Shakespeare's capacity for writing makes us realise that the quantity was almost as remarkable as the worth. He wrote his plays at the rate of two in a year, with his work as manager and actor thrown in, and his poems as a thing apart. The quality of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" brought him into the company of the country's great sonneteers; he was inspired to give attention to the sonnet form and made it one of the vehicles for the expression of his most beautiful thoughts. The most were written about the year with which we are now dealing, 1594. In accordance with the custom of the time, they were not printed immediately, but were written by the poet and given to his friends. But by this time the interest aroused by new work from Shakespeare's pen extended throughout literary circles, and the sonnets must have been copied and quoted extensively before they were published by a literary pirate named Thorpe in 1609.
The dedication of these sonnets to "Mr. W. H." has roused an enormous controversy, into which there is no need to venture far, as it lies outside the scope of a brief biography. It should never be forgotten that the sonnet in the days of Elizabeth was a form overladen with the conceits of many countries, and that few men would have regarded seriously the sentiments to which they committed themselves. Suffice it that many of the sonnets are of a haunting loveliness that defies praise, and gives to the best-intentioned expressions of admiration a quality of impertinence. If for W. H. we read H. W. and forget the prefix "Mr.," the troubles that have agitated generations of critics are seen to evaporate. H. W. would become Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, to whom in the sonnets constant references occur. A pirated edition might well have been handled either carelessly or with a view to suggesting what could not be said openly.
Next in order of the plays we come to that exquisite fantasy "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in which we find references to Shakespeare's supreme patron, Queen Elizabeth, and to the pageants he had seen as a little lad when the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth (1575). In 1595 or 1596 came "All's Well that Ends Well," taken from an Italian source, and "The Taming of the Shrew," with an introduction dealing boldly with the Stratford country and some of its worthies, contemporaries of the poet. In the two-part play of "Henry IV." that followed we have further references to Shakespeare's birthplace, and he introduces us to Mr. Justice Shallow, who was to come into prominence again in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." Clearly the dramatist was closely concerned at this period of his life with certain happenings in the place of his birth. These references help us, in place of authenticated records, to show that Shakespeare still kept in fairly close touch with his early home. "Henry IV." is famous for its scenes in the Boar's Head at Eastcheap, and lest the enumeration of plays should become a little tiresome, let us turn aside for a brief space to consider the taverns of Queen Elizabeth's day and the company to be met in them.
CHARLECOTE HALL
CHAPTER VIII
THE ELIZABETHAN TAVERNS
The London taverns were the clubs of London's literary men, and in Shakespeare's time the most famous houses were "The Mermaid" in Bread Street, "The Boar's Head" in Eastcheap, "The Devil" at Temple Bar, "The Falcon," "The Tabard," "The George," and some few others, situated on the south side of the river. In the days when he lived by the river-side at Southwark, Shakespeare would have counted among the members of his tavern club Edmund Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, "rare Ben Jonson," who wrote of his great rival, "I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any"; tribute over which the mind loves to linger. Fuller tells of the contests of wit that used to ensue when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson met, "which two I beheld like a great Spanish galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances; Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." We see in this simile that the lesson of the Spanish Armada had not been forgotten, and that its appearance was still vividly present in men's minds.