A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

On September 11 Shakespeare's name occurs in the margin of a folio page of donors (including all the principal inhabitants of Stratford) to a subscription list "towards the charge of prosecuting the bill in Parliament for the better repair of the highways." This appears to confirm the view that Shakespeare was at this time residing in Stratford.

On December 16 the play of Lord Cromwell was entered on S. R., and published as by W. S.

The plays at Court were twenty-two: on October 31; November 1, 5; December 26; January 5, February 23, before the King; on November 9, 19; December 16, 31; January 7, 15; February 19, 20, 28; April 3, 16, before Prince Henry and Charles, Duke of York; on February 9, 20 (sic), before the Prince; on March 28, April 26, before the Lady Elizabeth.

1612

On February 3 the burial of Gilbert Shakespeare "adolescens" was entered in the Stratford Register. I agree with Mr. French that this was most likely Shakespeare's brother.

In this year a suit was commenced "Lane Greene, and Shakespeare complts." on the ground that they had to pay too large a proportion of the reserved rent of the tithes purchased in 1605. It appears from the draft of the bill filed before Lord Ellesmere that Shakespeare's income from this source was £60.

The plays produced by the King's men were The Woman's Prize, Cardenno (i. e., Cardenes, or Loves Pilgrimage), and The Captain, by Fletcher and his coadjutors, and the Duchess of Malfi by Webster, who also published The White Devil, with the remarkable allusion to the "right happy and copious industry" of Shakespeare, Dekker, and Heywood. Curiously enough, this is often referred to even now as a eulogy on Webster's part; it is really damning with faint praise the poet to whom he hoped to be the successor as provider of plays to the King's company.

The Passionate Pilgrim reached a third edition, and was reissued as "certain amorous Sonnets between Venus and Adonis," by W. Shakespeare; "whereunto is added two love epistles" between Paris and Helen. These were stolen from Heywood's Troja Britannica of 1609. In his Apology for Actors (1612), he complains of the injury done him, as it might lead to unjust suspicion of piracy on his part, and adds, "As I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he hath published them, so the author I know much offended with M. Jaggard that altogether unknown to him presumed to make so bold with his name." In consequence, no doubt, of this remonstrance, Jaggard had to substitute a new title-page, from which Shakespeare's name was entirely omitted. He had allowed his name to be used in the titles of The London Prodigal in 1605, of The Yorkshire Tragedy in 1608, of The Passionate Pilgrim of 1609, and even of Sir John Oldcastle in 1600 without murmuring; but directly the interests of another demand justice at his hands he takes prompt action, and compels the piratical publisher to withdraw his name altogether.

The King's men at the Christmas festivities, &c., presented at Court fourteen plays before the King and fourteen before the Prince, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine. Among the plays so represented were Philaster, The Knot of Fools, Much Ado about Nothing, The Maid's Tragedy, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Tempest, A King and no King, The Twins' Tragedy, The Winter's Tale, Sir John Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor), The Moor of Venice, The Nobleman, Cesar's Tragedy, Love lies a bleeding (Philaster repeated), before the Prince, Lady Elizabeth, and the Palatine; A Bad Beginning makes a Good Ending (? All's Well that Ends Well; but entered S. R. 1660 as Ford's, and destroyed in MS. by Warburton's servant; Ford's revision must, of course, have been later than 1623), The Captain, The Alchemist, Cardenno, The Hotspur (1 Henry IV.), Benedicte and Betteris (Much Ado about Nothing), before the King. See Stanhope's Accounts (Halliwell, Outlines, p. 597, third edition, and Revels Accounts, p. xxiii.) Of these twenty Shakespeare contributes nine, Fletcher (with Beaumont) six, Jonson one, Tourneur one, Drayton (?) one, and two have not been identified.

1613

On 4th February Richard Shakespeare, the poet's only surviving brother, was buried at Stratford.

On 10th March Shakespeare purchased in Blackfriars a house with yard and haberdasher's shop for £140, subject to a mortgage of £60. This property had greatly increased in value since 1604, when it was sold for £100, probably in consequence of the immediate vicinity of the theatre, which drew large custom for feathers and other articles of attire to Blackfriars. Shakespeare leased it to John Robinson, who had by this time seen the absurdity in a business point of view of his opposition to the establishment of the theatre in 1596. One of the trustees for the legal estate (the mortgage remaining unredeemed till 1613) was John Heming, unquestionably Shakespeare's friend the actor.

On 8th June the King's men played at Court before the Duke of Savoy's ambassadors.

On 29th June the Globe Theatre was burnt down, "while Burbadge's company were acting the play of Henry VIII., and there shooting off certain chambers by way of triumph" (T. Lorkin's letter). Sir H. Wotton says it was "a new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII." It was of course Shakespeare's play in its original form. A Fool must have acted in it, for in the old ballad about this fire, "the reprobates prayed for the fool and Henry Condy" (Condell), who were apparently the last actors who escaped.

It has been conjectured that at this time Shakespeare retired from the stage, having sold his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars in order to purchase the house above mentioned. There is no particle of evidence that he had not saved the £80 then paid from his usual economies, or that if he had wished to sell his shares he could have done so. It is true that shares in the later Globe (rebuilt 1613-14) were so sold; but all the evidence as to the theatre in which Shakespeare was concerned points the other way. It appears from the 1635 documents that Hemings, Shakespeare, &c., had their shares without paying any consideration, and that all the shares held by Pope, Kempe, Bryan, Shakespeare, Sly, and Cowley had reverted by 1614 into the hands of the surviving shareholders, the Burbadges, Hemings, and Condell. If we examine the wills of these men, we find that Pope indeed, in 1603, leaves all his estate or interest in the Globe, "which I have or ought to have," to Mary Clark and Thomas Bromley; but that Phillips in 1605, and Cooke in 1614, make no mention of any shares. It seems most likely that this will of Pope's raised the question as to whether these shares were held during office as actor or absolutely. There can be little doubt that the former was the case, as is only reasonable where the shares, as in the first Globe, were given "without consideration." Purchased shares, like those in the latter Globe, are in a different position. At any rate, the shares left to Bromley and Clark in fact reverted to the surviving shareholders. Sly's will in 1608, which is in similar terms to Pope's, leaves his shares to Robert Brown, who, like Clark and Bromley, disappears from all future history of these shares. Moreover, there is no mention of any shares belonging to Cowley, Beeston, or Kempe: yet there can be no doubt that Kempe was till 1599 a shareholder.

On 15th July, in the Ecclesiastical Court at Worcester, the case of Dr. John Hall v. John Lane, for slandering his wife, was heard, and the defendant excommunicated on the 27th.

There were sixteen plays performed at Court by the King's men this year, on November 4, 16; January 10; February 4, 8, 10, 18; and nine others.

1614

Fletcher, Webster, and Beaumont had all left the King's men, and now, 31st October, Jonson leaves them too, and produces his Bartholomew Fair at the Hope, with abundant sneers at Shakespeare's plays, especially the Tempest and Winter's Tale. He does not allude to Henry VIII. Fletcher was now, as well as Jonson, a writer for the Princess Elizabeth's players.

In July John Combe left Shakespeare £5 as a legacy.

In the autumn an attempt was made by W. Combe, the squire of Welcombe, to inclose a large portion of the neighbouring common fields; this attempt was opposed by the Corporation, but supported by Mr. Manwaring and Shakespeare. The latter clearly acted simply with a view to his own personal interest. His name as an ancient freeholder occurs in a list, 5th September, as having claim for compensation if the inclosure took place. On 18th October, Replingham, Combe's agent, covenanted to give him full compensation for injury by "any inclosure or decay of tillage: " on 16th November he went to London: on 17th November his "cousin," T. Greene, town clerk of Stratford and at the same time his own solicitor, called to see him: he said the inclosures were to be less than had been represented, that nothing would be done till April, and that he and Mr. Hall thought nothing would be done at all. On 23d December letters to Mr. Manwaring and Shakespeare were written, with "almost all the company's hands" to them, and a private letter in addition by Greene to "my cousin," with copies of all the acts of the Corporation, and notes of the inconveniences that would result from the inclosure. The inclosure was not made, and Shakespeare did not get his compensation.

1616

On 25th January the first draft of Shakespeare's will was drawn up. On 10th February his daughter Judith was married without a license to T. Quiney, vintner of Stratford; they were summoned in consequence to the Ecclesiastical Court of Worcester a few weeks after. On 25th March the will was executed, and on 25th April "Will. Shakspere, gent." was entered in the burial register at Stratford. He died just before completing his fifty-fourth year; but it is usually supposed on the 23d, his birthday.

SECTION IV.

THE CHRONOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

It is of the greatest importance, in investigating the chronological succession of an author's works, that we should start from a definite and certain date. The neglect of this point, especially in so difficult an instance as the present, involves us too often in thorny discussions at the very onset. Such an epoch is presented us at once by the publication of Shakespeare's earliest poem. I begin therefore at this point.

Venus and Adonis was entered on S. R. 18th April 1593 by Richard Field, printer, son of Henry Field, tanner, of Stratford-on-Avon, who parted with his copyright to Mr. Harrison, senior, 25th June 1594. There were editions in 1593, 1594 (R. Field); 1596 (R. Field for J. Harrison); 1599 and 1602, bis (W. Leake); 1617 (W. Barrett); and 1620 (J. Parker). Harrison had assigned his copyright to Leake 25th June 1596. It was transferred to W. Barrett 16th February 1616-17; and again to J. Parker 8th March 1620. This was "the first heir of my invention," which means – the first production in which I have had no co-labourer. Compare Ford's expression "the first-fruits of my leisure" applied to 'Tis pity she's &c., although he had certainly at that time written plays in connection with Dekker and others.

Lucrece. Entered on 9th May 1594 in S. R. by Mr. Harrison, senior. Editions 1594 (R. Field for J. Harrison); 1598 (P. S. for J. Harrison); 1600 (J. H. for J. Harrison); 1607 (N. O. for J. Harrison); 1616 (T. G. for R. Jackson). This poem is a pendant to the former; the one exhibiting woman's chastity, the other her lust. Such opposition of subject in successive productions is very characteristic of Shakespeare.

A Lover's Complaint, published with the Sonnets 1609, written probably 1593-4, between the Venus and Lucrece.

Sonnets, entered on S. R. 20th May 1609 for T. Thorpe. I have on pp. 25, 120 already stated my opinion that these were written during 1594-8.

Titus Andronicus was a new play in 1594, acted for the first time by Sussex' men at the Rose on 23d January.

Richard III. was no doubt acted this same year by the Chamberlain's men; just before the old play which had been acted by the Queen's players was published (S. R. 19th June 1594). A Richard is alluded to in John Weever's Epigrams, published 1599, when the author was twenty-three, but written when he was not twenty; they must therefore date at latest in 1596 (not 1595 as usually stated). Weever mentions Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Romeo, and Richard as the issue of honey-tongued Shakespeare. We shall see that Romeo, as referred to here, was acted in 1595-6, and I believe the Richard referred to is the Richard II. of 1595. Edward III. I have shown in p. 118 to be an alteration of an old play of Marlowe's written in 1590, revived in 1594 about the autumn, after Lucrece was published. It will be most convenient to defer the consideration of authorship of the preceding plays till I have to treat of Henry VI.; the dates of editions of all the plays will be exhibited in tabular form further on, which will save much repetition and interruption of argument. We now come to an unquestionable date; and it is from this, the first recorded date in connection with an undoubted play, that I wish the reader to regard our investigation of play dates as beginning.

1594

December 28. Shakespeare's only farcical comedy of Errors was acted at Gray's Inn at night: the same players had acted before the Queen at Greenwich on that day, very likely in the same comedy. In April 1595 the English agent in Edinburgh wrote to Burghley, how ill King James took it that the comedians in London should scorn the king and people of Scotland in their plays. The barrenness of Scotland is mentioned in iii. 2. Neither would James approve of a play in which witchcraft and exorcising is so constantly ridiculed. The opening scene is very like in method to that of Midsummer-Night's Dream; and the reiterated allusions by either Dromio to being transformed to an ass (ii. 2. 201; iii. 1. 15; iv. 4. 28; iii. 2. 77) remind us so strongly of that play as almost to infer contemporaneity of production; especially as in iii. 1. 47 the same quibble, an ass and ace, occurs as in Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 1. 317. Now in 1593, in his Pierce's Supererogation, and in 1592 in his Four Letters, Gabriel Harvey had rung the changes on an ass and a Nash even to wearisomeness; just as Shakespeare in this play puns on an ell and a Nell (iii. 2. 112). This may seem very forced; but I must remind the reader, that s and sh were not distinguished in pronunciation except by pedants at the end of the sixteenth century. It seems then most likely that in dwelling on this transformation, Shakespeare meant to recall to his audience the dyslogistic name inflicted on his old enemy Nash by Gabriel Harvey. All this points to a production of the play in 1594, by the Chamberlain's men; but there are also indications of its having been altered from an earlier version. In the stage directions there are traces of the name Juliana12 for Luciana: in the text Dowsabel occurs instead of Nell, and in v. 1, the prefix Fat. (Father) has been clearly replaced by Mar. (Merchant) in a revision; note especially v. 1. 195, where both prefixes have by a common printer's error been inserted at once. The older form, again, had Antipholus Sereptus for A. of Syracuse, and Erotes or Erratis for A. of Ephesus; and it had twenty-five years of separation between the parents for thirty-three in the later version. This last difference occurs in i. 1, which is throughout written in a more mechanical and antique style of metre than the rest of the play; and indeed seems to be one of the earliest specimens left us of Shakespeare's attempts to bombast out a blank verse. There is also the name Menaphon (v. 1. 368), which is likely to have been adopted from Greene's Menaphon (1589), who again took it from Marlowe's Tamberlaine (1587-8). The Adam "that goes in the calf-skin," surely alludes to the Adam in the Looking-glass for London (1590), whose "calf-skin jests" were even after seven years an object of ridicule to the playwrights. For all these reasons I believe that a version of this play was acted c. 1590, perhaps in the winter of that year. It does not follow that that version was entirely by Shakespeare, as the present play is; he may have replaced a coadjutor's work of 1590 by his own of 1594. The plot, with its time-unity, is not likely to be of his arranging. As to the pun on the war made by France against her heir (iii. 2. 126), which is usually relied on for the date of production, it merely gives as limits August 1589, when the war of succession began, and 27th February 1594, when Henri IV. was crowned. It does, however, enable us to say positively that the first performance of the play was before the formation of the Chamberlain's company, who only revived it, no doubt in an amended shape, on 28th December 1594, most likely for the sake of the Court performance. The original plot was probably suggested by Plautus' Menæchmi and Amphitryo; and perhaps more directly by the History of Error performed by the Chapel children in 1576, which, by the bye, has nothing to do with the Ferrar of the Earl of Sussex' men in 1582. But we cannot assume in these early plays that Shakespeare was the plotter. It is certain, however, that he did afterwards adopt the likeness of twins in Twelfth Night as a means of introducing "errors" on the stage.

1595

January 26 was the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, at Greenwich. Such events were usually celebrated with the accompaniment of plays or interludes, masques written specially for the occasion not having yet become fashionable. The company of players employed at these nuptials would certainly be the Chamberlain's, who had, so lately as the year before, been in the employ of the Earl's brother Ferdinand. No play known to us is so fit for the purpose as Midsummer-Night's Dream, which in its present form is certainly of this date. About the same time Edward Russel, Earl of Bedford, married Lucy Harrington. Both marriages may have been enlivened by this performance. This is rendered more probable by the identity of the Oberon story with that of Drayton's Nymphidia, whose special patroness at this time was the newly married Countess of Bedford. That poem contains an allusion to Don Quixote, which could not well have been written till 1612, and certainly not till 1605; but Drayton is known to have constantly altered his poems by way of addition and omission, and no date of original production can in his case be fixed by allusions of this kind. The date of the play here given is again confirmed by the description of the weather in ii. 2. In 1594, and in that year only, is there on record such an inversion of the seasons as is there spoken of. Chute's Cephalus and Procris was entered on S. R., 28th September 1593; Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 22d October 1593; Marlowe and Nash's Dido was printed in 1594. All these stories are alluded to in the play. The date of the Court performance must be in the winter of 1594-5. But the traces of the play having been altered from a version for the stage are numerous. There is a double ending. Robin's final speech is palpably a stage epilogue, while what precedes from "Enter Puck" to "break of day —Exeunt" is very appropriate for a marriage entertainment, but scarcely suited to the stage. In Acts iv. and v., again, we find in the speech-prefixes Duke, Duchess, Clown for Theseus, Hippolita, Bottom: such variations are nearly always marks of alteration, the unnamed characters being anterior in date. In the prose scenes speeches are several times assigned to wrong speakers, another common mark of alteration. In the Fairies the character of Moth (Mote) has been excised in the text, though he still remains among the dramatis personæ. It is not, I think, possible to say which parts of the play were added for the Court performance; but a careful examination has convinced me that wherever Robin occurs in the stage-directions or speech-prefixes scarcely any, if any, alteration has been made; Puck, on the contrary, indicates change. The date of the stage play may, I think, be put in the winter of 1592; and if so it was acted, not at the Rose, but where Lord Strange's company were travelling. For the allusion in v. 1. 52, "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death of Learning, late deceased in beggary," to Spenser's Tears of the Muses (1591), or Greene's death, 3d September 1592, could not, in either interpretation, be much later than the autumn of 1592; and the lines in ii. 1. 156 —

"I am a spirit of no common rate;The summer still doth tend upon my state,And I do love thee" —

are so closely like those in Nash's Summer's Last Will, where Summer says —

"Died I had indeed unto the earth,But that Eliza, England's beauteous Queen,On whom all seasons prosperously attend,Forbad the execution of my fateUntil her joyful progress was expired" —

that I think they are alluded to by Shakespeare. The singularly fine summer of 1592 is attributed to the influence of Elizabeth, the Fairy Queen. Nash's play was performed at the Archbishop's palace at Croydon in Michaelmas term of the same year by a "number of hammer-handed clowns (for so it pleaseth them in modesty to name themselves);" but I believe the company originally satirised in Shakespeare's play was the Earl of Sussex', Bottom, the chief clown, being intended for Robert Greene. Thus much for date of production. For the title of the play, compare the conclusion of The Taming of a Shrew and Peele's Old Wife's Tale, the latter of which is performed in a dream, and the former is supposed by Sly to be so; the interpretation that it means a play performed at midsummer is quite inconsistent with iv. 1. 190, &c., and other passages. The names of the personages are interesting, because they show us what books Shakespeare was reading at this time: from North's Plutarch, Life of Theseus, the first in the book, he got Periginia (Perigouna), Aegles, Ariadne, Antiope, and Hippolita; from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, also the first in the printed editions, which he afterwards dramatised, Philostrate; from Greene's James IV. Oberon. This last name, with Titania's, also occurs in the Queen's Entertainment at Lord Hertford's, 1591. The time-analysis of this play has probably been disturbed by omissions in producing the Court version. I. 1. 128-251 ought to form, and probably did, in the original play, a separate scene; it certainly does not take place in the palace. To the same cause must be attributed the confusion as to the moon's age; cf. i. 1. 209 with the opening lines: the new moon was an afterthought, and evidently derived from a form of the story in which the first day of the month and the new moon were coincident after the Greek time-reckoning. It is worth notice that not only is the title of Preston's Cambyses parodied in the Pyramus interlude, but his pension of sixpence a day is ridiculed in iv. 2. Nor must we quite pass over the fact, which confirms the 1595 date, that on 30th August 1594, at the baptism of Prince Henry (of Scotland), the tame lion which was to have been brought in in the triumph was replaced by a Moor, "because his presence might have brought some fear." The play is nearly as much an error play (iii. 2. 368) as the Errors itself, and, like it, has no known immediate source for the plot. The Pyramus interlude is clearly based on C. Robinson's Handfull of Pleasant Delights (1584); and some of the fairy story may have been suggested by Montemayor's Diana. The line ii. 2. 104, is from Peele's Edward I. (near end), "how nature strove in them to show her art," and I think the man who dares not come in the moon because it is in snuff may allude to the offence given at Court by Lyly's Endymion in 1588. An absolute downward limit of date is given by a line imitated in Doctor Doddypol, a play alluded to in 1596 by Nash, and spoiled in the imitation —