. in this latter entry have misled Mr. Halliwell and others to assign the authorship of the play to Tony Brewer. On 26th November Shakespeare's King Lear was entered S. R. as it was played before the King on 26th December 1606, "Saint Stephen's Night at Christmas last." This settles two important questions; first, the relation of the Quarto text to the Folio – the Quarto being the version played at Court, the Folio that retained by the players for the public stage; secondly, the existence of a custom in the Globe company of allowing, in cases of altered or revised plays, the version not required for future stage purposes to be issued to the public in print. Many instances of this custom are brought to light in the present treatise. On October 7, Cyril Tourneur's (?) Revenger's Tragedy was entered S. R. The date of production on the stage is uncertain. It had "been sundry times acted by the King's players." Nor am I aware of the grounds on which the authorship is assigned to Tourneur. It was published anonymously. On 25th June, Susanna, Shakespeare's daughter, married John Hall, M.A., physician at Stratford. There were thirteen performances this winter at Court by the King's men. In 1608 Shakespeare probably produced Coriolanus. On 21st February Elizabeth Hall was baptized, within eight months from her parents' marriage. The prospect of a continuation of his family, though not of his family name, was some alleviation for Shakespeare of the loss of his youngest brother Edmund, "a player," buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, 31st December 1607, "with a forenoon knell of the great bell," ætatis 27. Of Edmund's career in London we know nothing; but surely he must have belonged to the Globe company. His absence from the actors' lists offers no obstacle to this supposition; they are, after that of The Seven Deadly Sins in 1594, confined to names of shareholders and principal actors. And if player for the Globe, why not author? May he not, for instance, have written The Yorkshire Tragedy under his brother's superintendence, and may not this account for its being published as William Shakespeare's? All attempts to assign it to any known author have egregiously failed. However this may be, and however poignantly William felt the loss of the Benjamin of the family, a severer bereavement awaited him in the death of his mother, buried at Stratford 9th September 1608. It has always been a favourite hypothesis with me that Volumnia was drawn from her as a model of matronly virtue, and it is certain that at this date a final change took place in Shakespeare's manner of writing. His plays since the accession of James had been, with scarcely an exception, tragedies; from this time they are really, under whatever head they may have hitherto been classed, tragi-comedies, and all turn, as I pointed out many years ago, on the reuniting of separated members of families. The first of this final group is Marina, the part of Pericles which replaced Wilkins' work, and which was written in this winter and hurriedly printed in 1609 as a practical answer to Wilkins' prose version, published in 1608, in which he claimed the story as an "infant of his brain." Shakespeare's version must, I think, be placed after his return to London from Stratford, where he remained after his mother's funeral till 16th October, when he stood godfather for William Walker. The Court performances this winter were twelve. On 28th January 1609, Troylus and Cressida was entered S. R., not for Roberts, whose intended publication in 1603 had been stayed, but for Bonian and Whalley, who issued it with a preface stating that it had never been "staled with the stage." This false statement was withdrawn in their subsequent re-issue during the same year, but it proves that the period during which the play had been performed in 1602 must have been a very short one; such a statement could not have otherwise been put forward with any plausibility. On 20th May the Sonnets were published, with a dedication to their "only begetter," Mr. W. H. I think that these initials designate Sir William Hervey, to whom Lord Southampton's mother left at her death in November 1607 the greatest part "of her stuff." He was her third husband, and may have been the original suggester to Shakespeare, as a friend to Lord Southampton, that he should write a series of Sonnets to him recommending marriage in 1594, when Southampton had not yet become devoted to "the fair Mrs. Vernon," and was entangled in the affair of the frail Avisa. In 1609 he was busily occupied with the Virginian company, and promoting voyages for American discovery, an allusion to which underlies the Dedication "wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth," adventurer being the current phrase for explorer of unknown regions. On 7th June Shakespeare's cousin, Thomas Green, then residing at New Place, Stratford, issued a final precept in his behalf against one Hornby, who had become bail for John Addenbroke, in a matter of debt for £6. This litigation had begun in August 1608: juries had been summoned on 21st December and 15th February, and then Addenbroke absconded, leaving Hornby to be answerable. The plague being prevalent this year, there were no Christmas performances at Court, and not many on the public stage. Cymbeline was Shakespeare's only production. In its present state it has evidently been subjected to revision and to alteration for some revival after Shakespeare's death, when the doggerel in the vision in iv. 4 was inserted; originally, no doubt, the ghosts appeared in dumb show to music. The Globe players received £30 as a compensation for being restrained from playing in London during six weeks, i. e., during August and September, when the bills of mortality show the plague to have been at its height.