Beside these national histories, some few incidents from ancient histories, or the annals of other nations, took their place, commonly disfigured by the mixture of fabulous events. But neither authors nor public felt the slightest anxiety with regard to their origin and nature. They were invariably overloaded with those fantastic details, and those forms borrowed from the common habits of life, with which children so often decorate the objects which they are obliged to picture to themselves by the aid of their imagination alone. Thus Tamburlaine appeared in his chariot drawn by the kings whom he had conquered, and complaining bitterly of the slow pace and miserable appearance of his team. On the other hand, Vice, the usual buffoon of dramatic compositions, performed, under the name of Ambidexter, the principal part in Preston's tragedy of "Cambyses," which was thus converted into a Morality which would have been intolerably tedious if the spectators had not had the gratification of seeing a prevaricating judge flayed alive upon the stage, by means of "a false skin," as we are duly informed by the author. The performance, though almost entirely deficient in decorations and changes of scenery, was animated by material movement, and by the representation of sensible objects. When tragedies were performed, the stage was hung with black; and in an inventory of the properties of a troop of comedies, we find enumerated, "the Moor's limbs, four Turks' heads, old Mahomet's head, one wheel and frame in the siege of London, one great horse with his legs, one dragon, one rock, one cage, one tomb, and one hell's mouth." [Footnote 13] This is a curious specimen of the means of interest which it was then thought necessary to employ upon the stage.
[Footnote 13: Malone's Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 309-313 ed. 1821.]
And yet, at this period, Shakspeare had already appeared! and, before Shakspeare's advent, the stage had constituted, not only the chief gratification of the multitude, but the favorite amusement of the most distinguished men! Lord Southampton went to the theatre every day. As early as 1570, one, and probably two, regular theatres existed in London. In 1583, a short time after the temporary victory gained by the Puritans over the performance of stage-plays in that city, there were eight troops of actors in London, each of whom performed three times a week. In 1592, that is, eight years before the time when Hardy at length obtained permission to open a theatre in Paris, which had previously been impossible on account of the useless privilege possessed by the "Brethren of the Passion," an English pamphleteer complained most indignantly of "some shallow-brained censurers," who had dared "mightily to oppugn" the performance of plays, which, he says, are frequented by all "men that are their own masters—as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London." [Footnote 14] Finally, in 1596, so vast a multitude of persons went by water to the theatres, which were nearly all situated on the banks of the Thames, that it became necessary considerably to augment the number of boatmen.
[Footnote 14: See Nash, "Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil," p. 59, reprinted by the Shakspeare Society in 1842.]
A taste so universal and so eager could not long remain satisfied with coarse and insipid productions; a pleasure which is so ardently sought after by the human mind, calls for all the efforts and all the power of human genius, This national movement now stood in need only of a man of genius, capable of receiving its impulse, and raising the public to the highest regions of art. By what stimulus was Shakspeare prompted to undertake this glorious task? What circumstance revealed to him his mission? What sudden light illumined his genius? These questions we can not answer. Just as a beacon shines in the nighttime without disclosing to our view the prop by which it is supported, so Shakspeare's mind appears to us, in his works, in isolation, as it were, from his person. Scarcely, throughout the long series of the poet's successes, can we discern any traces of the man, and we possess no information whatever regarding those early times of which he alone was able to give us an account. As an actor, it does not appear that he distinguished himself above his fellows. The poet is rarely adapted for action; his strength lies beyond the world of reality, and he attains his lofty elevation only because he does not employ his powers in bearing the burdens of earth. Shakspeare's commentators will not consent to deny him any of those successes to which he could possibly lay claim, and the excellent advice which Hamlet gives to the actors at the court of Denmark has been quoted in support of a theory that Shakspeare must have executed marvelously well that which he so thoroughly understood. But Shakspeare showed equal acquaintance with the characters of great kings, mighty warriors, and consummate villains, and yet no one would be likely to conclude from this that he was capable of being a Richard the Third or an Iago. Fortunately, we have reason to believe that applause, which was then so easily obtained, was not bestowed in a sufficient degree to tempt an ambition which the character of the young poet would have rendered it too easy for him to satisfy; and Rowe, his first historian, informs us that his dramatic merits "soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer."
Years nevertheless elapsed before Shakspeare made his appearance on the stage as an author. He arrived in London in 1584, and is not known to have engaged in any employment unconnected with the theatre during his residence in the metropolis; but "Pericles," his first work, according to Dryden, though many of his other critics and admirers have rejected it as spurious, did not appear until 1590. How was it possible that, amid the novel scenes that surrounded him, his active and fertile mind, whose rapidity, according to his contemporaries, "equaled that of his pen," could have remained for six years without producing any thing? In 1593, he published his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he dedicated to Lord Southampton as "the first heir of his invention;" and yet, during the two preceding years, two dramas which are now ascribed to him had achieved success upon the stage. The composition of the poem may have preceded them, although the dedication was written subsequently to their production; but if the "Venus and Adonis" is anterior to all his dramas, we must come to the conclusion that, in the midst of his theatrical life, Shakspeare's eminently dramatic genius was able to engage in other labors, and that his first productions were not intended for the stage. A more probable supposition is that Shakspeare spent his labor, at first, upon works which were not his own, and which his genius, still in its novitiate, has been unable to rescue from oblivion. Dramatic productions, at that time, were less the property of the author who had conceived them than of the actors who had received them. This is always the case when theatres begin to be established; the construction of a building and the expenses of a performance are far greater risks to run than the composition of a drama. To the founder of the theatre alone is dramatic art indebted, at its origin, for that popular concourse which establishes its existence, and which the talent of the poet could never have drawn together without his assistance. When Hardy founded his theatre at Paris, each troop of actors had its poet, who was paid a regular salary for the composition of plays, just in the same way as the chaplain of the Earl of Northumberland. In the time of Shakspeare, the English stage had made much greater progress, and already enjoyed the facility of selection and the advantages of competition. The poet no longer disposed of his labor beforehand, but he sold it when completed; and the publication of a piece, for permission to perform which an author had been paid, was regarded, if not as a robbery, at least as a want of delicacy which he found it difficult to defend or excuse. While dramatic property was in this state, the share which the self-love of an author might claim in it was held in very low account the success of a work which he had sold did not belong to him, and its literary merit became, in the hands of the actors, a property which they turned to account by all the improvements which their experience could suggest. Transported suddenly into the midst of that moving picture of human vicissitudes which even the paltriest dramatic productions then heaped upon the stage, the imagination of Shakspeare doubtless beheld new fields opening to its view. What interest, what truthfulness might he not infuse into the store of facts presented to him with such coarse baldness! What pathetic effects might he not educe from all this theatrical parade! The matter was before him, waiting for spirit and life. Why had not Shakspeare attempted to communicate them to it? However confused and incomplete his first views may have been, they were rays of light arising to disperse the darkness and disorder of chaos. Now a superior man possesses the power of making the light which illumines his own eyes evident to the eyes of others. Shakspeare's comrades doubtless soon perceived what new successes he might obtain for them by remodeling the uncouth works which composed their dramatic stock; and a few brilliant touches imparted to a ground-work which he had not painted—a few pathetic or terrible scenes intercalated in an action which he had not directed—and the art of turning to account a plan which he had not conceived, were, in all probability, his earliest labors, and his first presages of glory. In 1592, a time at which we can scarcely be certain that a single original and complete work had issued from his pen, a jealous and discontented author, whose compositions he had probably improved too greatly, speaks of him, in the fantastic style of the time, as an "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; an absolute Johannes Factotum, who is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in the country." [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," published in 1592.]