About this time Shakespeare, always attentive to pecuniary matters, brought an action against one John Clayton for £7, and obtained a verdict.
The August entries on S. R. are specially interesting. On the 4th a memorandum (not in the regular course of entry) appears to the effect that As You Like It, Henry V., Every Man in his Humour, and Much Ado about Nothing, were "to be stayed." On the 14th, Every Man in his Humour was licensed; on the 23d, Much Ado about Nothing, and along with it 2 Henry IV., "with the humours of Sir John Falstaff. Written by Master Shakespeare." On the 11th the first and second parts of the History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, "with his Martyrdom," had been licensed. The "staying" is generally supposed to have relation to surreptitious printing; I think it more likely to have been caused by the supposed satirical nature of the plays. As You Like It was not printed; Henry V. was printed in an incomplete form[7] without license; while the emphatic mention of Falstaff and the insertion of the author's name to 2 Henry IV., not customary at that date, show that the Oldcastle scandal had not yet died out. This is still further proved by the almost simultaneous entries of the two plays written October to December 1599 for the Admiral's men by Monday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathaway, on Sir John Oldcastle. Only one has reached us, which is plainly satirical of Henry V. It was, however, in one of the editions printed in 1600 ascribed to William Shakespeare. Drayton, who was the chief author concerned in its production, had left the Chamberlain's men in 1597, and been writing for the Admiral's ever since. It is noticeable that after 1597 we find the favourable notices of Lodge and Shakespeare which had been inserted in previous editions expunged from his writings, notably the lines on Lucrece in the legend of Matilda. Drayton had probably quarrelled with both his coadjutors. With the entry here on Oldcastle's "martyrdom" compare the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. This was not the play acted before Hunsdon on March 6, which was probably The Merry Devil.
On 8th October Midsummer-Night's Dream was entered on S. R.; on 28th October The Merchant of Venice. Curiously enough, two rival issues of each of these plays was made this year, although only one publisher made an entry in each case. On 22d July 1598, J. Roberts had entered The Merchant of Venice, but was refused permission to print unless he could get the Lord Chamberlain's license, who was the patron of the actors of that play. He apparently did not get it; but in 1600, when J. Heyes does get the license, he arranges with Heyes to print the book for him, but previously prints a slightly differing copy on his own account. He makes with Fisher, the publisher of the other play, a somewhat similar transaction.
There were three Court performances this Christmas by the Chamberlain's men, December 26, January 5, February 24. The payment for these to Hemings and Cowley indicates that the latter was a shareholder in the Globe.
2 and 3 Henry VI. were probably revised and revived at the Globe about this time.
1601.
In this year All's Well that Ends Well and Hamlet were produced. The form in which the latter appeared is matter of dispute; but we may safely assert that it lay between the version of the first Quarto and that of the Folio; the variation of the Quarto from this original form being caused by the surreptitious nature of that edition, and that of the Folio by a subsequent revision in 1603. The company of "little eyases" satirised in this play was not of the Paul's children, with whom the Chamberlain's men were on the most friendly terms, but of the Chapel children at the Blackfriars, who were then acting Jonson's "comical satires" against Dekker, Marston, and Shakespeare. Singularly enough, they were tenants of the Burbadges, who were also owners of the Globe.
In the same year 1601, a poem by Shakespeare appeared along with others by Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in R. Chester's Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint. This publication, could we ascertain its exact date, would show the time when the stage controversy ceased and these four writers could amicably appear together. Dekker, however, does not appear among them, and we cannot tell if his Satiromastix was acted with Shakespeare's approval or not. It was produced at the Globe by his company as well as by the children of Paul's at some time between 22d May, up till which day Dekker was writing for the Admiral's men, and 11th November, when it was entered on S. R. This bitter satire seems to have been the last open word in the controversy, but by no means the end of its history.
The next fact we have to notice may perhaps explain why, just at this point of Shakespeare's career, we find in 1602 a cessation of production, accompanied by a change of manner in outward form and inward thought when writing was resumed in 1603. In March 1601, in the Essex trials, Meyrick was indicted "for having procured the outdated tragedy of Richard II. to be publicly acted at his own charge for the entertainment of the conspirators" (Camden). From Bacon's speech (State Trials) it appears that Phillips was the manager who arranged this performance. This identifies the company as the Chamberlain's, and therefore the play as Shakespeare's. It may seem strange that a play, duly licensed and published in 1597, could give offence in 1601; but the published play did not contain the deposition scene, iv. 1, the acted play of 1601 certainly did. This point is again brought forward in Southampton's trial: he calmly asked the Attorney-General, "What he thought in his conscience they designed to do with the Queen?" "The same," replied he, "that Henry of Lancaster did with Richard II." The examples of Richard II. and Edward II. were again quoted by the assistant judges against Southampton, while Essex in his defence urged the example of the Duke of Guise in his favour. From all which it is clear that the subjects chosen for historical plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare were unpopular at Court, but approved of by the Essex faction, and that at last the company incurred the serious displeasure of the Queen. Accordingly, they did not perform at Court at Christmas 1601-2;[8] and we find them travelling in Scotland instead—L. Fletcher with his company of players being traceable at Aberdeen in October. Here the actors would hear of the Gowry conspiracy instead of Essex', of which we shall find the result hereafter. Before leaving London, however, or in the next year after their return, they acted The Life and Death of Lord Cromwell, Earl of Essex, a play in which the rise and fall of Robert Devereux, the late Earl, was pretty closely paralleled. This was entered on S. R., 11th August 1602, "as lately acted."
On September 8 John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was buried at Stratford.