Shakespeare’s Plays—Who Wrote them?
There is a quaint story printed by the Camden Society—Kemp’s “Nine Daies’ Wonder,” published 1600. Kemp was one of the leading performers in that company in which Shakespere had subordinate parts assigned him, and Edward Alleyne was chief manager. Nash was a friend of his, and his tract, “An Almond for a Parrot,” is dedicated to him, “Monsieur du Kempe.” He talks of another great journey, and signifies that he keeps it dark whether “Rome, Jerusalem, Venice, or any other place at your idle appoint” (p. 20). One of his letters begins, “My notable Shakerags,” mentions “a penny poet, whose first making was the miserable stolne story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat.” In the Returne from Parnassus—dialogue, “Phil. What, M. Kempe, how doth the Emperour of Germany? Student. God save you, M. Kempe: Welcome from dancing the morrice ‘over the Alpes.’ Kempe. Is it not better to make a foole of the world as I have done than to be fooled of the world as you schollers are.” There is also that well-known allusion to “our fellow Shakespeare putting them all down, I and Ben Jonson too, and giving him a purge that made him beray his credit” (whatever that may mean). Also p. xiv, “The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, Sir Anthony, Sir Thomas, and Sir Robert Shirley, as it is now play’d by Her Majesties Servants,” the following scene is supposed to take place at Venice:—“Servant. An Englishman desires accesse to you. Sir Anthony. What is his name? Servant. He calls himself Kempe. Sir. Ant. Bid him come in; Welcome, honest Will, and what good new plays have you?” etc. Nash also speaks of Kemp as being at Bergamo, and an Englishman from Venice meeting him there and having a conversation on the “order and maner of our plays.” These allusions, whether feigned or otherwise, show there were communications going on between her Majesties players and foreign parts, which were understood to be connected with “new plays” and “plays of note.”
Was there any distant connection between Will Kempe and Sir A. Sherley? His mother’s name was Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe, and had three sons—Thomas, Anthony, and Robert. “No three persons of one family ever experienced adventures at the same time so uncommon or so interesting” (from a book “The Sherley Brothers,” by one of the same house, for Roxburghe Club, Evelyn Philip Shirley). Sir Anthony married a first cousin of the Earl of Essex, “who had oftentimes to befriend him.” He was sent on embassies to every quarter of the known world. Was ofttimes in communication with Burleigh. We hear of him most in Italy, “sent by Emperor of Germany as ambassador to Morocco”; “hired horses to pass the Alpes” (see Kemp, p. 16); writes to Anthony Bacon, a friend of Essex (p. 22). It appears that he wrote many letters at this period to his patron Earl of Essex, Mr. Anthony Bacon, and Mr. Secretary Cecil. He is found everywhere, sometimes employed as ambassador, sometimes on special missions, sometimes in questionable ventures. Milan, Venice, where at one time he seems to have resided for several years, Rome, Persia, Cyprus, Antioch, Syracuse, Prague, Arabia, Tripoli, Aleppo, Bagdad, Constantinople, Portugal, Spain. Sir Anthony appears (Annals of the Shirley Family) with his brother Sir Robert to have always been in debt and difficulty, “sometimes like to starve for want of bread,” profuse and extravagant when money was to be had, utterly careless how it was obtained. Mention is made of “Henry Sherley, kinsman of Mr. James Sherley, the play-wright, and who did also excel him in that faculty.” Henry Sherley was the author of the following plays never printed: Spanish Duke of Lerna, Duke of Guise, Gasaldo the country lover (p. 270, Annals of Shirley Family). Sir Anthony was ever aiming to get reinstated at Court, and if he had been known to have been mixed up with these plays, it would have been fatal to his chance with Elizabeth. Clearly he had something to do with Will Kempe, a member of Alleyn’s company, who acted the prominent parts in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice, etc. Was not “Will Kempe” the go-between the manager and the author? Was it not necessary, in order to keep the secret, that the MSS. should not pass from hand to hand, or be entrusted even to the ambassador’s bag? Lansdowne MSS. 1608, Milan, Sir Anthony Sherley to his sister, Lady Tracy, “you will say, I should have written; it is true, but there are such intercepting of my poor papers that before God I dare commit nothing to paper, and now less than ever.” The extraordinary capacity and knowledge of languages and familiarity with places and scenery by Sir Anthony Sherley, especially in Italy, were clearly unequalled. What share had he in what may be a joint-stock company for the production of these plays? It is now acknowledged that many of the plays are translated from Italian plays and other novels. Did he bring this grist to the mill, find novels and stories, translate them, and forward them by his trusted kinsman Kempe to others to ship-shape them and fit them for the stage? May not the name of Sherley have oozed out amongst “the playwrights,” and thence “Henry Sherley, who excelled in that faculty,” been spoken of as the man who wrote them. Sir Anthony keeps up his friendship with Anthony Bacon, whom no doubt he knew in earlier days at Court. How fond they all were of the name of Anthony. A greater knowledge of men and manners and languages and the leading men and courtiers of the day or such a master of travel existed not in his time. Strange also is it that “The Travailes of the three English Brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, and Mr. Robert Sherley,” should be presented on the stage by this same company of which Kempe was a member. How were they acquainted with them?
These are all singular coincidences, and as I write I have been perusing Donnelly, and I find nothing to contradict, but much to back up my theories. His chapter ix. vol. i. p. 171, also x. and others passim, might fit Sherley as well as Bacon. (Shylock, p. 224.) Sherley borrows money wherever he could get credit and at other times spends it freely.
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my monies and my usances.
Sir Anthony, has he not often “sat on the Rialto”? has he not often watched the Argosies come “to road”? Has he not had ventures everywhere? Read over The Merchant of Venice, and say if it could possibly have been written but by one resident there and half Italian in his knowledge and familiarity with people and scenes in Italy itself. What is Antonio everywhere but Anthony “writ new”? See Sonnets, lxxvi.:
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
See also Sonnets passim illustrating and explaining “my papers yellowed with their age,” “my muse,” “my verse.”
What are the names of places mentioned? Tripolis, Mexico, England, Lisbon, Barbary, India, “where his argosies with portly sail,” “the pageants of the sea.” What in Othello? Cyprus on the brow of the sea “stand ranks of people and they cry a sail.” May—nay, must have witnessed it in person.
The leading qualifications for the author of Shakespeare’s Plays to possess are summed up on the medallion of Sir Anthony Sherley’s picture, Antonius Sherleyus Anglus Eques aurati (Annals of the Shirley Family, second edition, p. 297, “Multorum mores hominum qui vidit et urbes”), and it was his and his alone to fulfil them to the letter. He must have a familiarity with sylvan life, its beauties, its copses, and its ferns and flowers; must have mixed in youthful sports, hawked, hunted the hare, and chased the roe and conies in his father’s park at Wiston (there is an ancient picture of the Lord of the Manor there, issuing forth on a sporting expedition, p. 264). He no doubt visited Chartley (Erdeswick’s Staffordshire). “The park is very large and hath therein red deer, fallow deer, wild beasts, and swine,” passed on to Tamworth, the ancient seat of Ferrers family (see Shirley Annals, p. 183). “In the principal chamber is a very noble chimney piece of dark oak, reaching to the ceiling, carved with the story of Venus and Adonis, and the arms of Ferrers and the motto, [20] ‘only one.’” May be the young Southampton was with him there. His education must have been liberal—Oxford, Hart and All Souls’ Colleges—he was at them both. He must have studied at the bar and had great legal knowledge—“Inns of Court” gave him that. English court life, its pageants, its courtiers, he knew them well. Camps he had commanded at Zutphen. His friends and kinsmen were Essex, Lord Southampton, the latter to whom he dedicated his Venus and Adonis, had like himself married a sister Vernon, a cousin of Lord Essex. The fickleness of sovereigns he had felt, he had in some way offended Elizabeth, and that spiteful woman never him forgave; she cut off his kinsman Essex’s head and stole his books. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Val to Duke:
“These banished men that I have kept withal,
Are men endued with worthy qualities,
Forgive them what they have committed here,
And let them be recalled from their exile:
They are reformed, civil, full of good,
And fit for great employment.”
Sherley Brothers, p. 27, to Sir Cecill, “his whole object being if possible to conciliate the Queen, and to obtain leave to return to England. Elizabeth however remained inexorable.”—A.D. 1600.
P. 34. Venice, “which city remained his head quarters for some years.”—1601.
P. 50. A.D. 1605.—“Four months abode in Saphia, kept open house . . .; to supply his own turn for money he got credit of Jews to take up money, and pay them in moriscos, but at an excessive rate, almost fifty for an hundred.”
All foreign courts, even the Czar of Muscovy, the great Sophi, King of Morocco, of Persia; well, he had had missions to them, and been of them and amongst them. A thorough knowledge of a sailor’s life, their own peculiar phrases and ship-shape ways are his to speak of as a sailor would; perils by sea and land, he had gone through them all. Languages, most of them on his mouth-tips dwell (Alls Well that Ends Well, “If there be here German or Dane, low Dutch, Italian, or French, let him speak to me”). The habits and the ways, the customs, dresses, manners, laws of almost every known nation then, he had witnessed, thought on, and had both an eye-sight and head knowledge of them. Horses, he knew their points; nightingales (passim), he had listened to their song.
Among the papers relating to the Low Countries in the S.P.O. is the following in illustration of Shakespeare’s well-known line, “Saddle white Surrey to the field,” etc. “A note of all the horses of old store, which Thomas Underwood acknowledgeth himself to have received since his coming to your honor’s (Sir H. Sidney) service, June 2, 1589, e.g.:
| Charge. | Discharge. | |
| Graie | Stanhope | given to Sir Roger Williams. |
| Baie | SHURLIE | ,, Mr. Ralph Love. |
| Baie | Skipworth | ,, The Grooms. |
| Graie | Essex | ,, Mr. St. Barbe. |
| Graie | Bingham | ,, Sir Philip Sidney. |
| Pied | Markham | ,, The French Ambassador. |
| Dun | Sidney | ,, Bonham. |
| Sorrel | Bingham | ,, Sir Richard Bingham. |
| Black | Stanhope | ,, To the cart at Fulham.” |
“Anthony Sherley had a command in the Low Countries among the English when Sir Philip Sidney was killed” (Wood). “This was before Zutphen in 1586.”—From Sherley Brothers (p. 4).
“Dispatched with title of Colonel into Brittany under Essex,” 1591 (p. 5).
Might he not even have heard Essex or Sir Philip Sidney give orders to saddle his gray charger to the field to-morrow.
Anthony Sherley and no other was he who wrote these plays.
CHAPTER III.
Mr. Donnelly’s Cryptogram.
I have waited until I had Mr. Donnelly’s book before me. The marvellous industry, research and intelligence displayed is simply astounding. I dare not express an opinion on the subject. But why or wherefore should Bacon take such an interest in and spend so much ingenuity on Anne Hathaway and her marriage? It is a strange tale. I have myself been Commissary for Bishops and held Courts for them; have been for years a Surrogate for Bishops and Archbishops, and have had now and then to refuse a license; but I never had or heard of such a case as this, and should certainly have refused to grant a license to allow “once” publishing the banns to stand for “thrice” and to slur over “consent of parents.” It most probably happened that the banns were published the first time more or less surreptitiously, and taking the parents by surprise were not objected to; but if it proceeded to a second “asking,” they would be forbidden; it is clear there was an objection known to be hanging up. Turn the bull’s-eye light of common sense unto what was too common in parishes of old. Who, why, and wherefore did Farmers Sandells and Rychardson appear upon the scene? They, it may be, held office in the parish, and had caught hold of a lad who, to save the parish a burden or one of themselves a scandal, would for a consideration make an “honest woman of Ann Hathaway.” I myself recollect having a similar case to deal with on all-fours—a farming lad of 19 or 20 and a woman of 29 or 30 near her confinement, when I felt so strongly on the subject, that before the marriage ceremony, I asked the intended bridegroom to come into the vestry to question him as to his being in his sober senses, and if he understood what was the position he was about to make for himself.
One error Mr. Donnelly has fallen into when he uses strong language against William Shakespere for allowing “one quart of sack” (p. 51) to be sent to his guest. It was a common compliment to send such gifts, and the omission would have been thought an insult. In Ambrose Barnes’ Memoirs (p. 244) published by the Surtees Society, Appendix, 1592:—“The Corporation of Newcastle-on-Tyne paid for 20 lb. of sugar in two loaves at 18d. a lb., 6 bottles of sack, 10 pottles of white wine, 9 pottles of claret wine, sent as a present to my Lord of Durham as he came travelling to this town.” Again (p. 427), 1684:—“6d. for one pint of sack when Mr. Shakespeare preached!” Also in Longstaff’s Darlington (p. 239), Churchwardens’ accounts, 1643:—“One quart off wine when Mr. Doughty preached, 10d.; one quart wine and one pinte sack when another gentleman preached, which lay att George Stevenson’s, 1s. 8d.;” 1650, “six quarts of sacke to the minister that preached when we had not a minister, 9s.;” 1666, “one quart of sack bestowed on Mr. Jellett when he preached, 2s. 4d.; more bestowed on him at Ralph Collings’, when Mr. Bell was there, 1s. 8d.”
I know that my friends the public have a strong idea that this subject has been thoroughly threshed out, and are apt to say and think—
Shakespere and Bacon are vexation,
Donnelly is as bad,
His Cryptogram it puzzles me,
His Cipher drives me mad.
Nevertheless, I have an opinion that I have been able to fling a few novel hints upon the question, and so cast it upon the waters to sink or swim.
Scott Surtees.
Dinsdale-on-Tees,
May 14, 1888.