And now, being dead, is no-thing."
This being the sort of literature which William Shakespeare's pen turned out during his residence in London, he could manage very well without a library. And it was the most natural thing in the world that, after retiring to the shade of Stratford, it should have produced, on occasion, the famous epitaphs on his friends Elias James and "Thinbeard." At all events, this is a simpler explanation than the "deterioration of power," for which no one has assigned a sufficient reason," which Halliwell * was driven to assume in order to account for this drivel from the pen which had written "Hamlet."
* "Life of Shakespeare," p. 270. London, 1848.
And, moreover, it is a satisfactory explanation of what can not be explained in any other way (and which no Shakespearean has ever yet attempted to explain at all), of the fact that William Shakespeare, making his last Will and Testament at Stratford, in 1515, utterly ignored the existence of any literary property among his assets, or of his having used his pen, at any period, in accumulating the competency of which he died possessed. Had William Shakespeare been the courtly favorite of two sovereigns (which Mr. Hallam doubts * ), it is curious that he never was selected to write a Masque. Masques were the standard holiday diversions of the nobles of the day, to which royalty was so devoted that it is said the famous Inigo Jones was maintained for some years in the employment of devising the trappings for them alone (though, of course, it is no evidence, either way, as to the matter we have in hand). But if William Shakespeare was the shrewd and prosperous tradesman that we have record of (and, that he came to London poor and left it rich, everybody knows), was he not shrewd enough, as well, to see that his audiences did not require philosophical essays and historical treatises; that he need not waste his midnight oil to verify the customs of the early Cyprians, or pause to explore for them the secrets of nature? We may assert him to be a "great moral teacher" to-day; but, had he been a "great moral teacher" then, he would have set his stage to empty houses. He could have earned the same money with much less trouble to himself.
* "Literature of Europe," vol. iii., p. 77 (note).
The gallants would have resorted to his stage daily (as they would have gone to the baths if they had been in old Home); and the ha'penny seats have enjoyed themselves quite as much had he given them the school of "The Hog hath lost his Pearl," or "The Devil is an Ass," or the tumbles of a clown. Why should this thrifty manager have ransacked Greek and Latin and Italian letters, the romance of Italy and the Sagas of the Horth (or, according to Dr. Farmer, rummaged the cloisters of all England, to get these at second hand)? Had these all been collected in a public library, would he have had leisure to sit down and pull them over for this precious audience of his, these gallants and groundlings—when his money was quite as safe if he merely reached out and took the nearest spectacle at hand (as he took his "Taming of the Shrew," "Winter's Tale," "sea-coast of Bohemia," and all—from Robert Greene)? But, if we may be allowed to conceive that it was the action (that is to say, the "business") of the Shakespearean plays that delighted this Shakespearean audience (that filled the cockpit, galleries, and boxes, while poor Ben Jonson's, according to Digges, would hardly bring money enough to pay for a sea-coal fire), and that certain greater than the manager used this action thereafter as a dress for the mighty transcripts caused to be printed under voucher of the popular manager's name—if we may be allowed to conceive this—however exceptional, it is at least an accounting for the Shakespearean plays as we possess them to-day, without doing violence to human experience and the laws of nature.
Southampton, Raleigh, Essex, Rutland, and Montgomery are young noblemen of wealth and leisure, who "pass away the time merely in going to plays every day." * We have seen that the best seats were on the stage, and these, of course, the young noblemen occupied. There were no actresses in those days—the female parts were taken by boys—but titled ladies and maids of honor were admitted to seats on the stage as well as the gallants, and a thrifty stage manager might easily make himself useful to both. If my Lord Southampton was bosom friend to William Shakespeare (as rumor has it), their intimacy arose probably through some such service. A noble youth of nineteen, of proverbial gallantry and sufficient wealth (though, it must be remembered, as among the fortunes of his day, a comparatively poor man; not able to give away $25,000 at a time, for instance), was not at so great a loss for a friend and alter ego in London in 1593 (the date at which the "Venus and Adonis" is dedicated to him) as to be forced to forget the social gulf that separated him from an economical commoner (lately a butcher in the provinces), however popular a stage manager, except for cause; and it takes considerable credulity to believe that he did forget it (if he did), through being dazzled by the transcendent literary abilities of the economical commoner aforesaid.
* "My Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland come not to the
court, the one but very seldom; they pass away the time
merely in going to plays every day."—(Letter from Rowland
White to Sir Robert Sidney, dated October 11, 1599, quoted
by Kenny, "Life and Genius of Shakespeare." London:
Longmans, 1864. p. 34, note.) But it may be noted that
Southampton and Raleigh were opposed to each other in
politics.
For Southampton lived and died without ever being suspected of a devotion to literature or literary pursuits; and, besides, the economical commoner had not then written (if he ever did write) the "Hamlet" and "Lear," and those other evidences of the transcendent literary ability which could seduce a peer outside his caste. That the gallants and stage managers of the day understood each other, just as they perhaps do today, there is reason to believe. Dekker, in his "Gull's Horn-Book," says that, "after the play was over, poets adjourned to supper with knights, where they in private unfolded the secret parts of their dramas to them." By "poets" in this extract is meant, as appears from the context, the writers of dramas for the stage; such as, perhaps, William Shakespeare was. But whether these suppers after the play were devoted to intellectual and philosophical criticism is a question for each one's experience to aid him in answering. Whether William Shakespeare was admitted to this noble companionship, or was only emulous of the honor, we have no means of conjecture, as either might account for the fact that with his first savings he purchased a grant of arms for his father, thus obtaining not only an escutcheon, but one whole generation of ancestry; a transaction which involved, says Dr. Farmer, the falsehood aud venality of the father, the son and two kings at arms, and did not escape protest; * for if ever a coat was "cut from whole cloth," we may be sure that this coat-of-arms was the one.
* A complaint must have been made from some quarter that
this application had no sufficient foundation, for we have,
in the Herald's college, a manuscript which purports to be
"the answer of Garter and Clarencieux, kings of arms, to a
libellous scrowl against certain arms supposed to be
wrongfully given in which the writers state, under the head
"Shakespeare," that "the person to whom it was granted had
borne magistracy, and was justice of peace, at Stratford-
upon-Avon; he married the daughter and heir of Arden, and
was able to maintain that estate." The whole of this
transaction is involved in considerable, and, perhaps, to a
great extent, intentional obscurity; and it still seems
doubtful whether any grant was actually made in the year
1596. In the year 1599, the application must have been
renewed in a somewhat altered form. Under that date, there
exists a draft of another grant, by which John Shakespeare
was further to be allowed to impale the ancient arms of
Arden. In this document a statement was originally inserted
to the effect that "John Shakespeare showed and produced his
ancient coat-of-arms, heretofore assigned to him whilst he
was her Majesty's officer and bailiff of that town." But the
words "showed and produced" were afterward erased, and in
this unsatisfactory manner the matter appears to have
terminated.
It is manifest that the entries we have quoted contain a
number of exaggerations, one even of positive misstatements.
The "parents and antecessors" of John Shakespeare were not
advanced and rewarded by Henry VII.; but the maternal
ancestors, or, more probably, some more distant relatives of
William Shakespeare, appear to have received some favors and
distinctions from that sovereign. The pattern of arms given,
as it is stated, under the hand of Clareneieux (Cooke, who
was then dead), is not found in his records, and we can
place no faith in his allegation. John Shakespeare had been
a justice of the peace, merely ex officio, and not by
commission, as is here insinuated; in all probability he did
not possess "lands and tenements of the value of five
hundred pounds;" and Robert Arden, of Wilmecote, was not a
"gentleman of worship."—(Kenny, "Life and Genius of
Shakespeare," p. 38. London: Longmans, 1854.)