By 1592, when Greene wrote his Groatsworth, “Shakescene” thinks he can bombast out a blank verse with the best; he is an actor, he is also an author, or a furbisher of older plays, and, as a member of the company, is a rival to be dreaded by Greene’s three author friends: whoever they were, they were professional University playwrights; the critics think that Marlowe, so near his death, was one of them.
Will, supposing him to come upon the town in 1587, has now had, say, five years of such opportunities as were open to a man connected with the stage. Among these, in that age, we may, perhaps, reckon a good deal of very mixed society—writing men, bookish young blades, young blades who haunt the theatre, and sit on the stage, as was the custom of the gallants.
What follows? Chaff follows, a kind of intimacy, a supper, perhaps, after the play, if an actor seems to be good company. This is quite natural; the most modish young gallants are not so very dainty as to stand aloof from any amusing company. They found it among prize-fighters, when Byron was young, and extremely conscious of the fact that he was a lord. Moreover there were no women on the stage to distract the attention of the gallants. The players, says Asinius Lupus, in Jonson’s Poetaster, “corrupt young gentry very much, I know it.” I take the quotation from Mr. Greenwood. [106a] They could not corrupt the young gentry, if they were not pretty intimate with them. From Ben’s Poetaster, which bristles with envy of the players, Mr. Greenwood also quotes a railing address by a copper captain to Histrio, a poor actor, “There are some of you players honest, gentlemanlike scoundrels, and suspected to ha’ some wit, as well as your poets, both at drinking and breaking of jests; and are companions for gallants. A man may skelder ye, now and then, of half a dozen shillings or so.” [107a] We think of Nigel Olifaunt in The Fortunes of Nigel; but better gallants might choose to have some acquaintance with Shakespeare.
To suppose that young men of position would not form a playhouse acquaintanceship with an amusing and interesting actor seems to me to show misunderstanding of human nature. The players were, when unprotected by men of rank, “vagabonds.” The citizens of London, mainly Puritans, hated them mortally, but the young gallants were not Puritans. The Court patronised the actors who performed Masques in palaces and great houses. The wealth and splendid attire of the actors, their acquisition of land and of coats of arms infuriated the sweated playwrights. Envy of the actors appears in the Cambridge “Parnassus” plays of c. 1600–2. In the mouth of Will Kempe, who acted Dogberry in Shakespeare’s company, and was in favour, says Heywood, with Queen Elizabeth, the Cambridge authors put this brag: “For Londoners, who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kempe? He is not counted a gentleman that knows not Dick Burbage and Will Kempe.” It is not my opinion that Shakespeare was, as Ben Jonson came to be, as much “in Society” as is possible for a mere literary man. I do not, in fancy, see him wooing a Maid of Honour. He was a man’s man, a peer might be interested in him as easily as in a jockey, a fencer, a tennis-player, a musician, que sçais-je? Southampton, discovering his qualities, may have been more interested, interested in a better way.
In such circumstances which are certainly in accordance with human nature, I suppose the actor to have been noticed by the young, handsome, popular Earl of Southampton; who found him interesting, and interested himself in the poet. There followed the dedication to the Earl of Venus and Adonis; a poem likely to please any young amorist (1693).
Mr. Greenwood cries out at the audacity of a player dedicating to an Earl, without even saying that he has asked leave to dedicate. The mere fact that the dedication was accepted, and followed by that of Lucrece, proves that the Earl did not share the surprise of Mr. Greenwood. He, conceivably, will argue that the Earl knew the real concealed author, and the secret of the pseudonym. But of the hypothesis of such a choice of a pseudonym, enough has been said. Whatever happened, whatever the Earl knew, if it were discreditable to be dedicated to by an actor, Southampton was discredited; for we are to prove that all in the world of letters and theatre who have left any notice of Shakespeare identified the actor with the poet.
This appears to me to be the natural way of looking at the affair. But, says Mr. Greenwood, of this intimacy or “patronage” of Southampton “not a scrap of evidence exists.” [109a] Where would Mr. Greenwood expect to find a scrap of evidence? In literary anecdote? Of contemporary literary anecdote about Shakespeare, as about Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman, Heywood, and Fletcher, there is none, or next to none. There is the tradition that Southampton gave the poet £1000 towards a purchase to which he had a mind. (Rowe seems to have got this from Davenant,—through Betterton.) In what documents would the critic expect to find a scrap of evidence? Perhaps in Southampton’s book of his expenditure, and that does not exist. It is in the accounts of Prince Charlie that I find him, poor as he was, giving money to Jean Jacques Rousseau.
As to the chances of an actor’s knowing “smart people,” Heywood, who knew all that world, tells us [109b] that “Tarleton, in his time, was gracious with the Queen, his sovereign,” Queen Elizabeth. “Will Kempe was in the favour of his sovereign.”
They had advantages, they were not literary men, but low comedians. I am not pretending that, though his
“flights upon the banks of Thames
So did take Eliza and our James,”