All this “is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare was a pseudonym,” [147a] says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is not consistent with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, that he thought that Kempe thought, that his fellow player was the author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge play.
In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia credits Shakespeare with Venus and Adonis, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions “negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a nom de plume is not apparent,” says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised.
Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author of Venus, Lucrece, Romeo, Richard, “more whose names I know not.” Davies (1610) calls him “our English Terence” (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having “played some Kingly parts in sport.” Freeman (1614) credits him with Venus and Lucrece. “Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander.” I repeat Heywood’s evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play, A Woman Killed with Kindness, was, from the old days of Henslowe, in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, “Jack Fletcher,” “Frank Beaumont,” “Kit Marlowe,” “Tom Nash,” he says,
“Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’”
Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve against the evidence.
We need not pursue the allusions later than Shakespeare’s death, or invoke, at present, Ben Jonson’s panegyric of 1623. As to Davies, his dull and obscure epigram is addressed “To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare.” He accosts Shakespeare as “Good Will.” He remarks that, “as some say,” if Will “had not played some Kingly parts in sport,” he had been “a companion for a King,” and “been a King among the meaner sort.” Nobody, now, can see the allusion and the joke. Shakespeare’s company, in 1604, acted a play on the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600. King James suppressed the play after the second night, as, of course, he was brought on the stage throughout the action: and in very droll and dreadful situations. Did Will take the King’s part, and annoy gentle King Jamie, “as some say”? Nobody knows. But Mr. Greenwood, to disable Davies’s recognition of Mr. Will as a playwright, “Our English Terence,” quotes, from Florio’s Montaigne, a silly old piece of Roman literary gossip, Terence’s plays were written by Scipio and Laelius. In fact, Terence alludes in his prologue to the Adelphi, to a spiteful report that he was aided by great persons. The prologue may be the source of the fable—that does not matter. Davies might get the fable in Montaigne, and, knowing that some Great One wrote Will’s plays, might therefore, in irony, address him as “Our English Terence.” This is a pretty free conjecture! In Roman comedy he had only two names known to him to choose from; he took Terence, not Plautus. But if Davies was in the great Secret, a world of others must have shared le Secret de Polichinelle. Yet none hints at it, and only a very weak cause could catch at so tiny a straw as the off-chance that Davies knew, and used “Terence” as a gibe. [149a]
The allusions, even the few selected, cannot prove that the actor wrote the plays, but do prove that he was believed to have done so, and therefore that he was not so ignorant and bookless as to demonstrate that he was incapable of the poetry and the knowledge displayed in his works. Mr. Greenwood himself observes that a Baconian critic goes too far when he makes Will incapable of writing. Such a Will could deceive no mortal. [150a] But does Mr. Greenwood, who finds in the Author of the plays “much learning, and remarkable classical attainments,” or “a wide familiarity with the classics,” [150b] suppose that his absolutely bookless Will could have persuaded his intimates that he was the author of plays exhibiting “a wide familiarity with the classics,” or “remarkable classical attainments.” The thing is wholly impossible.
I do not remember that a single contemporary allusion to Shakespeare speaks of him as “learned,” erudite, scholarly, and so forth. The epithets for him are “sweet,” “gentle,” “honeyed,” “sugared,” “honey-tongued”—this is the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote L’Allegro just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” with “native wood-notes wild”; and gives to Jonson “the learned sock.” Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare’s works appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller’s remark that Shakespeare’s “learning was very little,” that, if alive, he would confess himself “to be never any scholar.” [151a] I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare’s generation, such as Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins’s view be correct, the men of Shakespeare’s and of Milton’s generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.
VIII
“THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE”
When Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, “Ah, but you cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor.” We have seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet (“Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief,” quoth Jonson), as author of Venus and Adonis, and as a sonneteer. “All this does nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems alluded to,” says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again. [155a]