Greene, representing himself as Roberto after his mistress had deserted him, describes himself as sitting under a hedge as an outcast and bemoaning his fate.

"On the other side of the hedge sat one that heard his sorrow, who, getting over, came ... and saluted Roberto.... 'If you vouchsafe such simple comfort as my ability will yield, assure yourself that I will endeavour to do the best that ... may procure your profit ... the rather, for that I suppose you are a scholar; and pity it is men of learning should live in lack.' Roberto ... uttered his present grief, beseeching his advice how he might be employed. 'Why, easily,' quoth he, 'and greatly to your benefit; for men of my profession get by scholars their whole living.' 'What is your profession?' said Roberto. 'Truly, sir,' said he, 'I am a player.' 'A player!' quoth Roberto; 'I took you rather for a gentleman of great living; for if by outward habit men should be censured, I tell you you would be taken for a substantial man.' 'So am I, where I dwell,' quoth the player, 'reputed able at my proper cost to build a windmill. What though the world once went hard with me, when I was fain to carry my fardel a foot-back? Tempora mutantur—I know you know the meaning of it better than I, but I thus construe it—It is otherwise now; for my very share in playing apparel will not be sold for two hundred pounds.' 'Truly,' said Roberto, 'it is strange that you should so prosper in that vain practice, for that it seems to me your voice is nothing gracious.' 'Nay, then,' said the player, 'I mislike your judgement; why, I am as famous for Delphrygus and The King of Fairies as ever was any of my time; The Twelve Labours of Hercules have I thundered on the stage, and played three scenes of the Devil in The Highway to Heaven.' 'Have ye so?' said Roberto; 'then I pray you pardon me.' 'Nay, more,' quoth the player, 'I can serve to make a pretty speech, for I was a country author, passing at a moral; for it was I that penned The Moral of Man's Wit, The Dialogue of Dives, and for seven years' space was absolute interpreter of the puppets. But now my almanac is out of date:

'"The people make no estimation Of morals, teaching education——"

Was this not pretty for a rhyme extempore? If ye will ye shall have more.' 'Nay, it is enough,' said Roberto; 'but how mean ye to use me?' 'Why, sir, in making plays,' said the other, 'for which you shall be well paid, if you will take the pains.' Roberto, perceiving no remedy, thought it best to respect his present necessity, (and,) to try his wit, went with him willingly; who lodged him at the town's end in a house of retail ... there by conversing with bad company, he grew a malo in pegus, falling from one vice to another.... But Roberto, now famoused for an arch-playmaking poet, his purse, like the sea, sometime swelled, anon, like the same sea, fell to a low ebb; yet seldom he wanted, his labours were so well esteemed. Marry this rule he kept, whatever he fingered beforehand, was the certain means to unbind a bargain; and being asked why he so slightly dealt with them that did him good, 'It becomes me,' saith he, 'to be contrary to the world. For commonly when vulgar men receive earnest, they do perform. When I am paid anything aforehand, I break my promise.'"

The player described here is the same person indicated by Nashe three years before in his Menaphon "Address." Both are represented as being famous for their performance of Delphrygus and The King of the Fairies, but the events narrated connecting Greene with Alleyn, and the opulent condition of the latter, refer to a more recent stage of Greene's and Alleyn's affairs than Nashe's reference. Both Nashe's and Greene's descriptions point to a company of players that between 1589-91 had won a leading place in London theatrical affairs; that performed at the Theatre; that played Hamlet, The Taming of a Shrew, Edward III., and Fair Em: the leader of which personally owned theatrical properties valued at two hundred pounds, and who was regarded by them as an actor of unusual ability. Seven years before 1592 this company performed mostly in the provinces, carrying their "fardels on their backs." It is very apparent then that it is Alleyn's old and new companies, the Worcester-Admiral-Strange development, to which the allusions refer.

While the "idiot art-masters" indicated by Nashe and Greene as those who chose, purchased, and reconstructed the plays used by Strange's company, included others beside Shakespeare in their satirical intention, this phase of their attacks upon the Theatre and its leading figures became centred upon Shakespeare as his importance in the conduct of its business increased, and his dramatic ability developed.

It is now generally agreed by critics that Shakespeare cannot have left Stratford for London before 1585, and probably not before 1586-87, and the likelihood has been shown that he then entered the service of James Burbage as a hired servant, or servitor, for a term of years. When Henslowe, in 1598, bound Richard Alleyn as a hired servant, he did so for a period of two years, which, we may judge, was then the customary term of such service. Assuming that Shakespeare bound himself to Burbage in 1586-87, his term of service would have expired in 1588-89. Though we possess no evidence that Shakespeare had produced any original plays at this time, the strictures of Nashe and Greene make it apparent that he had by then attained to the position of what might be called dramatic critic for the Burbage interests. In this capacity he helped to choose the plays purchased by his employers for the use of the companies in which they were interested.

Greene had come at odds with theatrical managers several years before Shakespeare could have attained to the position of reader for the Burbages. Even some of Greene's earlier reflections, however, seem to be directed against the management of the Shoreditch Theatre. In attacking theatrical managers he writes in, what he calls, "mystical speeches," and transfigures the persons he attacks under fictitious characters and names. In his Planetomachia, published in 1585, he caricatures one actor-manager under the name of Valdracko, who is an actor in Venus' Tragedy, one of the tales of the book. Valdracko is described as an old and experienced actor, "stricken in age, melancholick, ruling after the crabbed forwardness of his doting will, impartial, for he loved none but himself, politic because experienced, familiar with none except for his profit, skillful in dissembling, trusting no one, silent, covetous, counting all things honest that were profitable." This characterisation cannot possibly have referred to Shakespeare in the year 1585. When it is noticed, however, that nearly all of Greene's later attacks are directed against the Theatre and its fellows, it is probable that the stubborn, wilful, and aged James Burbage is also here scurrilously indicated. In writing of London and the actors in his "dark speeches," Greene refers to London as Rome and to the Shoreditch Theatre as the "theatre in Rome." In his Penelope's Web he writes: "They which smiled at the theatre in Rome might as soon scoff at the rudeness of the scene as give a plaudite at the perfection of the acting." While it is Burbage's Theatre that is here referred to, it is evident that his quarrel was not now with the actors—whom both he and Nashe praise in their quality—but with the plays, their authors, and the theatrical managers who patronised them.

It is evident that Shakespeare had something to do with the acceptance by the Burbages of plays by Marlowe and Kyd, and that Greene believed his own lack of patronage by the companies playing at the Theatre was due to Shakespeare's adverse influence. Knowing Shakespeare to be the son of a Stratford butcher, educated at a grammar school and recently a bonded servitor to Burbage, this "Master of Arts in Cambridge" questions the literary and dramatic judgment of the grammar school youth, and late serving-man, and employs his fellow university scholar, Thomas Nashe, to ridicule him and his critical pretensions.

Nashe returned to England in 1589, after a two years' absence upon the Continent, and cannot have acquired at first hand the knowledge he shows of dramatic affairs in London during the preceding year. It is evident that this knowledge was gained from Greene for that purpose. Mr. Fleay has demonstrated that Nashe, in his preface to Greene's Menaphon, alludes satirically to Thomas Kyd as the author of The Taming of a Shrew, and of the old Hamlet. Both of these plays were owned by Lord Strange's (now the Lord Chamberlain's) company in 1594, when, as I have suggested, they had recently taken them over from Pembroke's company, which was undoubtedly a Burbage company—using some of the Burbage properties and plays while under Shakespeare's management in 1591-94. Being Burbage properties, these plays were acted by Lord Strange's company between 1589 and 1591. Besides satirically indicating these plays and their author, Nashe goes on to criticise the "idiot art-masters" who make choice of such plays for the actors. "This affectation of actors and audience," writes Nashe—meaning this suiting of plays to the crude taste of the actors and the cruder taste of the public—"is all traceable to their idiot art-masters that intrude themselves as the alchemists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse, indeed it may be the ingrafted overflow of some killcow conceit, etc. Among this kind of men that repose eternity in the mouth of a player I can but engross some deep read school men or grammarians, who have no more learning in their skull than will serve to take up a commodity, nor art in their brains than was nourished in a serving man's idleness, will take upon them to be ironical censurers of all when God and poetry doth know they are the simplest of all."

This attack of Nashe's upon Shakespeare was recognised by all of the scholastic clique, and certain of its phrases are re-echoed in later attacks upon him by other scholars for several years afterwards; in fact, Nashe's diatribe proved to be a cue for Shakespeare's future detractors. In the expression "killcow," Nashe alludes to Shakespeare's father's trade. A few years later—1594—Chapman refers to Shakespeare as "judgements butcher," and later still, in 1598, Florio in his dedication of the Worlde of Wordes, and, in 1600, Ben Jonson in Every Man out of his Humour, also refer satirically to the supposed fact that Shakespeare's father was a butcher. In 1593 Chapman, in attacking Shakespeare in the early Histriomastix, re-echoes the term "idiot art-master." The phrase "ingrafted overflow of a killcow conceit" refers to Shakespeare's additions to, or revisions of, plays owned by his company that were originally written by such scholars as Greene. "Deep read school men or grammarians" is a reference to Shakespeare's grammar school education. "No more learning than will serve to take up a commodity" refers to Shakespeare's business management of Burbage's affairs, and "a serving man's idleness" to his recently ended term of service with Burbage in that capacity.

It shall be shown that in later years when Chapman, Roydon, Florio, Marston, and Jonson attacked Shakespeare in published or acted plays that he invariably answers them in kind. We have only inferential evidence that he answered Greene's and Nashe's reflections at this time by writing a ballad against them. Ralph Sidley, in verses prefixed to Greene's Never Too Late, published in the following year (1590), defends Greene from the attack of a ballad or jig maker, whom he calls a clown.

"The more it works, the quicker is the wit; The more it writes, the better to be 'steemed. By labour ought men's wills and wits be deem'd, Though dreaming dunces do inveigh against it. But write thou on, though Momus sit and frown; A Carter's jig is fittest for a clown. Bonum quo communius eo melius."

At the end of Greene's Never Too Late in the host's tale a ballad maker and player is attacked under the name of Mullidor; he is described as follows: "He is said to be a fellow that was of honest parents, but very poor: and his person was as if he had been cast in AEsop's mould; his back like a lute, and his face like Thersites', his eyes broad and tawny, his hair harsh and curled like a horse-mane, his lips were of the largest size in folio.... The only good part that he had to grace his visage was his nose, and that was conqueror-like, as beaked as an eagle.... Into his great head (Nature) put little wit, that he knew rather his sheep by the number, for he was never no good arithmetician, and yet he was a proper scholar, and well seen in ditties."

When we discount the caricature and spiteful animus of this description it closely matches the presentments of Shakespeare given by the most authoritative portraits which have come down to us. His parents, as we know, were undoubtedly poor, otherwise he would not have been in London as a servitor to Burbage. His eyes are invariably shown as hazel in colour and widely set apart; his hair heavy, curled, and falling to his shoulders; his lips very full, his nose large and "beaked," and his brow, or "great head," of unusual height and breadth. It is apparent, then, that this is a spiteful and distorted, but recognisable, description of Shakespeare, who, I infer from many indications in his opponents' plays, wore his hair in a peculiar manner, was not very tall, and was also somewhat thin-legged. The Chandos portrait which shows his shoulders, suggests that they were slightly sloping and somewhat round rather than square. On the whole, a physical type not calculated to inspire fear in a bully. Greene, on the other hand, is described by Chettle as a handsome-faced and well-proportioned man, and we may judge of a rather swash-buckling deportment.

Robert Greene died in September 1592. Shortly afterwards Henry Chettle published Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, which was his last literary effort, and appended a farewell letter of Greene's addressed "To those gentlemen, his quandam acquaintances, that spend their time in making plays, R.G. wisheth a better exercise and wisdom to prevent his extremities." In this epistle, addressing Marlowe, Nashe, and Peele, as well as two others at whose identity we can only guess, he says:

"If wofull experience may move you, gentlemen, to beware, or unheard-of wretchedness intreat you to take heed, I doubt not but you will look backe with sorrow on your time past, and endevour with repentance to spend that which is to come. Wonder not (for with thee will I first beginne), thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene, who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, 'There is no God,' should now give glorie unto his greatnesse; for penetrating is his power, his hand lyes heavy upon me, he hath spoken unto me with a voyce of thunder, and I have felt he is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded that thou shouldest give no glory to the giver? Is it pestilent Machivilian policie that thou hast studied? O peevish follie! what are his rules but meere confused mockeries, able to extirpate in small time the generation of mankinde? for if sic volo, sic iubeo, holde in those that are able to command, and if it be lawfull fas et nefas, to doo any thing that is beneficiall, onely tyrants should possesse the earth, and they, striving to exceed in tiranny, should each to other be a slaughterman, till, the mightyest outliving all, one stroke were left for Death, that in one age mans life should end.... With thee I joyne young Juvenall, that byting satyrist, that lastly with mee together writ a comedie. Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words; inveigh against vaine men, for thou canst doo it, no man better, no man so well; thou hast a libertie to reproove all and name none; for one being spoken to, all are offended—none being blamed, no man is injured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage; tread on a worme, and it will turne; then blame not schollers who are vexed with sharpe and bitter lines, if they reproove thy too much liberty of reproofe.

"And thou no lesse deserving then the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour, driven, as myselfe, to extreame shifts, a little have I to say to thee; and, were it not an idolatrous oath, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so mean a stay. Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery yee bee not warned; for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppits, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I to whom they have been beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were yee in that case that I am now, be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you; and, beeing an absolute Johannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wittes to bee imployed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaynte them with your admyred inventions! I knowe the best husband of you all will never proove an usurer, and the kindest of them all will never proove a kinde nurse; yet, whilst you may, seeke you better maisters; for it is pitty men of such rare wits should bee subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.

"In this I might insert two more[24] that both have writte against these buckram gentlemen; but let their owne worke serve to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they persever to maintaine any more such peasants. For other new comers, I leave them to the mercie of those painted monsters, who, I doubt not, will drive the best-minded to despise them; for the rest, it skills not though they make a jeast at them...."

It is now accepted by critics that these allusions of Greene's were directed against Shakespeare, and that the line "Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde" refers to Shakespeare's revision of The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, a play in the original composition of which Greene evidently had some hand. It has not before been suggested, however, that this play was performed by the Earl of Pembroke's company, under Shakespeare's management, in 1592. It was evidently the publicity given Marlowe's and Shakespeare's revision by the stage revival of the play by Pembroke's company at this time that called forth Greene's attack. This brings us to the end of the year 1592 in outlining chronologically the evidences of the antagonism of the scholars to Shakespeare.

In June 1593 George Peele shows animus against Shakespeare by echoing Greene's phrases in the introduction to The Honour of the Garter. In these verses, in complimenting several noblemen and "gentlemen poets," such as Sidney, Spenser, Harrington, Fraunce, Campion, and others, he refers also to

"ordinary grooms, With trivial humours to pastime the world, That favour Pan and Phoebus both alike."

This appears to be a reflection of Greene's "rude groomes" of the previous September and a reference to Shakespeare's theatrical work and his Venus and Adonis, which, though only recently published, had no doubt been read in MS. form for some time before.

I shall now proceed to show that at the end of 1593, after Lord Pembroke's company had returned from their unprofitable provincial tour when they were compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges," George Chapman wrote a play satirising Shakespeare and the disastrous fortunes of this company. This play was revised by Marston and Chapman in 1599, under the title of Histriomastix, or The Player Whipt, as a counter-attack upon Shakespeare in order to revenge the satire which he, in conjunction with Dekker and Chettle, directed against Chapman and Marston in Troilus and Cressida, and in a play reconstructed from Troilus and Cressida by Dekker and Chettle, called Agamemnon, in 1598-99. This latter phase of the matter shall be dealt with when I come to a consideration of the literary warfare of the later period.

It has never before been suggested that George Chapman had any hand in the composition of Histriomastix, though Mr. Richard Simpson shows clearly that it was an old play roughly revised in the form in which it was acted in 1599. Mr. Simpson suggests that it might have been written by Peele, in its original form, owing to certain verbal resemblances between portions of it and Peele's dedication to his Honour of the Garter. He dates its original composition in about 1590, but in doing so had evidently forgotten that he had already written: "The early Chrisoganus (of this play) seems to be of the time when the Earl of Northumberland, Raleigh, and Harriot strove to set up an Academy in London, and the spirit of the play, and even its expressions, were quite in unison with Peele's dedication of his Honour of the Garter,1593." All literary and historical references to the academical efforts of the Earl of Northumberland, Harriot, and others point to the years 1591-93 as the time in which this attempt to establish an Academy was made. Chapman in his dedication of The Shadow of Night to Roydon, in 1594, refers to the movement as then of comparatively recent date. "But I stay this spleen when I remember, my good Matthew, how joyfully oftentimes you reported unto me that most ingenious Derby, deep-searching Northumberland, and skill-embracing Earl of Hunsdon had most profitably entertained learning in themselves to the vital warmth of freezing Science," etc. Peele's allusions to the movement in his dedication to the Honour of the Garter, which is dated 26th June 1593, are as follows:

"Renowned Lord, Northumberland's fair flower, The Muses' love, patron and favourite, That artisans and scholars dost embrace. And clothest Mathesis in rich ornaments, That admirable mathematic skill, Familiar with the stars and Zodiac, To whom the heaven lies open as her book; By whose directions undeceivable, Leaving our Schoolmen's vulgar trodden paths, And following the ancient reverent steps Of Trismegistus and Pythagoras, Through uncouth ways and unaccessible, Doth pass into the pleasant spacious fields Of divine science and philosophy," etc.

Shakespeare evidently reflects knowledge of this academical attempt and pokes fun at the scholars in his reference to "a little academie" in Love's Labour's Lost:

"Navarre shall be the wonder of the world Our Court shall be a little academie Still and contemplative in living art."

This play was originally written late in 1591, but was drastically revised late in 1594, or early in 1595, after Shakespeare had read Chapman's Hymns to the Shadow of Night; and again, in 1598. The reference to the Academy was evidently introduced at the time of its first revision.

Mr. Simpson recognises the fact that most of the Chrisoganus passages, especially those in the earlier portions of Histriomastix, pertain to the play in its original form. If the reader will take the trouble to read Chapman's Hymns to the Shadow of Night (1594), his poem to Thomas Harriot, and his Tears of Peace, and compare their mental attitude and verbal characteristics with the "Chrisoganus" and "Peace" passages of Histriomastix, Chapman's authorship of the latter will become apparent. The following parallels from four of Chapman's poems are convincing, and they can be extended indefinitely:

Histriomastix—

"Have always borne themselves in Godlike State With lofty foreheade higher than the stars."

De Guiana, Carmen Epicum—

"Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars."

Histriomastix—

"Consume whole groves and standing fields of corn In thy wild rage and make the proud earth groan."

The Shadow of Night—

"Convert the violent courses of thy floods, Remove whole fields of corn and highest woods."

Histriomastix—

"Whose glory which thy solid virtues won Shall honour Europe while there shines a sun."

Poem to Harriot—

"When thy true wisdom by thy learning won Shall honour learning while there shines a sun."

Chapman in several instances in this play echoes Greene's slurs against Shakespeare and, in the same manner as Peele in the Honour of the Garter, repeats the actual phrases and epithets used by Greene and Nashe.

Histriomastix—

"I scorn a scoffing fool about my throne— An artless idiot (that like AEsop's daw Plumes fairer feathered birds)."

These lines evince Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's phrase "idiot art-master," and of Greene's "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," and clearly pertain to the play in its earlier form (1593) when Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (published late in 1592) was still a new publication. In fact, it is not improbable that Nashe collaborated with Chapman in the early form of this play.

Again when Chapman writes the following lines:

Histriomastix—

"O age, when every Scriveners boy shall dippe Profaning quills into Thessalies spring; When every artist prentice that hath read The pleasant pantry of conceipts shall dare To write as confident as Hercules; When every ballad-monger boldly writes," etc.

It is apparent that he again echoes Nashe's and Greene's attacks upon Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, all of which, however, he appears to have thought (as have later critics) were directed against Shakespeare.

The lines quoted above evidently reflect Chapman's knowledge of Nashe's preface to Greene's Menaphon in the expressions "Scriveners boy," "artist prentice," and "ballad-monger," while the words

"shall dippe Profaning quills into Thessalies spring"

refer to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and the lines from Ovid with which he heads that poem.

In 1593 when, as I have indicated, Histriomastix in its early form was written, Shakespeare had published Venus and Adonis and dedicated it to the Earl of Southampton. In the composition of this poem Shakespeare undoubtedly worked from Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. He prefixed to the poem two lines from Ovid's fifteenth Elegy:

"Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua";

which are rendered in Marlowe's translation:

"Let base conceited wits admire vile things, Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses springs."

In The Shadow of Night, published in the following year, Chapman again resents the fact that one of Shakespeare's "small Latin and less Greek" should invade the classical preserves of the scholars for his poetical and dramatic subjects:

"Then you that exercise the virgin court Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort, Making her drunken with Gorgonean dews, And therewith all your ecstasies infuse, That she may reach the topless starry brows Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring (As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind, And in her force, the forces of the mind: An argument to ravish and refine An earthly soul and make it more devine. Sing then with all, her palace brightness bright, The dazzle-sun perfection of her light; Circling her face with glories, sing the walks, Where in her heavenly magic mood she stalks, Her arbours, thickets, and her wondrous game, (A huntress being never match'd in fame,) Presume not then ye flesh-confounded souls, That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls, Which sever mounting spirits from the senses, To look into this deep fount for thy pretenses."

In these lines, besides indicating Shakespeare's recent Ovidian excursion in Venus and Adonis by his reference to "Castalian bowls," Chapman shows knowledge of Shakespeare's intention, in the composition of Love's Labour's Lost, of exhibiting Queen Elizabeth as a huntress. Chapman's Cynthia of The Shadow of Night is plainly a rhapsodised idealisation of the Queen. Later on I shall elaborate the fact that Love's Labour's Lost was written late in 1591, or early in 1592, as a reflection of the Queen's progress to Cowdray House, the home of the Earl of Southampton's maternal grandfather, Viscount Montague, and that the shooting of deer by the Princess and her ladies fancifully records phases of the entertainments arranged for the Queen during her visit.

Assuming, then, from the foregoing evidence and inferences that Chapman composed the early Histriomastix in 1593, let us examine the play further in order to trace its fuller application to Shakespeare and his affairs in that year.

Though Histriomastix was revised as an attack upon Shakespeare in 1599 by Chapman and Marston, who had commenced to collaborate in dramatic work in the previous year, its original plot and action remain practically unaltered. In its revision its early anti-Shakespearean intention was merely amplified and brought up to date by a few topical allusions, fitting circumstances in the lives of the persons caricatured, pertaining to the later period. The substitution of Troilus and Cressida for The Prodigal Child, as the play within the play presented by Sir Oliver Owlet's company, is also due to the period of revision. All of the passages of the play which are suggestive of the period of revision are palpably in the style of John Marston.

Among the persons of the early play is Chrisoganus, a scholar and mathematician, who has set up an academy to expound the seven liberal Sciences: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, all of which are introduced as persons in the first act. Chrisoganus was undoubtedly intended for Chapman's friend Thomas Harriot, the mathematician and astronomer, who was so prominent in the academical movement of 1592-93. The name Chrisoganus is evidently a reflection of Harriot's Ephemeris Chrisometra, a MS. copy of which is preserved in Zion College. Chapman's poem to Harriot, prefixed to his Achilles Shield (1599), expresses many of the same ideas voiced in Histriomastix and in much the same language, and indicates Chapman's collaboration with Marston in the revision of the play in that year.

In the early Histriomastix Chapman represents himself in the character of Peace. When the utterances of Peace are compared with certain of Chapman's poems, such as his Euthymia Raptus, or The Tears of Peace (1609), his poem to Harriot (1598), The Shadow of Night (1594), and Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595), in all of which he breaks away from his subject-matter at intervals to extol his own virtues and bewail his poverty and his neglect by patrons, it becomes evident that he transfigures himself in Histriomastix as Peace; which character acts as a chorus to, or running commentary on, the action of the play.

The whole spirit and purpose of this play is reproduced in The Tears of Peace, which is a dialogue between Peace and an interlocutor, who discuss at great length exactly the same ideas and subjects, dramatically treated, in Histriomastix, i.e. the neglect of learning and the learned, and "the pursuit of wealth, glory, greatness, pleasure, and fashion" by "plebian and lord alike," as well as the unaccountable success of an ignorant playwright who writes plays on any subject that comes into his head:

"And how they trot out in their lines the ring With idly iterating oft one thing, A new fought combat, an affair at sea, A marriage or progress or a plea. No news but fits them as if made for them, Though it be forged but of a woman's dream."

The plays of no other dramatist of that period match the description of the subjects of the plays given here. The "progress," mentioned by Chapman, is undoubtedly a reference to Love's Labour's Lost; "A marriage," Midsummer Night's Dream; "a plea," The Merchant of Venice; "A new fought combat," Henry V.—as a reflection of the military services of Southampton and Essex in Ireland in 1599; "an affair at sea," Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, etc.

In the second scene of Histriomastix, to Peace, the Arts, and Chrisoganus, come Mavortius and a group of his friends representing the nobility whom the academicians endeavour to win to their attendance and support. Mavortius and his followers refuse to cultivate Chrisoganus and the Arts, preferring a life of dalliance and pleasure, and to patronise plays and players instead. Other characters are introduced representing the Law, the Army, and Merchandise, who also neglect the Arts and live for pastime and sport.

The company of players patronised by Mavortius performs under the licence of Sir Oliver Owlet, and under the leadership of Posthaste, an erstwhile ballad maker, who writes plays for the company and who threatens to return to ballad making when playing proves unprofitable.

One of Mavortius' followers, Landulpho, an Italian lord, criticises the play presented by Posthaste and his fellows, and lauds the Italian drama.

A period of peace and prosperity, during which Chrisoganus and the Arts are neglected by the extravagant and pleasure-seeking lords and populace, is followed by war with an aftermath of poverty when Sir Oliver Owlet's company of players is disrupted, and the actors are compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges."

Enter CONSTABLE.]

HOST. Master Constable, ho! these players will not pay their shot.

POST. Faith, sir, war hath so pinch'd us we must pawn.

CONST. Alas, poor players! Hostess, what comes it to?

HOST. The Sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The hirelings—pence.

POST. What, sixpence an egg, and two and two an egg?

HOST. Faith, famine affords no more.

POST. Fellows, bring out the hamper. Chose somewhat out o'th stock.

Enter the Players.

What will you have this cloak to pawn? What think you its worth?

HOST. Some fewer groats.

ONIN. The pox is in this age; here's a brave world fellows!

POST. You may see what it is to laugh at the audience.

HOST. Well, it shall serve for a pawn.

The further development of this narrative will make it evident beyond any reasonable doubt that Posthaste, the poet-actor, is intended to caricature Shakespeare, and Sir Oliver Owlet's company and its misfortunes to reflect the Earl of Pembroke's company in similar circumstances in 1593; that Mavortius is the young Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis in 1593, and Lucrece in the year following; that Landulpho, the Italian lord, represents John Florio, who, in 1591, in his Second Fruites, criticised English historical drama and praised Italian plays, and who, at about the same time as teacher of languages entered into the pay and patronage of the Earl of Southampton, a connection which his odd and interesting personality enabled him to hold thereafterwards for several years. The part which Landulpho takes in the play was somewhat developed by Marston in 1599, at which time it shall later on be shown that the relations between Florio and Shakespeare had reached a heated stage. The play of The Prodigal Child, which was the play within the play acted by Posthaste and his fellows in the earlier form of Histriomastix, did not, in my opinion, represent the English original of the translated German play of The Prodigal Son which Mr. Simpson presents as the possible original, but was meant to indicate Shakespeare's Love's Labours Won, which was written late in the preceding year as a reflection of Southampton's intimacy with Florio, and the beginning of his affair with Mistress Davenant,[25] the Oxford tavern keeper's wife. The expression The Prodigal Child differs from that of The Prodigal Son in meaning, in that the word "Child" at that period meant a young nobleman. There is nothing whatever suggestive of Shakespeare's work in the translated German play, and it was merely the similarity of title that led Mr. Simpson to propose it as the play indicated. The play satirised by Chapman under the title of The Prodigal Child was undoubtedly written by Shakespeare, and it is no more likely that Chapman would use the actual name of the play at which he points than that he would use the actual names of the various persons or of the company of players whose actions and work he caricatures.

In 1594 George Chapman published Hymns to the Shadow of Night, and in 1595 his Ovid's Banquet of Sense and A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy, dedicating both publications to his friend Matthew Roydon. The dedication of these poems to Roydon was an afterthought; they were not primarily written with Roydon in mind.[26] It has been made evident that Chapman had first submitted these poems to the Earl of Southampton in an endeavour to win his patronage, and failing to do so dedicated them to Roydon and attacked Shakespeare in the dedications, where he refers to him in the capacity of reader to the Earl of Southampton, and imputes to his adverse influence his ill-success in his attempt. In the dedication to The Shadow of Night he writes:

"How then may a man stay his marvailing to see passion-driven men reading but to curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with affection to great men's fancies take upon them as killing censures as if they were judgements butchers or as if the life of truth lay tottering in their verdicts.

"Now what supererogation in wit this is to think skill so mightily pierced with their loves that she should prostitutely shew them her secrets when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar. Why then should our Intonsi Catones with their profit ravished gravity esteem her true favours such questionless vanities as with what part soever thereof they seem to be something delighted they queamishly commend it for a pretty toy. Good Lord how serious and eternal are their idolatrous platts for riches."

The expression "passion-driven," as applied by Chapman to Shakespeare in 1594, especially in a dedication written to Matthew Roydon,—who in this same year published Willobie his Avisa,—plainly refers to Shakespeare's relations at that time with Mistress Davenant, who was the original for the figure now known as the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, as well as for the Avisa of Willobie his Avisa. The words "reading but to curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with affection to great men's fancies," refer to Shakespeare in the capacity of reader to the Earl of Southampton. In an attack which John Florio makes upon Shakespeare in 1598, he also makes a similar reference to him in this capacity. The expression "judgements butcher," like Nashe's "killcow," indicates Shakespeare's father's trade of butcher.

It was the obvious parallel between Chapman's, "when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar," and Shakespeare's allusion, in Sonnet 86, to a poet who attempted to supplant him in Southampton's favour—

"He nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, As victors of my silence cannot boast; I was not sick of any fear from thence: But when your countenance filled up his line, Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine"—

that led Professor Minto to suggest Chapman as the rival poet of the Sonnets. In a former essay I have demonstrated the truth of Professor Minto's suggestion.

Chapman's Intonsi Catones, or "Unshorn Catos," refers to the peculiar manner in which Shakespeare wore his hair, which Greene describes as "harsh and curled like a horse-mane," and is also a reference to his provincial breeding and, presumed, lack of culture.

There are a number of indications in the few facts we possess of Shakespeare's life in 1594, and also in his own and contemporary publications, to warrant the assumption that the Earl of Southampton bestowed some unusual evidence of his bounty upon him in this year. If ever there was a period in his London career in which Shakespeare needed financial assistance more than at other times it was in this year. Lord Strange's company had now been acting under Henslowe's management for two years. The financial condition of both Burbage and Shakespeare must at this time have been at a low ebb. The plague had prevented Pembroke's company playing in London for nearly a year, and we have seen that their attempts to play in the provinces had resulted in failure and loss. In about the middle of 1594, however, Lord Strange's players (now the Lord Chamberlain's men) return to Burbage and the Theatre, when Shakespeare becomes not only a member of the company, but, from the fact that his name is mentioned with that of Kempe and Richard Burbage in the Court records of the payment for performances in December 1594, it is evident that he was then also a leading sharer in the company.

In parting from Henslowe and reorganising under Burbage in 1594 it is apparent that the reorganisers of the Lord Chamberlain's men would need considerable capital if we may judge the financial affairs of this company by those of the Lord Admiral's company (subsequently Lord Nottingham's men) while under Henslowe's management. On 13th October 1599 Henslowe records in his Diary: "Received with the company of my Lord of Nottingham's men to this place, beinge the 13th of October 1599, and it doth appeare that I have received of the debte which they owe unto me three hundred fifty and eight pounds." This was only a partial payment of this company's debt, which evidently was considerably in excess of this amount. It is unlikely, then, that Lord Strange's company was free of debt to him at the end of their term under his management.

Shakespeare's earliest biographer, Nicholas Rowe, records, on the authority of Sir William Davenant, "that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." Whatever truth there may be as to the amount of money here mentioned, it is apparent that Southampton evidenced his bounty to Shakespeare in 1594 in some substantial manner, which quickly became noised abroad among the poets and writers who sought patronage. Several of these poets in approaching Southampton refer inferentially to his munificence to Shakespeare. In 1594 Barnabe Barnes writes:

"Vouchsafe right virtuous Lord with gracious eyes Those heavenly lamps which give the muses light To view my muse with your judicial sight," etc.

The words italicised evidently refer to Southampton's acceptance of Venus and Adonis in the preceding year. Later in 1594, Thomas Nashe dedicated The Life of Jack Wilton to Southampton, and in a dedicatory Sonnet to a poem preserved in the Rawlinson MS. in the Bodleian Library, entitled The Choice of Valentines, Nashe apologises for the salacious nature of the poem, and in an appended Sonnet evidently refers to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in the line italicised below:

"Thus hath my pen presumed to please my friend, Oh might'st thou likewise please Apollo's eye; No, honor brooks no such impietie, Yet Ovids Wanton Muse did not offend, He is the fountain whence my streams do flow, Forgive me if I speak as I were taught."

In 1595 Gervase Markham, in a Sonnet prefixed to his poem on Richard Grenville's fight in the Revenge, addresses Southampton as:

"Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill, Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen, Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men."

The line italicised not only refers to Shakespeare but gives evidence also of the assured standing among poets which he had now attained in unbiased judgments.

In addition to these evidences of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, we have the poet's own acknowledgment of the recent receipt of a valuable gift in the Lucrece dedication: "The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance."

In his Hymns to the Shadow of Night (1594) and its dedication, Chapman complains of his lack of patronage and refers to what he designates as Shakespeare's "idol atrous platts for riches."[27] In the body of the poem he writes:

"Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices, Wisdom conforms herself to all earth's guises, Good gifts are often given to men past good And noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood."

In view of the general knowledge of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, and of the anti-Shakespearean intention which I have demonstrated in Chapman's poem, it is apparent that these lines refer to the nobleman's gift as well as to the intimacy between the peer and the player at this period.

In this same year (1594) the scholars devised a plan to disrupt the intimacy between Shakespeare and Southampton by producing and publishing a scandalous poem satirising their relations, entitled Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest maid and a chaste and constant wife. In this poem Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is represented as "Henry Willobie a young man and a scholar of very good hope," while Shakespeare is indicated as "W.S.," an "old actor." "W.S." is depicted as aiding and abetting Henry Willobie in a love affair with Avisa, the wife of an Oxford tavern keeper who conducts a tavern described as follows:

"See yonder house where hangs the badge Of England's saint when captains cry Victorious land to conquering rage."

In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long before had tryed the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered of the like infection." Willobie his Avisa in some measure reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authorship as well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem.

In 1595 George Chapman published his Ovid's Banquet of Sense and his A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy, in both of which poems, as well as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare. Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as definitely establishing the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to Shakespeare as well as his identity as the rival poet of the Sonnets.[28]

Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in 1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and literary prestige.

The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friendship and patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.

Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two years before that date.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1641, by John Tucker Murray.]

[Footnote 21: In 1594 Cuthbert Burbie published a play entitled The Cobbler's Prophecy, the authorship of which is ascribed to "R. Wilson" on the title-page. The textual resemblances between this play, The Pedlar's Prophecy, The Three Ladies of London, and The Three Lords and Three Ladies, and certain parallels between the two latter and Fair Em, all of which plays were published anonymously, led Mr. Fleay to credit all of them to Wilson, in which—excluding Fair Em—he was probably correct. All of these plays, with the exception of The Pedlar's Prophecy, were either Burbage's or Admiral's properties. The Three Lords and Three Ladies was published for Richard Jones in 1590, and The Cobblers Prophecy for Cuthbert Burbie in 1594. All plays published for Richard Jones were formerly old Admiral's properties, and nearly all the early plays published for Cuthbert Burbie old Burbage properties. Fair Em, while not published until 1631, records on the title-page that it was acted by Lord Strange's company. The Pedlar's Prophecy was, however, published by Thomas Creede, all of whose publications Mr. Fleay has found were old Queen's properties. Admitting, then, that all of these plays were written by Robert Wilson, the latter play must have been written by him for the Queen's company later than 1582-83, when he left Leicester's company. It appears probable also that the earlier plays—The Three Ladies and The Cobbler's Prophecy—were written for Leicester's company before that date, and retained by Burbage when he severed his connection with Leicester's men, or else, that they were retained by Leicester's men as company properties and brought to Strange's men in 1588-89 by Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, when their old company disbanded. It is evident, then, The Three Lords and Three Ladies, which Mr. Fleay admits is merely an amplification of the old play of The Three Ladies, which he dates as being first published in 1584, was a revision made when all these plays became Strange's properties, and that the scriptural parallels between The Three Lords and Three Ladies, The Three Ladies, and Fair Em, which are quite absent in The Pedlar's Prophecy—the only one of these plays ascribed in the publication itself to Wilson—are due to the revisionary efforts of the "theological poet" referred to by Greene as doing such work for Strange's company, and as having had a hand in Fair Em, which was acted in about 1590, in which year The Three Lords and Three Ladies, which shows similar scriptural characteristics, was published. From a time reference in the earlier form of this play—The Three Ladies—in the first scene, "not much more than twenty-six years, it was in Queen Mary's time," Mr. Fleay arbitrarily dates from the last year of Mary's reign, and concludes that it may have been acted by the Queen's company in 1584. He admits, however, that it does not appear in the list of the Queen's men's plays for this year, and later on infers from other evidence that the allusion to twenty-six years from Queen Mary's time probably referred to the first date of publication, which is unknown, but which he places, tentatively, in 1584. "That it was played by the Queen's men," he writes, "is shown under the next play,—The Three Lords and Three Ladies,—which is an amplification of the preceding play performed shortly after Tarleton's death in about 1588." Mr. Fleay writes further: "If I rightly understand the allusions, Tarleton acted in Wit and Will in 1567-68. The allusion to Tarleton's picture shows that Tarleton's Jests, in which his picture appears, had already been published. The statement that Simplicity (probably acted by Wilson himself), Wit, and Will had acted with Tarleton, proves that the present play was acted by the Queen's men."

In arguing to place Robert Wilson as a member of Strange's company in 1588-89, Mr. Fleay borrows both premises and inference from the facts to support his theory. He is no doubt right in dating the original composition of The Three Ladies of London before 1584, and probably also in attributing all of these plays to Wilson, but, seeing that they were all Burbage properties in 1589-90, is it not evident that The Three Ladies of London was an old Leicester play produced by Wilson before 1582-83, when he and Burbage left that company, and either that Burbage then retained possession of it, or, that it was brought to Strange's men by Pope, Kempe, and Bryan in 1589? Mr. Fleay admits that The Three Lords and Three Ladies is merely an amplification of The Three Ladies made after Tarleton's death, which occurred in 1588. It seems apparent, then, that the scriptural phraseology noticeable in The Three Ladies, The Three Lords and Three Ladies, and Fair Em, which led Mr. Fleay to impute the last to Wilson's pen, and also to connect him as a writer and an actor with Lord Strange's company in 1589-90, is the work of the "theological poet" indicated by Greene and Nashe as having had a hand in Fair Em in 1589. It is also evident that the actors who took the parts of Simplicity, Wit, and Will,—in The Three Lords and Three Ladies,—who had formerly acted with Tarleton, were Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, Strange's men, who were all formerly Leicester's men. It is much more likely that these old members of Leicester's company, who in Tarleton's time would have been juniors in the company, would recall and boast of their old connection, than that his late associates in the Queen's company would do so within a year or two of his death.]

[Footnote 22: Bentley was a Queen's player in 1584, and probably came from Sussex's company to the Queen's upon the organisation of that company in 1583.]

[Footnote 23: This letter and the verses are printed in Henslowe's Papers, p. 32, W.W. Greg, 1907, and in the works of several earlier editors.]

[Footnote 24: "The two more" here indicated by Greene are, I believe, Lodge and Matthew Roydon, both of whom are mentioned by Nashe in his address "To the Gentlemen of the two Universities" prefixed to Greene's Menaphon. I have elsewhere shown that Roydon was a prolific ballad writer who invariably wrote anonymously, or under pen names, and have made evident his authorship of Willobie his Avisa, as well as its anti-Shakespearean intention. Roydon also wrote plays as well as ballads, and was possibly one of the "theological poets" referred to by Greene in the introduction to his Farewell to Folly, who, he intimates, were averse "for their calling and gravity" to have their names appear as the authors of ballads or plays, and so secured "some other batillus to set their names to their verses." Roydon's affected anonymity is referred to by several other contemporary writers. Robert Arnim writes of him as "a light that shines not in the world as it is wished, but yet the worth of his lustre is known." Roydon was a curate of the Established Church. Shakespeare's lack of respect for Church of England curates, which is several times exhibited in his plays, was, no doubt, due in some degree to his dislike of Roydon.]

[Footnote 25: Since the publication of Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets, in 1913, I have learned that John Davenant was married twice. Roydon's Willobie his Avisa refers to his first wife, who was Anne Birde, daughter of Mayor William Birde of Bristol, whom he married before July 1592. I have also found that his second wife was Jane Shepherd of Durham. This matter will be fully elucidated in a forthcoming publication.]

[Footnote 26: Shakespeare and the Rival Poet, 1902.]

[Footnote 27: A probable allusion to his Lucrece dedication.]

[Footnote 28: Shakespeare and the Rival Poet, John Lane, London, 1903.]



CHAPTER VI

THE POLITICAL PURPOSE OF KING JOHN

1591-1592

The three parts of Henry VI. and their originals are of interest to Shakespearean students as marking the beginning of a phase of English historical drama, afterwards developed by Shakespeare, Kyd, Marlowe, and others. They owed their origin to the demand of the theatres for material with which to cater to the ebullient national spirit aroused by the long-threatened danger of a Spanish invasion, and its happy issue in the destruction of the great Armada, in 1588. They were originally produced between 1589 and 1591, and evidently for the Queen's players. The theatrical managers having found them a profitable investment, encouraged the continued production of historical plays. Peele, who is usually supposed to have been the author of The First Part of Henry VI., soon after wrote a play upon the reign of Edward I.; Marlowe appropriating Edward III. and later on Edward II.; and Shakespeare King John in 1591 and Richard II. in 1592-93.

Shakespeare, before composing Richard II.,—in the composition of which he was evidently guided by the previous production of Marlowe's Edward II.,—tried his "prentice hand" on King John. Both this play and the older play of The Troublesome Raigne of King John (upon which it is based, and which, in fact, it practically recasts) owe their origin to the same influences as the other historical plays mentioned. The Troublesome Raigne of King John was composed for the Queen's company at, or near to, the date of the Spanish Armada, and at a period when religious animosities were acute. Its anti-Catholic spirit is very aggressive. We have good evidence, in the manner in which Shakespeare, on recasting the old play, toned down or eliminated this spirit, that whatever dogmatic latitude he allowed himself in religion, his social and religious sympathies at this period were Catholic rather than Protestant. He was, withal, in common with a large proportion, and probably a majority, of his compatriots at that time, an English, as distinguished from a Roman, Catholic, and like them, though he outwardly acquiesced in the established religion, tacitly favoured the old Church in spiritual matters, while resenting its political activities.

Socially and politically, Shakespeare was essentially conservative. He looked naturally unto the rock whence he was hewn and to the hole of the pit whence he was digged. With a deep and abiding pride of race, linking him spiritually with the historic past of his people, he was inclined to look askance at the subverting spirit of Puritanism, which was now beginning to give Merrie England food for serious thought. His temperamental bias against Puritanism was accentuated by the openly avowed hostility of the Puritans to his chosen profession. Though born of the people, Shakespeare's social ideals were strongly aristocratic, and, while possessing, in an unusual degree that unerring knowledge of human nature in all classes and conditions of men, and broad tolerance of human foibles and weaknesses, attainable only by spiritual sympathy, in the political wisdom of democracy as it could then be conceived he had little confidence.

We have good evidence that Shakespeare's father was a Catholic, and it is more than likely that Shakespeare's sympathies were Catholic. His most intimate affiliations were Catholic. Southampton's family, the Wriothesleys, and his mother's family, the Browns, were adherents of the old faith, and though Southampton, in later life, turned to Protestantism he was Catholic during the early years of his intimacy with Shakespeare. For the clergy of the Established Church Shakespeare had little respect; he probably regarded the majority of them as trimmers and time-servers. He always makes his curates ridiculous; this, however, was probably due to his hostility to Roydon, whom he caricatures. On the other hand, his priests and friars, while erring and human, are always dignified and reverend figures. There is, however, no indecision in his attitude towards Rome's political pretensions. The most uncompromising Protestant of the time sounds no more defiant national note than he.

In King John we have an ingenuous revelation of Shakespeare's outlook on life while he was still comparatively young, and within a few years of his advent in London. He was yet unacquainted with the Earl of Southampton at the date of its composition, early in 1591.

In the character of Falconbridge, with which one instinctively feels its creator's sympathy, I am convinced that Shakespeare portrayed the personality of Sir John Perrot, an illegitimate son of Henry VIII., and half-brother to Queen Elizabeth. The immense physical proportions of both Perrot and Falconbridge; their characteristic and temperamental resemblances; their common illegitimate birth; the fact that both were trusted generals and relatives of their sovereigns; their similar bluff and masterful manner; their freedom of speech; and the suggestive unison between important incidents in their lives, all exhibit a resemblance much too remarkable for mere coincidence.

In the development of certain of Shakespeare's characters we instinctively feel his sympathy with, or antipathy for, the type he represents. Like Thackeray in the case of Barry Lyndon, he paints in Falstaff a rascal so interesting that he leads us almost to condone his rascality; yet who can doubt in either instance the author's inherent antipathy to the basic character he portrays. On the other hand, in depicting Biron, Antonio, and Jacques, we feel a sympathetic touch. For no one of his numerous characters is his admiration so apparent and unreserved as for that of Falconbridge. With other characters, such as Biron, Antonio, Jacques, Hamlet, and Prospero in their successive stages, we apprehend a closer mental likeness to, and spiritual synthesis of, their creator; here, however, is no creature of the brain, but a flesh-and-blood man of action, taken bodily from life. An early date for the original composition of King John is manifest in the broad strokes of portraiture, and lack of introspective subtlety, with which this character is drawn.

Sir John Perrot was a natural son of Henry VIII. and Mary Berkley, afterwards wife of Thomas Perrot of Islington and Herrodston in Pembrokeshire. His resemblance to Henry VIII. was striking, although his physical proportions were still larger. Much as he resembled his father he more nearly approximated in type both temperamentally and physically to "Coeur-de-lion." Perrot lived about two hundred years too late for his own fame. Had he been born a couple of centuries earlier he might have lived in history as a paladin of romance. He was a fantastical recrudescence, of the most fanciful age of chivalry. He is reported to have possessed extraordinary strength, and in his youth to have been much addicted to brawling. At about the age of twenty he owed his introduction to Henry VIII. to a fight in which he became engaged with two of the Yeomen of the Guard who endeavoured to oust him from the palace grounds, and whom he worsted in the effort. The King appearing upon the scene, Perrot is reported to have proclaimed himself his son. Henry received him favourably and promised him preferment, but died soon afterwards. Edward VI., upon his accession, acknowledged his kinship and created him Knight of the Bath. He was a very skilful horseman and swordsman, and excelled in knightly exercises.

In 1551 he accompanied the Marquis of Southampton to France upon the mission of the latter to negotiate a marriage between Edward VI. and Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II. The French King was so well pleased with him that he offered to retain him in his service. While generous and brave to an unusual degree, Perrot was extremely hot-tempered and of an arbitrary disposition. He seems to have inherited all of his father's mental, moral, and physical attributes in an exaggerated form, and to have had an ever-present consciousness of his kingly lineage. Money flowed through his fingers like water; he was rarely out of debt, and was relieved in this respect by both Edward VI. and Elizabeth. Upon the accession of Queen Mary, Perrot, though a Protestant, continued in royal favour; his kinship outweighing his religious disadvantage. He was, however, never without enemies at Court, created largely by his high-handed behaviour. During Mary's reign he was accused of sheltering heretics in his house in Wales, and was, in consequence, committed for a while to the Fleet, but was soon released. He saw service in France under the Earl of Pembroke, being present at the capture of St. Quentin. Later on he had a violent disagreement with his old commander, owing to his refusal to assist the latter in persecuting Welsh Protestants. A life-enduring friendship was later established between them by Pembroke's magnanimity in rallying to his support at a crucial period in his career. When Protestantism, at a later period, gained the upper hand under Elizabeth, he was equally averse to the persecution of Catholics. Elizabeth upon her accession continued the favours shown him by her predecessors. He was selected as one of four gentlemen to carry the canopy of state at her Coronation, and was appointed Vice-Admiral of the seas about South Wales. In 1570 he was made President of Munster, where he performed his duties in an extremely strenuous manner. He used deputies only in clerical matters; where there was fighting to be done he was there in person, and usually in the thick of it. Much as he liked to command he never could resist being in the actual scrimmage. He challenged James Fitmaurice Fitzgerald, the rebel leader in Munster, to single combat, which the latter prudently refused; later on, Fitzgerald led him and a small body of men into an ambush where he was out-numbered ten to one; Perrot refused to surrender, and though he made great slaughter of his assailants, was saved only by the timely arrival of a small body of his own men, whom the rebels supposed to be the advance guard of a stronger force. He was as generous in victory as he was imprudent in action; having defeated and captured Fitzgerald, he forgave him and restored him to his property. Such actions on his part being criticised by the Council, Perrot, in dudgeon, resigned his command and returned to England in 1573. He was received favourably by Elizabeth, whose goodwill he still continued to keep in spite of his numerous enemies at Court. Retiring to his Welsh estates at this time, he told Burghley that he intended thereafter to lead a "countryman's life," and "to keep out of debt." Much of his time during the following ten years was spent in suppressing piracy on the seas in his capacity of Vice-Admiral and Warden of the Marches. In 1584 he was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, an office which he executed vigorously and effectively, but in the same dominating spirit and with the same impatience of control that had marked his earlier Irish career. Exasperated at the delays of the Council in agreeing to his plans, he even went to the length of addressing the English Parliament in a letter, which, however, was suppressed by Walsingham, who apprehended the resentment of Elizabeth at such an unwarranted appropriation of her prerogative.

While Perrot's physical proportions were much above the average he was an extremely graceful and handsome man. A German nobleman of the time, visiting Ireland, seeing Perrot at the opening of Parliament, declared that though he had travelled all Europe he had never seen any one comparable to him for his port and majesty of personage.

Perrot's arbitrary and dominating manner created constant friction in his Council and aroused the enmity of his coadjutors and subordinates. He challenged Sir Richard Bingham, President of Munster, to a duel, and came to actual blows in the council chamber with Sir Nicholas Bagenal. He aroused the deadly enmity of Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, who set many plots on foot to work his undoing. One Philip Williams, a former secretary of Perrot's, was set on by Loftus to make revelations reflecting on Perrot's loyalty, which gained such credence that they resulted in his recall to England in 1588. He left behind him, writes Sir Henry Wallop, "a memory of such hard usage and haughty demeanour amongst his associates as I think never any before him in this place hath done." After Perrot's return to England, Loftus continued his machinations against him. Informers of all kinds were forthcoming to accuse him. One Denis O'Roughan, an ex-priest, offered to prove that he was the bearer of a letter from Perrot to Philip of Spain, promising that if the latter would give him the Principality of Wales, he would make him Master of England and Ireland. While this evidence was palpably false, the excited condition of public feeling in regard to the Jesuit plots and the aggressive plans of Spain lent it credence. A year before, Sir William Stanley, previously quite unsuspected of disloyalty, had turned the fortress of Deventer over to the Spaniards, and the Armada, which had been in preparation for years, was expected daily on the English coasts. Perrot, while not yet placed under arrest, was treated coldly by the Court. His was not a temper that could stand such treatment uncomplainingly. Knowing that the Queen's ill-usage of him arose largely from the influence of Sir Christopher Hatton, he expressed himself somewhat freely regarding that gentleman, and in a manner that reflected upon the Queen. Hatton's hatred of Perrot was well founded, he having seduced Hatton's niece some years before. The unceasing plotting of Perrot's enemies and his own imprudence of speech led to his arrest early in 1591. After a short confinement in Burghley's house, he was removed to the Tower, where he remained for a year before he was brought to trial. At this period and while still under restraint at Burghley's house, I date the composition of Shakespeare's King John. He was tried for high treason in April 1592, being charged with using contemptuous words about the Queen, relieving known traitors and Romish priests, and also with treasonable correspondence with Philip of Spain and the Duke of Parma. All of the evidence against him, except that relating to the use of disrespectful expressions regarding the Queen, fell to the ground. He was found guilty on this one point and taken back to the Tower. Two months later—that is, on 26th June—he was brought up for judgment and condemned to death. "God's death," he exclaimed, on being led back to the Tower, "will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up as a sacrifice to the envy of his frisking adversary?" He died a natural death in the Tower in September 1592. It is probable that had he lived the Queen would have pardoned him. It was rumoured at the time that she intended to do so. While such an intention appears probable from the fact that after his death his son was restored to his estates, it is more likely that Perrot's death, while under the Queen's disfavour, softened her resentment toward his family. Perrot's son, Sir Thomas, who inherited his estates, had incurred the ill-will of Elizabeth some years before by his clandestine marriage to Dorothy Devereux, sister of the Earl of Essex. She vented her displeasure upon every one remotely concerned in this transaction. Essex, who was entirely innocent of any complicity in it, was frowned upon for a time, and Bishop Aylmer, under whose surreptitiously obtained licence the marriage ceremony was performed, was called before the Council. The Queen for years declined to receive Lady Perrot, and upon one occasion, when visiting the Earl of Essex, refused to remain in his house upon the arrival of his sister, and was pacified only when Lady Perrot removed to a distant neighbour's.

It thus appears that the rancour of Elizabeth towards Sir John Perrot, which led to his imprisonment in 1591 and his later prosecution, was intensified by the fact of his family connection with the Earl of Essex, who at this same period was deep in her disfavour owing to his own unauthorised marriage to Lady Sidney. We may then infer that Court circles were divided in their attitude towards Perrot, and that while Sir Christopher Hatton and his followers were antagonistic to him, that Essex and his faction were correspondingly sympathetic.

I am convinced that Shakespeare's first recast of The Troublesome Raigne of King John was made at about this period, at the instigation of a court of action friendly to Perrot and antagonistic to Hatton, with the intention of arousing sympathy for Perrot by presenting him inferentially in heroic colours in the character of Falconbridge. Whatever animosities his outspoken criticisms and arbitrary demeanour may have aroused, amongst the courtiers and politicians, it is likely that his romantic history, his personal bravery, and his interesting personality had made him a hero to the younger nobility and the masses. It is evident that the author of The Troublesome Raigne of King John had Perrot in mind in the composition of that play, which is usually dated by the text critics in about 1588-89. It is acknowledged that the old play is based almost entirely upon the second edition of Holinshed's Chronicles, which was published in 1587, and that the Falconbridge incident has no foundation in that source, it being transposed from a portion of Hall's Chronicles relating to French history of an earlier time. If the original author's intention had been to dramatise the reign or character of King John, why should he have transposed incidents and characters from French history in no way connected with John's reign, and also have made one of these characters practically the protagonist of the action? Bearing this fact in mind, in conjunction with the evident date of composition of the old play in or about 1588-89, at the time when Perrot was recalled from Ireland and was being accused of disloyalty by his political enemies, it appears evident that the author, or authors, of The Troublesome Raigne had Perrot's interests in mind in its composition, and that its intention and personal point were recognised by the public upon its presentation, and also that it was published and rewritten in 1591, at the time when Perrot was sent to the Tower, in order further to stir up sympathy for his cause by a still more palpable and heroic characterisation.

In recasting the old play in 1591 at the most crucial period of Perrot's troubles, Shakespeare—evidently cognizant of its original intention and of the interpretation placed upon it by the theatre-going public—still further enhanced the character of Falconbridge as the protagonist of the drama, while he minimised the character of King John and quite neglected to explain the reason for much of the plot and action, which is quite clear in the old play. The neglect of historical and dramatic values, and the absence of analytical characterisation shown by Shakespeare in this play when it is considered as a dramatisation of the reign of King John, has been noticed by many past critics, who have not suspected the possibility of an underlying intention in its production. Mr. Edward Rose, in his excellent essay upon Shakespeare as an adapter, writes:

"Shakespeare has no doubt kept so closely to the lines of the older play because it was a favorite with his audience and they had grown to accept its history as absolute fact; but one can hardly help thinking that, had he boldly thrown aside these trammels and taken John as his Hero, his great central figure; had he analyzed and built up before us the mass of power, craft, passion, and devilry which made up the worst of the Plantagenets; had he dramatized the grand scene of the signing of the Charter and shown vividly the gloom and horror which overhung the excommunicated land; had he painted John's last despairing struggles against rebels and invaders as he has given us the fiery end of Macbeth's life, we might have had another Macbeth, another Richard, who would by his terrible personality have welded the play together and carried us breathless through his scene of successive victory and defeat. That, by this means, something would be lost, 'tis true—Falconbridge, for example, would certainly be lesser," etc. etc.

While regretting Shakespeare's neglect of the great dramatic possibilities in the reign and the character of King John, Mr. Rose recognised Shakespeare's evident interest in the character of Falconbridge. He writes:

"In reconstructing the play the great want that struck Shakespeare seems to have been that of a strong central figure. He was attracted by the rough, powerful nature which he could see the Bastard must have been; almost like a modern dramatist writing up a part for a star actor, he introduced Falconbridge wherever it was possible, gave him the end of every act (except the third), and created from a rude and inconsistent sketch a character as strong as complete and as original as even he ever drew. Throughout a series of scenes not otherwise very closely connected, this wonderful real type of faulty combative, not ignoble manhood, is developed, a support and addition to the scenes in which he has least to say, a great power where he is prominent."

Had Mr. Rose endeavoured briefly to describe the character of Sir John Perrot, he could not have done so more aptly.

Shakespeare in recasting The Troublesome Raigne of King John did not endeavour to dramatise either the character or reign of that King, but purposely followed the story of the earlier dramatist, having the same personal point in view. The author of The Troublesome Raigne of King John intentionally subordinated or distorted the actual facts of history in order to match his dramatic characterisation to the personality of Perrot, and its action to well-known incidents of Perrot's career in France and England. A palpable instance of this is exhibited in Falconbridge's soliloquy in Scene i., when questioned by the King before the Court regarding his paternity. Here the old author reflects a story of Perrot's youth which his biographers state was frequently related by Perrot to his friends. Soon after the accession of Edward VI., Perrot having by his extravagance become deeply involved in debt purposely placed himself in the path of the King's daily walk and, hearing his footsteps and pretending not to know of his presence, indulged in a soliloquy complaining of his misfortunes and lamenting his lack of wisdom and bemoaning the nonage of his half-brother the King, who in endeavouring to help him would probably be overruled by the Lord Protector and the Lords of the Council. He also debated aloud with himself other means of retrieving his fortune, such as retiring from the Court into the country or betaking himself to the wars. His anonymous biographer of 1592 wrote:

"As he was thus sadly debating the Matter unto hymselfe, the Kinge came behynd hym, and overheard most of that which he sayd, who at length stepped before him, and asked him, How now Perrott (quoth the Kinge) what is the matter that you make this great Moane? To whom Sir John Perrott answered, And it lyke your Majestie, I did not thinck that your Highness had byn there. Yes, said the Kinge, we heard you well inough: And have you spent your Livinge in our Service, and is the Kinge so younge, and under Government, that he cannot give you any Thinge in Recompence of your Service? Spie out somewhat, and you shall see whether the Kinge hath not Power to bestow it on you. Then he most humbly thanked his Majestie and shortly after founde out a Concealment, which as soon as he sought, the Kinge bestowed it on hym, wherewith he paid the most part of his Debtes; and for always after he became a better Husband. This story Sir John Perrott would sometimes recounte unto his Frends, acknowledging it a greate Blessinge of God, that had given him Grace in Time to look into his decaying Estate."

Comparison of this biographical incident with the following passage from The Troublesome Raigne not only reveals the source of the dramatist's inspiration but also accounts for a scene that has appeared peculiar to many critics.

K. JOHN. Ask Philip whose son he is.

ESSEX. Philip, who was thy father?

PHILIP. Mass, my lord, and that's a question: and you had not taken some pains with her before, I should have desired you to ask my mother.

K. JOHN.. Say, who was thy father?

PHILIP. Faith, my lord, to answer you sure, he is my father that was nearest my mother when I was gotten; and him I think to be Sir Robert Falconbridge.

K. JOHN. Essex, for fashion's sake demand again: And so an end to this contention.

ROBERT. Was ever man thus wrong'd as Robert is?

ESSEX. Philip! Speak, I say; who was thy father?

K. JOHN. Young man, how now? what! art thou in a trance?

Q. ELINOR. Philip, awake! The man is in a dream.

PHILIP. Philippus, atavis edite Regibus. (Aside.) What say'st thou: Philip, sprung of ancient Kings? Quo me rapit tempestas? What wind of honour blows this fury forth, Or whence proceed these fumes of majesty? Methinks I hear a hollow echo sound, That Philip is the son unto a King: The whistling leaves upon the trembling trees Whistle in concert I am Richard's son; The bubbling murmur of the water's fall Records Philippus Regis filius; Birds in their flight make music with their wings, Filling the air with glory of my birth; Birds, bubbles, leaves and mountains, echo, all Ring in mine ears, that I am Richard's son. Fond man, ah, whither art thou carried? How are thy thoughts yrapt in Honour's heaven? Forgetful what thou art, and whence thou cam'st? Thy father's land cannot maintain these thoughts; These thoughts are far unfitting Falconbridge; And well they may; for why this mounting mind Doth soar too high to stoop to Falconbridge Why, how now? Knowest thou where thou art? And know'st thou who expects thine answer here? Wilt thou, upon a frantic madding vein, Go lose thy land, and say thyself base-born? No, keep thy land, though Richard were thy sire; Whate'er thou think'st say thou art Falconbridge.

K. JOHN. Speak, man! be sudden, who thy father was.

PHILIP. Please it your Majesty, Sir Robert ... Philip, that Falconbridge cleaves to thy jaws: (Aside) It will not out; I cannot for my life Say I am son unto a Falconbridge. Let land and living go! 'tis Honour's fire That makes me swear King Richard was my sire. Base to a King, adds title of more state, Than knight's begotten, though legitimate. Please it your Grace, I am King Richard's son.

While it is generally agreed by text critics that Shakespeare's King John was drastically revised in about 1596, the metrical tests and the scarcity of classical allusions denote its composition at about the same period as that of the original composition of Richard II.; and though the later time revision of both of these plays has no doubt replaced much of Shakespeare's earlier work in them with matter of a later time, an early date for their original composition is very evident. I therefore assign the original composition of King John to the early part of the year 1591, and believe, that in writing this play Shakespeare worked from a copy of The Troublesome Raigne of King John, and that he followed, and still further developed, the original intention of that play regarding the interests of Sir John Perrot. It is evident that King John was written at the time The Troublesome Raigne was published in 1591, and that the play was Burbage property when it was published. A play was not as a rule published until it had outrun its interest upon the stage, or had been replaced by a new play upon the same subject.

While records of Henslowe's affiliations with Lord Strange's and the Admiral's companies do not appear in his Diary until February 1592, when the Rose Theatre was ready for their occupancy, it is likely that their connection commenced in the previous year and that his affiliations with the Queen's company ended at the same time. The number of old plays formerly owned by the Queen's company that came into the hands of Strange's, the Admiral's, and Pembroke's men at this time were probably purchased from Henslowe, upon the reorganisation of companies in 1591-92, or else were brought to these companies as properties by Queen's men who joined them upon the disruption of this large and powerful company at this period. Gabriel Spencer, Humphrey Jeffes, and John Sinkler, whose names are mentioned in The True Tragedy of the Duke of York, were evidently old Queen's men, the former two joining Pembroke's men, and Sinkler, Strange's men at this time. The entry of their names as actors in this play was evidently made while it was a Queen's property and when the Queen's company acted under Henslowe's auspices at the Rose Theatre between 1587 and 1591. Both Jeffes and Spencer rejoined Henslowe upon the new reorganisation of companies in 1594, and continued to perform with him and the Lord Admiral's men as Pembroke's men until 1597, when they became Admiral's men. After Spencer was killed in a duel by Ben Jonson in 1598, his widow continued to be a protege or pensioner of Henslowe's for some years.

The generally accepted belief that the old Henry VI., The Contention, and The True Tragedie were—like The Troublesome Raigne of King John, The Seven Deadly Sins, and other plays owned by companies with which Burbage was connected—originally Queen's plays, is responsible for the otherwise unsupported assumption that Burbage was a member and the manager of the Queen's company for several years.

As the disruption of the old Queen's company and its reorganisation into a smaller company under the two Duttons, as well as the inception of Henslowe's connection with Strange's men, evidently took place some time between the Christmas season of 1590-91, when the Queen's company performed four times at Court and the Admiral-Strange company only once, and the Christmas season of 1591-92, when Strange's company performed six times and the Queen's only once, and then for the last time on record, it is evident that Pembroke's company was formed also in this year. It is not unlikely then that Shakespeare's recast of The Troublesome Raigne of King John into King John was made at the instigation of the Earl of Pembroke himself at the time of Perrot's arrest in 1591. As Pembroke's father was a lifelong friend of Perrot's it is extremely probable that he also would be his partisan and well-wisher.

In every poem or play written by Shakespeare from the time he made the acquaintance of the Earl of Southampton at the end of 1591, and even for some time after the accession of James I. in 1603, I find some reflection of his interest in that nobleman or in the fortunes of the Essex party with which he was affiliated. I find no reflection of this interest in King John nor in The Comedy of Errors, except in a few passages which palpably pertain to a period of revision in the former play. From this and other subjective evidence already advanced I date the composition of both of these plays in 1591, and in doing so conform to the chronological conclusions reached by authoritative text critics whose judgments have been formed altogether upon textual and stylistic grounds.

While nearly all writers upon the Elizabethan drama recognise the topical, political, or controversial nature of much of the dramatic representation of that age, it is usual to deny for Shakespeare's plays any such topical significance. This attitude of the critics is due largely to neglect or ignorance of contemporary history, and also to the lack of a proper understanding of the chronological order in which the plays were produced, and their consequent inability to synchronise the characters or action of the plays, with circumstances of Shakespeare's life, or with matters of contemporary interest, as well as to the masterly objective skill by which he disguised his intentions, in order to protect himself and his company from the stringent statutes then in force, prohibiting the presentation of matters concerning Church or State upon the stage.



CHAPTER VII

THE INCEPTION OF THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

1591-1594

A few months after the publication of Greene's A Groatsworth of Wit, Henry Chettle issued a book entitled Kinde Heartes Dreame, to which he prefaced an apology for publishing Greene's attack upon Shakespeare. He writes: "I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myselfe have seene his demeanour no lesse civill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approoves his art." When critically examined, these references to Shakespeare take on a somewhat greater biographical value than has usually been claimed for them. Agreeing with the assumption that Shakespeare left Stratford between 1586 and 1587,—that is, at between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-three years,—we are informed by these allusions, that by the time he had reached his twenty-eighth year he had attained such social recognition as to have enlisted in his behalf the active sympathies of "divers of worship,"—that is, men of assured social prestige and distinction,—whose protest against Greene's attack evidently induced Chettle's amends. Chettle's book was published in December 1592; just four months later, in April 1593, Venus and Adonis was licensed for publication, and shortly afterwards was issued with the well-known dedication to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. It is reasonable to assume that this poem and its dedication had been submitted in MS. to Southampton and held some time previous to the date of the application for licence to publish, and that his favour was well assured before the poem was finally let go to press. The few months intervening between Greene's attack and Chettle's apology, and the application for licence to publish, may then easily be bridged by the reading in MS. form of Venus and Adonis by Southampton's friends. It is likely also that Greene's public attack upon Shakespeare led this generous and high-spirited nobleman to acquiesce in the use of his name as sponsor for the publication. The nearness of these dates and incidents gives us good grounds for believing that the Earl of Southampton was included in the number referred to by Chettle as "divers of worship." In using the expression "the qualitie he professes," Chettle plainly referred to Shakespeare's profession as an actor-manager, and of his excellence in this respect bears his own record: "myselfe," he writes, "have seene his demeanour no lesse civill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes." Of Shakespeare's literary merits, however, he expresses no personal knowledge, but tells us that "divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approoves his art." Had Chettle referred to any of Shakespeare's known dramatic work he could have passed his own judgment, as in fact he does upon his civility as manager and his excellence as an actor. Having seen Shakespeare act he would also, no doubt, have heard his lines declaimed had our poet at that period produced upon the public boards any of his original dramas. The term "facetious grace" might well be applied to the manner and matter of Shakespeare's lighter comedies had any of them been publicly acted, but would be somewhat inapt if applied to the rather stilted staginess of his early historical work. Much argument has been advanced in various attempts to prove that Shakespeare produced Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Nights Dream previous to the year 1591-92, but no particle of evidence, either external or internal, has yet been advanced in support of these assumptions; much, however, has been advanced against them. If we may accept Shakespeare's own subscribed statement as evidence, and that evidence is truthful, Venus and Adonis was his first acknowledged original literary effort. In the dedication to Southampton he distinctly names it "the first heir of my invention." It is probable, then, that the "facetious grace" in writing, of which "divers of worship" had reported, referred to this poem, which had been held then for several months (as were his Sonnets for years) in MS. "among his private friends."

At the time that Chettle published his Kinde Heartes Dreame Shakespeare had already produced The Comedy of Errors and King John, and had evidently had a hand with Marlowe in the revision of The True Tragedie of the Duke of York. It is unlikely, however, that Chettle had witnessed a performance of The Comedy of Errors, which was produced primarily for private presentation. The True Tragedie of the Duke of York and The Troublesome Raigne of King John were both old plays by other hands, and it was for publishing Greene's attack upon Shakespeare for his share in the revision of the former, that Chettle now apologised. He would therefore not regard his revision of The Troublesome Raigne, if he knew of it, as original work. It is evident, then, Shakespeare's "facetious grace in writing," of which Chettle had heard, referred either to Venus and Adonis, or The Comedy of Errors, or both, neither of which were known to the public at this time.

Friendship may perhaps be too strong a term to apply to the relations that subsisted at this date between Southampton and Shakespeare, but we have good proof in Chettle's references to him late in 1592, in the dedication of Venus and Adonis in 1593, and of Lucrece in 1594, as well as the first book of Sonnets,—which I shall later show belongs to the earlier period of their connection,—that the acquaintance between these two men, at whatever period it may have commenced, was at least in being towards the end of the year 1592. A brief outline and examination of the recorded incidents of Southampton's life in these early years may throw some new light upon the earliest stage of this acquaintance, especially when those incidents and conditions are considered correlatively with the spirit and intention of the poems which Shakespeare wrote for him, and dedicated to him a little later.

Thomas Wriothesley, second Earl of Southampton, and father of Shakespeare's patron, died on 4th October 1581. Henry, his only surviving son, thus became Earl of Southampton before he had attained his eighth birthday, and consequently became, and remained until his majority, a ward of the Crown. The Court of Chancery was at that period a much simpler institution than it is to-day, and Lord Burghley seems personally to have exercised the chief functions of that Court in its relation to wards in Chancery, and also to have monopolised its privileges. We may infer that this was a position by no means distasteful to that prudent minister's provident and nepotic spirit. Burghley was essentially of that type of statesmen who are better contented with actual power, and its accruing profits, than the appearance of power and the glory of its trappings. Leicester, Raleigh, and Essex might, in turn, pose their day as they willed upon the political stage so long as they confined themselves to subordinate or ornamental capacities; but whenever they attempted seriously to encroach upon the reins of power, he set himself to circumvent them with a patience and finesse that invariably wrought their undoing.

In this system of politics he had an apt pupil in his son, Sir Robert Cecil, who, viewed through the ages, while presenting a less solid figure than his father, displays a much more refined and Machiavellian craft.

The attention and care which Burghley bestowed from the beginning upon his young ward's affairs bespeak an interest within an interest when his prudent and calculating nature is borne in mind and the later incidents of his guardianship are considered.