The Yorkshire Tragedy was entered on S. R. May 20, as by William Shakespeare. The authorship of this play has not been yet ascertained.
On May 20 Anthony and Cleopatra, and Pericles (not as in the Quarto version with the three last acts by Shakespeare), were entered on S. R. Wilkins' prose version of the play was printed this same year. I take the order of events regarding this play to have been as follows. Wilkins wrote a play on Pericles in 1606, which was parodied in Middleton's Puritan that same year; in 1607 Twine's Pattern of Painful Adventures was reprinted; in the same year Wilkins left the King's company and joined the Queen's; in May 1608 the play was entered for publication, but not published; it may have been "stayed" by the Chamberlain's company; in the same year Wilkins issued surreptitiously (it was not entered on S. R.) his "true history of the play as it was lately presented by the poet Gower." Such a proceeding as this, a printing of a prose narrative founded on an unprinted play and by the same author, is unparalleled in the history of Shakespearean drama. It must be remembered that Wilkins was not even connected with the King's company at the time. Meanwhile Shakespeare had rewritten Acts iii.-v. In this new shape the play was acted in 1608, and was, as we know from an allusion in Pimlico, or Run Redcap (entered S. R. 15th April 1609), very popular. An edition of the play thus altered was issued in 1609, not by Blount, who made the entry in May 1608, but by Gosson, as the "late much-admired play ... with the true relation of the whole history ... as also the no less strange and worthy accidents in the birth and life of his daughter Marina," that is, of the part written by Shakespeare. This edition is very hurriedly and carelessly got up.
In August Shakespeare commenced an action against Addenbroke.
On September 9 Shakespeare's mother was buried at Stratford. Shakespeare's company had been shortly before travelling on the southern coast (Halliwell, who suppresses the exact date as usual). It is always dangerous to read personal feeling in a dramatist's work; but the coincidences in date of his King John and Hamnet's death, of his Coriolanus and his mother's death, justify, I think, my opinion that his wife's grief is apotheosised in Constance, and his mother's character in Volumnia. This is confirmed by the great change that takes place in his work at this time; his next four plays are devoted to subjects of family reunion after separation.
On 16th October he was godfather to William Walker at Stratford.
In this autumn Coriolanus was probably produced.
The Court Christmas performances by the King's men were twelve, on unknown dates.
1609.
On January 28 Troylus and Cressida was entered on S. R., and published from a surreptitious copy, with a preface, stating that it had been "never staled with the stage." This preface was withdrawn before the close of the year, probably at the instance of the King's company. It has been, however, the cause of misleading many modern critics (myself included), as to the date of the production of the play. In the new issue the title states that it is printed "as it was acted by the King's Majesty's servants."
On February 15, a verdict for £6 and £1, 4s. costs was given in favour of Shakespeare against John Addenbroke for debt, and execution issued. This suit began in August 1608; the precept for a jury is dated 21st December, when an adjournment of the trial probably took place. After the final judgment Addenbroke was non inventus, and on 7th June 1609, Shakespeare proceeded against his bail, one Horneby. All these proceedings were conducted not personally, but through his solicitor and cousin Thomas Greene.