On May 2 The Taming of a Shrew was entered on S. R.
On May 9 The Rape of Lucrece was entered. The difference in tone between the dedication of this poem to Lord Southampton and that of Venus and Adonis distinctly points to a personal intercourse having taken place in the interval. Hence the date of Shakespeare's first interview with his patron may be assigned as between April 1593 and May 1594.
On May 14 The Famous Victories of Henry V. and Leir were entered on S. R.
On May 14 also the Admiral's company, of which nothing is heard since 1591, began to act at the Rose, having acted at Newington for three days only. Alleyn, Henslow's son-in-law, had left the management of Shakespeare's company on the death of Lord Derby, and now joined the Admiral's men.
Between[5] June 3 and June 13 the Chamberlain's men played at Newington Butts alternately with the Admiral's: among the Chamberlain's plays we notice on June 3, 10, Hester and Ahasuerus, which exists in a German version of which a translation ought to be published; June 5, 12, Andronicus; June 9, Hamlet; June 11, The Taming of a Shrew. The intermediate days were occupied by the Admiral's men: who on the 15th [17th] went to the Rose, and the Chamberlain's men no doubt to the Theater, the Burbadges' own house. The Chamberlain's company at this date included W. Shakespeare, R. Burbadge, J. Hemings, A. Phillips, W. Kempe, T. Pope, G. Bryan, all of whom, with the possible exception of Burbadge, had been members of Lord Strange's company; together with H. Condell, W. Sly, R. Cowley, N. Tooley, J. Duke, R. Pallant, and T. Goodall, who had previously been in all probability members of the Queen's company. C. Beeston must have joined them soon afterwards. The names of Richard Hoope, William Ferney, William Blackway, and Ralph Raye occur in Henslow's Diary as Chamberlain's men c. January 1595. The Queen's men came in on the reconstitution of that company in 1591-2. See on this matter further on under the head of The Seven Deadly Sins.
On June 19 the old play of Richard III. (with Shore's wife in it) was entered on S. R., a pretty sure indication, which tallies with other external evidence, that the play attributed to Shakespeare was produced about this time. No one can read the four plays composing the Henry 6th series without feeling that, however various their authorship, they form a connected whole in general plan. Margaret is the central figure, who hovers like a Greek Chorus over the terrible Destiny that involves King and people in its meshes. But Margaret is not Shakespeare's creation; she is Marlowe's. Shakespeare had no share in the plays on the contention of York and Lancaster, and but a slight one in 1 Henry VI. Marlowe had a chief hand in 1 Henry VI. and York and Lancaster; probably wrote the whole of Richard Duke of York, and laid, in my opinion, the foundation and erected part of the building of Richard III. At his death he seems to have left unacted or unpublished his poem of Hero and Leander, finished afterwards by Chapman; Dido, partly by Nash, and produced (when?) by the Chapel children; Andronicus acted (under Peele's auspices?) by the Sussex men, and Richard III., completed by Shakespeare, and acted by the Chamberlain's company as we have it in the Quarto. All these plays were produced or published in 1594. About the same time an earlier play of Marlowe's, originally acted c. 1589, was altered and revised by Shakespeare. The date and authorship of the Shakespearian part of Edward III., viz., from "Enter King Edward" in the last scene of act i. to the end of act ii., are proved by the allusion to the poem of Lucrece; the repetition of lines from the Sonnets: "Their scarlet ornaments," "Lilies that foster smell far worse than weeds," and many smaller coincidences with undoubted Shakespearian plays: while the original date and authorship of the play as a whole will appear from the following quotations. In the Address prefixed to Greene's Menaphon, in a passage in which Nash has been satirising Kyd and another as void of scholarship and unable to read Seneca in the original, he suddenly attacks Marlowe, whom he has previously held up as the object of their imitation, and asks what can they have of him? in Nash's own words: "What can be hoped of those that thrust Elysium into Hell, and have not learned, so long as they have lived in the spheres, the just measure of the Horizon without an hexameter?" Marlowe in Faustus[6] has "confound Hell in Elysium," and, in Edward III, horízon is pronounced hórizon. This, however, might occur in other plays; but in Greene's Never Too Late we find Tully addressing the player Roscius, who certainly represents R. Wilson, in these words: "Why, Roscius, are thou proud with Æsop's crow, being pranked with the glory of others' feathers? Of thyself thou canst say nothing: and if the Cobbler hath taught thee to say Ave Cæsar, disdain not thy tutor because thou pratest in a King's chamber." Unless another play can be produced with "Ave Cæsar" in it, this must be held to allude to Edward III., in which play Wilson must have acted the Prince of Wales (act i. 1. 164). The "cobbler" alludes to Marlowe as a shoemaker's son.
On July 20, Locrine, an old play written, says Mr. Simpson, by G. Tylney in 1586, but in which Peele had certainly a principal hand, was entered on S. R. It was issued as "newly set forth, overseen and corrected by W. S." I see no reason to believe that this was Shakespeare. Of course he had no hand in writing the play; and in any case Peele did not probably sanction the publication.
To this year we must assign the production of the earliest of Shakespeare's Sonnets. That these (or rather that portion of them which are continuous, 1-126) were addressed to Lord Southampton was proved by Drake. The identity of language between the Dedication of Lucrece and Sonnet 26, the exact agreement of them with all we know of the careers of Shakespeare and his patron during the next four years, and the utter absence of evidence of his connection with any other patron, are conclusive on that point. They begin (1-17) with entreaties to marry, which date about 6th October 1594, when Southampton attained his majority, and before he had met Elizabeth Vernon, and end (117) in a time when "peace proclaiming olives of endless age," after the treaty of Vervins, 2d May 1598: and before the Earl's marriage at the end of that year. They involve a story of some frail lady who had transferred her favours to the young lord from the older player (40-42). Far too much has been written on this matter from a moral point of view. The fact remains, and all we can say is: Remember these Sonnets were written "among private friends," and not for publication. The lady has not hitherto been identified, but is, I think, identifiable. On September 3d was entered on S. R., Wyllobie his Avisa. Dr. Ingleby has shown in his Shakespeare Allusion-books that the W. S. in this poem is William Shakespeare, and that Hadrian Dorrell, the reputed editor, is a fictitious character. He has, however, missed the key to this anonymity; viz., that the book was known to be a personal satirical libel. P[eter] C[olse], according to the author of Avisa, "misconstrued" the poem; and so necessitated the further figment in the 1605 edition that the supposed author, A. Willobie, was dead; in this edition the mythical H. D. says: "If you ask me for the persons, I am altogether ignorant of them, and have set them down only as I find them named or disciphered in my author. For the truth of this action, if you enquire, I will more fully deliver my opinion hereafter." But independently of this evidence from the book itself we find in S. R. (Arber, iii. 678) that when the works of Marston, Davies, &c., were burnt in the Hall, 4th June 1599, other books were "stayed;" viz., Caltha Poetarum, Hall's Satires, and "Willobie's Adviso to be called in." This marks the book as of the same character as its companions; viz., libellous, calumnious, personally abusive. The characters in the poems were evidently representations of real living persons. The heroine of the poem is Avĭsa, or Avīsa (sometimes written A vis A), that is, Avice or Avice A. This name was not uncommon (see Camden's Remaines, p. 93). She lived in the west of England, "where Austin pitched his monkish tent," in a house "where hangs the badge of England's saint." The place is more fully described thus:—
"At east of this a castle stands