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NOTE ON SHAKSPERE'S OCCUPATIONS IN 1593.

It may be assumed with tolerable certainty that for nearly a year Shakspere was unemployed in his profession. We have endeavoured to show in this chapter how he filled up some part of his leisure. But with reference to his poetical labours it is scarcely necessary to infer that all his time was spent in "lonely musing." A notion has been propounded that he personally visited Italy. In the Local Illustrations to the Taming of the Shrew, and the Merchant of Venice, with which we were favoured by Miss Martineau, will be found some very striking proofs of Shakspere's intimate acquaintance, not only with Italian manners, but with those minor particulars of the domestic life of Italy, such as the furniture and ornaments of houses, which could scarcely be derived from books, nor, with reference to their minute accuracy, from the conversation of those who had "swam in a gondola." These observations were communicated to us by our excellent friend, without any previous theorizing on the subject, or any acquaintance with the opinions that had been just then advanced on this matter by Mr. Brown. It is not our intention here to go over this ground again; but it appears to us strongly confirmatory of the belief that Shakspere did visit Italy, that in 1593 he might have been absent several months from England without any interference with his professional pursuits. It is difficult to name any earlier period of his life in which we can imagine him with the leisure and the command of means necessary for such a journey. The subsequent part of the sixteenth century certainly left him no leisure. The Merchant of Venice and Othello (in which there is also one or two remarkable indications of local knowledge) were produced within a few years of 1593. The Taming of the Shrew probably belongs to the exact period.

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We have a distinct record when the theatres were re-opened after the plague. The Diary' of Philip Henslowe records that "the Earl of Sussex his men" acted Huon of Bordeaux' on the 28th of December, 1593. Henslowe appears to have had an interest in this company. It is probable that Shakspere's theatre of the Blackfriars was opened about the same period. We have some evidence to show what was the duration of the winter season at this theatre; for the same diary shows that from June, 1594, the performances of the theatre

at Newington Butts were a joint undertaking by the Lord Admiral's men and the Lord Chamberlain's men. How long this association of two companies lasted is not easy to determine; but during the month of June we have entries of the exhibition of Andronicus, of Hamlet, and of The Taming of a Shrew. No subsequent entries exhibit the names of plays which have any real or apparent connection with Shakspere.* It appears that in December, 1593, Richard Burbage entered into a bond with Peter Streete, a carpenter, for the performance on the part of Burbage of the covenants contained in an indenture of agreement by which Streete undertook to erect a new theatre for Burbage's company. This was the famous Globe on the Bankside, of which Shakspere was unquestionably a proprietor. We thus see that in 1594 there were new demands to be made upon his invention; and we may reasonably conclude that the reliance of Burbage and his other fellows upon their poet's unequalled powers was one of their principal inducements to engage in this new enterprise.

In the midst of his professional engagements, which doubtless were renewed with increased activity after their long suspension, Shakspere published his Rape of Lucrece. He had vowed to take advantage of all idle hours till he had honoured Lord Southampton with some graver labour than the first heir of his invention. The Venus and Adonis was entered in the Registers of the Stationers' Company on the 18th of April, 1593. The Lucrece appears in the same Registers on the 9th of May, 1594. That this elaborate poem was wholly or in part composed in that interval of leisure which resulted from the shutting of the theatres in 1593 may be reasonably conjectured; but it is evident that during the year which had elapsed between the publication of the first and the second poem, Shakspere had been brought into more intimate companionship with his noble patron. The language of the first dedication is that of distant respect, the second is that of grateful friendship:—

"To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield.

"The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness. Your Lordship's in all duty,

"WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."

Henry Wriothesly was born October 6th, 1573. His grandfather, the first Earl, was the celebrated Chancellor of Henry VIII., a fortunate statesman and lawyer, whose memory, however he was lauded by his contemporaries, is infamously associated with the barbarous cruelties of that age in the torture of the heroic Ann Askew. His son Henry, the second Earl, bred up by his father in the doctrines opposed to the Reformation, adhered with pertinacity to the old forms of religion, and was of course shut out from the honours and employ* See our Introductory Notice to Hamlet.

ments of the government. He was unmolested, however, till his partisanship in the cause of Mary Queen of Scots occasioned his imprisonment in the Tower, in 1572. The house in which his father the Chancellor dwelt was also his London residence; and its site is still indicated by the name of Southampton Buildings. In Aggas's map the mansion appears to have been backed by extensive gardens. Gervase Markham, in his curious book, printed in 1624, entitled Honour in his Perfection; or, a Treatise in Commendation of the Vertues and Renowned Vertuous Vndertakings of the Illustrious and Heroicall Princes Henry Earle of Oxenford, Henry Earle of Southampton, Robert Earle of Essex, &c.,' thus describes the state with which the father of Shakspere's friend was surrounded:-" His muster-roll never consisted of four lackeys and a coachman, but of a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen; he was not known in the streets by guarded liveries, but by gold chains; not by painted butterflies, ever running as if some monster pursued them, but by tall goodly fellows, that kept a constant pace, both to guard his person and to admit any man to their lord which had serious business." The pomp with which he was encircled might in some degree have compensated for the absence of courtly splendour. But he lived not long to enjoy his solitary dignity, or, as was sufficiently probable, to conform to the opinions which might have opened to him the road to the honours of the crown. He died in 1581, leaving two children, Henry and Mary. The boy earl was only eight years old at the death of his father. During his long minority the accumulation of the family property must have been great; and we may thus believe that the general munificence of his patronage in after-life has not been overrated. He appears to have had careful guardians, who taught him that there were higher honours to be won than those which his rank and wealth gave him. At the age of twelve he became a student of St. John's College, Cambridge; and four years afterwards took the degree of Master of Arts by the usual exercises.* He subsequently became, according to one account, a member of Gray's Inn. At the period when Shakspere dedicated to him his Venus and Adonis he was scarcely twenty years of age. He is supposed to have become intimate with Shakspere from the circumstance that his mother had married Sir Thomas Heneage, who filled the office of Treasurer of the Chamber, and in the discharge of his official duties would be brought into frequent intercourse with the Lord Chamberlain's players. This is Drake's theory. The more natural belief appears to be that he had a strong attachment to literature, and, with the generous impetuosity of his character, did not regard the distinctions of rank to the extent with which they were regarded by men of colder temperaments and more worldly minds. Shakspere appears to have been the first amongst the writers of his day that offered a public tribute to the merits of the young nobleman. Both the dedications, and especially that of Lucrece, are conceived in a modest and a manly spirit, entirely different from the ordinary language of literary adulation. Nash, who dedicates a little book to him "Cum prius disputasset publicè pro gradu."-Harleian MS. 7138.

*

at the same period, after calling him "a dear lover and cherisher, as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves," gives us one of the many proofs that the characters of satirist and flatterer may have some affinity :-" Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit, both in heroic resolution and matters of conceit. Unreprievably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste paper which on the diamond rock of your judgment disasterly chanceth to be shipwracked.” Gervase Markham, who many years after became the elaborate panegyrist of Southampton, dedicates a tragedy to him in the following sonnet, in 1595:

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"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 ears-enchanting men :

From graver subjects of thy grave assays,
Bend thy courageous thoughts unto these lines;
The grave from whence mine humble Muse doth raise
True honour's spirit in her rough designs:

And when the stubborn stroke of my harsh song
Shall seasonless glide through almighty ears,
Vouchsafe to sweet it with thy blessed tongue,

Whose well-tun'd sound stills music in the spheres:

So shall my tragic lays be blest by thee,
And from thy lips suck their eternity."

This hyperbolical praise is something different from Shakspere's simple expressions of respect and devotion in the dedication to the Lucrecc. There is evidence in that dedication of a higher sort of intercourse between the two minds than consists with any forced adulation of any kind, and especially with any extravagant compliments to the learning and to the abilities of a superior in rank. Such testimonies are always suspicious; and probably honest old Florio, when he dedicated his World of Words' to the Earl in 1598, shows pretty correctly what the race of panegyrists expected in return for their compliments : In truth, I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of all; yea of more than I know, or can, to your bounteous lordship, in whose pay and patronage I have lived some years; to whom I owe and vow the years I have to live. But, as to me, and many more, the glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused light and life." There is an extraordinary anecdote told by Rowe of Lord Southampton's munificence to Shakspere, which seems to bring the poet somewhat near to Florio's plain-speaking association of pay and patronage:-" What grace soever the Queen conferred upon him, it was not to her only he owed the fortune which the reputation of his wit made. He had the honour to meet with many great and uncommon marks of favour and friendship from the Earl of Southampton, famous in the histories of that time for his friendship to the unfortunate Earl of Essex. It was to that noble lord that he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis. There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who

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