In this passage, whether he knew it or not—and we know not how he knew things,—Shakespeare soars to the heights of Plato's dreams, in the "Phædrus" and the "Symposium". Did he go beyond the appreciation of "the groundlings" in such passages? Did they find mirth in the passion of the Jew, and fail to fathom Shakespeare's deep sympathy with the oppressed? Probably he gave them more and other things than he seemed to give; to them Shylock's may have appeared as a comic part, but indeed we cannot judge that strange Elizabethan audience. Shakespeare knew what they wanted, horrors, ghosts, revenges, manslayings. He gave them these things in "Lear" and "Hamlet," but gave with them the deepest and subtlest thoughts, the most magical poetry, treasures of wit, and all this they could enjoy, as they could follow every point, pass, and parry in the wit-combats.
It seems probable that Shakespeare's fame as a poet rested, for a while, rather on his verses, "Venus and Adonis" (published 1593) and "Lucrece" (1594), than on all the treasures of his plays. The two poems, the only works of Shakespeare's which he himself saw through the press, are dedicated, in brief terms, to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, then a lad of twenty, fond of pleasure, art, and letters. The dedications are not fulsome, when we consider the manner of addressing patrons in that age. The second address, of some ten lines, says "the love I dedicate to your lordship is without end.... What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours." It seems that Southampton had behaved with generosity to the poet, and it looks as if the poet's "love" were more than the trick-phrase of a person obliged.
The poems themselves, "Venus and Adonis" in a six line stanza, "Lucrece" in a seven line stanza, are remarkable for fluent mastery of verse and rhyme, for lusciousness of description of physical beauties, and for the compassionate passage on the poor hunted hare, and the vigorous description of a horse. Shakespeare manifestly loved a good horse, and probably felt compunctions about riding to harriers. But as to the poetry; it certainly is not superior to the luscious descriptions in Spenser; the verse is by no means superior to, nor, to some tastes, equal to Spenser's; and, if we lost Marlowe's "Hero and Leander," the misfortune would be as great as if we lost "Venus" and "Lucrece". The two compositions show us Shakespeare exercising himself on a fashionable class of themes, and with an overflow of fashionable conceits; sufflaminandus erat, says Ben Jonson; "the drag needed to be put on". Had we nothing else of Shakespeare's, we could make no guess at his greatness.
Indeed his contemporaries could hardly do so, till his plays were pirated and printed, because all their innumerable merits could not be fully appreciated till the plays were meditatively and frequently perused. By 1598, Francis Meres, comparing English with ancient poets, names Shakespeare and others with Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles and Aristophanes, also Ausonius and Claudian. But he places Warner in the same good company (in "Palladis Tamia," or "Wit's Treasury," 1598).
The plays named by Meres are "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Comedy of Errors," "Love's Labours Lost," "Love's Labour's Won" (?), "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Merchant of Venice," both "Richards," "Henry IV," "King John," "Titus Andronicus," and "Romeo and Juliet". "The soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' his sugared sonnets, among his private friends." (Not published till 1609.)
Gullio, in the Cambridge comedy, "The Return from Parnassus" (about 1599-1602) is a farcical ignorant braggart who says "let this duncified world esteem of Spenser and Chaucer, I'll worship sweet Mr. Shakespeare," for his "Venus and Adonis". He also quotes "Romeo and Juliet," and the University wits manifestly despised Shakespeare, as no scholar and not a University man. They bade Ben Jonson go back to his brick-making; he was not a University man!
Meanwhile Shakespeare, with his share in the company and what he received for his written plays, and from patrons, was thriving, while his father struggled with debt and difficulties. None the less, probably aided pecuniarily and advised by Shakespeare, he applied to the College of Arms for a grant of armorial bearings (1596). A memorandum exists in which John Shakespeare is said to have "lands and tenements of good wealth and substance". The grant was not made till 1599, and the heralds appear to have been very good-natured in permitting these Shakespeares to write themselves gentlemen. The financial basis, however, was supplied when, in 1597, Shakespeare bought New Place, a large house in the town of Stratford, and two gardens. Sir Sidney Lee reckons his income, allowing for the altered values of money, at £1040 in our currency.
In short, like Scott, Shakespeare lived to found a family of gentility, though Scott naturally inherited the gentility and heraldic quarterings, which Shakespeare did not. He prospered continually; he held, later, shares in the Globe theatre, and there is abundant proof that in money, acres, and goods he throve to an extent that denotes careful living. He appears as a strict exactor of debts: in nothing was he careless and indifferent except as regarded the immortal works, which, after his death, his 'stage friends, Heming and Condell, published as best they might (1623, the first folio).
Shakespeare seems, in fact, to have had even more than Scott's indifference to his literary fame, unless we suppose him to have been firmly persuaded that his works, once given to the stage, must secure their own immortality. Even so, he might have employed the leisure of his last years in preparing a correct text for the press.
Yet who knows that Shakespeare did not dream of doing what was unprecedented, of revising and collecting his plays for publication? Playwrights seldom printed their dramas, for reasons already given. But, in 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, Ben Jonson published his "works" (he was laughed at for calling them "works") in a tall and stately folio. It may have been in Shakespeare's mind to do the same thing: but "to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow"! He may have contemplated the difficult task, he may even have made fair copies of some of his manuscripts of his many unprinted plays,—the papers which his friends, the actors, say had "scarce a blot". But his older manuscripts may have been tattered and worn, and altered for better or worse. To collect and revise all was a serious labour for a retired, perhaps a weary man. He was but 52 when he died; he may, we repeat, have dreamed of a task which he put off from day to day: there is no mystery in delays so natural when the custom of play writers was not to publish.