In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long before had tryed the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered of the like infection." Willobie his Avisa in some measure reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authorship as well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem.
In 1595 George Chapman published his Ovid's Banquet of Sense and his A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy, in both of which poems, as well as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare. Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as definitely establishing the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to Shakespeare as well as his identity as the rival poet of the Sonnets.[28]
Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in 1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and literary prestige.
The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friendship and patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.
Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two years before that date.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1641, by John Tucker Murray.
[21] In 1594 Cuthbert Burbie published a play entitled The Cobbler's Prophecy, the authorship of which is ascribed to "R. Wilson" on the title-page. The textual resemblances between this play, The Pedlar's Prophecy, The Three Ladies of London, and The Three Lords and Three Ladies, and certain parallels between the two latter and Fair Em, all of which plays were published anonymously, led Mr. Fleay to credit all of them to Wilson, in which—excluding Fair Em—he was probably correct. All of these plays, with the exception of The Pedlar's Prophecy, were either Burbage's or Admiral's properties. The Three Lords and Three Ladies was published for Richard Jones in 1590, and The Cobblers Prophecy for Cuthbert Burbie in 1594. All plays published for Richard Jones were formerly old Admiral's properties, and nearly all the early plays published for Cuthbert Burbie old Burbage properties. Fair Em, while not published until 1631, records on the title-page that it was acted by Lord Strange's company. The Pedlar's Prophecy was, however, published by Thomas Creede, all of whose publications Mr. Fleay has found were old Queen's properties. Admitting, then, that all of these plays were written by Robert Wilson, the latter play must have been written by him for the Queen's company later than 1582-83, when he left Leicester's company. It appears probable also that the earlier plays—The Three Ladies and The Cobbler's Prophecy—were written for Leicester's company before that date, and retained by Burbage when he severed his connection with Leicester's men, or else, that they were retained by Leicester's men as company properties and brought to Strange's men in 1588-89 by Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, when their old company disbanded. It is evident, then, The Three Lords and Three Ladies, which Mr. Fleay admits is merely an amplification of the old play of The Three Ladies, which he dates as being first published in 1584, was a revision made when all these plays became Strange's properties, and that the scriptural parallels between The Three Lords and Three Ladies, The Three Ladies, and Fair Em, which are quite absent in The Pedlar's Prophecy—the only one of these plays ascribed in the publication itself to Wilson—are due to the revisionary efforts of the "theological poet" referred to by Greene as doing such work for Strange's company, and as having had a hand in Fair Em, which was acted in about 1590, in which year The Three Lords and Three Ladies, which shows similar scriptural characteristics, was published. From a time reference in the earlier form of this play—The Three Ladies—in the first scene, "not much more than twenty-six years, it was in Queen Mary's time," Mr. Fleay arbitrarily dates from the last year of Mary's reign, and concludes that it may have been acted by the Queen's company in 1584. He admits, however, that it does not appear in the list of the Queen's men's plays for this year, and later on infers from other evidence that the allusion to twenty-six years from Queen Mary's time probably referred to the first date of publication, which is unknown, but which he places, tentatively, in 1584. "That it was played by the Queen's men," he writes, "is shown under the next play,—The Three Lords and Three Ladies,—which is an amplification of the preceding play performed shortly after Tarleton's death in about 1588." Mr. Fleay writes further: "If I rightly understand the allusions, Tarleton acted in Wit and Will in 1567-68. The allusion to Tarleton's picture shows that Tarleton's Jests, in which his picture appears, had already been published. The statement that Simplicity (probably acted by Wilson himself), Wit, and Will had acted with Tarleton, proves that the present play was acted by the Queen's men."
In arguing to place Robert Wilson as a member of Strange's company in 1588-89, Mr. Fleay borrows both premises and inference from the facts to support his theory. He is no doubt right in dating the original composition of The Three Ladies of London before 1584, and probably also in attributing all of these plays to Wilson, but, seeing that they were all Burbage properties in 1589-90, is it not evident that The Three Ladies of London was an old Leicester play produced by Wilson before 1582-83, when he and Burbage left that company, and either that Burbage then retained possession of it, or, that it was brought to Strange's men by Pope, Kempe, and Bryan in 1589? Mr. Fleay admits that The Three Lords and Three Ladies is merely an amplification of The Three Ladies made after Tarleton's death, which occurred in 1588. It seems apparent, then, that the scriptural phraseology noticeable in The Three Ladies, The Three Lords and Three Ladies, and Fair Em, which led Mr. Fleay to impute the last to Wilson's pen, and also to connect him as a writer and an actor with Lord Strange's company in 1589-90, is the work of the "theological poet" indicated by Greene and Nashe as having had a hand in Fair Em in 1589. It is also evident that the actors who took the parts of Simplicity, Wit, and Will,—in The Three Lords and Three Ladies,—who had formerly acted with Tarleton, were Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, Strange's men, who were all formerly Leicester's men. It is much more likely that these old members of Leicester's company, who in Tarleton's time would have been juniors in the company, would recall and boast of their old connection, than that his late associates in the Queen's company would do so within a year or two of his death.
[22] Bentley was a Queen's player in 1584, and probably came from Sussex's company to the Queen's upon the organisation of that company in 1583.