A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

1595

That the date of Midsummer Night's Dream should be fixed in the winter of 1594-5 was long since seen by Malone, the allusions to the remarkable weather of 1594 being too marked to be put aside contemptuously. It has also been attempted to assign other dates on account of the play's being manifestly written for some marriage solemnity. It is not needful to alter the date for that reason. Either the marriage of W. Stanley, Earl of Derby, at Greenwich, on 24th January, 1594-5, or that of Lord Russel, Earl of Bedford, to Lucy Harrington (before 5th February, S. R.), would suit very well in point of time. The former is the more probable; because it took place at Greenwich, where we know the Chamberlain's men to have performed in the previous month, and because these actors had mostly been servants to the Earl of Derby's brother in the early part of the previous year.

There is little, if any doubt, that Shakespeare produced Richard II. and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as we now have it, in this year. A larum for London, or The Siege of Antwerp, by (?) Lodge, was acted about this time.

The play of Richard Duke of York was printed in 1595 and on 1st December Edward III. was entered on S. R.

The performances of the Chamberlain's men, 1594-5, at Court, were on December 26, 27, 28; January 5; February 22. Payment was made to Hemings and Bryan.

1596

Early in this year the play of Sir T. More was produced by the Chamberlain's company. The name of T. Goodale, who was one of their actors, occurs in the MS. It appears from the notes of E. Tylney, then Master of the Revels, that much revision had to be made in its form in consequence of its reproducing, under a thin disguise, a narrative of the Apprentice Riots of June 1595. The imprisonment of the Earl of Hertford in October of the same year was too closely paralleled by that of Sir T. More in the play to be agreeable to the Government. Another point objected to was satirical allusion to Frenchmen. The date hitherto assigned to this play is "1590 or earlier" (Dyce), which is palpably wrong.

Soon after Shakespeare's King John was acted. It contains, in my opinion, an allusion to the expedition to Cadiz in June (i. 2. 66-75).

On July 23d Henry Carey died, and the "Chamberlain's players" became the men of his son, George Carey L. Hunsdon.

In the same month, or earlier, Romeo and Juliet was revived in a greatly altered and improved form. All work by the second hand was cut out and replaced by Shakespeare's own writing. It was not, however, acted at this date at the Curtain, but at the Theater. Lodge's allusion in his Wit's Miserv, 1596, to Hamlet, as acted in that house, is inconsistent with any other supposition. On August 5 a ballad on Romeo and Juliet was entered on S. R. This is taken by Mr. Halliwell as evidence that the play was then on the stage. On August 27 ballads are also mentioned on Macdobeth and The Taming of a Shrew. That on Macbeth could not have been on the play as we now have it, but that a play on this subject, perhaps an earlier form of the extant one, was then acted, is very probable.

On August 11 Hamnet Shakespeare was buried at Stratford: his father undoubtedly was present. This is the first visit to Stratford on his part since 1587 so far as any evidence exists.

Shakespeare returned to his lodgings "near the Bear Garden" in Southwark (Alleyn MS. teste Malone) before October 20, where a draft of a grant of arms was made to John Shakespeare, no doubt at his son's expense.

In November, a petition was presented by the inhabitants of Blackfriars against the transformation into a theatre of a large house bought by J. Burbadge on the preceding February 4. The petition was ineffectual.

Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, sometimes called The Jew of Venice, is generally assigned to this year. I prefer 1597.

On December 29, Henry Shakespeare, the poet's uncle, was buried at Snitterfield; and his wife Margaret on 9th February 1596-7.

The Court performances of Lord Hunsdon's men at Whitehall were six in number, two at Christmas, and others on 1st, 5th January; 6th, 8th February 1596-7.

1597

Before March 5 a surreptitious edition of Romeo and Juliet was published, but not entered on S. R. This consists of an imperfect and abridged copy of the revised play, with lacunæ filled up by portions of the original version of 1591. See hereafter in Section IV.

In Easter term, Shakespeare purchased New Place, a mansion and grounds in Stratford, for £60. This was freehold, and henceforth his designation is, William Shakespeare of New Place, Stratford, Gentleman. From this time, male heirs failing, his ambition seems to be to found a family in one of the female branches; and Stratford is to be regarded as his residence.

Soon after 5th March, Lord Hunsdon was appointed Chamberlain vice W. Brooke, Lord Cobham, deceased, and Lord Hunsdon's men again became the Lord Chamberlain's.

During this year and the next Shakespeare undoubtedly produced 1 and 2 Henry IV. The name given to the "fat knight" was originally Sir John Oldcastle. This offended the Cobham family, who were lineally descended from the great Sir John Oldcastle, and through their influence the Queen ordered the name to be altered. The new name was that of Falstaff, unquestionably identical with the Fastolfe of history. Shakespeare had unwittingly adopted the name Oldcastle from the old play of The Famous Victories of King Henry V. Mr. Halliwell has pointed out that there must have been another play in which a Sir John Oldcastle was represented: he quotes Hey for Honesty, "The rich rubies and incomparable carbuncles of Sir John Oldcastle's nose;" and Howell's Letters, ii. 71, "Ale is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good as Sir John Oldcastle and Smug the Smith was used to drink." I venture to add that this last quotation fixes the other play. It was Drayton's Merry Devil of Edmonton, in which Sir John the priest of Enfield drinks ale with Smug the Smith, and "carries fire in his face eternally." This play was probably produced between 1 Henry IV. and 2 Henry IV. The words "tickle your catastrophe" in the latter are more likely to be an allusion to the "gag" in the Merry Devil than conversely; similar ridicule of this phrase is introduced in Sir Giles Goosecap, which is certainly of later date. It seems strange that Sir John Oldcastle should have been used as the name of a priest; but the play has been so greatly abridged (all the part of the story in which Smug replaces St. George as the sign of the inn, for instance, having been cut out) that it would be mere guess-work to try to restore its original form, and without such restoration we cannot judge of the reasons for so singular an impersonation. Of course it was attempted to remove all trace of Oldcastle's name; but just as the prefix Old. to one of the speeches in Shakespeare's play bears evidence to Oldcastle having been his original fat knight, so it is possible that in a hitherto unexplained passage there may be a trace of Oldcastle as Drayton's original ale-drinking priest. In scene 9 the words italicised in "My old Jenerts bank my horse, my castle" look very like a corruption of a stage direction written in margin of a proof thus —

Old- J. enters

castle

– he is on the scene directly after, and his entrance is nowhere marked.

T. Lodge, as well as Drayton, was writing about this date for the Chamberlain's men.

On August 29 Richard II. was entered on S. R., and on October 20 Richard III. These were evidently printed from authentic copies, duly authorised for publication.

About July 1597 the Theater, with regard to extension of the lease of which James Burbadge had been negotiating up to his death in the spring of that year, was finally closed as a place of performance. In October the Chamberlain's men no doubt began to act at the Curtain, which Pembroke's men left at that date to join the Admiral's company at the Rose; some of them, however, probably Cooke, Belt, Sinkler, and Holland, had already in 1594 joined the Chamberlain's, as we shall see. About this date Mr. Halliwell says "Shakespeare's company" were at Rye (in August), at Dover and Bristol (in September), &c. Pembroke's company were at these places, but he has given no proof that the Chamberlain's were. The "Curtain-plaudities" of Marston's Scourge of Villany, entered S. R. 8th September 1598, would certainly seem to show that they acted at the Curtain in 1598. This does not, however, involve the inference that they acted there in 1596, at which time they no doubt performed at the Theater.

About this same time the play of Wily Beguiled was acted, which contains distinct parodies of speeches by Shylock and old Capulet, as well as of other scenes in the Merchant of Venice, which must have preceded it. It has been alleged by Steevens and others that this play existed in 1596, but no proof has been given of this assertion.

In November John Shakespeare filed a bill against Lambert for the recovery of the Asbies estate. There is no trace of his having proceeded further with this litigation.

At Christmas the Chamberlain's men performed four plays at Whitehall, one of which was Love's Labour's Lost. The corrections and augmentations of the play, as we have it, may be confidently ascribed to the preparation for this performance.

1598

On January 24 Abraham Sturley wrote to Richard Quiney urging him to persuade Shakespeare to make a purchase at Shottery, on the ground that he would thus obtain friends and advancement, and at the same time benefit the Corporation.

On February 25 1 Henry IV. was entered on S. R., and on July 22 The Merchant of Venice.

In this spring or in 1597 Much Ado about Nothing was probably produced. It was probably an alteration of Love's Labour's Won.

In September Jonson joined the Chamberlain's men, and produced his Every Man in his Humour at the Curtain. This was the Quarto version with the Italian names. Aubrey has been subjected to much unfounded abuse for asserting that Jonson acted at the Curtain. The actors in this play were Shakespeare, Burbadge, Phillips, Hemings, Condell, Pope, Sly, Beeston, Kemp, and Duke. Shakespeare, it will be noted, is first on the list.

On September 7 Meres' Palladis Tamia was entered on S. R. Among the abundant and often-quoted praises of Shakespeare in this work the most important for biographical purposes are the enumeration of his plays, the lists of tragic and comic dramatists, and this passage, which I shall have to refer to hereafter. "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the great witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare. Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends," &c. A careful comparison of the list of dramatists with that of known plays or titles of plays that have come down to us shows that the Palladis Tamia could not have been completed for the press till June 1598, and an examination of the list of Shakespeare's plays shows that it consists of those then in the repertoire of the Chamberlain's company, that is, of those either newly written or revived between June 1594 and June 1598. These plays are: Gentlemen of Verona; Errors; Love's Labour's Lost; Love's Labour's Won; Midsummer-Night's Dream; Merchant of Venice– comedies. Richard II.; Richard III.; Henry IV.; John; Titus Andronicus; Romeo and Juliet– tragedies. It is clear that Richard III. and a play on Andronicus, which I believe to be the one we have, were attributed to Shakespeare at that time.

On 25th October Richard Quiney wrote from the Bell in Carter Lane to his "loving good friend and countryman Mr. William Shakespeare," who was, according to the subsidy roll discovered by Mr. J. Hunter, then living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, asking for the loan of £30. On the same day he wrote to his brother-in-law Mr. Sturley at Stratford, that "our countryman Mr. W. Shakespeare would procure us money." The former letter was sent evidently by hand, an affirmative answer obtained, and soon after instructions given by Shakespeare for the procuring the money. We could not otherwise account for the letter being preserved among the documents of the Corporation.

The Famous Victories of Henry V. was reprinted in 1598; as we so often find to be the case with old plays on which other plays have been founded. The complaint about the name Oldcastle no doubt was a special motive for reproducing the old play in this instance.

There were three plays performed at Court by Shakespeare's company in the Christmas festivities.

1599

In April a play of Troylus and Cressida, by Dekker and Chettle, was written; no doubt an opposition play to some revival of Shakespeare's older one on the same subject.

The Chamberlain's men acted A Warning for Fair Women about this time. This play appears to me to come from the hand of Lodge.

In this year The Passionate Pilgrim, "by W. Shakespeare," was imprinted by Jaggard. It contains two of the Sonnets, two other Sonnets from Love's Labour's Lost, and one other poem from the same play by Shakespeare. The remaining poems, as far as they are known, are by Barnefield and other inferior authors. There is not a vestige of reason for reprinting this book as Shakespeare's.

In the spring Shakespeare's company left the Curtain and went to act at the Globe. This was a newly erected building on Bankside, made partly of the materials of the old Theater, which had been removed by Burbadge at the beginning of the year. One of the first plays performed in it was Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, the chief actors in which were Burbadge, Hemings, Phillips, Condell, Sly, and Pope. Kempe, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant had left the company, and did not act at the Globe. But Shakespeare's name is also absent in this list, and this fact, coupled with that of the libellous nature of this "comical satire," and Jonson's leaving the Chamberlain's men immediately after it to continue his strictures on Dekker, &c., at Blackfriars with the Children of the Chapel, makes it exceedingly probable that the disagreement which eventuated in the "purge" given by Shakespeare to Jonson mentioned in The Return to Parnassus had already arisen. It would lead to too long a digression to do more than touch on this stage quarrel here. I can only say that it lasted till 1601; that Jonson and Chapman on the one side at Blackfriars, and Shakespeare, Marston, and Dekker on the other, at first at the Globe, Rose, and Paul's, afterwards at the Fortune, kept up one continual warfare for more than three years. Not one of their plays during this time is free from personalities and satirical allusions; nor, indeed, are most comedies of Elizabeth's time; it is only because the allusions have grown obscure and uninteresting to us, that we fail to see that the Elizabethan comedy is eminently Aristophanic. It is not till the reign of James that we find the comedy of manners and intrigue at all generally developed.

Another play produced after the opening of the Globe was Henry V., and soon after in this year As You Like It.

Somewhere about this time an attempt was made to get a grant to "impale the arms of Shakespeare with those of Arden," ignotum cum ignotiore. The grant was not obtained.

At this Christmas the Chamberlain's men gave three performances at Court, viz., on 26th December at Whitehall, on 5th January 1599-1600 and on 4th February at Richmond.

1600

Shrovetide, February 4. The play performed at Court was probably The Merry Wives of Windsor. This play is assigned by tradition to a command of the Queen, who wished to see Falstaff represented in love, and is said to have been written in a fortnight. It was probably an adaptation of the old Jealous Comedy of 1592, and is more likely to have come after than before Henry V., in which Shakespeare had failed, according to his implied promise in the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV., to continue the story with Falstaff in it. It stands apart altogether from the historical series.

March 6. The Chamberlain's men acted "Oldcastle" before their patron, Lord Hunsdon, and foreign ambassadors at Somerset House. This could not have been Shakespeare's "Falstaff," for the obnoxious name of Oldcastle would certainly not have been revived before such an audience; nor could it have been the Sir John Oldcastle, which belonged to another company; it may have been The Merry Devil of Edmonton.

About this time Shakespeare, always attentive to pecuniary matters, brought an action against one John Clayton for £7, and obtained a verdict.

The August entries on S. R. are specially interesting. On the 4th a memorandum (not in the regular course of entry) appears to the effect that As You Like It, Henry V., Every Man in his Humour, and Much Ado about Nothing, were "to be stayed." On the 14th, Every Man in his Humour was licensed; on the 23d, Much Ado about Nothing, and along with it 2 Henry IV., "with the humours of Sir John Falstaff. Written by Master Shakespeare." On the 11th the first and second parts of the History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, "with his Martyrdom," had been licensed. The "staying" is generally supposed to have relation to surreptitious printing; I think it more likely to have been caused by the supposed satirical nature of the plays. As You Like It was not printed; Henry V. was printed in an incomplete form7 without license; while the emphatic mention of Falstaff and the insertion of the author's name to 2 Henry IV., not customary at that date, show that the Oldcastle scandal had not yet died out. This is still further proved by the almost simultaneous entries of the two plays written October to December 1599 for the Admiral's men by Monday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathaway, on Sir John Oldcastle. Only one has reached us, which is plainly satirical of Henry V. It was, however, in one of the editions printed in 1600 ascribed to William Shakespeare. Drayton, who was the chief author concerned in its production, had left the Chamberlain's men in 1597, and been writing for the Admiral's ever since. It is noticeable that after 1597 we find the favourable notices of Lodge and Shakespeare which had been inserted in previous editions expunged from his writings, notably the lines on Lucrece in the legend of Matilda. Drayton had probably quarrelled with both his coadjutors. With the entry here on Oldcastle's "martyrdom" compare the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. This was not the play acted before Hunsdon on March 6, which was probably The Merry Devil.

On 8th October Midsummer-Night's Dream was entered on S. R.; on 28th October The Merchant of Venice. Curiously enough, two rival issues of each of these plays was made this year, although only one publisher made an entry in each case. On 22d July 1598, J. Roberts had entered The Merchant of Venice, but was refused permission to print unless he could get the Lord Chamberlain's license, who was the patron of the actors of that play. He apparently did not get it; but in 1600, when J. Heyes does get the license, he arranges with Heyes to print the book for him, but previously prints a slightly differing copy on his own account. He makes with Fisher, the publisher of the other play, a somewhat similar transaction.

There were three Court performances this Christmas by the Chamberlain's men, December 26, January 5, February 24. The payment for these to Hemings and Cowley indicates that the latter was a shareholder in the Globe.

2 and 3 Henry VI. were probably revised and revived at the Globe about this time.

1601

In this year All's Well that Ends Well and Hamlet were produced. The form in which the latter appeared is matter of dispute; but we may safely assert that it lay between the version of the first Quarto and that of the Folio; the variation of the Quarto from this original form being caused by the surreptitious nature of that edition, and that of the Folio by a subsequent revision in 1603. The company of "little eyases" satirised in this play was not of the Paul's children, with whom the Chamberlain's men were on the most friendly terms, but of the Chapel children at the Blackfriars, who were then acting Jonson's "comical satires" against Dekker, Marston, and Shakespeare. Singularly enough, they were tenants of the Burbadges, who were also owners of the Globe.

In the same year 1601, a poem by Shakespeare appeared along with others by Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in R. Chester's Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint. This publication, could we ascertain its exact date, would show the time when the stage controversy ceased and these four writers could amicably appear together. Dekker, however, does not appear among them, and we cannot tell if his Satiromastix was acted with Shakespeare's approval or not. It was produced at the Globe by his company as well as by the children of Paul's at some time between 22d May, up till which day Dekker was writing for the Admiral's men, and 11th November, when it was entered on S. R. This bitter satire seems to have been the last open word in the controversy, but by no means the end of its history.

The next fact we have to notice may perhaps explain why, just at this point of Shakespeare's career, we find in 1602 a cessation of production, accompanied by a change of manner in outward form and inward thought when writing was resumed in 1603. In March 1601, in the Essex trials, Meyrick was indicted "for having procured the outdated tragedy of Richard II. to be publicly acted at his own charge for the entertainment of the conspirators" (Camden). From Bacon's speech (State Trials) it appears that Phillips was the manager who arranged this performance. This identifies the company as the Chamberlain's, and therefore the play as Shakespeare's. It may seem strange that a play, duly licensed and published in 1597, could give offence in 1601; but the published play did not contain the deposition scene, iv. 1, the acted play of 1601 certainly did. This point is again brought forward in Southampton's trial: he calmly asked the Attorney-General, "What he thought in his conscience they designed to do with the Queen?" "The same," replied he, "that Henry of Lancaster did with Richard II." The examples of Richard II. and Edward II. were again quoted by the assistant judges against Southampton, while Essex in his defence urged the example of the Duke of Guise in his favour. From all which it is clear that the subjects chosen for historical plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare were unpopular at Court, but approved of by the Essex faction, and that at last the company incurred the serious displeasure of the Queen. Accordingly, they did not perform at Court at Christmas 1601-2;8 and we find them travelling in Scotland instead – L. Fletcher with his company of players being traceable at Aberdeen in October. Here the actors would hear of the Gowry conspiracy instead of Essex', of which we shall find the result hereafter. Before leaving London, however, or in the next year after their return, they acted The Life and Death of Lord Cromwell, Earl of Essex, a play in which the rise and fall of Robert Devereux, the late Earl, was pretty closely paralleled. This was entered on S. R., 11th August 1602, "as lately acted."

On September 8 John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was buried at Stratford.

1602

On 18th January The Merry Wives of Windsor was entered on S. R.: a surreptitious issue. On 2d February, Twelfth Night was performed at the Readers' Feast at the (?) Middle Temple, "much like The Comedy of Errors or the Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian, called Inganni" (Manningham's Diary).

On 19th April 1 and 2 Henry VI. (evidently the Quarto plays on which 2 and 3 Henry VI. were founded) were assigned by Millington to Pavier, salvo jure cujuscumque, S. R. This entry is important. It shows that the remodelling of the old Quarto plays under the new name of Henry VI. instead of The Contention of York and Lancaster had taken place; it indicates a doubt or fear as to whether the copyright might be disputed by some publisher, authorised by the Chamberlain's men to produce the amended version.