A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

In January 1610 the Revels children left the Blackfriars Theatre, and set up with a new organisation under Rossiter at Whitefriars the new private stage. It appears from the statement of C. Burbadge, in the 1635 documents discovered by Mr. Halliwell, that that family then bought up the remainder of the lease from Evans, and took some of the Revels boys, now grown up, to strengthen the Globe company. Among these were Underwood and Ostler; but as C. Burbadge also names Field, who did not join the King's men till 1615 or 1616, his subsequent statement that they set up men-players, Shakespeare, Hemings, Condell, &c., in Blackfriars at that date, is not to be taken as necessarily exact. The King's men undoubtedly took possession of Blackfriars for their own performances in 1614 or 1615, after the Globe had been burned and rebuilt; but there is not a trace of them until then in connection with this private house except this ex parte statement of C. Burbadge, made for a special purpose, in a plea which is studiously ambiguous. But there is evidence that other companies acted there. Field's Amends for Ladies was performed there by the Lady Elizabeth's company and the Duke of York's (afterwards Prince Charles'). This performance must have taken place during a temporary union between the Prince's men and the Lady Elizabeth's, to which latter the play and its author were properly attached; but that the Duke of York's acted continuously at Blackfriars from 1610 to 1615, is very probable. It is not likely that a company under such patronage, and admitted to Court performances every Christmas, should have been merely a strolling company, and there was no other theatre for them to perform in. The King's men held the Globe, Prince Henry's (afterwards the Palgrave's) the Fortune, the Queen's the Bull and the Curtain, the Queen's Revels' boys Whitefriars, and Lady Elizabeth's at first the Swan till 1612, and after its abandonment the newly renovated Hope in 1614, and then the rebuilt Cockpit or Phœnix. There is no proof that Shakespeare ever acted at Blackfriars; there is strong presumption to the contrary as to his supposed shares in that theatre: it was the "private inheritance" of the Burbadges, and that the King's men had shares in it at this time rests on the evidence of forged documents and mischievously fertile imaginations, to which the purchase of twenty acres of land at Stratford by Shakespeare from the Combes in June seems to require access of capital to make this new acquisition feasible. Winter's Tale was certainly produced early this year, before Jonson's Alchemist, which was acted and entered S. R., October 3, but was, however, "stayed" for the usual reasons, and did not get published till 1612. The Address to the Reader (no doubt dating 1610) contains one of Jonson's numerous allusions to the "dance of antics" in Winters Tale. Jonson, who had produced Epicene for the Chapel children in 1609, had returned to the King's men when the boys left Blackfriars. Shakespeare's last play this year, and final finished contribution to the stage, was The Tempest, produced about November, after the news that the ships of Sir T. Gates at the Bermudas had not been destroyed. This play as we have it has unfortunately been abridged for Court performances, probably by Beaumont in 1612 or 1613, to whom the insertion of the Masque may confidently be attributed. There were fifteen winter performances at Court in 1610-11.

The loss of Shakespeare was repaired as well as circumstances would permit by the accession of Beaumont and Fletcher to the King's company in 1611. In that year they produced their masterpieces Philaster, a King and no King and The Maid's Tragedy: in 1612 The Woman's Prize (by Fletcher alone), the play of Cardenas (probably the original form of Love's Pilgrimage), and The Captain. Jonson contributed Catiline in 1611, and Webster The Duchess of Malfi in 1612. The Second Maiden's Tragedy (by the author of The Revenger's Tragedy, I think) was also produced in 1611. At Court the unusual number of twenty-two plays was acted in the 1611 winter and twenty-eight in 1612. These must have included nearly every play they possessed; and the fact that the whole, or nearly so, of Shakespeare's plays were revived at Court in these two years makes his retirement in 1610 to my mind nearly a certainty, and accounts for the not very felicitous praise of his "copious industry" by Webster in the Dedication of his White Devil in 1612. Webster couples the retired Shakespeare with Dekker and Heywood: but Jonson's works he speaks of as "laboured and understanding," Beaumont's and Fletcher's as "no less worthy composures." This higher praise is given to the writers who like himself were then contributing to the Globe repertory. He mentions no one else but Chapman of "full and heightened style." Are we to attribute to this mention of him the tradition that Chapman wrote The Second Maiden's Tragedy? On 11th September 1611 Shakespeare's name occurs "in the margin, as if a later insertion" (says Mr. Halliwell) of a list of Stratford donors "towards the charge of prosecuting the bill in Parliament for the better repair of the highways." In 1612 Lane, Greene, and Shakespeare filed a bill before Lord Ellesmere complaining that some of the lessees of the Stratford tithes refused to contribute their proper shares of a reserved rent. It appears from this document that Shakespeare's income from this source was £60. In the same year Heywood, in his Apology for Actors, complained of W. Jaggard's having printed in The Passionate Pilgrim, 3d edition, two love epistles taken from his Troia Britannica, as by W. Shakespeare, "which might put the world in opinion I might steal them from him;" he adds that he knows the author was much offended for Jaggard's presuming to make bold with his name. The name was in consequence withdrawn altogether from the title-page. Notwithstanding this, many modern editors print The Passionate Pilgrim as Shakespeare's. On 4th February 1613 Richard Shakespeare was buried at Stratford; whether the Gilbert Shakespeare, "adolescens," who was buried 3d February 1612, was also a brother of William's, is doubtful, but likely. On l0th March 1613 Shakespeare bought of Henry Walker a house and yard near Blackfriars Theatre for £140, of which £60 remained on mortgage (one of the trustees being in 1618 John Heming, Shakespeare's fellow-actor): he leased the house to John Robinson for ten years. On 29th June the Globe was burned down. It caught fire during the performance of All is True (Henry VIII.) This was not the play as we have it – which is a later version by Massinger and Fletcher, written for the Blackfriars Theatre, and containing only three scenes that can be attributed to Shakespeare – but a play in which there was a fool's part. Wotton describes it as "the play of Henry VIII.," but Lorkin says it was a new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces of Henry VIII. Whether new play or not it was probably by Shakespeare, written c. 1609, and portions of it remain imbedded in that now extant by Fletcher and Massinger c. 1617, the original MS. having perished in the fire. Just at the same time one Lane had been maligning Mrs. Hall, Shakespeare's daughter, in connection with Ralph Smith. Lane was summoned before the Ecclesiastical Court at Worcester on 15th July and excommunicated on the 27th. There were only seven plays performed at Court by the King's men in the winter 1613-14, all their principal writers – Fletcher, Beaumont, Jonson, Webster – having left them after the Globe fire. Surely this is not consistent with the statement of C. Burbadge that they had taken the Blackfriars building to their own use. No new play can be traced to them till 1615, when the Globe had been2 rebuilt, and the Prince Charles' men had gone to the Curtain. Then they certainly did take the Blackfriars to themselves, and with an excellent staff of writers – Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, and Field – they occupied it as well as the new Globe. A letter of John Chamberlain's to Sir Dudley Carleton, 5th January 1615, says of the stage in general: "Of five new plays there is not one that pleases, and therefore they are driven to furbish over their old." Yet Jonson's Bartholomew Fair was one of these 1614 plays acted at Court. I suspect that Lady Elizabeth's players were not so well liked as the King's, and that Shakespeare and Beaumont were greatly missed. Fletcher and Massinger were not yet able to replace them even at Court.

In July 1614 John Combe left a legacy of £5 to Shakespeare; this fact disposes of the silly story of Shakespeare having satirised him in infantile doggerel. In the autumn William Combe, the squire of Wilcombe, originated a proposal to enclose common fields in the neighbourhood; he was supported by Shakespeare, who had been guaranteed against prospective loss by Replingham, Combe's agent. The corporation, through his cousin Greene, the town-clerk, remonstrated with him in November when he was in London, and again in December wrote to him representing the inconveniences and loss that would be caused. The matter dragged on to September 1615, and then fell through. This is the last notice of Shakespeare's action in any public matter. On l0th February 1616 his daughter Judith was married to Thomas Quiney, vintner, four years her junior, without licence, whence a fine and threat of excommunication at the Worcester Ecclesiastical Court: and on 25th April Shakespeare was buried. His will had been executed on 25th March. It was not regularly engrossed, but a corrected draft, originally prepared for copying and completion on 25th January, but evidently neglected until the sudden emergency of Shakespeare's illness. It appears from this document that Judith's marriage portion was to have been £100, on condition of her husband's settling on her £150 in land; if this condition was fulfilled within three years he was left £150 to his own use, if not it was strictly settled on her and her children. This £150 is independent of £100 in discharge of her marriage portion, and £50 conditional on her surrendering her interest in the Rowington manor to Susanna Hall. To Joan Hart, his sister, whose husband had been buried on 17th April, was left wearing apparel, £20, a life-interest in Henley Street, and £5 each to her sons. To Susanna Hall he left all his real estate settled in tail male, with the usual remainders over. To Elizabeth Hall all his plate except the broad silver-gilt bowl, which went to Judith Quiney. To his fellows, Hemings, Burbadge, and Condell, £1, 6s. 8d. each for rings; the usual legacies to the executors, poor, &c.; and to his wife his second best bed. Of course she was fully provided for by freebench in the Rowington copyhold, and dower on the rest of the property; nevertheless, it is strange that she does not appear as executrix, that she had no life-interest left her in house or furniture, and that in the draft of the will, as made in January, her name does not appear to have been mentioned at all. It is only in the subsequent interlineations that her bequest appears.

SECTION II.

THE PERSONAL CONNECTIONS OF SHAKESPEARE WITH OTHER POETS

One of the objects of the present treatise is to bring into clearer light the relations of Shakespeare with contemporary dramatists. Strangely enough this has scarcely been attempted in earlier biographies. His dealings in malt have been carefully chronicled: his connections with poets have been slurred over. It will be useful, therefore, to gather up the scattered notices of personal contact between him and his fellows in dramatic production. Mere allusions to his works, whether complimentary or otherwise, will not come under this category. Such will be found collected, and well collected, in Dr. Ingleby's Century of Praise; but they consist almost entirely of slight references to his published works, and have no bearing of importance on his career. Nor, indeed, have we any extended material of any kind to aid us in this investigation; one source of information, which is abundant for most of his contemporaries, being in his case entirely absent. Neither as addressed to him by others, nor by him to others, do any commendatory verses exist in connection with any of his or other men's works published in his lifetime – a notable fact, in whatever way it may be explained. Nor can he be traced in any personal contact beyond a very limited circle, although the fanciful might-have-beens so largely indulged in by his biographers might at first lead us to an opposite conclusion.

With John Lyly, the founder of English Comedy, he seems to have had no personal intercourse, although the reproduction by him of many of Lyly's puns and conceits, and some few of his dramatic situations, distinctly prove that he had carefully examined his published plays. Nor does the solitary reference to Shakespeare in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, however it may display strong personal feeling, lead us to suppose that there had been any personal relations between these dramatists; in fact, the very wording of the passage properly understood distinctly disproves the existence of such relations. Of all the dramatists who had preceded him on the London stage the only two with whom he can be even conjecturally brought in personal contact before the opening of the Rose Theatre in 1592 are Robert Wilson and George Peele. It is unlikely that he should have begun his career as a novice and journeyman independent of tutor or coadjutor, and a minute examination of the careers of these two dramatists leads me to infer that they were connected with the same company as Shakespeare in 1590-1. In any case, they were his immediate models in his early work in several respects. It is from Wilson that his liking for doggerel rhymes and alternately rhyming stanzas was derived: it is from Peele that his love tragedy of Romeo and Juliet– his only early tragedy – derived, in its earliest form, as acted in 1591, whatever in it was not Shakespeare's own. Wilson was probably his tutor or coadjutor in Comedy and Peele in Tragedy. But this is after all conjecture; on the other hand, it is certain that in 1592-3 a greater than Peele or Wilson was writing for the same company as Shakespeare, and necessarily in close connection with him. For Marlowe he certainly had a sincere regard: from his poem of Hero and Leander Shakespeare makes the only direct quotation to be found in his plays; on his historical plays Shakespeare, after his friend's decease, bestowed in addition, revision, and completion, a greater amount of minute work than on his own; and the earlier of his own histories were distinctly built on lines similar to those of Edward II. and Edward III. The relation of Shakespeare's Histories to Marlowe's is far more intimate than that of his Comedies or of Romeo to any predecessor's productions. I cannot find a trace of direct connection between Shakespeare and any other poet than these mentioned, during the life of Lord Strange. His connection with Lord Southampton seems to have been more intimate than any with his fellow-poets. In the Sonnets addressed to him there is mention of other pens who have dedicated poems to his lordship, and whom Shakespeare for poetical purposes professes to regard as dangerous rivals. The only persons known to have dedicated anything to Southampton are Nash and Markham, although George Peele had written a high eulogy of him in his Honour of the Garter in 1593. Markham's dedication is one of four prefixed to his poem on The Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenvile (S. R. 9th September 1595); (1.) to Charles Lord Montjoy (in prose); (2.) to Robert Earl of Sussex (Sonnet); (3.) to the Earl of Southampton (Sonnet); (4.) to Sir Edward Wingfield (Sonnet). I am not aware of any previous attempt to identify Markham with the rival alluded to in the Sonnets of Shakespeare, and yet there are many coincidences of language which would lead to this conclusion. Take Sonnet 78, for instance. "Thine eyes … have added feathers to the learned's wing and given grace a double majesty." In Markham we find in 1, "hath given wings to my youngling Muse;" and in 3, "whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen" (cf. in 1, "that thine eyes may lighten," &c.); and in 4, the double majesty of the grace, "vouchsafe to grace my work and me, Gracing the soul beloved of heaven and thee." I do not find in Markham the "affable familiar ghost" of Sonnet 86, but this and other allusions may have referred to his Thyrsis and Daphne (S. R. 23d April 1593, five days after the entry of Venus and Adonis) which is now unfortunately lost; and there is something like it in the Grenvile Tragedy, in which Markham calls on Grenvile's soul to "sit on his hand" while he writes, which the ghost apparently does until it is dismissed to its "rest" at the end of the poem. Markham was an exceedingly learned man and the "proud full sail of his great verse" would well apply to his stilted and conceited effusion. He does not in it allude to Southampton's beauty, though he may have done so in his Thyrsis, but he calls him "Bright lamp of virtue" with which compare Sonnet 79: "He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word from thy behaviour." On the whole I incline to regard Markham as the rival poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As to Nash, his supposed satirical allusions to Shakespeare, as set forth by the fertile fancy of Mr. Simpson, have no more real existence than the allusions discovered by other like imaginations in the writings of Spenser. His only notice of Shakespeare's writings is the well-known mention of the representation of Talbot on the stage, and that is highly complimentary. He may be included under the "every alien pen" of Sonnet 78, but he is not (as I once thought he was) the rival poet alluded to. It may be of interest in connection with this matter to note that in The Dumb Knight, in which Markham certainly wrote i. 2, ii. 1, iii. 4, and iv. 2, Venus and Adonis is satirised as a lascivious poem.

Of intercourse with other dramatists while a member of the Chamberlain's company, the first instance is that with Lodge and Drayton. That the connection with Drayton terminated in a misunderstanding is clear from the excision of the favourable notice of Shakespeare's Lucrece from his Matilda, and from Drayton's taking the chief part in writing Sir John Oldcastle, the object of which was to keep alive the ill-feeling produced by the unfortunate adoption of that name from the old play of Henry V. for the character afterwards called Sir John Falstaff. This connection with Drayton ended in 1597, that with Lodge in 1599. If I am right in my attribution of part authorship to Lodge in Henry VI. and The Taming of the Shrew in its original form, Shakespeare revised and altered his plays, but not till after Lodge's retirement from connection with the Chamberlain's company. Soon after this, in 1601, he founded his Hamlet on Kyd's, but with Kyd himself I have not been able to find that he was at any time personally connected. Nevertheless, as regards mere outward form, Kyd was the chief model for the great tragedies of Hamlet, Lear, &c. Of course, as regards all poetic essentials, his influence on Shakespeare cannot for a moment be compared to Marlowe's.

With Marston, Chapman, and Dekker, Shakespeare's relations were ephemeral, in connection with the great stage quarrel of 1599-1601, and in no respect personal, unless we suppose that he had a hand in hiring Dekker to oppose Jonson. My own belief is that he was away in Scotland when Satiromastix was produced, and that the division of the company left in London did this without his knowledge. With Jonson his relations were evidently personal and of very varied nature. He probably introduced him to the Chamberlain's company in 1598; he certainly acted in his play of Every Man in his Humour: he did not act in Every Man out of his Humour– and then Jonson joined the Chapel children, and entered on his three years' struggle with Marston, Dekker, &c. In 1601 Shakespeare satirised these children in Hamlet, and about the same time administered the "purge" to Jonson mentioned in The Return from Parnassus: at the end of the same year, he, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston were contributors to Chester's Love's Martyr. In 1603 Jonson, who had again joined the Chamberlain's men, wrote Sejanus in conjunction with some one (with Shakespeare in my opinion), and got into trouble for it. Shakespeare certainly acted in this play, and must at that time have been on good terms with Jonson. All the allusions to Shakespeare's Henry V., &c., in the Prologue at the revival of Every Man in his Humour in 1601 by the Chapel children, and the purge administered to Jonson, had been forgiven and forgotten on both sides. But in 1605 Jonson wrote Volpone, in which Shakespeare did not act, and which gave offence at Court: and this caused a new disagreement between him and the King's men (formerly the Chamberlain's). He left them, and with Chapman and Marston wrote Eastward Ho, in which Hamlet is ridiculed, and for allusions to Scotland in which, similar to those in Volpone, the authors were imprisoned. The King's men retaliated with the additions to Mucedorus, of which more elsewhere, and Jonson did not join them again for years. He wrote for the Chapel children in 1609, and not till 1610, at the end of the year, when Shakespeare's dramatic career was just expiring, did he produce The Alchemist for them at the Globe. It is to be hoped that these two great dramatists were not at open enmity during the later part of Shakespeare's life; but all record of any real friendship between them ends in 1603, and little value is to be attributed either to the vague traditions of Jonson's visiting him at Stratford, or to the abundant praise lavished on him by Jonson in commendatory verses after his death. Much more important for ascertaining the real relations existing between them are the allusions to The Tempest and Winter's Tale so abundantly scattered through all Jonson's plays from 1609 to 1616, while Shakespeare was yet alive.

Of other dramatists who were connected with Shakespeare in King James's time I know only of Tourneur and Wilkins – the former simply as an author writing for Shakespeare's company, the latter as the playwright who wrote Pericles in its original form: the history of the production of this play has already been given.

As to Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster, &c., who after 1610 wrote for the King's men, and the numerous contemporaries who wrote for other companies, no trace of any intercourse with Shakespeare, personal or otherwise, remains to us, though abundant guesses and hypotheses utterly foundationless3 will be found in the voluminous Shakespearian literature already existing. The truth appears to be that Shakespeare at no time sought for a large circle of acquaintance, and that his position as almost sole provider of plays for his company relieved him of that miscellaneous comradeship which was the bane of Dekker, Heywood, and many other gifted writers of the time. Of any one of these a far larger personal connection can be proved than I believe ever existed in the case of Shakespeare: and to this we no doubt are greatly indebted for the depth and roundness of those great plays, which could never have been conceived without much solitude, much suffering, and much concentration.

SECTION III.

ANNALS ON WHICH THE PRECEDING SECTIONS ARE FOUNDED

Until April 1564

On 26th April 1564 was baptized William, son of John Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon and Mary Arden, at that time an only child, two girls born previously having died in their infancy. John Shakespeare was son of Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield, where his brother Henry also resided: he was a glover, who speculated in wool, corn, &c. He lived in Henley Street, Stratford, as early as 29th April 1552, having left his father about 1550, and in October 1556 purchased two small estates in that town – one that is now shown as the birthplace, the other in Greenhill Street. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, whose father, Robert, a yeoman, had contracted a second marriage with Agnes Hill, widow, and in the settlement then made had reserved to Mary the reversion to estates at Wilmecote and Snitterfield. Some part of this land was occupied by Richard Shakespeare's grandfather. Mary Arden also received under her father's will, dated 24th November 1556, a considerable sum in money, and the fee-simple of Asbies at Wilmecote, a house with sixty acres of land. In 1557 John was a burgess, a member of the corporation, and by choice of the Court Leet ale-taster to the borough, sworn to look to the assize and goodness of bread, ale, or beer. In September 1558 he was one of the four constables under the rules of the Court Leet. On 6th October 1559 he was again chosen constable and one of the four affeerors for determining fines under the borough bye-laws. In 1561 he was again chosen affeeror, and one of the borough chamberlains, which office he held till the end of 1563.