This seems an allusion to Greene’s own metaphor, and must be taken for a covert attack on Shakspeare, who had by this time pretty well eclipsed the fame of Greene.
[1287] “These three gifted men (Peele, Greene, and Marlowe), says their late editor, Mr. Dyce (Peele’s Works, preface xxxv.), though they often present to us pictures that in design and colouring outrage the truth of nature, are the earliest of our tragic writers who exhibit any just delineation of the workings of passion; and their language, though now swelling into bombast, and now sinking into meanness, is generally rich with poetry, while their versification, though somewhat monotonous, is almost always flowing and harmonious. They as much excel their immediate predecessors as they are themselves excelled by Shakspeare.” Not quite as much.
Other writers of this age. 33. We can hardly afford time to dwell on several other writers anterior to Shakspeare. Kyd, whom Mr. Collier places, as a writer of blank verse, next to Marlowe,[1288] Lodge,[1289] Lily, Nash, Hughes, and a few more, have all some degree of merit. Nor do the anonymous tragedies, some of which were formerly ascribed to Shakspeare, and which even Schlegel, with less acuteness of criticism than is usual with him, has deemed genuine, always want a forcible delineation of passion, and a vigorous strain of verse, though not kept up for many lines. Among these are specimens of the domestic species of tragic drama, drawn probably from real occurrences, such as Arden of Feversham and the Yorkshire Tragedy, the former of which, especially, has very considerable merit. Its author, I believe has not been conjectured; but it may be referred to the last decade of the century.[1290] |Heywood’s Woman killed with Kindness.| Another play of the same kind, A Woman killed with Kindness, bears the date of 1600, and is the earliest production of a fertile dramatist, Thomas Heywood. The language is not much raised above that of comedy, but we can hardly rank a tale of guilt, sorrow, and death, in that dramatic category. It may be read with interest and approbation at this day, being quite free from extravagance either in manner or language, the besetting sin of our earlier dramatists, and equally so from buffoonery. The subject resembles that of Kotzebue’s drama, the Stranger, but is managed with a nobler tone of morality. It is true that Mrs. Frankfort’s immediate surrender to her seducer, like that of Beaumelé in the Fatal Dowry, makes her contemptible; but this, though it might possibly have originated in the necessity created by the narrow limits of theatrical time, has the good effect of preventing that sympathy with her guilt, which is reserved for her penitence.
[1288] Collier, iii. 207. Kyd is author of Jeronymo, and of the “Spanish Tragedy,” a continuation of the same story. Shakspeare has selected some of their absurdities for ridicule, and has left an abundant harvest for the reader. Parts of the Spanish Tragedy, Mr. C. thinks, “are in the highest degree pathetic and interesting.” This perhaps may be admitted, but Kyd is not, upon the whole, a pleasing dramatist.
[1289] Lodge, one of the best poets of the age, was concerned, jointly with Greene, in the Looking Glass for London. In this strange performance the prophet Hosea is brought to Nineveh, and the dramatis personæ, as far as they are serious, belong to that city: but all the farcical part relates to London. Of Lodge Mr. C. says, that he is “second to Kyd in vigour and boldness of conception, but as a drawer of character, so essential a part of dramatic poetry, he unquestionably has the advantage,” iii. 214.
[1290] The murder of Arden of Feversham occurred under Edward VI., but the play was published in 1592. The impression made by the story must have been deep to produce a tragedy so long afterwards. It is said by Mr. Collier, that Professor Tieck has inclined to think Arden of Feversham a genuine work of Shakspeare. I cannot but venture to suspect that, if this distinguished critic were a native, he would discern such differences of style, as render this hypothesis improbable. The speeches in Arden of Feversham have spirit and feeling, but there is none of that wit, that fertility of analogical imagery, which the worst plays of Shakspeare display. The language is also more plain and perspicuous than we ever find in him, especially on a subject so full of passion. Mr. Collier discerns the hand of Shakspeare in the Yorkshire Tragedy, and thinks that “there are some speeches which could scarcely have proceeded from any other pen,” Collier, iii. 51. It was printed with his name in 1608; but this, which would be thought good evidence in most cases, must not be held sufficient. It is impossible to explain the grounds of internal persuasion in these nice questions of æsthetic criticism, but I cannot perceive the hand of Shakspeare in any of the anonymous tragedies.
William Shakspeare. 34. Of William Shakspeare,[1291] whom, through the mouths of those whom he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we scarcely know anything. We see him, so far as we do see him, not in himself, but in a reflex image from the objectivity in which he was manifested; he is Falstaff, and Mercutio, and Malvolio, and Jaques, and Portia, and Imogen, and Lear, and Othello; but to us he is scarcely a determined person, a substantial reality of past time, the man Shakspeare. The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more than names. If we are not yet come to question his unity, as we do that of “the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” an improvement in critical acuteness doubtless reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear, as we can give a distinct historic personality to Homer. All that insatiable curiosity and unwearied diligence have hitherto detected about Shakspeare serves rather to disappoint and perplex us, than to furnish the slightest illustration of his character. It is not the register of his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthography of his name that we seek. No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary can be produced.
[1291] Though I shall not innovate in a work of this kind, not particularly relating to Shakspeare, I must observe, that Sir Frederic Madden has offered very specious reasons (in the Archæologia, vol. xxvi.), for believing that the poet and his family spelt their name Shakspere, and that there are, at least, no exceptions in his own autographs, as has commonly been supposed. A copy of Florio’s translation of Montaigne, a book which he had certainly read (see Malone’s note on Tempest, act ii. scene 1), has been lately discovered with the name W. Shakspere clearly written in it, and there seems no reason to doubt that it is a genuine signature. This book has, very properly, been placed in the British Museum, among the choice κειμηλια of that repository.
His first writings for the stage. 35. It is generally supposed that he settled in London about 1587, being then twenty-three years old. For some time afterwards we cannot trace him distinctly. Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, he describes in his dedication to Lord Southampton, as “the first heir of his invention.” It is however certain that it must have been written some years before, unless we take these words in a peculiar sense, for Greene, in his Groat’sworth of Wit, 1592, alludes, as we have seen, to Shakspeare as already known among dramatic authors. It appears by this passage, that he had converted the two plays on the wars of York and Lancaster into what we read as the second and third parts of Henry VI. What share he may have had in similar repairs of the many plays then represented, cannot be determined. It is generally believed that he had much to do with the tragedy of Pericles, which is now printed among his works, and which external testimony, though we should not rely too much on that as to Shakspeare, has assigned to him; but the play is full of evident marks of an inferior hand.[1292] Its date is unknown; Drake supposes it to have been his earliest work, rather from its inferiority than on any other ground. Titus Andronicus is now by common consent denied to be, in any sense, a production of Shakspeare; very few passages, I should think not one, resemble his manner.[1293]
[1292] Malone, in a dissertation on the tragedy of Pericles, maintained that it was altogether an early work of Shakspeare. Stevens contended that it was a production of some older poet, improved by him; and Malone had the candour to own that he had been wrong. The opinion of Stevens is now general. Drake gives the last three acts, and part of the former, to Shakspeare; but I can hardly think his share is by any means so large.