SECTION IV.
THE CHRONOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.
It is of the greatest importance, in investigating the chronological succession of an author's works, that we should start from a definite and certain date. The neglect of this point, especially in so difficult an instance as the present, involves us too often in thorny discussions at the very onset. Such an epoch is presented us at once by the publication of Shakespeare's earliest poem. I begin therefore at this point.
Venus and Adonis was entered on S. R. 18th April 1593 by Richard Field, printer, son of Henry Field, tanner, of Stratford-on-Avon, who parted with his copyright to Mr. Harrison, senior, 25th June 1594. There were editions in 1593, 1594 (R. Field); 1596 (R. Field for J. Harrison); 1599 and 1602, bis (W. Leake); 1617 (W. Barrett); and 1620 (J. Parker). Harrison had assigned his copyright to Leake 25th June 1596. It was transferred to W. Barrett 16th February 1616-17; and again to J. Parker 8th March 1620. This was "the first heir of my invention," which means—the first production in which I have had no co-labourer. Compare Ford's expression "the first-fruits of my leisure" applied to 'Tis pity she's &c., although he had certainly at that time written plays in connection with Dekker and others.
Lucrece. Entered on 9th May 1594 in S. R. by Mr. Harrison, senior. Editions 1594 (R. Field for J. Harrison); 1598 (P. S. for J. Harrison); 1600 (J. H. for J. Harrison); 1607 (N. O. for J. Harrison); 1616 (T. G. for R. Jackson). This poem is a pendant to the former; the one exhibiting woman's chastity, the other her lust. Such opposition of subject in successive productions is very characteristic of Shakespeare.
A Lover's Complaint, published with the Sonnets 1609, written probably 1593-4, between the Venus and Lucrece.
Sonnets, entered on S. R. 20th May 1609 for T. Thorpe. I have on pp. [25], [120] already stated my opinion that these were written during 1594-8.
Titus Andronicus was a new play in 1594, acted for the first time by Sussex' men at the Rose on 23d January.
Richard III. was no doubt acted this same year by the Chamberlain's men; just before the old play which had been acted by the Queen's players was published (S. R. 19th June 1594). A Richard is alluded to in John Weever's Epigrams, published 1599, when the author was twenty-three, but written when he was not twenty; they must therefore date at latest in 1596 (not 1595 as usually stated). Weever mentions Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Romeo, and Richard as the issue of honey-tongued Shakespeare. We shall see that Romeo, as referred to here, was acted in 1595-6, and I believe the Richard referred to is the Richard II. of 1595. Edward III. I have shown in p. 118 to be an alteration of an old play of Marlowe's written in 1590, revived in 1594 about the autumn, after Lucrece was published. It will be most convenient to defer the consideration of authorship of the preceding plays till I have to treat of Henry VI.; the dates of editions of all the plays will be exhibited in tabular form further on, which will save much repetition and interruption of argument. We now come to an unquestionable date; and it is from this, the first recorded date in connection with an undoubted play, that I wish the reader to regard our investigation of play dates as beginning.
December 28. Shakespeare's only farcical comedy of Errors was acted at Gray's Inn at night: the same players had acted before the Queen at Greenwich on that day, very likely in the same comedy. In April 1595 the English agent in Edinburgh wrote to Burghley, how ill King James took it that the comedians in London should scorn the king and people of Scotland in their plays. The barrenness of Scotland is mentioned in iii. 2. Neither would James approve of a play in which witchcraft and exorcising is so constantly ridiculed. The opening scene is very like in method to that of Midsummer-Night's Dream; and the reiterated allusions by either Dromio to being transformed to an ass (ii. 2. 201; iii. 1. 15; iv. 4. 28; iii. 2. 77) remind us so strongly of that play as almost to infer contemporaneity of production; especially as in iii. 1. 47 the same quibble, an ass and ace, occurs as in Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 1. 317. Now in 1593, in his Pierce's Supererogation, and in 1592 in his Four Letters, Gabriel Harvey had rung the changes on an ass and a Nash even to wearisomeness; just as Shakespeare in this play puns on an ell and a Nell (iii. 2. 112). This may seem very forced; but I must remind the reader, that s and sh were not distinguished in pronunciation except by pedants at the end of the sixteenth century. It seems then most likely that in dwelling on this transformation, Shakespeare meant to recall to his audience the dyslogistic name inflicted on his old enemy Nash by Gabriel Harvey. All this points to a production of the play in 1594, by the Chamberlain's men; but there are also indications of its having been altered from an earlier version. In the stage directions there are traces of the name Juliana[12] for Luciana: in the text Dowsabel occurs instead of Nell, and in v. 1, the prefix Fat. (Father) has been clearly replaced by Mar. (Merchant) in a revision; note especially v. 1. 195, where both prefixes have by a common printer's error been inserted at once. The older form, again, had Antipholus Sereptus for A. of Syracuse, and Erotes or Erratis for A. of Ephesus; and it had twenty-five years of separation between the parents for thirty-three in the later version. This last difference occurs in i. 1, which is throughout written in a more mechanical and antique style of metre than the rest of the play; and indeed seems to be one of the earliest specimens left us of Shakespeare's attempts to bombast out a blank verse. There is also the name Menaphon (v. 1. 368), which is likely to have been adopted from Greene's Menaphon (1589), who again took it from Marlowe's Tamberlaine (1587-8). The Adam "that goes in the calf-skin," surely alludes to the Adam in the Looking-glass for London (1590), whose "calf-skin jests" were even after seven years an object of ridicule to the playwrights. For all these reasons I believe that a version of this play was acted c. 1590, perhaps in the winter of that year. It does not follow that that version was entirely by Shakespeare, as the present play is; he may have replaced a coadjutor's work of 1590 by his own of 1594. The plot, with its time-unity, is not likely to be of his arranging. As to the pun on the war made by France against her heir (iii. 2. 126), which is usually relied on for the date of production, it merely gives as limits August 1589, when the war of succession began, and 27th February 1594, when Henri IV. was crowned. It does, however, enable us to say positively that the first performance of the play was before the formation of the Chamberlain's company, who only revived it, no doubt in an amended shape, on 28th December 1594, most likely for the sake of the Court performance. The original plot was probably suggested by Plautus' Menæchmi and Amphitryo; and perhaps more directly by the History of Error performed by the Chapel children in 1576, which, by the bye, has nothing to do with the Ferrar of the Earl of Sussex' men in 1582. But we cannot assume in these early plays that Shakespeare was the plotter. It is certain, however, that he did afterwards adopt the likeness of twins in Twelfth Night as a means of introducing "errors" on the stage.
1595.
January 26 was the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, at Greenwich. Such events were usually celebrated with the accompaniment of plays or interludes, masques written specially for the occasion not having yet become fashionable. The company of players employed at these nuptials would certainly be the Chamberlain's, who had, so lately as the year before, been in the employ of the Earl's brother Ferdinand. No play known to us is so fit for the purpose as Midsummer-Night's Dream, which in its present form is certainly of this date. About the same time Edward Russel, Earl of Bedford, married Lucy Harrington. Both marriages may have been enlivened by this performance. This is rendered more probable by the identity of the Oberon story with that of Drayton's Nymphidia, whose special patroness at this time was the newly married Countess of Bedford. That poem contains an allusion to Don Quixote, which could not well have been written till 1612, and certainly not till 1605; but Drayton is known to have constantly altered his poems by way of addition and omission, and no date of original production can in his case be fixed by allusions of this kind. The date of the play here given is again confirmed by the description of the weather in ii. 2. In 1594, and in that year only, is there on record such an inversion of the seasons as is there spoken of. Chute's Cephalus and Procris was entered on S. R., 28th September 1593; Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 22d October 1593; Marlowe and Nash's Dido was printed in 1594. All these stories are alluded to in the play. The date of the Court performance must be in the winter of 1594-5. But the traces of the play having been altered from a version for the stage are numerous. There is a double ending. Robin's final speech is palpably a stage epilogue, while what precedes from "Enter Puck" to "break of day—Exeunt" is very appropriate for a marriage entertainment, but scarcely suited to the stage. In Acts iv. and v., again, we find in the speech-prefixes Duke, Duchess, Clown for Theseus, Hippolita, Bottom: such variations are nearly always marks of alteration, the unnamed characters being anterior in date. In the prose scenes speeches are several times assigned to wrong speakers, another common mark of alteration. In the Fairies the character of Moth (Mote) has been excised in the text, though he still remains among the dramatis personæ. It is not, I think, possible to say which parts of the play were added for the Court performance; but a careful examination has convinced me that wherever Robin occurs in the stage-directions or speech-prefixes scarcely any, if any, alteration has been made; Puck, on the contrary, indicates change. The date of the stage play may, I think, be put in the winter of 1592; and if so it was acted, not at the Rose, but where Lord Strange's company were travelling. For the allusion in v. 1. 52, "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death of Learning, late deceased in beggary," to Spenser's Tears of the Muses (1591), or Greene's death, 3d September 1592, could not, in either interpretation, be much later than the autumn of 1592; and the lines in ii. 1. 156—
"I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state,
And I do love thee"—
are so closely like those in Nash's Summer's Last Will, where Summer says—
"Died I had indeed unto the earth,
But that Eliza, England's beauteous Queen,
On whom all seasons prosperously attend,
Forbad the execution of my fate
Until her joyful progress was expired"—
that I think they are alluded to by Shakespeare. The singularly fine summer of 1592 is attributed to the influence of Elizabeth, the Fairy Queen. Nash's play was performed at the Archbishop's palace at Croydon in Michaelmas term of the same year by a "number of hammer-handed clowns (for so it pleaseth them in modesty to name themselves);" but I believe the company originally satirised in Shakespeare's play was the Earl of Sussex', Bottom, the chief clown, being intended for Robert Greene. Thus much for date of production. For the title of the play, compare the conclusion of The Taming of a Shrew and Peele's Old Wife's Tale, the latter of which is performed in a dream, and the former is supposed by Sly to be so; the interpretation that it means a play performed at midsummer is quite inconsistent with iv. 1. 190, &c., and other passages. The names of the personages are interesting, because they show us what books Shakespeare was reading at this time: from North's Plutarch, Life of Theseus, the first in the book, he got Periginia (Perigouna), Aegles, Ariadne, Antiope, and Hippolita; from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, also the first in the printed editions, which he afterwards dramatised, Philostrate; from Greene's James IV. Oberon. This last name, with Titania's, also occurs in the Queen's Entertainment at Lord Hertford's, 1591. The time-analysis of this play has probably been disturbed by omissions in producing the Court version. I. 1. 128-251 ought to form, and probably did, in the original play, a separate scene; it certainly does not take place in the palace. To the same cause must be attributed the confusion as to the moon's age; cf. i. 1. 209 with the opening lines: the new moon was an afterthought, and evidently derived from a form of the story in which the first day of the month and the new moon were coincident after the Greek time-reckoning. It is worth notice that not only is the title of Preston's Cambyses parodied in the Pyramus interlude, but his pension of sixpence a day is ridiculed in iv. 2. Nor must we quite pass over the fact, which confirms the 1595 date, that on 30th August 1594, at the baptism of Prince Henry (of Scotland), the tame lion which was to have been brought in in the triumph was replaced by a Moor, "because his presence might have brought some fear." The play is nearly as much an error play (iii. 2. 368) as the Errors itself, and, like it, has no known immediate source for the plot. The Pyramus interlude is clearly based on C. Robinson's Handfull of Pleasant Delights (1584); and some of the fairy story may have been suggested by Montemayor's Diana. The line ii. 2. 104, is from Peele's Edward I. (near end), "how nature strove in them to show her art," and I think the man who dares not come in the moon because it is in snuff may allude to the offence given at Court by Lyly's Endymion in 1588. An absolute downward limit of date is given by a line imitated in Doctor Doddypol, a play alluded to in 1596 by Nash, and spoiled in the imitation—
"Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl,
Which shook together by the silken wind
Of their loose mantles made a silver chime."
This solidification of the dewdrops does not occur in the Shakespeare parallel, ii. 1. 15. Mr. Halliwell's fancy that Spenser's line in Fairy Queen, vi.—"Through hills and dales, through bushes and through briers" must have been imitated by Shakespeare in ii. 1. 2, is very flimsy; hill and dale, bush and brier, are commonplaces of the time. Nor is there any proof that this song could not have been transmitted to Ireland in 1593 or 1594.
Richard II. cannot be definitely dated by external evidence, but all competent critics agree that it is the earliest of Shakespeare's historical plays; the question of authorship, &c., of Richard III. being reserved for the present. It is a tragedy like Marlowe's Edward II., not a "life and death" history. The Civil Wars of Daniel, from which Shakespeare seems to have derived a few hints, was entered on S. R. 11th October 1594. The play probably was produced after this date, and before the publication of the Pope's bull in 1596, inciting the Queen's subjects to depose her. In consequence of this bull the abdication scene was omitted in representation, and in the editions during Elizabeth's lifetime. In like manner, Hayward was imprisoned for publishing in 1599 his History of the First Year of Henry IV., which is simply the story of Richard's abdication. The omitted scene was restored in 1608 under James I. as "new additions." Such new additions on title-pages are often restorations of omitted passages. The Folio copy omits a few other speeches, the play having been evidently found too long in representation; but it contains the abdication scene. This being the first play of Shakespeare's that passed the press was carelessly corrected, whence much apparently unShakespearian and halting metre, which is easily set right. The source of the plot is Holinshed's Chronicle; "the earlier play on Richard II. lately printed" (says Mr. Stokes in 1878) "I have not seen; but it concludes with the murder of the Duke of Gloster." The play seen at the Globe by Forman in 1611 began with the rebellion of Wat Tyler. It was not Shakespeare's. There is no prose in this play, in John, or the Comedy of Errors; a sign of early work.
1595.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a striking instance of the difficulties in which we are involved if we attempt to assign a single date for the production of every play, and neglect the fact that alterations were and are continually made by authors in their works. Drake and Chalmers date this play in 1595; Gervinus, Delius, and Stokes 1591. Malone at different times adopted both dates. I believe that all these opinions are reconcilable, that the play was produced in 1591, with work by a second hand in it, which was cut out and replaced by Shakespeare's own in 1595. For a date after 1593 is distinctly indicated in the play as we have it by the allusions to Hero and Leander in i. 1. 21, iii. 1. 119; and to the pestilence in ii. 1. 20; a still closer approximation is shown to the Merchant of Venice, by the mistake of Padua for Milan in ii. 5. 2. If Shakespeare had not, at the time when he finally produced the Two Gentlemen, begun his study for the Venetian story, whence this name? It only occurs there, once in Much Ado, and in the non-Shakespearian parts of The Taming of the Shrew. In like manner the mistake of Verona for Milan in iii. 4. 81, v. 4. 129, indicates that he had been preparing Romeo and Juliet. That our play lies between the Errors and the Dream on one hand and The Merchant on the other, becomes pretty clear by comparing the development of character in the Dromios, Launce and Speed, Lancelot Gobbo; in Lucetta and Nerissa; in Demetrius and Lysander, Valentine and Proteus. Nor are marks of the twofold date wanting. In the first two acts we find Valentine at the Emperor's court, no Duke mentioned; in the last three at the Duke's, no Emperor mentioned. The turning-point is in ii. 4, where, though "Emperor" occurs in the text, "Duke" is used in the stage directions. In i. 1. 32, "If haply won perhaps a hapless gain; if lost, why then a grievous labour won," there is surely an allusion to Love's Labour's Won, and Love's Labour's Lost; we shall see hereafter that in 1591 these were quite recent plays. The Eglamour of Verona mentioned in i. 2. 9 is not the Eglamour of Milan who appears in iv. 3, v. 1. Style and metre require an early date for i. ii. 1-3 and parts of iii. 1; but in any argument of an internal nature, Johnson's weighty remark should be remembered—"From mere inequality, in works of imagination, nothing can with exactness be inferred." The immediate origin of the plot is unknown; parts of the story are identical with those of The Shepherdess Filismena in Montemayor's Diana, translated in MS. by Young, c. 1583, and of Bandello's Apollonius and Sylla in Rich's Farewell to Military Profession (1581). Felix and Philiomena had been dramatised and acted at Court by the Queen's players, 1584-5. That the revision of The Two Gentlemen was hurriedly performed is clear from the unusually large number of Exits and Entrances that are not marked. This hurry accounts, in some degree, for the weakness of the play, which induces so many critics to insist on an early date for it as a whole. Yet the special blemish they discover, v. 4. 83, the yielding up of Silvia by Valentine, is paralleled in the Dream, where (iii. 2. 163) Lysander says, "With all my heart, in Hermia's love I yield you up my part:" and that Shakespeare felt the unreality of this part of the plot is clear from Two Gentlemen, v. 4. 25, which to me seems a manifest reminiscence of his last play, "How like a dream is this I see and hear!" (cf. Midsummer-Night's Dream, iv. 1. 190, "It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream"). He had been reading Chaucer, as we know, and from him had adopted this method of presenting stories in a dream. A slighter reminiscence of Chaucer's Knight's Tale occurs in the mention of Theseus, iv. 4. 173.
1595-6.
Romeo and Juliet was surreptitiously printed by J. Danter in 1597; "as it hath been often with great applause played (publicly), by the Rt. Hon. the L. of Hunsdon, his servants." This edition must have been printed in 1596 (old reckoning), for the players would have been called the Chamberlain's servants except during the tenure of that office by W. Brooke, Lord Cobham, from 23d July 1596 to 5th March 1597. That it was on the stage as well as Richard II. in 1595-6, appears from Weever's Epigrams. A correct edition of Romeo appeared in 1599. The relation of these two versions of the play presents a difficult problem. The 1599 Quarto Q2 is unquestionably the play of 1595-6, as acted by the then Chamberlain's players at the Theater; for it does not follow, as Mr. Halliwell supposes, that because they continued to act it when called Lord Hunsdon's players, they had not ever acted it before. Such reasoning would compel us to assign all plays published as "acted by the King's players" to a date subsequent to 1602—Hamlet, for example, and Troylus and Cressida. Nor does it follow that because it was acted at the Curtain, where Marston mentions it in his Scourge of Villany (S. R. 8th September 1598), that it was produced at that same theatre. Mr. P.A. Daniel has shown, in his Parallel Text Edition, that the 1597 Quarto Q1 is a shortened version of the play, no doubt for stage purposes (compare the Quartos in i. 1; i. 3; iii. 1). He has also with great ingenuity conclusively proved that Q2 is a revised copy made on a text in many places identical with Q1 (see i. 1. 122; i. 4. 62; ii. 3. 1-4; iii. 2. 85; iii. 3. 38-45; iii. 5. 177-181; iv. 1. 95-98, 110; v. 3. 102, 107). But his conclusion that Q1 is partly made up from notes taken during the performance, is not borne out by any evidence. There are no "mistakes of the ear" in this play, nor is this conclusion consistent with his own theory that Q2 was a revision made on the text of Q1. I owe what I believe to be the real solution to a hint from my son, a boy of thirteen. When a play was written and licensed, at least three copies would be made of it. One, with the Master of the Revels' endorsement (which I will call R), would be kept in the archives of the theatre intact; one would be made for the manager (M), which would have occasional notes of stage direction, &c., inserted; and one, an acting copy, for the prompter (P), usually much abridged from the original and always altered: this would contain stage directions, &c., in full, but in the unaltered passages would be identical with M. Now Q1 shows evident signs of being printed from a shortened copy P; Q2 is manifestly a revision of a full copy M. The genealogy of the Quartos then stands thus:—
| R (author's first version). | |||
| P | M | ||
| Q1 | Q2 | ||
Q2 is, according to this theory, a revised version made on a complete copy of an early version of the play, while Q1 is printed from the prompter's copy of the same early version. When the revision took place this copy would be thrown aside as worthless; and any dishonest employé of the theatre could sell it to an equally dishonest publisher, who would publish it as the play now acted. If this solution be correct, and it is the only one yet proposed that meets all the difficulties of the case, Q1 is specially interesting as being the earliest extant play (as acted) in which Shakespeare had a share. For it is clear that some passages in it, especially ii. 6, the laments in iv. 5, and Paris' dirge in v. 3, are not only unlike the corresponding passages in Q2, but unlike anything we have from Shakespeare's hand. The date of the early form of the play was 1591, eleven years after the earthquake of 1580 (i. 3. 23, 30). As confirmatory of the conclusion that Q2 was revised from an early play note that in i. 1 the servants are nameless in Q1, but have names in the stage directions in Q2; that in 1. 3 the servant is called clown in Q1; that in iii. 5 in Q2, where the prefixes vary between Lady and Mother, it is in the unaltered parts that Mother is used as in Q1, but Lady always where enough alteration has taken place to require a completely fresh transcript; that in v. 3 there is a double entry marked for the Capulets (a sure sign); that in ii. 3. 1-4, v. 3. 108-111, duplicate versions occur. On the other hand, the printing of the Nurse's speeches in italics in both Quartos is conclusive for identity of origin in that scene. Other points worth noting are that "Queen Mab, what's she?" i. 4. 55 in Q1 are omitted in Q2: Mab had become well known in 1595, probably through Drayton's Nymphidia. In ii. 2. 144, "I am afraid all this is but a dream," reminds us of similar passages in Errors, ii. 2. 184; Two Gentlemen, v. 4. 26; and Dream, iv. 1. 199, &c. W. Kempe acted the part of Peter (see entry in iv. 5); Balthazar is proparoxyton in v. 1. The line in iii. 2, 75, "O serpent heart hid with a flowering face" (where Q1 has "serpent's hate"), is very like the often-quoted "O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide" (3 Henry VI. i. 4. 137). The play is founded on Arthur Brooke's poem, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, containing a rare example of true constancy. Constancy in love is its main subject. He took the Italian form of the name Romeo, and the time of Juliet's sleep forty-two hours ("forty at least" in the novel) from Rhomeo and Julietta in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Much unnecessary writing has been expended on this forty-two hours; the plot requires forty-eight. Daniel, in his Rosamund (S. R. February 1591-2), and the author of Doctor Doddypol (c. October 1594), have passages very like some in this play. A ballad founded on the play was entered S. R. 15th August 1596. On the mention of "the first and second cause" in ii. 4. 26 and (in Q1 only) in iii. 1, some critics base the conclusion that this play must be subsequent to Saviolo's Book of Honour, &c. (S. R. 19th November 1594). I believe that the book referred to is The Book of Honor and Arms, wherein is discussed the CAUSES of quarrel,&c. (S. R. 13th December 1589). The same expression occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2. 184; in any case it probably belongs to the revised version of this last named play. The alteration in ii. 4 from "to-morrow morning" to "this afternoon," shows that in the revision Shakespeare attended to details in the time of action.
1596.
King John was founded on the old play acted by the Queen's men, called The Troublesome Reign of King John. The lines ii. 1. 455-460 are imitated in Captain Stukeley by Dekker and others, acted at the Rose, 11th December 1596; iii. 1. 176-179 refer manifestly to the Pope's bull in 1596, inciting the English to depose Elizabeth; Chatillon's speech ii. 1. 71-75 is most applicable to the great fleet sent against Spain in the same year; Constance's lamentations have been reasonably referred to the death of Hamnet Shakespeare (buried 11th August); the Iron Age is alluded to in iv. 1. 60, and never elsewhere in Shakespeare. Now, Heywood's play of that name was on the stage from June 23 to July 16 under the title of Troy. The summer of 1596 is thus undoubtedly the date of Shakespeare's play. There are some indications of the play having been shortened; Act ii. in the Folio has only seventy-four lines, and Essex has a part of only three lines, although in the older John he appears in five scenes. I think he was meant to be entirely cut out c. 1601 after Essex' execution, and these three lines should be given to Salisbury. The rival play of Stukeley was shortened in the same way; a whole act was expunged before its publication in 1605. In i. 2 (Folio) the Citizen on the walls is called Hubert; this indicates that the same actor represented both characters.
1596-7.
The Merchant of Venice, or Jew of Venice, was no doubt founded on an old play called The Jew of Venice, by Dekker. It seems, from the title of the German version of this play, that the Jew's name was Joseph. The name Fauconbridge in i. 2 (where Portia's suitors are enumerated, compare Two Gentlemen, i. 2) points to a date soon after John; and the "merry devil" of ii. 3. 2, a phrase never elsewhere used in Shakespeare, indicates contemporaneity with The Merry Devil of Edmonton produced in the winter of 1596. Again, the manifest imitations of this play in Wily Beguiled, which I show elsewhere to date in the summer of 1597, give a posterior limit, which must be decisive. This play has no sign whatever of having been altered; the Clarendon Press guesses, founded on the discrepancy of the number of suitors (iv. for vi.) are as worthless as Mr. Hales' proof, referred to by Mr. Halliwell (Outlines, p. 251), of the date of Wily Beguiled. The conclusive evidence of imitation in this play is the conjunction of the "In such a night" lines in scene 16, with the "My money, my daughter" iterations of Gripe in scene 8 of the same play. On 22d July 1598, J. Roberts entered The Merchant or Jew of Venice on S. R., but had to get the Lord Chamberlain's license before printing. On 28th October 1600, he consented to the entry of the play for T. Hayes; nevertheless, he issued copies of his own imprint independently.
1597.
The First Part of Henry IV. was entered on S. R. 25th February 1598; a genuine and authorised imprint. The publication of this play was hurried in order to refute the charge of attacking the Cobham family in the person of Sir John Oldcastle, the original name of the character afterwards called Falstaff (cf. "my old lad of the castle," i. 2. 48). Moreover, in i. 2. 182, we find in the text the names Harvey and Russel instead of Peto and Bardolph. The name Russel for Bardolph again occurs in a stage direction in 2 Henry IV. ii. 2. These were evidently originally the names of the characters, and were changed at the same time as that of Oldcastle: Russel was the family name of the Bedford Earls, and Harvey that of the third husband of Lord Southampton's mother. The new names were picked up from the second part; in which Lord Bardolph and Peto (a distinct personage from the "humourist" of Part I.) were serious characters. The play was produced in the spring; the only mentions of June in Shakespeare's plays are in ii. 4. 397 (sun F.); iii. 2. 75; and Anthony, iii. 10. 14. In ii. 4. 425, Preston's Cambyses is ridiculed (cf. Dream). There is an imitation of iii. 2. 52 in Lust's Dominion (the Spanish Moor's Tragedy, by Dekker, Haughton, and Day, February 1600, absurdly quoted by Stokes as Marlowe's). For the "abuses of the time" i. 2. 174; iv. 3. 81; see under Sir T. More, 1596. This play, as well as 2 Henry IV. and Henry V., is founded on The Famous Victories of Henry V., an old play produced by the Queen's company; from which the name Oldcastle was taken.
1597-8.
The Second Part of Henry IV. was entered on S. R. 23d August 1600. This Quarto is much abridged in i. 3, ii. 3, iv. 1, iv. 4, and a whole scene, iii. 1, is omitted. It abounds in oaths apparently foisted in by the players, and is apparently printed from a prompter's copy. The omissions arise, I think, from expurgations made by the Master of the Revels. Plays in which rebellion was the subject were especially disagreeable at Court. In the Epilogue there is evidence of alteration, the words "if my tongue ... good-night," having been inserted after the first production of the play, as is clear from their succeeding in Q. the clause about praying for the Queen, which must have been final in either version. The newly inserted words contain the allusion to Oldcastle, and show that in this play, as well as the former, that was the original appellation of Falstaff. This is confirmed by the appearance of Old. in a speech prefix in i. 2. 137; and Russel in a stage direction in ii. 2. Mr. Halliwell's notion that Russel and Harvey were names of actors, has not the slightest foundation, nor are such actors known. Note also that in iii. 2. 29, Falstaff is mentioned as having been page to the Duke of Norfolk, which was historically true of Oldcastle (compare the "serving the good Duke of Norfolk" in The Merry Devil. The date of that play is 1597.) The early part i. 1, or. ii. 4, was written before the entry of 1 Henry IV. on S. R., 25th February 1598, in which Falstaff is mentioned. "Sincklo" occurs in a stage direction in v. 1; he is not known in connection with Shakespeare's company till this play was acted; he was previously a member of Pembroke's troop, and acted in 3 Henry VI. when it belonged to them along with Humfrey [Jeffes], and Gabriel [Singer]. These two last named, and others, joined the Admiral's company at the Rose in October 1597, when Pembroke's men broke and went into the country. Sinkler, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant, stayed with the Chamberlain's men from c. 1594 till they left the Curtain in 1599, and then Kemp, Duke, Beeston, and Pallant set up a new company under the patronage of the Earl of Derby. Not one of these can be shown to have acted for the Chamberlain's, except between these dates, and that they left in discontent is probable from their being all omitted in the list of the 1623 Folio. Sinkler remained in Shakespeare's company till 1604. Pistol, in his first appearance in ii. 4, does not for a while talk in iambics. Mrs. Quickly (i. 2. 269) appears to be called Ursula (Nell in Henry V.) For the changes in the names of this and other characters in the series of Falstaff plays, see hereafter in the table given on p. [207].
Love's Labour's Lost was published in 1598, "as it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas." This was undoubtedly the earliest of Shakespeare's plays that has come down to us, and was only retouched somewhat hurriedly for this Court performance. The date of original production cannot well be put later than 1589. The characters are in several instances confused. In ii. 1 Boyet occurs in place of Berowne in the prefixes, and Rosaline for Katharine in the text. In iv. 2, and v. 1, there is still greater muddling of Holofernes and Nathaniel; now one, now the other appears, first as Curate, then as Pedant; in iv. 2, Berowne is called "one of the strange Queen's Lords," and Queen for Princess occurs in the prefixes through the greater part of the play. It is pretty clear that this lady ambassador was in the 1589 play called Queen. In ii. 1, the lines 21-114 were almost certainly added in 1597. They begin with a prefix Prin. inserted in the middle of one of the Queen's (Princess's) speeches; and in them only throughout the play is the prefix Nav. (Navarre) used for King. In iv. 3, the speech of Berowne (l. 290-365) must be mostly assigned to 1597; the repetition of the lines, "From women's eyes ... Promethean fire" is an unmistakable indication of revision (see the similar instances in Romeo). A like instance of substitution of a long version for a short one, occurs in v. 1. 847-879, which are manifestly the 1597 substitute for v. 1. 827-832; again, v. 2. 575-590 could not have conveyed any amusement in the conceit of "Ajax" till after the publication of Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax in 1596. The mention of "first and second cause," &c., in i. 2. 171-192, may imply that this was another of the additions. But it is in iv. 2 that the greatest changes have been made. It is clear from v. 1. 125, that Sir Holofernes was originally the Curate. Modern editors either omit Holofernes or substitute Nathaniel; Sir Holofernes is also the Curate in iv. 2. 67-156—"This is a gift ... colorable colours." In the rest of this scene Sir Nathaniel is the Curate, and Master Holofernes the Pedant. This latter is the 1597 version. I am not aware that this singular change of character has been noted, or any reason assigned for it, except my conjecture, that it was intended to disguise a personal satire which, however pertinent in 1589, had become obsolete in 1597. For a full discussion of all these changes made in 1597, see my article on Shakespeare and Puritanism in Anglia, vol. 7.
Much Ado about Nothing is more likely than any other play to be identical with Love's Labour's Won. The internal evidence has been set forth by Mr. Brae; but there are points of external evidence also, that have been overlooked. It is very frequent, in old plays, to find days of the week and month mentioned; and when this is the case, they nearly always correspond to the almanac of the year in which the play was written. Now, in this play alone in Shakespeare is there such a mark of time; comparing i. 1. 285, and ii. 1. 375, we find that the 6th July came on a Monday; this suits the years 1590 and 1601, but none between; an indication that the original play was written in 1590. Unlike Love's Labour's Lost, it was almost recomposed at its reproduction, and this day-of-the-week mention is, I think, a relic of the original plot, and probably due, not to Shakespeare, but to some coadjutor. Again, Meres' list in his Palladis Tamia consists of the following plays:—Gentlemen of Verona (1595), Errors (1594), Love's Labour's Lost (1597), Love's Labour's Won (?), Midsummer-Night's Dream (1594-5), Merchant of Venice (1596-7), Richard II. (1595), Richard III. (1594), Henry IV. (1597), King John (1596), Titus Andronicus (1594), Romeo and Juliet (1595-6). The dates I have appended to these may in some instance be slightly erroneous; but I think no one will deny that the plays mentioned by Meres must have constituted the Shakespeare repertoire of the Chamberlain's men, and have been played by them between the dates of their constitution as a company in 1594, and the publication of Meres' book in 1598. But there is absolutely no other comedy of Shakespeare's that can be assigned to such a date. All's Well that Ends Well was certainly not played by his company so early. Again, Cowley and Kempe played the constables in this play; but Kempe had left the company by the summer of 1599. There is no argument against this conclusion yet produced. The main subject of the play had been dramatised before in Ariodante and Geneuora, acted at Court by the Merchant Tailors' boys in 1582-3. The old German play of Jacob Ayrer, The Beautiful Phœnicia (c. 1595, Cohn) also contains points of similarity with Shakespeare's play that are not found in the Bandello novel which Belleforest translated in 1594. Pedro and Leonato are the only names which Shakespeare retains from the novel; which Ayrer follows in this respect. When the title was altered is doubtful: the play was known as Benedick and Beatrice in 1613.
Henry V. was acted, with the choruses as we have them in the Folio, between 15th April and 28th September, while Essex was in Ireland; see chorus to Act v. That this was the final revision of the play, I am by no means convinced. The scene with the Scotch and Irish captains, iii. 2. 69 to end, I take to be an insertion for the Court performance, Christmas 1605, to please King James, who had been so annoyed that year by depreciation of the Scots on the stage. That the Quarto copy is printed from an abridged version made for acting purposes, is palpable. By omitting i. 1, and substituting one Bishop for two in i. 2 (two being retained in the stage direction) Ely is disposed of; by simple omission and transference of a speech in iv. 3 to Warwick, Westmoreland disappears; in a similar way Bedford gives place to Clarence; in iv. 3. 69 Salisbury is replaced by Gloster, and was evidently meant to be in l. 5-9 of the same scene; in iv. 1 Erpingham remains in the stage direction, but has been cut out in the text. That the version from which the Quarto was abridged was the 1599 copy, is a separate question to which I am inclined to say no. I rather hold that it was an earlier one without choruses, and following the Chronicle historians much more closely. I cannot otherwise account for the substitution of Gebon for Rambures in iii. 7, and iv. 5; and of Bourbon for Britany in iii. 5, and for Dolphin in iii. 7, iv. 5. Mr. Daniel's theory is that the Quarto was later than the Folio version, that is to say, that Shakespeare wrote a play historically incorrect, that his errors were corrected in a stage version before 1600, i.e., while he was still himself an actor; that the errors were afterwards restored, and have kept the stage ever since. I cannot think this. I believe that the Quarto is (as we have seen in other instances) a shortened version of a play written early in 1598 for the Curtain Theatre, and that the Folio (except such alterations as were made after James's accession) is a version enlarged and improved for the Globe Theatre later in the same year. With regard to this series of Falstaff plays, the following table may be of interest.
| NAMES OF "IRREGULAR HUMOURISTS" IN— | ||||||
| Famous Victories. | 1 Hen. IV. (original version). | 1 Hen. IV. (altered version). | 2 Hen. IV. (i. 1 to ii. 4 altered). | 2 Hen. IV. (ii. 4 to end unaltered). | Hen. V. (both versions). | Merry Wives. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gadshill. | Gadshill. | Gadshill. | ||||
| Ned. | Ned Poins. | Poins. | Poins. | |||
| Tom. | Harvey. | Peto. | Peto. | |||
| Russell. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | |
| Oldcastle. | Oldcastle. | Falstaff. | Falstaff. | Falstaff. | F. in text. | Falstaff. |
| ? Hostess. | Quickly. | Quickly. | Quickly. | Quickly. | Quickly. | |
| Doll. | Doll. | |||||
| Pistol. | Pistol. | Pistol. | ||||
| Nym. | Nym. | |||||
| Shallow. | Shallow. | |||||
According to my hypothesis, the original names Oldcastle, Ned Poins, Gadshill, &c., were chiefly taken from The Famous Victories of Henry V.; all these disappear from the series by ii. 4 of 2 Henry IV.: the later names, Bardolph, Falstaff, Nym, Pistol, Shallow, persist to the end of the series, but did not occur in the original forms of 1 and 2 Henry IV. The name Falstaff was no doubt taken from 1 Henry VI., in which Shakespeare had been writing on March 1592, and which we know from the Epilogue to Henry V. to have been revived by 1598 at latest.
1599.
As You Like It was "stayed" on the 4th August 1600, and was written after "Diana in the fountain" (iv. 1. 154) was set up in Cheapside in 1598 (Stow). In iii. 5. 83 a line is quoted from Hero and Leander, published in 1598; the only instance in which Shakespeare directly refers to a contemporary poet. The date may, I think, be still more exactly fixed from i. 2. 94, "the little wit that fools have was silenced," which alludes probably to the burning of satirical books by public authority 1st June 1599. Every indication points to the latter part of 1599 as the date of production. This play is a rival to the Robin Hood plays acted at the Rose in 1598; Jaques, "the traveller," seems to have been the origin of Jonson's Amorphus in Cynthia's Revels, and Touchstone of Cos the whetstone in the same play; compare i. 2. 56. The female characters differed considerably in height, as in Much Ado and The Dream. The remarks of Touchstone on quarrels and lies in v. 4 should be compared with Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2 to end; Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4. 26, &c. The comparison of the world to a stage in ii. 7 suggests a date subsequent to the building of the Globe, with its motto of Totus mundus agit histrionem; and the introduction of a fool proper, in place of a comic clown such as is found in all the anterior comedies, confirms this: the "fools" only occur in plays subsequent to Kempe's leaving the company. The title is taken from Lodge's address prefixed to his Rosalynde, on which the play is founded—"if you like it, so," says Lodge—and it is alluded to in the Epilogue (which, like that to 2 Henry IV., is spoken by a female character), and again by Jonson in the Epilogue to Cynthia's Revels, which play has much more connection with the present than is usually supposed. There is a tradition that Shakespeare took the part of Adam.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, as we have it in the Folio, was probably made for the Court performance in February 1600; in i. 4, the "King's English" does not imply that James, not Elizabeth, was on the throne; but that the time of action is under a king, Henry IV. It was written after Henry V.; perhaps, according to the old tradition, in obedience to the Queen's command, who wished to see Falstaff in love, Shakespeare not having fulfilled his promise in the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. to introduce him in the Henry V. play; a failure probably caused by the defection at this date of the actor who had taken this part—Kempe, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant having quitted the King's men between the production of 2 Henry IV. and that of this play. The title, The Merry Wives of Windsor, suggests approximation in subject with The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1597), and so does the great likeness in the characteristics in the Hosts of these plays; while the plot of the Anne Page story is identical with that of Wily Beguiled (1597), Fenton corresponding to Sophos, Caius to Churms, Simple to Plodall, Evans to R. Goodfellow. It appears from the Quarto edition that Ford's assumed name was originally Brook, not Broome. This was probably altered because Brook was the name of the Lord Cobham, who took offence at the production of Oldcastle on the stage. The song of Marlowe's sung by Evans in iii. 1 was published as Shakespeare's in the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599; not necessarily by any means in consequence of its previous introduction in this play. Mr. P. A. Daniel has rightly pointed out that iii. 5 is really composed of two scenes, one between Falstaff and Quickly, the other between Falstaff and Ford; and that the latter ought to begin the fourth Act: he has also shown that in various places the Folio has inconsistencies not explicable without the aid of the Quarto. But all this does not prove any "degradation" of the play at "managerial" hands; it rather indicates hurried and careless production, such as we might expect in a play ordered to be produced in a fortnight, according to the old tradition. Another internal proof of such hurry, both in this play and in Much Ado about Nothing, lies in the fact that they are almost entirely in prose; which is not the case in any other play by Shakespeare. And this brings us to the question of the nature of the Quarto version. It has been held to be merely a first sketch of the play: this theory is untenable. Mr. P. A. Daniel holds it to be a stolen version made up by a literary hack from shorthand notes obtained at a representation. This hypothesis gives no explanation of the "cousin-Garmombles" of iii. 5, nor does it enable us to understand how no better a representation of the play was issued, nor how whole scenes (that of the fairies for example) appear in quite a different version from the Folio. My own opinion is that the case is parallel to that of Romeo and Juliet; that the Quarto is printed from a partly revised prompter's copy of the older version of the play, which became useless when Shakespeare had made his final version. I believe also that this older version was produced soon after the visit of the Count of Mümplegart (Garmombles) to Windsor in August 1592; that it was probably the Jealous Comedy, acted as a new play by Shakespeare's company 5th January 1593; that when Shakespeare revived this old play, he accommodated the characters to Henry IV. as best he could. Mr. Daniel's argument that The Merry Wives was a later play than Henry V., because Nym would otherwise have had no title to special mention in the title-page of the Quarto, has not much weight. This Quarto was printed three years after Henry V. was produced, and Nym's reputation from either play was three years old, according to Mr. Daniel himself. Why then should he not be mentioned?
I must add a word on the Fairy scene, v. 5. The fairies are Nan the Queen (in red?), cf. iv. 4. 71; Will Cricket (in grey?); two other boys, Bede and Bean, in green and white; and Evans, Puck Hobgoblin or Robin Goodfellow, in black. The prefixes Qu., Qui., and Pist. are mistakes for Queen and Puck. Pistol and Quickly cannot be actors in this scene, nor in the entrance are they placed with "Evans, Anne Page, Fairies," but at the ends of the second and third lines, as if by afterthought. All the Pistol fairy speeches belong to Evans (Puck). There seems to have arisen some confusion in the final revision, when this scene was probably altered. Further confirmation of the original early date of the play may be found in Falstaff's statement that the Thames shore was "shelvy and shallow" (iii. 5. 15); for in 1592 the Thames was so low as to be fordable at London Bridge, and Falstaff was thrown in the ford at Datchet. But the allusions to "three Doctor Faustuses" and Mephistopheles are not helpful; Faustus was on the boards till 1597 at least. One of Henry Julius' plays derived from English sources, printed in 1594, The Adulteress, contains the same story as The Merry Wives. If this was not derived from Shakespeare's play, whence was it? The ground of the English play was probably the story in Tarleton's News out of Purgatory (1590). Note that the other play by Julius distinctly traceable in origin to the English stage is Vincentius Ladislaus (1594), in which the similarities to Much Ado (1590), are as marked as in the present instance. We have already seen that Evans acts the part of Robin Goodfellow, and that Will Cricket is another fairy; but these are two characters in Wily Beguiled, in which play Robin Goodfellow means Drayton and Will Cricket Kempe. I believe that in Shakespeare's play, Evans and Dr. Caius are satirical representations of Drayton and Lodge. Drayton is introduced as Evan, a Welsh attorney, by Jonson in For the Honour of Wales, and Lodge was frequently satirised on the stage as a French doctor. The part of Falstaff was acted in Charles the First's time by Lowin, and there is no reason why he should not have been the original performer of it in this play as revised. He was twenty-four years old in 1600.
1600.
Julius Cæsar is alluded to in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs (Sir John Oldcastle), 1601; and the actor of Polonius in Hamlet iii. 2. 109 had probably acted the part of Cæsar; at any rate Cæsar must be anterior to the Quarto Hamlet which was produced in 1601. The structure of this play is remarkable; the first three acts and last two have no characters in common except Brutus, Cassius, Antony, and Lucius; there are in fact two plays in one, Cæsar's Tragedy and Cæsar's Revenge. Contemporary plays by other dramatists were produced in a double pattern: e.g., Marston's Antonio and Mellida, in two parts; Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, in two parts; Kyd's old play of Jeronymo, in two parts. All these were on the stage at the same time as Julius Cæsar. Revenge-plays with ghosts in them were the rage for the next four years. That the present play has been greatly shortened, is shown by the singularly large number of instances in which mute characters are on the stage; which is totally at variance with Shakespeare's usual practice. The large number of incomplete lines in every possible position, even in the middle of speeches, confirms this. That alterations were made we have the positive testimony of Jonson, who in his Discoveries tells us that Shakespeare wrote, "Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause" (compare iii. 1. 47). That this original reading stood in the acting copies till not long before the 1623 Folio was printed, is clear from the fact that Jonson, in the Induction to his Staple of News (1625), alludes to it as a well-known line requiring no explanation—"Cry you mercy," says Prologue, "you never did wrong but with just cause." This would imply that Shakespeare did not make the alterations himself; a hypothesis confirmed by the spelling of Antony without an h: this name occurs in eight of Shakespeare's plays, and in every instance but this invariably is spelled Anthony. Jonson himself is more likely to have been called on to make this revision than any other author connected with the King's company c. 1622. The "et tu Brute" about which so much has been written was probably taken from Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour (i. 1); it is found in the Duke of York (1595) and elsewhere. Nicholson, in his Acolastus his after wit (S. R. 8th September 1600), probably took it from Shakespeare's play, "Et tu Brute! wilt thou stab Cæsar too?"
1601.
All's Well that Ends Well manifestly contains passages—i. 1. 230-244; i. 3. 130-142; ii. 1. 130-214; ii. 3. 80-110, 132-151; iii. 4 letter: v. 3 concluding part—which are of very early date; certainly written not later than 1593. It is not, however, in my opinion, to be identified with Love's Labour's Won: the allusions to the present title in iv. 4. 35; v. 1. 24; v. 3. 333, 336, all occur in rhyme passages, and some of them, at least, belong to the earlier date. The play, as we have it, was written after Marston's Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600), to which there is a palpable allusion in iii. 6. 41; and before The Dutch Courtesan (probably 1602) by the same author, which contains several allusions to its title. The name Corambus in iv. 3. 185 suggests the same date, as this is the appellation of Polonius in the Quarto Hamlet. The introduction of Violenta, a mute character, in iii. 5, and the substitution of the same name in Twelfth Night, i. 5, for Viola, show that this last-named play was the last written of the two, but not much interval could have occurred between them. In confirmation of this approximation of dates, compare the name Capilet, v. 3. 147, 159, with Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 315. In plot this play agrees with Much Ado in the supposed death of Helen, and the promise of Bertram to marry Maudlin Lafeu; with Measure for Measure, in the substitution of Helen for Diana; with The Gentlemen of Verona, in Helen's pilgrim disguise, and her meeting with the Hostess. In it and Twelfth Night we find a few slight allusions to the Puritans; another confirmation of date. The only other use even of the word Puritan is in the late play Winter's Tale, iv. 3. 46. Compare the doubtful Pericles, iv. 6. 9. The way in which the earthquake is mentioned in i. 3. 91, gives a still further confirmation. There was an earthquake in London in 1601. I take the boasting Parolles to be Marston; born under Mars, muddied in Fortune's displeasure, an egregious coward, an accuser of Captain Dumain of being lousy, he in all points agrees with Marston, as figured in the other satirical plays of the time. The charge against Dumain is repeated against Jonson in Satiromastix; Marston had left the Admiral's company in 1599, just before the Fortune Theatre was built for them. His cowardice is dilated on in Jonson's Conversations, and the allusions to him as Jack Drum are frequent in the play. Once we find Tom Drum in v. 2 (from Tom Drum's Vants in Gentle Craft, 1598), a hint that Thomas Dekker, author of The Shoemaker's Holiday, or The Gentle Craft (1600), was aiding and abetting John Marston in his satirical plays. Helen was acted by a short boy (i. 1. 202). The incident of the King's gift to Helen of his ring, only referred to in the last scene, seems to point at the gift of a ring to Essex by Elizabeth in 1596. Essex was executed in 1601, just before this play was acted. The older parts pointed out above were, I think, incorporated from detached scenes written in 1593 during the plague time, and laid by for future use. The plot is from Giletta of Narbonne in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, a book used by Shakespeare in 1594 for his alteration of Edward III. Mr. Stokes says that Eccleston and Gough acted in this play, on the authority of Mr. Halliwell; one of the many ignes fatui that have misled this unwary compiler.
1601-2.
Twelfth Night, or What You Will, was first acted 2d February 1602 at one of the Inns of Court (Manningham's Diary). Its date lies between Marston's Malcontent (1602), (of Malevole in which play Malvolio is clearly a caricature), and What You Will(1602) by the same author. This adoption of the name of his play seems to have induced Shakespeare to replace it by the now universally adopted title. The appellation Rudesby (v. 1. 55) is from Chapman's Sir Giles Goosecap(1601). Several minor points have been already noticed under the previous play All's Well. In this play, as in that, I believe that earlier written scenes have been incorporated. It is only in similar cases that we find such contradictions as that between the three months' sojourn of Viola at the Count's court (v. 1), and the three days' acquaintance with the Duke in i. 4. In ii. 4 there are palpable signs of alteration, and iii. 1. 159-176, v. 1. 133-148 are surely of early date. Moreover, the singular agreement of the plot with the Comedy of Errors in the likeness of the twins, and with The Gentleman of Verona, or rather with Apollonius and Sylla, whence part of that play was derived, point to a likelihood that the first conceptions of these plays were not far apart in time. I think the early portions were written in 1593, like those of the preceding play. For the change from Duke (i. 1-4) to Count in the rest of the play compare The Gentlemen of Verona. I believe that Sir Toby represents Jonson and Malvolio Marston; but that subject requires to be treated in a separate work from its complexity.
1602.
Troylus and Cressida was published surreptitiously in 1609, with an address to the reader stating that it had been "never staled with the stage." This statement was withdrawn in the same year, and a new title-page issued, "as it was acted by the King's Majesty's servants at the Globe." It had in fact been entered in S. R. 1603, February 7, by J. Roberts, and licensed for printing, "when he hath gotten sufficient authority for it"—which he evidently did not get. It could not therefore have been produced later than 1602. Nor could it, as we have it, have been earlier; the line i. 3. 73, "rank Thersites with his mastic jaws" evidently alluding to Dekker's Satiro-Mastix (1601). I once thought Marston, as Histriomastix or Theriomastix, was alluded to; but the character of Thersites suits Dekker, not Marston. Jonson describes him in The Poetaster, iii. 1, as "one of the most overflowing rank wits in Rome; he will slander any man that breathes if he disgust him." In 1602, Jonson, Marston, and Shakespeare had become reconciled; of reconciliation with Dekker, at any time, there is no trace. This play is probably the "purge" given by Shakespeare to Jonson when he put down all those "of the university pen" (The Return from Parnassus, iv. 3, acted in the winter 1602-3); Ajax representing Jonson, Achilles Chapman, and Hector Shakespeare: but whether this conjecture be true or no, Dekker is certainly Thersites. All this part of the play (the camp story) splits off from the love story of Troylus and Cressida, which is of much earlier date, c. 1593. The two parts are discrepant in minor points, notably in the existence of a truce (i. 3. 262), "dull and long-continued" fighting having been abundant in i. 2. The parts written in 1602 are i. 3; ii. 1; ii. 2; ii. 3; iii. 3. 34 to end; iv. 5. (except lines 12-53); v. i; v. 2 (retains much older work); v. 3. 1-97. All this part bears evident marks of the reading of Chapman's Iliad i.-vii. (1598); the love story is somewhat from the old Troy book printed by Caxton, but more from Chaucer's Troilus and Cressid. At the end of v. 3, in the Folio v. 10. 32-34, are repeated; this shows that the 1602 acting copy was meant to end with v. 3, thus making the play a comedy; as it now stands it is usually classed with the tragedies; in the Folio, it is placed unpaged between the Histories and Tragedies, and is not mentioned in the "Catologue" of contents. The prologue and v. 4-10 contain much work that is unlike Shakespeare's, and are probably by some coadjutor whose other lines have been replaced by the 1602 additions. Heywood in his Iron Age treated this same subject, and the date of that play is important in this investigation. The Ages of Heywood were acted before 1611 (see his Address to the Reader in The Golden Age); The Iron Age was "publicly acted by two companies on one stage at once," and "at sundry times thronged three several theatres." These were the Rose, the Curtain, and the Bull; Pembroke's men, and the Admiral's, acted together at the Rose, October to November 1597. This must have been the time when the Iron Age was performed; but not as a new play. It would otherwise have been entered in Henslowe's Diary as such. All the Ages were then probably old in 1597. In 1595-6 we find them accordingly entered by Henslowe under other names; in 1595, March 5, The Golden Age, whose scenes are in Heaven and Olympus, appears as Steleo (Cœlo) and Olempo; he subsequently writes Seleo for Steleo; The Silver and Brazen Ages on May 7 and May 23, as the first and second parts of Hercules. These three plays were produced in succession. The entry of Galfrido and Bernardo is a forgery, and a clumsy one, for it necessitates a Sunday performance, which is a thing unknown in Henslowe's Diary, if the dates be properly corrected. On 23d June 1596, Troy was acted, palpably The Iron Age; and on 7th April 1597, Five Plays in One may have been the second part of that play. About February 1599, Heywood left the Admiral's men, and joined Lord Derby's; in April, Dekker and Chettle produced their Troylus and Cressida; in May their Agamemnon, and Dekker his Orestes' Furies. I believe that all these were merely enlargements of Heywood's Iron Age. Dekker was a "dresser of plays" and a shameless plagiarist; witness the stealing of Day's work, which he afterwards reclaimed in his Parliament of Bees. At the same time that Dekker was thus pillaging Heywood, his friend Marston was satirising Heywood as Post-haste in Histriomastix for appropriating Shakespeare's Troylus (of 1593) and bringing out The Prodigal Child, the old Acolastus of 1540, as a new play. There can be no doubt that the company satirised in Histriomastix is Derby's. It was a "travelling" company, newly set up, with a poet who extemporises his plays (Heywood had a share in 220) and uses
"No new luxury of blandishment,
But plenty of Old England's mother's words."
The allusion to Troylus, l. 267-275, in which "he shakes his furious spear," has led some persons to a very absurd identification of Posthaste with Shakespeare. I have noticed before the singular allusion to The Iron Age in John iv. 1. 60 (1596).
1603.
The Taming of the Shrew is unlike any play hitherto considered; the Shakespearian part of it being evidently confined to the Katharine and Petruchio scenes—ii. 1. 167-326; iii. 2 (except 130-150, 242-254); iv. 1; iv. 3; iv. 5 (except three lines at end); v. 2 (except ten lines at conclusion). The construction of the play shows that it was not composed by Shakespeare in conjunction with another author, but that his additions are replacements of the original author's work; alterations made hurriedly for some occasion when it was not thought worth while to write an entirely new play. Such an occasion was the plague year of 1603, when the theatres were closed and the companies had to travel. We shall see, hereafter, that Shakespeare's other similar alterations of other men's work were made in like circumstances. This date is confirmed by the allusions to other taming plays, of which there were several; the present play, in its altered shape, being probably the latest: ii. 1. 297 refers to Patient Grissel, by Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton, December 1599; "curst" in ii. 1. 187, 294, 307; v. 2. 188, to Dekker's Medicine for a Curst Wife, July 1602; and iv. 1. 221 to Heywood's Woman Killed with Kindness, March 1603. There is nothing but the supposed inferiority of work to imply an earlier date; and this, on examination, will be seen to be merely a subjective inference arising from the reflex action of the less worthy portion with which Shakespeare's is associated. Rudesby in iii. 2. 10 is from Sir Giles Goosecap (1601), and Baptista, as a man's name, could hardly have come under Shakespeare's notice, when in his Hamlet he made it a woman's. The earlier play thus altered probably dates 1596, when an edition of The Taming of a Shrew was reprinted. This last-named play was written for Pembroke's company in 1588-9. Another limit of date is given by the name Sincklo in the Induction. Sinklo was an actor with the Chamberlain's men, from 1597 to 1604. Nicke in iv. 1. is Nicholas Tooley. The play is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. In the Induction, "The Slys are no rogues: we came in with Richard Conqueror," is, I think, an allusion to the stage history of the time. Sly and Richard the Third (Burbadge) came into Lord Strange's company together in 1591. In the Pembroke play, Don Christophero Sly was probably acted by Christopher Beeston. The Induction, partly revised by Shakespeare, seems to have been clumsily fitted by the players (as, indeed, the whole play is, especially in the non-appearance of "my cousin Ferdinand," iv. 1. 154, whose place seems to be taken by Hortensio): surely Sly ought to have been replaced, as in the 1588 play; and is it possible that Shakespeare even in a farce should have made Sly talk blank verse, sc. 2, l. 60-120? The Taming of a Shrew, as acted in June 1594 at Newington Butts, was the old play which had belonged to Pembroke's men, probably by Kyd; but the first version of the play, afterwards altered by Shakespeare, was written, I think, by Lodge, (? aided by Drayton in the Induction). This Induction was, I think, greatly altered by Shakespeare in 1603.
1603.
Hamlet is extant in three forms—the Folio, which is evidently a stage copy considerably shortened for acting purposes; the 1604 Quarto, which is a very fair transcript of the author's complete copy, with a few omissions; and the 1603 Quarto, imperfect and inaccurate. The date of the perfect play is certainly 1603. In ii 2. 346, &c., we find that the tragedians of the city—i.e., Shakespeare's company—are "travelling," and that "their inhibition comes of the late innovation." This has been interpreted in various ways, the most absurd being that which regards the establishment of the Revels children in 1604 as the innovation: hardly less so is Malone's notion that the putting down of the Curtain players in 1600 is the inhibition referred to. The Globe company travelled in 1601 in consequence of Essex' attempt at political innovation, and their acting Richard II. in connection therewith; they travelled again in 1603, the theatres being shut because of the plague: this latter is the time referred to in the final version, for in the latter part of that year the Puritan party had by millenary petitions at Hampton Court conferences, and so forth, attempted a religious "innovation;" and their anxiety to avoid this charge is evident in their continual protests that it was a reformation, not an innovation, that they wanted (see Fuller, Church History, under 1603-4 passim). The immediately succeeding passage, l. 351-379, however, which also occurs in the earlier version, distinctly points to 1601. The "berattling of the common stages by the aery of little eyases," the controversy between poet and player, ended in that year; these lines are not contained in the second Quarto. The words "if they should grow themselves to common players," indicate a possible date of writing c. 1610, when Ostler and Underwood, Chapel boys in 1601, had grown up and been taken into the King's men; but the use of the present tense in the preceding paragraph shows that the same Chapel children who had been engaged in the Jonson and Marston quarrel were still on the stage, and that the date of writing is anterior to their replacement by the Revels boys in January 1604. The growing to common players then must be taken generally, not specifically; unless we suppose a still further revision c. 1610, which on other grounds is not unlikely. It may be worth noting that the play of Dido, in rivalry of which the player's speech in ii. 2 is recited, belonged to these same Chapel children. In like manner the Pyrgus in Jonson's Poetaster recites bits of The Battle of Alcazar in rivalry with Dekker's Captain Stukeley. But although the date of the perfect play is almost certainly 1603, Hamlet had certainly been on the stage some years at that time. Tucca in Satiromastix (1601) says, "My name's Hamlet Revenge," and he comes on, "his boy after him, with two pictures under his cloak." In Marston's Malcontent (1601), "Illo, ho, ho, ho! art thou there, old Truepenny?" must refer to Hamlet. In iii. 2. 42, "Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them," refers, I think, to extemporising Kempe, who left Shakespeare's company in 1599. Florio's Montaigne, which is implicitly referred to throughout the play (see Mr. Feis, Shakespeare and Montaigne, 1884), was entered S. R. 4th June 1600. On the title-page of the first Quarto it is said that the play had been acted in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere; i.e., in the travelling of 1601. It is pretty clear, then, that 1601 was the date of its production. Polonius (iii. 2. 108) had already played Julius Cæsar in the University, which could hardly have been before 1601; and Hamlet was entered by Roberts 26th July 1602, in S. R., "as it was lately acted." Plays thus produced during "travels," were almost always hurried and careless performances; indeed, this form of Hamlet seems to have been an unfinished refashioning of the old play by Kyd, that had so long been performed by the Chamberlain's men. The names Corambis and Montano for Polonius and Reynaldo, and a good deal of Acts iii. and iv., seem to be remnants of this old play. The name Corambus is found in the German version, which probably dates c. 1592. It also occurs in All's Well, iv. 3. 185. The first Quarto is in this instance, as in those of Romeo, Henry V., and Merry Wives, in my opinion, printed from a partly revised prompter's copy of the 1601 play, which became useless when the fuller version was made. In this instance there are traces of alterations having been made on this copy similar to that in Romeo, iii. 5. 177. The usual explanation of the peculiar text of imperfect Quartos is, that notes were taken in shorthand at the theatre, which, eked out by the vampings of some playdresser, made up a saleable version, however incorrect. The stronghold of this theory is the soliloquy in iii. 1. 56, &c. The minor errors of "right done" for "write down," i. 2. 222; "invenom'd speech" for "in venom steept," ii. 2. 533; "honor" for "owner," v. 1. 121; and the like, can be easily paralleled in the most authentic copies of printed plays of the period. But a careful examination of the text of that speech of Hamlet's in the first Quarto, shows that its present meaningless shape arises from the displacement of two lines only, an error which is most unlikely to have occurred in shorthand notes, and is completely subversive of the hack play-writing botcher hypothesis. I append this soliloquy, as I suppose it to have stood in the MS. of the prompter's copy, after the partial 1601 correction:
bourne
The undiscover'd country from whose sight
no passenger ever return'd.
Ay, that
"To be, or not to be? Ay, there's the point.
To die—to sleep—is that all? Ay. All? No.
To sleep—to dream—ay, marry, there it goes.
For in that dream of death when we, awake,
Are doom'd before an everlasting Judge,
The happy smile and the accurst are damn'd.
But for the joyful hope of this, who'ld bear
The scorns and flattery of the world, the right
Scorn'd by the rich, the rich curst of the poor,
The widow being opprest, the orphan wrong'd,
The taste of hunger, or a tyrant's reign,
And thousand more calamities besides,
When that he may his full quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,
But for a hope of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No passenger has e'er return'd? Ay that
Puzzles the brain and doth confound the sense;
Which makes us rather bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
This consciënce makes cowards of us all."
I have put in italics in the text the marginal corrections of "proof" as shown above, inserted in their proper places; a comparison with the first Quarto will show how the printer, not the shorthand man or playdresser, by inserting them in the wrong places, has produced the nonsense that has caused so many groundless hypotheses.
"When we awake,
And borne before an everlasting Judge,
From whence no passenger ever return'd
The undiscover'd country, at whose sight
The happy smile," &c.
And farther on:
"Ay that O this conscience," &c.
The erroneous notions with regard to these imperfect Quartos arise, in a great measure, from their being compared with the carefully edited later versions; were they also edited and emended the differences would appear much smaller than they do now. The earlier (1601) form of this play was evidently hurriedly prepared during the journey to Scotland, in which the company visited the universities, at a time when the public taste for revenge-plays had been revived by the reproduction of Kyd's Jeronymo (Spanish Tragedy) by the Chapel children, probably at Jonson's suggestion; a new version of Kyd's Hamlet naturally followed. Other such plays were: Marston's Antonio and Mellida (Paul's, 1599-1600); Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar (1600); Chettle and Heywood's Hoffman, or Revenge for a Father, also called Like quits Like (Admiral's, January 1603): Chapman's Revenge of Bussy is of later date. A passage in Ram Alley (c. 1609), v. 1, "The custom of thy sin so lulls thy sense," &c., is apparently imitated from iii. 4. 161, &c., a passage not found in the Folio. This would lead to the conjecture that the Folio abridgment was made after 1609; on the other hand, the re-insertion in it of ii. 2. 350-379 points to a date, about 1610, when Underwood and Ostler had "grown to common players," and were admitted among the King's men. It was probably made then by Shakespeare himself. It is indeed most unlikely, that were it not so, its text should have been preferred, by the editors of the Folio, to the fuller one of the Quarto, which lay ready printed to their hands. We have, then, in the forms of this play, an example of Shakespeare's hurried revision of the work of an earlier writer, but it must be remembered in a most mutilated form; of the full working out of his own conception, in the shape fittest for private reading; and finally, of his practical adaptation of it to the requirements of the stage. The date of the printing of the first Quarto, and, therefore, of the revision made in the second, is after 19th May 1603, as the actors are called "King's servants" in the title-page. I. 1. 107-125, which surely allude to the death of Elizabeth, are omitted in the Folio. In iii. 2. 177, iv. 5. 77, alternative readings—
{"For women fear too much even as they love",
"And women's fear and love hold quantity,"
{"And now behold"
"O Gertrard, Gertrard"—
are printed side by side, a sure mark of revision.
1604.
Measure for Measure was written, in my opinion, in rivalry to Marston's The Fawn, which was printed March 1606, but produced 1603-4. It was also subsequent to Chettle and Heywood's Like quits Like, 14th January 1603; v. 1. 416. All the allusions in it suit 1604. The avoidance of publicity by James I. (i. 1. 68-71; ii. 4. 27-30); the existing war and expected peace (i. 2. 4. 83); the stabbers—four out of ten prisoners—in iv. 3; the stuffed hose, to which Pompey's name is appropriate, all agree in this; peace was concluded in the autumn; the "Act of Stabbing" was passed in this year, the bombasted breeches revived with the new reign. But these are more valuable in showing what reliance can be placed on such allusions than in fixing the date of the play; for it was acted at Court, 26th December 1604. The title was probably taken from a line in 3 Henry VI., ii. 6. 55; the plot is like All's Well in the substitution of Mariana, Twelfth Night in the Duke's love declaration at the end. It is founded on Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1582). An order was made in 1603, that no new houses should be built in the suburbs of London. Compare i. 2. 104.
1604.
Othello was acted at Court 1st November 1604, being, no doubt, like Measure for Measure, 26th December, a new play that year. The Merry Wives, 4th November, and Henry V., 7th January, were revised for the same Revels. The Errors, 28th December, Loves Labour's Lost, between New Year and Twelfth Day, and The Merchant of Venice, January 10, 12, were also reproduced. The document in the Record Office containing these details is a modern forgery, but Malone possessed a transcript of the genuine entry in the Revels accounts. It was a bold thing for Shakespeare to have performed before James I. in two plays on unfounded jealousy, at a time when the King was so jealous of the relations of the Queen with Lord Southampton. The 1622 Quarto copy of this play is abridged for stage reasons; by whom we cannot say. The allusion to the "huge eclipse" (v. 2. 99), points to the total eclipse of 2d October 1605. Shakespeare had probably been reading Harvey's Discoursive Problem concerning Prophesies (1588), in which he speaks of "a huge fearful eclipse of the sun" as to happen on that day. The likeness of this play in small details to Measure for Measure indicates close contemporaneity of date, e.g., the name Angelo (i. 3. 16); the word "grange" (i. 1. 106), and "seeming" (iii. 3. 209). This play was again acted at Court in 1613. It was founded on Cinthio's novel Hecatomithi, Third Decad, Novel 3. The "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" (i. 3. 145) came from Raleigh's narrative of The Discovery of Guyana (1600). He was "resolved" of their credibility. In The Patient Man, by Dekker, S. R. 9th November 1604, there is a distinct reference to Othello—
"Thou kill'st her now again,
And art more savage than a barbarous Moor" (i. 1).
King Lear was probably on the stage when the old play of Leir on which it was founded was published. This latter was entered on S. R. 8th May, as "The Tragical History of King Leir and his three daughters, as it was lately acted," but was published as "The true Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters, &c., as it hath been divers and sundry times lately acted." It is not tragical in any sense, and ends happily. Shakespeare was the first person who, in opposition to the chronicles, made a tragedy on this story. There can be no doubt that Stafford, the publisher, meant to pass the old play as Shakespeare's; the last trace we have of it on the stage is in April 1594, when it was acted at the Rose by the Queen's and Sussex' men, who almost immediately afterwards broke up. That Shakespeare's play remained on the stage till the end of 1605 is evident from the words "these late eclipses" (i. 2. 112) which clearly refer to the huge eclipse of the sun in October 1605, and the immediately preceding eclipse of the moon in September. The word "late" could not be used, whether in the original text or by subsequent insertion, till October. That Shakespeare had been probably reading Harvey on the subject I have noticed under the preceding play, to which the present is every way closely allied. Compare, for instance, the characters of Iago and Edmund. The Quarto of 1608, entered S. R. 26th November 1607 as acted at Whitehall St. Stephen's Day, i.e., 26th December 1606, is abridged and slightly altered for Court representation and carelessly printed; the Folio is, on the other hand, somewhat shortened for the public stage. The names of the spirits in iii. 4 are from Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. The two lines at the end of Act i. and the Merlin's Prophecy (iii. 2. 79-95) are not in Shakespeare's manner; they are mere gag, inserted by the Fool-actor to raise a laugh among the groundlings. The story of Gloster and his sons is probably founded on Sidney's Arcadia, ii. 133-138, ed. 1598.
1606.
Macbeth, as we have it, is abridged for the stage in an unusual degree. Nevertheless it contains one scene, iii. 5, and a few lines, iv. i. 39-43, which are not by Shakespeare. The character of Hecate, and the songs in these passages (Black spirits and white, and Come away), are from Middleton's Witch, acted 1621-22. The insertions in Macbeth must have been made in 1622; they were probably merely intended to introduce a little singing and music then popular; and music has ever since been an essential ingredient in the stage representations. Omitting these forty lines, we have ample evidence of the date of the play as Shakespeare left it. In the Porter's speech, ii. 3. 1-23, 26-46, the "expectation of plenty" refers to the abundance of corn in 1606; the allusions to equivocation certainly allude to the trial of Garnet and other Jesuits in the spring of that year: the "stealing out of a French hose" agrees with the short and strait fashion then in vogue, when "the tailors took more than enough for the new fashion sake" (A. Nixon's Black Year, 1606); the touching for the King's evil, iv. 3. 140-159, implies that James was on the throne. Camden, in his Remains (1605), a book certainly known to Shakespeare, refers to it as a "gift hereditary." The "double balls and treble sceptres" in iv. 1. 119-122, necessitate a time of writing subsequent to 24th October 1604, when the constitution was changed. The applicability of the circumstances of the play to the Gowry conspiracy would be especially pleasing to James, and the predictions of the weyward sisters had already been presented to the King at Oxford in Latin in 1605. Warner added an account of Macbeth to his new edition of Albion's England in 1606, but the absolute argument against this being a new play when Forman saw it performed 20th April 1610, lies in the distinct allusion in The Puritan by Middleton, acted 1606—"instead of a jester, we'll ha' th' ghost in a white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table." This was Shakespeare's first play without a jester, and Banquo's ghost sits in Macbeth's place at the upper end. There is little doubt that Malone was right in assigning the visit of the King of Denmark in July and August 1606 as the occasion for the production of this play at Court. But was this the date of its first production on the stage? All the evidences for it are gathered from ii. 3. 1-23, 26-46; iv. 1. 119-122; iv. 3. 140-159; every one of which passages bears evident marks of being an addition to the original text. The description of Cawdor's death is remarkably like that of the Earl of Essex in Stow (by Howes, p. 793), who minutely describes "his asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold." Steevens (ii. 4) reminds us of corresponding passages in Hamlet and Cæsar, to which plays Macbeth is throughout more closely allied than to Lear or Timon. The references to Antony, i. 3. 84, iii. 1. 57, are just what might be expected from one who had recently read Plutarch's life of Antony for writing Julius Cæsar. Shakespeare's company were in Scotland in 1601, and were appointed the King's Servants; Laurence Fletcher being admitted burgess of the guild of the borough of Aberdeen, 22d October 1601. This, I think, is the date of production of Macbeth on the stage, 1606 being that of the revised play at Court. But there are traces of a still earlier play. In 1596, August 27, there is, says Mr. Collier, an entry in S. R. (I suppose in that portion relating to fines, &c., which Mr. Arber has not been allowed to reprint) referring to two ballads, one on Macdobeth, the other on The Taming of a Shrew. Kempe, in his Dance from London to Norwich (1600), refers to this ballad as made by "a penny poet whose first making was the miserable stolen story of Mac-do-el or Mac-do-beth or Mac somewhat, for I am sure a Mac it was, though I never had the maw to see it;" he bids the writer "leave writing these beastly ballads; make not good wenches prophetesses, for little or no profit." This ballad was in all probability founded on a play, as its companion was; a play probably written some year or two before. That Shakespeare had some connection with this early play, is rendered probable by iv. 1. 94-101, in which Dunsin'ane is accented in the southern manner; in the rest of the play it is always, as in Scotland, Dunsina'ne. This passage, in which Macbeth speaks of himself in the third person, and rhymes in a manner which strongly reminds us of the pre-Shakespearian stage, suggests that the old play of c. 1593-4 was used by Shakespeare in making his 1601 version. I may ask the reader who doubts the remarkable alterations to which this play has been subjected, to examine the following incomplete lines at points where compression by omission seems to have taken place, i. 3. 103; i. 4. 35; ii. 1. 16; ii. 1. 24; ii. 3. 120; iii. 2. 155; iv. 3. 15; and to compare the later alterations by Davenant and others, as given in my article in Anglia, vol. vii.
1606-7.
Timon of Athens unquestionably contains much matter from another hand. The Shakespearian part is so like Lear in matter, and Anthony and Cleopatra in metre, that the conjectural date here assigned to it cannot be far wrong. It was founded on the passage in North's Plutarch (Life of Antony), and perhaps on the story as told in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, with a hint or two from Lucian's Dialogues (? at second hand; no translation of that time is known). It would be out of proportion in this work to reproduce my 1868 essay on the authorship, which awaits some slight corrections from recent investigation. It will be found in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions for 1874. I can only here point out the parts that are certainly not Shakespeare's, namely, ii. 1; ii. 2. 194-204; iii. 1; iii. 2; iii. 3; iii. 4 (in great part); iii. 5; iii. 6. 116-131; iv. 2; iv. 3. 70-74, 103-106, 464-545; v. i. 157; v. 3. Delius and Elze say the second author was George Wilkins. Perhaps so; but they are certainly wrong in regarding the play as an alteration made by Shakespeare of another man's work. Whether Wilkins completed the unfinished sketch by Shakespeare, or the actors eked it out with matter taken from a previous play by him, I cannot tell: but Shakespeare's part is a whole totus teres atque rotundus. There is no trace of his ever working in conjunction with any author after 1594, although in this play, in The Shrew, and Pericles there is evidence of his writing portions of dramas which were fitted into the work of other men. Wilkins left the King's men in 1607 and wrote for the Queen's. This migration to an inferior company is so unusual as to indicate some rupture on unfriendly terms. Perhaps the insertion of Shakespeare's work in his play offended him. The unShakespearian characters in the play are three Lords—Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius; three Servants—Flavius (Steward always in the Shakespeare part), Flaminius, and Servilius; three Strangers; three Creditors—Hortensius, Philotus, and 2d Varro; three Masquers; and the Soldier. I have not here assigned to Wilkins all parts of the play that have been suspected, but only those with regard to which the evidence is definite, with entire exclusion of merely æsthetic opinion.
1607.
Anthony and Cleopatra was entered on S. R. 20th May 1608; and no doubt was written not much more than a year before that date. Where-ever we find plays entered but not printed in their author's lifetime, it is pretty safe to conclude that they were then still on the stage: compare, for Shakespeare, the instances of The Merchant of Venice, Troylus and Cressida, and As You Like it.
1608.
Coriolanus in all probability was produced not long after Anthony. There is no external evidence available. Both these Roman plays are founded on North's Plutarch.
Pericles as we now have it was probably on the stage in 1608, when Wilkins published his prose version of "the play, as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient poet John Gower." He was probably annoyed by the adoption of Shakespeare's version of the Marina story in place of his own. The rest of the play as it stands—i.e., Acts i. ii. and Gower chorus to Act iii.—are by Wilkins, in whose novel the only distinctly traceable piece of Shakespeare's is from iii. 1. 28-31, which is repeated almost verbatim. The play was published in 1609, probably as an answer to Wilkins; whose unaltered play must have been on the stage as early as 1606, seeing that The Puritan, acted that year, contains a distinct parody of the scene of Thaisa's recovery. This original form of the play was founded on Gower's Confessio Amantis and Twine's novel of Prince Apollonius, which was probably, in consequence of the popularity of the play, reprinted in 1607. It was, I think, this Wilkins' play that was entered in S. R. along with Anthony and Cleopatra 20th May 1608, and the publication of which was stayed. There is no trace of any transfer of Blount's interest as so entered to Gosson, who published the altered play. To the popularity of this drama there are many allusions, notably one in Pimlico, or Run Redcap (1609).
1609.
Cymbeline was probably produced after the Roman plays and before Winters Tale; and the Iachimo part was doubtless then written. There is, however, strong internal evidence that the part derived from Holinshed, viz., the story of Cymbeline and his sons, the tribute, &c., in the last three acts, was written at an earlier time, in 1606 I think, just after Lear and Macbeth, for which the same chronicler had been used. All this older work will be found in the scenes in which Lucius and Bellarius enter. A marked instance in the change of treatment will be found in the character of Cloten. In the later version he is a mere fool (see i. 3; ii. 1); but in the earlier parts he is by no means deficient in manliness, and the lack of his "counsel" is regretted by the King in iv. 3. Especially should iii. 5 be examined from this point of view, in which the prose part is a subsequent insertion, having some slight discrepancies with the older parts of the scene. Philaster, which contains some passages suggested by this play, was written in 1611. The Iachimo story is found in Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 11, Novel 9. The verse of the vision, v. 4. 30-122, is palpably by an inferior hand, and was probably inserted for some Court performance after Shakespeare had left the stage. Of course the stage directions for the dumb show are genuine. This would not have been worth mentioning but for the silly arguments of some who defend the Shakespearian authorship of these lines, and maintain that the play would be maimed without them. Forman saw this play acted c. 1610-11; which gives our only posterior limit of date.
1610.
The Winter's Tale was founded on Greene's Dorastus and Fawnia; it was still on the stage when Dr. S. Forman saw it, 15th May 1611; but this gives only a posterior limit. Sir H. Herbert mentions it as an old play allowed by Sir G. Buck. But Buck, although not strictly Master of the Revels till August 1610, had full power to "allow" plays from 1607 onwards. We are, after all, left in great measure to internal evidence. One really helpful fact is that Jonson in Bartholomew Fair links it with The Tempest: "If there be never a servant monster in the Fair who can help it? nor a nest of antics? He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries." This was written in 1614, and at that date he would of course allude to the latest productions of Shakespeare, if to any. This allusion occurs in a play written for a rival company, the Princess Elizabeth's. In his Conversations with Drummond, Jonson again refers to this play apropos of Bohemia having no sea-coast. I suspect that the Bear was a success in Mucedorus, and therefore revived in this play.
1610.
The Tempest was shown by Malone to contain many particulars derived from Jourdan's narrative, 13th October 1610, A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Isle of Devils; by Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and Captain Newport, with divers others. He is not equally successful in showing that Shakespeare used The True Declaration of the Colony of Virginia, S. R. 8th November 1610, in which the reference to The Tempest as a "Tragical Comedy" seems to me to show that the play was already on the stage. It does not follow that because the October pamphlet was used in the storm scenes, that none of the play was written before that month; but that the date of its first appearance was in October to November 1610, I have little doubt. Gonzalo's description of his ideal republic is from Florio's Montaigne. The play as we have it is evidently abridged; one character, the son of Anthonio the Duke of Milan, i. 2. 438, has entirely disappeared, unless the eleven lines assigned to Francisco are the débris of his part. The lines forming the Masque in iv. 1 are palpably an addition, probably made by Beaumont for the Court performance before the Prince, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Palatine in 1612-13; or else before the King on 1st November 1612 (The Winters Tale being acted on 5th November). This addition consists only of the heroics, ll. 60-105, 129-138; the mythological personages in the original play having acted in dumb show. In the stage directions (l. 72) of the dumb show "Juno descends;" in the text of the added verse l. 102, she "comes," and Ceres "knows her by her gait." This and the preceding were surely Shakespeare's last plays; compare Prospero's speech, v. 1. 50, &c., and the Epilogue. He began his career with the Chamberlain's company (after his seven years' apprenticeship in conjunction with others, 1587-94), with a Midsummer Dream, he finishes with a Winter's Tale; and so his playwright's work is rounded; twenty-four years, each year an hour in the brief day of work, and then the rounding with a sleep.[13]
1613.
Henry VIII. as we have it is not the play that was in action at the Globe when that theatre was burned on Tuesday, 29th June 1613. Howes (Stow, Chronicles, p. 1003) says, "By negligent discharging of a peal of ordnance, close to the South side thereof the Thatch took fire, and the wind suddenly disperst the flame round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed and no man hurt; the house being filled with people, to behold the play, viz., of Henry the Eight." A letter from Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, 30th June 1613, and another from John Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 8th July 1613 (Winwood's Memorials, iii. 469), give similar accounts. Sir Henry Wotton (Reliquiæ, p. 475), in a letter of 2d July 1613, says it was at "a new play acted by the King's players at the Bankside, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth." The title "All is True" is clearly alluded to in the Prologue, ll. 9, 18, 21; but the same Prologue shows that the extant play was performed as a new one at Blackfriars, for the price of entrance, a "shilling," l. 12, and the address to "the first and happiest hearers of the town," l. 24, are only applicable to the "private house" in Blackfriars; the entrance to the Globe was twopence, and the audience at this "public house" of a much lower class. This play is chiefly by Fletcher and Massinger, Shakespeare's share in it being only i. 2; ii. 3; ii. 4; while Massinger wrote i. 1; iii. 2. 1-193; v. 1. It was not, however, written by these authors in conjunction. Shakespeare appears to have left it unfinished; his part is more like The Winter's Tale than any other play, and was probably written just before that comedy in 1609, during the prevalence of the plague. I have before noted the disturbing effect of these plague times, with the concomitant closing of the theatres, &c., on Shakespeare's regular habits of composition. This play is founded on Holinshed's Chronicle and Fox's Christian Martyrs (1563). It is worth noting that its success called forth new editions of S. Rowley's When you see me you know me, and the Lord Cromwell of W. S. in this year; both plays on Henry the Eighth's times. On the authorship question see Mr. Spedding's Essay in The Gentleman's Magazine, August 1850, Mr. Boyle's Essay and my own letter in the Athenæum. That the 1613 play (probably finished by Fletcher, and destroyed in great part in the Globe fire) was not that now extant is certain, for in a contemporary ballad on the burning of the Globe we are told that the "riprobates prayed for the fool," and there is no fool in Henry VIII. The extant play was produced by Fletcher and Massinger in 1617.
1625.
The Two Noble Kinsmen was published in 1634, as written by Fletcher and Shakespeare. There is no other evidence that Shakespeare had any hand in it, except the opinions of Lamb, Coleridge, Spalding, Dyce, &c. These, on analysis, simply reiterate the old argument, "It is too good for any one else." Hazlitt and Hallam held, notwithstanding, the opposite opinion. I have myself shown in The Literary World, 10th February 1883 (Boston), that the play was first acted in 1625. It was printed from a playhouse MS., with stage directions, such as i. 3: "2 Hearses ready with Palamon and Arcite; the 3 Queens. Theseus and his Lords ready;" and in iii. 5: "Knock for Schoole." But in iv. 2, we find an actor named Curtis taking the part of Messenger. No actor of that name is known except Curtis Greville, who joined the King's men between 1622, when he belonged to the Palsgrave's, and October 1626, when he performed in Massinger's Roman Actor. Moreover, the Prologue tells us this was a new play performed in a time of losses, and in anticipation of leaving London. The company did leave London in 1624, after their trouble in August about Middleton's Game of Chess. On this occasion they travelled in the north, and performed at Skipton three times for £3; and again, in July 1625 they travelled, on account of the plague in London; where they ceased to perform in May, when the deaths from that disease exceeded forty per week. Greville probably joined the King's men on the breaking up of the Palsgrave's, of whom the last notice dates 3d November 1624. This gives Easter 1625 as the likeliest date for the play. But whether in 1624 or 1625 (and it must be one of these years) it was first acted, the advocates of Shakespeare's part-authorship are now reduced to the hypothesis that a play begun by Shakespeare was left unnoticed for some dozen years, although a similarly unfinished play had been finished and acted twelve seasons before, and a collected edition of Shakespeare's works had been issued in the interim, in which had been included every available portion of his writings.[14] I cannot believe this; nor can I think that if Shakespeare were really concerned in this play it would have been put forth in 1625 with so modest a Prologue. This might have suited while he lived, but nine years after his death, and two years after his collected works had been published, it is incredible. With the highest respect then for the eminent æsthetic critics who hold that Shakespeare did write part of this play, I must withdraw my adhesion, and state my present opinion that there is nothing in it above the reach of Massinger and Fletcher, but that some things in it (ii. 1a; iv. 3) are unworthy of either, and more likely to be by some inferior hand, W. Rowley for instance. The popular instinct has always been on this side; editions containing this play have not been sought after; and had it not been known not to have been Shakespeare's, it would surely have been gathered up with the W. S. plays in the Folio of 1663.