Sonnets, entered on S. R. 20th May 1609 for T. Thorpe. I have on pp. [25], [120] already stated my opinion that these were written during 1594-8.
Titus Andronicus was a new play in 1594, acted for the first time by Sussex' men at the Rose on 23d January.
Richard III. was no doubt acted this same year by the Chamberlain's men; just before the old play which had been acted by the Queen's players was published (S. R. 19th June 1594). A Richard is alluded to in John Weever's Epigrams, published 1599, when the author was twenty-three, but written when he was not twenty; they must therefore date at latest in 1596 (not 1595 as usually stated). Weever mentions Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Romeo, and Richard as the issue of honey-tongued Shakespeare. We shall see that Romeo, as referred to here, was acted in 1595-6, and I believe the Richard referred to is the Richard II. of 1595. Edward III. I have shown in p. 118 to be an alteration of an old play of Marlowe's written in 1590, revived in 1594 about the autumn, after Lucrece was published. It will be most convenient to defer the consideration of authorship of the preceding plays till I have to treat of Henry VI.; the dates of editions of all the plays will be exhibited in tabular form further on, which will save much repetition and interruption of argument. We now come to an unquestionable date; and it is from this, the first recorded date in connection with an undoubted play, that I wish the reader to regard our investigation of play dates as beginning.
December 28. Shakespeare's only farcical comedy of Errors was acted at Gray's Inn at night: the same players had acted before the Queen at Greenwich on that day, very likely in the same comedy. In April 1595 the English agent in Edinburgh wrote to Burghley, how ill King James took it that the comedians in London should scorn the king and people of Scotland in their plays. The barrenness of Scotland is mentioned in iii. 2. Neither would James approve of a play in which witchcraft and exorcising is so constantly ridiculed. The opening scene is very like in method to that of Midsummer-Night's Dream; and the reiterated allusions by either Dromio to being transformed to an ass (ii. 2. 201; iii. 1. 15; iv. 4. 28; iii. 2. 77) remind us so strongly of that play as almost to infer contemporaneity of production; especially as in iii. 1. 47 the same quibble, an ass and ace, occurs as in Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 1. 317. Now in 1593, in his Pierce's Supererogation, and in 1592 in his Four Letters, Gabriel Harvey had rung the changes on an ass and a Nash even to wearisomeness; just as Shakespeare in this play puns on an ell and a Nell (iii. 2. 112). This may seem very forced; but I must remind the reader, that s and sh were not distinguished in pronunciation except by pedants at the end of the sixteenth century. It seems then most likely that in dwelling on this transformation, Shakespeare meant to recall to his audience the dyslogistic name inflicted on his old enemy Nash by Gabriel Harvey. All this points to a production of the play in 1594, by the Chamberlain's men; but there are also indications of its having been altered from an earlier version. In the stage directions there are traces of the name Juliana[12] for Luciana: in the text Dowsabel occurs instead of Nell, and in v. 1, the prefix Fat. (Father) has been clearly replaced by Mar. (Merchant) in a revision; note especially v. 1. 195, where both prefixes have by a common printer's error been inserted at once. The older form, again, had Antipholus Sereptus for A. of Syracuse, and Erotes or Erratis for A. of Ephesus; and it had twenty-five years of separation between the parents for thirty-three in the later version. This last difference occurs in i. 1, which is throughout written in a more mechanical and antique style of metre than the rest of the play; and indeed seems to be one of the earliest specimens left us of Shakespeare's attempts to bombast out a blank verse. There is also the name Menaphon (v. 1. 368), which is likely to have been adopted from Greene's Menaphon (1589), who again took it from Marlowe's Tamberlaine (1587-8). The Adam "that goes in the calf-skin," surely alludes to the Adam in the Looking-glass for London (1590), whose "calf-skin jests" were even after seven years an object of ridicule to the playwrights. For all these reasons I believe that a version of this play was acted c. 1590, perhaps in the winter of that year. It does not follow that that version was entirely by Shakespeare, as the present play is; he may have replaced a coadjutor's work of 1590 by his own of 1594. The plot, with its time-unity, is not likely to be of his arranging. As to the pun on the war made by France against her heir (iii. 2. 126), which is usually relied on for the date of production, it merely gives as limits August 1589, when the war of succession began, and 27th February 1594, when Henri IV. was crowned. It does, however, enable us to say positively that the first performance of the play was before the formation of the Chamberlain's company, who only revived it, no doubt in an amended shape, on 28th December 1594, most likely for the sake of the Court performance. The original plot was probably suggested by Plautus' Menæchmi and Amphitryo; and perhaps more directly by the History of Error performed by the Chapel children in 1576, which, by the bye, has nothing to do with the Ferrar of the Earl of Sussex' men in 1582. But we cannot assume in these early plays that Shakespeare was the plotter. It is certain, however, that he did afterwards adopt the likeness of twins in Twelfth Night as a means of introducing "errors" on the stage.
1595.
January 26 was the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, at Greenwich. Such events were usually celebrated with the accompaniment of plays or interludes, masques written specially for the occasion not having yet become fashionable. The company of players employed at these nuptials would certainly be the Chamberlain's, who had, so lately as the year before, been in the employ of the Earl's brother Ferdinand. No play known to us is so fit for the purpose as Midsummer-Night's Dream, which in its present form is certainly of this date. About the same time Edward Russel, Earl of Bedford, married Lucy Harrington. Both marriages may have been enlivened by this performance. This is rendered more probable by the identity of the Oberon story with that of Drayton's Nymphidia, whose special patroness at this time was the newly married Countess of Bedford. That poem contains an allusion to Don Quixote, which could not well have been written till 1612, and certainly not till 1605; but Drayton is known to have constantly altered his poems by way of addition and omission, and no date of original production can in his case be fixed by allusions of this kind. The date of the play here given is again confirmed by the description of the weather in ii. 2. In 1594, and in that year only, is there on record such an inversion of the seasons as is there spoken of. Chute's Cephalus and Procris was entered on S. R., 28th September 1593; Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 22d October 1593; Marlowe and Nash's Dido was printed in 1594. All these stories are alluded to in the play. The date of the Court performance must be in the winter of 1594-5. But the traces of the play having been altered from a version for the stage are numerous. There is a double ending. Robin's final speech is palpably a stage epilogue, while what precedes from "Enter Puck" to "break of day—Exeunt" is very appropriate for a marriage entertainment, but scarcely suited to the stage. In Acts iv. and v., again, we find in the speech-prefixes Duke, Duchess, Clown for Theseus, Hippolita, Bottom: such variations are nearly always marks of alteration, the unnamed characters being anterior in date. In the prose scenes speeches are several times assigned to wrong speakers, another common mark of alteration. In the Fairies the character of Moth (Mote) has been excised in the text, though he still remains among the dramatis personæ. It is not, I think, possible to say which parts of the play were added for the Court performance; but a careful examination has convinced me that wherever Robin occurs in the stage-directions or speech-prefixes scarcely any, if any, alteration has been made; Puck, on the contrary, indicates change. The date of the stage play may, I think, be put in the winter of 1592; and if so it was acted, not at the Rose, but where Lord Strange's company were travelling. For the allusion in v. 1. 52, "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death of Learning, late deceased in beggary," to Spenser's Tears of the Muses (1591), or Greene's death, 3d September 1592, could not, in either interpretation, be much later than the autumn of 1592; and the lines in ii. 1. 156—
"I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state,
And I do love thee"—