William Shakspere and Robert Greene

What Lord Rosebery says of Napoleon is equally true of the author of “Hamlet” and “King Lear,” “Mankind will always delight to scrutinize something that indefinitely raises its conception of its own powers and possibilities, and will seek, though eternally in vain, to penetrate the secrets of this prodigious intellect,” and it is to Stratford-on-Avon that many turn for the final glimpse of what Swinburne calls “the most transcendent intelligence that ever illuminated humanity.” William Shakspere, the third child and eldest son (probably), of John Shakspere, is supposed to have been born at a place on the chief highway or road leading from London to Ireland, where the road crosses the river Avon. This crossing was called Street-ford or Stratford. This, at any rate, was the place of his baptism in 1564, as is evidenced by the parish register. The next proven fact is that of his marriage in 1582, when he was little more than eighteen years old. Before this event nothing is known in regard to him.

John Shakspere, the father apparently of William Shakspere, is first discovered and described as a resident of Henley Street, where our first glimpse is had of him in April, 1552. In that year he was fined the sum of twelve pence for a breach of the municipal sanitary regulations. Nothing is known in regard to the place of his birth and nurture, nor in regard to his ancestry. The evidence is, prima-facie, that the Shaksperes were of the parvenu class. John Shakspere seems to have been a chapman, trading in farmer’s produce. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, the seventh and youngest daughter of Robert Arden, who had left to her fifty-three acres and a house, called “Ashbies” at Wilmecote. He had also left to her other land at Wilmecote, and an interest in two houses at Smitterfield.

This step gave John Shakspere a reputation among his neighbors of having married an heiress, and he was not slow to take advantage of it. His official career commenced at once by his election in 1557, as one of the ale-tasters, to see to the quality of bread and ale; and again in 1568 he was made high bailiff of Stratford. John Shakspere was the only member of the Shakspere family who was honored with civic preferment and confidence, serving the corporation for the ninth time in several functions. However, the time of his declination was at hand, for in the autumn of 1578 the wife’s property at Ashbies was mortgaged for forty pounds. The money subsequently tendered in repayment of the loan was refused until other sums due to the same creditor were repaid. John Shakspere was deprived of his aldermanship September 6, 1580, because he did not come to the hall when notified. On March 29, he produced a writ of habeas corpus, which shows he had been in prison for debt. Notwithstanding his inability to read and write, he had more or less capacity for official business, but so managed his private affairs as to wreck his own and his wife’s fortune.

At the time of the habeas corpus matter William Shakspere was thirteen years old. “In all probability,” says his biographer, “the lad was removed from school, his father requiring his assistance.” There was a grammar school in Stratford which was reconstructed on a medieval foundation by Edward VI, though the first English grammar was not published until 1586. This was after Shakespere had finished his education. “No Stratford record nor Stratford tradition says that Shakspere attended the Stratford grammar school.” But, had the waning fortune of his father made it possible, he might have been a student there from his seventh year—the probable age of admission—until his improvident marriage when little more than eighteen and a half years old. However, a provincial grammar school is a convenient place for the lad about whose activities we know nothing, and whose education is made to impinge on conjecture and fanciful might-have-been.

We are told that Shakspere must have been sent to the free school at Stratford, as his parents and all the relatives were unlearned persons, and there was no other public education available; nevertheless, it was the practice of that age to teach the boy no more than his father knew. One thing is certain, that the scholastic awakening in the Shakspere family was of short duration, for it began and ended with William Shakspere. His youngest daughter, Judith, was as illiterate as were her grandparents. She could not even write her name, although her father at the time of her school age had become wealthy, and his eldest daughter “the little premature Susanna,” as De Quincy calls her, could barely scrawl her name, being unable to identify her husband’s (Dr. Hall) handwriting, which no one but an illiterate could mistake. Her contention with the army surgeon, Dr. James Cook, respecting her husband’s manuscripts, is proof that William Shakspere was true to his antecedents by conferring illiteracy upon his daughters. The Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was not exceptionally liberal and broad minded in the matter of education in contrast with many of his contemporaries, notably Richard Mulcaster, (1531-1611), who says that “the girl should be as well educated as her brother,” while the real author of the immortal plays had also written, “Ignorance is the curse of God,” and, “There is no darkness but ignorance.”

It was not the least of John Shakspere’s misfortunes that in November, 1582, his eldest son, William, added to his embarrassments, by premature and forced marriage. It is the practice of Shakespere’s biographers to pass hurriedly over this event in the young man’s life, for there is nothing commendable in his marital relations. There is expressed in it irregularity of conduct and probable desertion on his part; pressure was brought to bear on the young man by his wife’s relations, and he was forced to marry the woman whom he had wronged. Who can believe that their marriage was a happy one, when the only written words contained in his will are not words expressive of connubial endearment, such as “dear wife” or “sweet wife,” but “my wife?” He had forgotten her, but by an interlineation in the final draft, she received his second best bed with its furniture. This was the sole bequest made to her.

We are by no means sure of the identity of his wife. We do not know that she and Shakespere ever went through the actual ceremony of marriage, unless her identity is traceable through Anne Wateley, as a regular license was issued for the marriage of William Shaxpere and Anne Wateley of Temple Grafton, November 27, 1583. Richard Hathaway, the reputed father of Shakspere’s wife, Anne, in his will dated September 1, 1581, bequeathed his property to seven children, his daughters being Catherin, Margaret and Agnes. No Anne was mentioned. The first published notice of the name of William Shakspere’s (supposed) wife appears in Rowe’s “Life of Shakespere” (1709), wherein it is stated that she “was the daughter of one Hathaway said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighborhood of Stratford.” This was all that Betterton, the actor Rowe’s informant, could learn at the time of his visit to Stratford-on-Avon. The exact time of this visit is unknown, but it was probably about the year 1690. This lack of knowledge in regard to the Hathaways shows that the locality of Anne Hathaway’s residence, or that of her parents, was not known at Stratford. The house at Shottery, now known as Anne Hathaway’s cottage, and reached from Stratford by fieldpaths, may have been the home of Anne Hathaway, wife of William Shakspere, before his marriage, but of this there is no proof.

Shakspere was married under the name “Shagspere,” but the place of marriage is unknown, as his place of residence is not mentioned in the bond. In the registry of the bishop of the diocese (Worcester) is contained a deed wherein Sandells and Richardson, husbandmen of Stratford, bound themselves in the bishop’s consistory court on November 28, 1582, as a surety for forty pounds, to free the bishop of all liability should any lawful impediment, by reason of any precontract, or consanguinity, be subsequently disclosed to imperil the validity of the contemplated marriage of William Shakspere with Anne Hathaway. Provided, that Anne obtained the consent of her friends, the marriage might proceed with at once proclaiming the bans of matrimony. The wording of the bond shows that, despite the fact that the bridegroom was a minor by nearly three years, the consent of his parents was neither called for, nor obtained, though necessary “for strictly regular procedure.” Sandells and Richardson, representing the lady’s family, ignored the bridegroom’s family completely. In having secured the deed, they forced Shakspere to marry their friend’s daughter in order to save her reputation. Soon afterwards—within six months—a daughter was born. Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case render it highly probable that Shakspere had no thought of marriage, for the waning fortune of his father had made him acquainted with the “cares of bread.” He was a penniless youth, not yet of age, having neither trade, nor means of livelihood, and was forced by her friends into marrying her—a woman eight years older than himself. In 1585 she presented him with twins.

When he left Stratford for London we do not know positively, but the advent of the twins is the approximate date of the youth’s Hegira. He lived apart from his wife for more than twenty-five years. The breath of slander never touched the good name of Anne (or Agnes), the neglected wife of William Shakspere. There is prima-facie evidence that the playbroker’s wife fared in his absence no better than his father and mother, who, dying intestate in 1601 and 1608, respectively, were buried somewhere by the Stratford church, but there is no trace of any sepulchral monument, or memorial. If anything of the kind had been set up by their wealthy son, William Shakspere, it would certainly have been found by someone. The only contemporary mention made of the wife of Shakspere, between her marriage in 1582 and her husband’s death in 1616, was as the borrower, at an unascertained date, of forty shillings from Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her father’s shepherd. The money was unpaid when Whittington died in 1601, and his executor was directed to recover the sum from Shakspere and distribute it among the poor of Stratford. There is disclosed in this pecuniary transaction, coupled with the slight mention of her in the will and the barring of her dower, prima facie evidence of William Shakspere’s indifference to, and neglect of, if not dislike for, his wife. All this is in striking contrast with the conduct of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom the biographers of Shakespere have attempted to disparage, and whose endearment for his wife is so feelingly expressed in his will. And, in contrast also, is the conduct of Edward Alleyn, famous as an actor, and as the founder of Dulwich College, who lived with his wife in London, and called her “sweet mouse.”

The tangibility of this Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon is very much in evidence along pecuniary lines, especially as money lender, land-owner, speculator and litigant. In 1597 he bought New Place in Stratford for sixty pounds; also mentioned as a holder of grain at Stratford X quarters. The following entry is in Chamberlain’s accounts at Stratford in 1598: “Paid to Mr. Shaxpere for one lode of stone xd;” in the same year Richard Quiney wrote to William Shakspere for a loan of thirty or forty pounds; in 1599 William Shakspere was taken into the new Globe Theatre Company as partner; in 1602 Shakspere bought one hundred seven acres of arable land at Stratford for three hundred two pounds (in his absence the conveyance was given over to his brother, Gilbert); in the same year he bought a house with barns, orchards, and gardens, from Hercules Underhill for sixty pounds; also a cottage close to his house, New Place; in 1605 Shakspere bought the thirty-two-year lease of half Stratford tithes for four hundred forty pounds; in 1613 Shakspere bought a house near Blackfriars’ Theatre for one hundred and forty pounds, and mortgaged it next day for sixty pounds; in 1612 Shakspere is mentioned in a law suit brought before Lord Ellsimore about Stratford tithes; in 1611 Hamnet, his only son, died at Stratford at the age of eleven and half years. The father, however, set up no stone to tell where the boy lay.

In the autumn of the year 1614 Shakspere became implicated with the landowners, William Combe and Arthur Mannering, in the conspiracy to enclose the common field in the vicinity of Stratford. The success of this rapacious scheme would have advantaged Shakspere in his freehold interest, but might have affected adversely his interest in the tithes, so he secured himself against all possible loss by obtaining from Riplingham, Combe’s agent, in October, 1614, a deed of indemnification; then, in the spirit of his agreement, he acted in unison with the two greedy land-sharks to rob the poor people of their ancient rights of pasturage. The unholy coalition caused great excitement. The humble citizens of Stratford were thoroughly aroused, and the town corporation put up a sharp and vigorous opposition to the scheme, for enclosure would have caused decay of tillage, idleness, penury, depopulation, and the subversion of homes. Happily, the three greedy cormorants Combe, Mannering and Shakspere failed in their efforts and the common field was unenclosed.

Shakspere is thought to have been penurious for his litigious strivings point in that direction, but this feature of his character was not disclosed in 1596 and 1599, when he sought to have his family enrolled among the gentry, as shown by his extravagance in bribing the officers of the Herald College to issue a grant of arms to his father, “a transaction which involved,” says Dr. Farmer, “the falsehood and venality of the father, the son and two kings-at-arms, and did not escape protest, for if ever a coat was cut from whole cloth we may be sure that this coat-of-arms was the one.” Shakspere himself was not in a position to apply for a coat-of-arms—“a player stood far too low in the social scale for the cognizance of heraldry.” Nevertheless, recent writers on the subject of Shakespeare stamp this bogus coat-of-arms on the covers of their books. We know that the Shaksperes did not belong to the Armigerous part of the population, and that they stood somewhat lower in the social scale than either the Halls or Quineys, who bore marital relations with them.

Shakspere’s son-in-law, John Hall, was a master of arts and an eminent physician. He was summoned more than once to attend the Earl and Countess of Northampton at Ludlow Castle. He was of the French Court School, and was opposed to the indiscriminate process of bleeding. On June 5, 1607, Dr. Hall was married at Stratford-on-Avon to Shakspere’s eldest daughter, Susanna. Stratford then contained about fifteen hundred inhabitants. One hundred sixty-two years later, Garrick gave his unsavory description of Stratford-on-Avon as “the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved, wretched-looking town in all Britain.” Cottages of that day in Stratford consisted of mud walls and thatched roofs. “At this period and for many generations afterwards the sanitary conditions of the thoroughfares of Stratford-on-Avon were simply terrible.”

On February 10, 1616, Thomas Quiney, a vintner, and also an accomplished scholar and penman, was married at Stratford church to Judith, Shakspere’s younger daughter, who could neither read nor write. The marriage ceremony took place without a license or proclaiming the bans. For this breach of ecclesiastical procedure both the parties were summoned to the court at Worcester and threatened with excommunication. When the fortune hunter goes forth to woe, and is determined to win, he is content to wade through reeking refuse and muckheaps to marry a rich heiress and does not much care if her histrionic father by XXXIX Elizabeth were a vagabond.

If “there is a soul of truth in things erroneous,” so there may be a soul of truth in the creditableness of the Shakspere traditions, for in them are revealed the environment in which they had their genesis, and the character of the inventor or fabricator. All of the traditions are comparatively recent or modern, and were made current by people who were, with few exceptions, coarse and densely ignorant. These apocryphal accounts serve to show also how little educated people knew, or cared, about writing with literary or historical accuracy when Shakspere was the subject. Unfortunately all of the traditions about Shakspere are of a degrading character.

The poaching escapade of his having robbed a park is one of the invented stories of fancy-mongers. There is very little likelihood that the young husband, with a wife and three babies to support, would voluntarily place himself in a position where he would have to flee from Sir Thomas Lucy’s prosecution; thereby degrading the lowermost rank of life by bringing disgrace upon himself, his wife and children, while his parents in straitened circumstances were struggling to keep the wolf from the door. The records show that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park either at Charlecote or Fulbroke, still the Lucys of a later day were not anxious to lose the honor of having spanked Shakspere for poaching on the ancestral preserves.

England was called in those days “The toper’s paradise,” and tradition informs us that Shakspere was one of the Bedford topers. However, we should not infer from this that William Shakspere, a firm man of business, was at any time a drunken sot. The only story recorded during Shakspere’s life is contained in John Manningham’s note-book. It savors strongly of the tavern, the diarist criminating Shakspere’s morals. This entry was made on March 13, 1601, the reference being to player Shakspere.

No wonder that such eminent votaries of Shakspere as Stevens, Hallam, Dyce and Emerson are disappointed and perplexed, for, while the record concerning the life of the player, money-lender, landowner, play-broker, speculator and litigant are ample, they disclose nothing of a literary character; but the pecuniary litigation evidence, growing out of Shakspere’s devotion to money-getting in London and Stratford, does unfold his true life and character. The records do not furnish a single instance of friendship, kindness or generosity, but upon the delinquent borrower of money he rigidly evoked the law, which gave a generous advantage to the creditor, and its vile prison to the debtor.

In 1600 Shakspere brought action against John Clayton for seven pounds and got judgment in his favor. He sued Philip Rogers, a neighbor in Stratford Court, for one pound, fifteen shillings and six pence due for malt sold, and two shillings loaned. In August, 1608, Shakspere prosecuted John Addenbroke to recover a debt of six pounds. He prosecuted this last suit for a couple of years until he got the defendant into prison. The prisoner was bailed out by Horneby. Addenbroke, running away, escaped from the clutches of his tormentor, who then bore down on his security, Horneby.

“The pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of imprisoning him, and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts and supporting his family, grate upon our feelings,” says Richard Grant White, “and,” adds this eminent Shakspearean, “we hunger and we receive these husks, we open our mouths for food and we break our teeth against these stones.” We may be sure that there was left in the impoverished home of John Addenbroke little more palatable than husks and stones, when the father fled to escape from the clutches of his insistent creditor, William Shakspere of Stratford.

The paltry suits he brought to recover debts do not tend to disclose this Shakspere’s “radiant temperament,” or fit him to receive the adjective, “gentle,” except in contumely for his claim to gentility. It is not known that Shakspere ever gave hospitality to the necessities of the poor of his native shire, for whom, it appears, there beat no pulse of tenderness. A man of scanty sensibilities he must have been. The poor working people of Stratford, we may be sure, shed no tear at this Shakspere’s departure from the world.

We do not envy the man, who can regard these harsh pecuniary practices in this Shakspere, as commendable traits of his worldly wisdom, for he was shrewd in money matters, and could have invested his money in London and Stratford so as not to have brought sorrow and distress upon his poor neighbors. These matters are small in themselves, but they suggest a good deal, for they bear witness to sorrow-stricken mothers, hungry children and fathers in loathsome prisons, powerless to provide food, warmth and light for the home. The diary, or note-book, of Philip Henslowe, the theatrical manager and play-broker, shows that Henslowe was himself a very penurious and grasping man, who, taking advantage of starving play-makers’ necessities, became very wealthy. William Shakspere, of Stratford-on-Avon, as a theatrical manager, became rich also, but his note-book has not been preserved, so nothing is known of his business methods in dealing with the poor play-makers; but the literary antiquarians, by ransacking corporations’ records and other public archives, have proven that Shakspere was very much such a man as the old pawnbroker and play-broker, Philip Henslowe, of a rival house.

The biographers should record these facts, and not strive to shun them, for the literary antiquaries have unearthed and brought them forward, and they tell the true story of Shakspere’s life, though we do not linger lovingly over them, for, like Hallam, “we as little feel the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterward an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Lear,’” for the Stratford records are as barren of literary matter as the lodgings in Silver street, London. Not a crumb for the literary biographer in either place!

Professor Wallace has added another non-literary document in the matter of Shakspere’s deposition in the case of Bellot vs. Mountjoy, which he discovered in the public record office, but it in no way contributes to a literary biography. The truth is that, with all their industry, the antiquarians have in this regard not brought to light a single proven fact to sustain the claim that this Shakespere was either the author of poems or plays. This bit of new knowledge gives us a glimpse of this William Shakspere as an evasive witness, having a conveniently short memory. These depositions disclose his intermediation in the matter of making two hearts happy, but not the faintest glimpse of the author of poems or plays. When the claim of authorship is challenged, new particulars of the life of Shakspere, such as this and others that have been unearthed by antiquarians, whether in the public record office or corporation archives, are alike worthless so far as establishing the poet Shakspere’s identity. They fail to confirm the identity of the actor Shakspere with the author of the plays and poems that are associated with his name. There are no family traditions, no books, manuscripts, or letters, addressed to him, or by him, to poet, peer or peasant. The credible evidence supplied by contemporaneous, or antiquarian, research do not identify the player and landowner with the author of “Hamlet,” “Lear” and “Othello.”

Our belief in the pseudonymity of the author of the poems and plays, called Shakespeare, is strengthened by the absence of verse commemorative of concurrent events, such as the strivings of his boldest countrymen in the great Elizabethan age. There is, from his pen, neither word of cheer, nor sympathy, with the daring and suffering warriors and adventurers of that time, although his contemporaries versified eulogies to the heroes of those days for their stirring deeds. There is, in the poems and plays, no elegiac lay in memory of Elizabeth, “the glorious daughter of the illustrious Henry,” as Robert Greene calls her, nor is there one line of mourning verse at the death of Prince Henry, the noblest among the children of the king, by a writer who was always a strenuous and consistent supporter of prerogative against the conception of freedom. This is another evidence of the secrecy maintained as to the authorship of the poems and plays. We cannot discover a single laudatory poem or commendatory verse, or a line of praise of any publication, or writer of his time. All this is in contrast with his contemporaries, whose personalities are identifiable with their literary work, and, so liberal of commendation were they, that they literally showered commendatory verses on literary works of merit, or those thought to have merit. Of these, thirty-five were bestowed on Fletcher, a score or more on Beaumont, Chapman and Ford, while Massinger received nineteen. Ben Jonson’s published works contain thirty-seven pieces of commendation. His Roman tragedy, “Sejanus,” was acclaimed by ten contemporary poets. In praise of his comedy, “Volpone,” there are seven poems. The versified compliments bestowed on him by his fellow craftsmen embrace many of the most celebrated names antecedent to his death, which occurred in 1637. Early in 1638 a collection of some thirty elegies were published under the title of “Jonsonus Virbius,” or “The Memory of Ben Jonson,” in which nearly all the leading poets of the day, except Milton, took part.

It must appear strange to the votaries of Shakspere that Jonson should have received so many crowns of mourning verse, while for Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon, the reputed author of “Hamlet,” “Lear” and “Macbeth,” there wailed no dirge. Not a single commendatory verse was bestowed by a contemporary poet antecedent to his death, nor was a single elegiac poem written of him in the year of his death, 1616. Already in that fatal year there had been mourning for Francis Beaumont, who received immediate posthumous honors by many poets, in memorial odes, sighing forth the requiem to his name in mournful elegy.

Eight and forty days after the death of Francis Beaumont, all that was mortal of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon was buried in the chancel of his parish church, in which, as part owner of the tithes and consequently one of the lay rectors, he had the right of interment. Over the spot where his body was laid, there was placed a slab with the inscription imprecating a curse on the man who should disturb his bones,

This rude, absurd and ignorant epitaph has given much trouble to writers on the subject of Shakespeare. The usual explanation of the threat is given that the Puritans thought that the church had been profaned by the ashes of an actor. These ignorant words could not have been written as a deterrent to the Puritans, for they did not belong to the ignorant section of the population, but to the middle class, nor would they have been deterred from invading Shakspere’s tomb by the superstitious fear of a threat contained in doggerel verse cut on the tomb. There was not the least danger that the actor’s grave would be violated by the Puritans, for Dr. John Hall, Shakspere’s son-in-law, was a Puritan. If he had had this warning epitaph cut on the tomb it would have been written in scholarly English. The doggerel lines, rude as they are, satisfied, doubtless, the widow and daughters, themselves ignorant. The most pleasing epitaph, it seems to us, would have been one expressing a known wish of their “dear departed” in words, when read by others, that would best suit their understandings, for the Shakspere family were uncultured. They could not read the stupid epitaph on his tomb, and so their hearts were not saddened as they gazed upon an inscription of barbaric rudeness.

Some slight circumstance may have given rise to William Hall’s conjecture, during his visit to Stratford, in 1694, that Shakspere authored his own epitaph, and that these lines were written to suit the capacity of clerks and sextons, who, according to Hall, in course of time would have removed Shakspere’s dust to the bone house. This is not improbable from the point of view taken by those who believe that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the doggerel epigram on John Combe, money lender, and the vituperative ballad abusing the gentleman whose park he (Shakspere) robbed, for the three compositions are of the same grade of ignorant nonsense. But we do know that had the author of “Hamlet” written his own epitaph, it would have been as deathless as the one over the Countess of Pembroke:

It should be borne in mind that clerks and sextons were not the only ignorant people in and about Stratford. There were some that had a grievance, or thought they had, which parish clerks and sextons had not. We have reference to the poor debtors, who regarded Shakspere of Stratford as a grasping usurer, hard upon poor people in his power, so the curse inscribed slab was placed over Shakspere’s grave as a shield to protect his ashes from those who would not hesitate to invade the tomb of one whose memory had become hateful to them. If in pressing his claim the money lender elects to be a tormentor, his name will be execrated while living and a hateful memory when dead.

One thing is evidenced by the maledictory epitaph; that the one who wrote it was afraid the tomb might be violated by the removal of the bones to the charnel house. Who were they that would most likely invade Shakspere’s tomb? Obviously those, we repeat, who regarded him as a hard-hearted man, who pressed poor debtors with all the rigor of the law to enforce the payment of petty sums; the man who had shown himself supremely selfish in an attempt to enclose the Stratford common field; the man who would be made “a gentleman” by misrepresentation, fraud and falsehood. The foregoing facts, and the legal and municipal evidence bound up in dusty records, a bogus coat-of-arms, and a rude epitaph, tell the true story of the life of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon.

There is no record of any pretended living likeness of Shakspere better representing him than the Stratford bust. This bust is erected on the north side of the chancel of Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-on-Avon. On the floor of the chancel in front of the monument are the graves of Shakspere and his family. We have no means of ascertaining when the monument and bust were erected. The first folio edition of his reputed works was published in 1623. It contained words from Leonard Diggs prefatory lines “and time dissolves thy Stratford moniment,” monument being used interchangeably with tomb; but these words do not prove that the bust was set up before 1623. His image was rudely cut, sensual and clownish in appearance.

There is not a tittle of evidence adduced to show that a knowledge of Shakspere’s putative authorship of poems and plays was current at Stratford when the first folio edition of his reputed works was published in 1623. The records attest that Shakspere’s fame reputatively as writer is posterior to this event. How strange it must seem to those who claim for Shakspere an established reputation as poet and dramatist of repute anterior to the first folio edition in 1623, that Dr. Hall, himself an author and most advantaged of all the heirs by Shakspere’s death, should fail to mention his father-in-law in his “cure-book” or observations! The earliest dated cure is 1617, the year following Shakspere’s death, but there are undated ones. In “Obs. XIX.” Hall mentions without date an illness of his wife, Mrs. Hall; and we find him making a note long afterwards in reference to his only daughter, Elizabeth, who was saved by her father’s skill and patience. “Thus was she delivered from death and deadly diseases and was well for many years.” The illness of Drayton is recorded without date in “Obs. XXII.,” with its wee bit of a literary biography, and he is referred to as “Mr. Drayton, an excellent poet.” Had Shakspere received a like mention as a poet or writer by one who knew him so intimately, what a delicious morsel it would have been to all those who have followed the literary antiquarian through the dreary barren waste of Shakespearean research. We have found nothing but husks, and these, eulogists of Shakespeare—Hallam, Stevens and Emerson—refused to crunch! For nearly three centuries the Stratford archives have contained all matters concerning Shakspere’s life and character, and have given us full knowledge of the man; nothing has been lost; but of his alleged literary life, there is not a crumb, no family traditions, no books, no manuscripts, no letters, no commendatory verses, plays, masques or anthology.

The biographers of Shakespeare have none of the material out of which poets and dramatists are made, but only those facts which are congruous with money lenders, land speculators, play-brokers and actors; also, a good assortment of apocryphal stores and gossipy yarns which have become traditional currency. According to Mark Twain there is something more. He says, “When we find a vague file of chipmunk tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village we know that Hercules has been along.” Again he proceeds, “The bust, too, there in the Stratford church, the precious bust, the calm bust with a dandy mustache, and the putty face unseamed with care—that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years, and will look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.”

Not having found the slightest trace of Shakespeare in 1592 as writer of plays, or as adapter or elaborator of other men’s work, his advent into literature must have been at a later date, if at all. In 1593 “Venus and Adonis” appeared in print with a dedication to Lord Southampton, and signed “William Shakespeare.” In 1594 appeared another poem, “Lucrece,” also with a dedication to Lord Southampton. The poems bore no name of an author on the title page. Here is literary tangibility, but does it establish the identity of their author, or attest the responsibility of the young Stratford man for the poems which were published under the name of Shakespeare? This was the first mention of the now famous name? Was it a pseudonym, or was it the true name of the author of the poem? The enthusiastic reception of the poems awakens a suspicion when we learn that their popularity was due to a belief in their lasciviency; and that the dedicatee was the rakish Henry Wriothesley, third Earle of Southampton; and, furthermore, that the name of the dedicator, “Shakespeare,” was one of a class of nicknames which in 1593 still retained in some measure that which was derisive in them. In 1487 a student at Oxford changed his own name of “Shakespeare” into “Saunders,” because he considered it too expressive and distinctive of rough manners, and significant of degradation, and as such was unwilling to aid in its hereditary transmission, when all that is derisive in the name Shakspere remained fixed and fossilized in the old meaning. In those unlettered times, lascivious persons were sometimes branded, so to speak, with the nickname “Shakspere.” Primarily, the name has no militant signification. There is no such personal name in any known list of British surnames. They are of the parvenu class without ancestry.

Mr. Sidney Lee admits that the Earle of Southampton is the only patron of Shakspere that is known to biographical research (p. 126). By what fact, or facts, may we ask, is the authenticity of the Earl’s friendship or patronage attested? Southampton was the standing patron of all the poets, the stock-dedicatee of those days. It was the fashion of the times to pester him with dedications by poets grave and gay. They were after those five or six pounds, which custom constrained his Lordship to yield for having his name enshrined in poet’s lines. All the poets of that age were dependents, and there is, with few exceptions, the same display of pharisaic sycophancy, greediness, and on the part of dedicatee an inordinate desire for adulation. Every student of Elizabethan literature and history should know that the Southampton-Shakspere friendship cannot be traced biographically. The Earl of Southampton was a voluminous correspondent, but did not bear witness to his friendship for Shakspere. A scrutinous inspection of Southampton’s papers contained in the archives of his family, descendants and contemporaries, yields nothing in support of the contention that Southampton’s friendship, or patronage, is known to biographical research, and it is as attestative as that other apocryphal story preserved by Rowe “which is fast disappearing from Shakespearean biography.”

“There is one instance so singular in its munificence that if we had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William Davenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, we should not venture to have inserted that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him (Shakspere) a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.” (Davenant was the man who gave out that he was the natural son of Shakspere). A present of a thousand pounds which equals at least twenty-five thousand dollars to-day! The magnitude of the gift discredits the story nevertheless, the startled Rowe, is the first to make it current, but does not give his readers the ground for his assurance. Be it what it may, he could hardly satisfy the modern reader that this man, a son, who insinuatingly defiles the name and fair fame of his own mother, is a credible witness, or that such a man is “fit for wolf bait.” What purchase did Shakspere “go through with?” Not New Place in 1597, for the purchase money was only sixty pounds. Neither could it have been the Stratford estate in 1602, for at that time Southampton was a prisoner in the Tower. In fact, the whole sum expended by Shakspere did not amount to a thousand pounds in all. The truth is, the social Rules of Tudor and Jacobin times did not permit peer and peasant to live on terms of mutual good feeling. Almost all the poets in hope of gain, penned adulatory sonnets in praise of Lord Southampton. In those times they had a summary way of dealing with humble citizens. Jonson, Chapman and Marston, were imprisoned for having displeased the king by a jest in “Eastward Ho,”—

“A nobleman to vindicate rank brought an action in the star-chamber against a person, who had orally addressed him as ‘Goodman Morley.’” The literati of those days found in scholastic learning, neither potency, nor promise, to abrogate class distinctions by giving a passport to high attainment in literature, poetry and philosophy. Ben Jonson says, “The time was when men were had in price for learning, now letters only make men vile. He is upbraidingly called a poet as if it were a contemptible nickname.”

Mr. Lee tells us, that the state papers and business correspondence of Southampton were enlivened by references to his literary interest and his sympathy with the birth of English Drama. (P. 316.). “However, Mr. Lee has extracted no reference to Shakspere from the paper.” Southampton’s zest for the theatre is based on the statement contained in the “Sidney Papers” that he and his friend Lord Rutland “come not to court but pass away the time merely in going to plays every day.” When a new library for his old college, St. Johns, was in course of construction, Southampton collected books to the value of three hundred and sixty pounds wherewith to furnish it. Southampton’s literary tastes and sympathy with the drama cannot be drawn from his gift to the library, for it consisted largely of legends of the saints and mediaeval chronicles. When and where did William Shakspere acknowledge his obligations to the only patron of the player? According to Mr. Lee, who is known to biographical research, not one of the Shakespearean plays was dedicated to Southampton. The name “Shakspere” is conspicuously absent from among the distinguished writers of his day, who in panegyrical speech and song acclaimed Southampton’s release from prison in 1602.

Francis Meres, a pedantic schoolmaster and Divinity student, had his “Palladis Tamia” registered September 7, 1598, and published shortly after. Meres in his “Tamia” writes of the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, and his “Venus and Adonis,” and his “Lucrece,” and his sugared sonnets to his friends, and enumerates twelve plays—though at the time three only had been published with his name. Like others of his contemporaries, Meres writes tritely of the honey-tongued, the honey sweet and the sugared. With him, everything written is mellifluent, but he says nothing of the man. In fact, no contemporary left on record any definite impression of Shakespeare’s personal character. Meres asserted that Ben Jonson was one of our best poets for tragedy, when at that time (1598) Jonson had not written a single tragedy, and but one comedy.

Before, we transcribe, in part, “Wits Treasury” by Francis Meres, we ask the readers’ pardon for this abuse of their patience, for Meres merely repeats names of Greek, Latin and modern play-makers. “As these tragic poets flourished in Greece—Aeschylus, Euripides” (in all seventeen are named and these among the Latin, Accius, M. Attilus, Seneca and several others). “So these are our best for tragedy; the Lord Buckhurst, Dr. Leg of Cambridge, Dr. Eds of Oxford, Master Edward Ferris—the author of the ‘Merriour for Magistrates,’—Marlowe, Peele, Watson, Kyd, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker and Benjamin Jonson. The best poets for comedy”—(Meres proceeds with his enumeration, naming sixteen Greeks and ten Latins, twenty-six in all.) “So the best for comedy amongst us be Edward, Earl of Oxford; Dr. Lager of Oxford; Master Rowley; Master Edwards: eloquent and wittie John Lilly; Lodge; Gascoyne; Greene; Shakespeare; Thomas Nash; Thomas Heywood; Anthony Munday. Our best plotters: Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathaway and Henry Chettle.”

Meres does not seem to have considered it necessary to read before reviewing. Had he done so he would not have placed the name of Lord Buckhurst first in his list, giving primacy to this mediocrist, and the author of “Romeo and Juliet,” whoever he was, ninth in his list of dramatic poets which he considered best among the English for tragedy; nor, would he have named for second place on the list Dr. Leg of Cambridge, instead of the author of “The Jew of Malta” (Marlowe). What has Dr. Eds of Oxford, whose name stands third in the Meres list, written that he should have been mentioned in the same connection with the author of “The White Devil” (Webster) or the author of that classic “The Conspiracy,” and “The Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron” (Chapman)? Why this commingling of such insignificant writers as Edward, Earl of Oxford, Lord Buckhurst, Drs. Lager and Leg, with the giant brotherhood? The fact is, so far as attesting the responsibility of anybody or anything, the Meres averments are as worthless as “a musty nut.” What was said of John Aubrey is also true of Francis Meres, “His brain was like a hasty pudding whose memory and judgment and fancy were all stirred together.” Yet this is the writer that many Shakespearean commentators confidently appeal to, in part, and whose testimony, in part, they, with equal unanimity impeach.

The slight mention of Shakespeare by the “judicious Webster,” as Hazlet calls him, comprehends no more than that Shakspere was one of the hack writers of the day: “detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance.” For mine own part I have ever truly cherished “my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman, the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson, the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker and Master Heywood.”

These words written by the third greatest of English tragic poets are very significant, for Webster wrote for the theatre to which Shakspere, the player and play-broker, belonged; yet industry is the only distinguishing mark in Shakspere which he must share with Dekker, and Heywood, hack writers for the stage. Dekker’s many plays attest his copious industry, when we remember that this writer spent three years in prison, and Heywood’s industry cannot be doubted for he claimed to have had a hand and main finger in two hundred twenty plays. Copious industry signifies to the reader the existence of an author not utterly unknown, it is true, but it fails to identify him as the author of the immortal plays. What shall we say then? Were the works called Shakespeare’s but little known? Shakspere’s biographers say that they were the talk of the town. If that is true, then the writer who was commended for industry was not regarded by Webster as the author of “Hamlet,” “Lear,” and “Macbeth,” for Shakespeare’s distinctive characteristics are not individualized from those of Dekker and Heywood, while those of Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are. In the last four named is perfect interlacement of personality with authorship, but not so in Shakespeare.

John Webster’s judgment of his fellow craftsman was just, “I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours.” Webster never conceals or misrepresents the truth by giving evasive, or equivocating, evidence. He reveals the judicial trait of his character in placing Chapman first among the poets then living, assuming that the name Shakespeare was used by printers and publishers, if not by writers, as an impersonal name, masking the name of a true poet. Sidney, Marlowe and Spencer had then descended to the tomb.

George Chapman’s name has not received due prominence in the modern hand-books of English literature, but he was a bright torch and numbered by his own generation, among the greatest of its poets. He, whom Webster calls the “Prince’s Sweet Homer” and “My Friend,” was not unduly honored by the “full and heightened style” which Webster makes characteristic of him. “Our Homer-Lucan,” as he was gracefully termed by Daniel, is a poet much admired by great men. Edmund Waller never could read Chapman’s Homer without a degree of transport. Barry is reputed to have said that when he went into the street after reading it, men seemed ten feet high; Coleridge declares Chapman’s version of the Odyssey to be as truly an original poem as the “Faerie Queene.” He also declares that Chapman in his moral heroic verse stands above Ben Jonson. “There is more dignity, more lustre, and equal strength.”

Translation was in those times a new force in literature. By the indomitable force and fire of genius Chapman has made Homer himself speak English by translating the genius, and by having chosen that which prefers the spirit to the letter. It is in his translation that the “Iliad” is best read as an English book. Out of it there comes a whiff of the breath of Homer. It is as massive and majestic as Homer himself would have written in the land of the virgin queen. “He has added,” says Swinburne, “a monument to the temple which contains the glories of his native language, the godlike images, and the costly relics of the past.” “The earnestness and passion,” says Charles Lamb, “which he has put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek zeal for the honor of his heroes is only paralleled by that fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry with which Milton, as if personating one of the zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat down to paint the acts of Samson against the uncircumcised.” It was the reflected Hellenic radiance of the grand old Chapman version to the lifted eyes of Keats flooded with the “light which never was on sea or shore.” This younger poet sang: