The expression "passion-driven," as applied by Chapman to Shakespeare in 1594, especially in a dedication written to Matthew Roydon,—who in this same year published Willobie his Avisa,—plainly refers to Shakespeare's relations at that time with Mistress Davenant, who was the original for the figure now known as the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, as well as for the Avisa of Willobie his Avisa. The words "reading but to curtail a tedious hour and altogether hidebound with affection to great men's fancies," refer to Shakespeare in the capacity of reader to the Earl of Southampton. In an attack which John Florio makes upon Shakespeare in 1598, he also makes a similar reference to him in this capacity. The expression "judgements butcher," like Nashe's "killcow," indicates Shakespeare's father's trade of butcher.
It was the obvious parallel between Chapman's, "when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their souls like an heavenly familiar," and Shakespeare's allusion, in Sonnet 86, to a poet who attempted to supplant him in Southampton's favour—
"He nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine"—
that led Professor Minto to suggest Chapman as the rival poet of the Sonnets. In a former essay I have demonstrated the truth of Professor Minto's suggestion.
Chapman's Intonsi Catones, or "Unshorn Catos," refers to the peculiar manner in which Shakespeare wore his hair, which Greene describes as "harsh and curled like a horse-mane," and is also a reference to his provincial breeding and, presumed, lack of culture.
There are a number of indications in the few facts we possess of Shakespeare's life in 1594, and also in his own and contemporary publications, to warrant the assumption that the Earl of Southampton bestowed some unusual evidence of his bounty upon him in this year. If ever there was a period in his London career in which Shakespeare needed financial assistance more than at other times it was in this year. Lord Strange's company had now been acting under Henslowe's management for two years. The financial condition of both Burbage and Shakespeare must at this time have been at a low ebb. The plague had prevented Pembroke's company playing in London for nearly a year, and we have seen that their attempts to play in the provinces had resulted in failure and loss. In about the middle of 1594, however, Lord Strange's players (now the Lord Chamberlain's men) return to Burbage and the Theatre, when Shakespeare becomes not only a member of the company, but, from the fact that his name is mentioned with that of Kempe and Richard Burbage in the Court records of the payment for performances in December 1594, it is evident that he was then also a leading sharer in the company.
In parting from Henslowe and reorganising under Burbage in 1594 it is apparent that the reorganisers of the Lord Chamberlain's men would need considerable capital if we may judge the financial affairs of this company by those of the Lord Admiral's company (subsequently Lord Nottingham's men) while under Henslowe's management. On 13th October 1599 Henslowe records in his Diary: "Received with the company of my Lord of Nottingham's men to this place, beinge the 13th of October 1599, and it doth appeare that I have received of the debte which they owe unto me three hundred fifty and eight pounds." This was only a partial payment of this company's debt, which evidently was considerably in excess of this amount. It is unlikely, then, that Lord Strange's company was free of debt to him at the end of their term under his management.
Shakespeare's earliest biographer, Nicholas Rowe, records, on the authority of Sir William Davenant, "that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." Whatever truth there may be as to the amount of money here mentioned, it is apparent that Southampton evidenced his bounty to Shakespeare in 1594 in some substantial manner, which quickly became noised abroad among the poets and writers who sought patronage. Several of these poets in approaching Southampton refer inferentially to his munificence to Shakespeare. In 1594 Barnabe Barnes writes:
"Vouchsafe right virtuous Lord with gracious eyes
Those heavenly lamps which give the muses light
To view my muse with your judicial sight," etc.
The words italicised evidently refer to Southampton's acceptance of Venus and Adonis in the preceding year. Later in 1594, Thomas Nashe dedicated The Life of Jack Wilton to Southampton, and in a dedicatory Sonnet to a poem preserved in the Rawlinson MS. in the Bodleian Library, entitled The Choice of Valentines, Nashe apologises for the salacious nature of the poem, and in an appended Sonnet evidently refers to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in the line italicised below: