William Shakespeare: His Homes and Haunts

by S. L. Bensusan

CHAPTER X

THE LATEST PLAYS

At this point in Shakespeare's career he lost his first royal patron. Queen Elizabeth, whose long and fateful reign drew to its appointed close on March 24, 1603. The poet gave to the world no expression of grief at her loss. Perhaps he could not do so in loyalty to his first and well-beloved patron, Henry Wriothesley, who still languished in prison for his complicity in the Essex rising of two years before. There had been times in his career when, through no fault of his own, Shakespeare had been looked upon with suspicion, and it may have been that the path to royal patronage had been at times a thorny and difficult one. In any case Elizabeth's generosity had been limited; she had not intervened to check the attack upon the theatres by the "unco guid" of London in 1601, when, but for the supineness of the Surrey and Middlesex magistrates, the poet's financial prosperity might have met with a serious set-back. Here, as in so many other places, we are too far from the time to see the truth clearly, and those who seek to fill in the shadowy outline of the poet's life must rely upon such conjecture as may have been put forward in good faith by the people who were nearer to him. King James loved the theatre; Queen Elizabeth tolerated it; nor must it be forgotten that in the days when the poet's star was in the ascendant his royal mistress had seen the greater glories of her reign and was entering upon her declining years, not without many troubles and much sorrow to mark the last milestones of the road.

One of the first acts of King James's reign was to confer special rights upon the Lord Chamberlain's company, of which the poet was a prominent member. Henceforward he was one of "The King's Servants," and the King took a special interest in Shakespeare's plays, which were often performed before him. Unhappily the plague drove the Court from London in the autumn of 1603 to the Earl of Pembroke's seat at Wilton; but in 1604, when the Court returned to London, Shakespeare was first of the nine actors who walked in the royal procession, and received a gift of scarlet cloth for the making of a cloak worthy the occasion. Many other honours followed. Great State occasions called for plays; Shakespeare's were chosen, and his company acted them. The scenic art began to receive a rather belated attention—in short, there was all the requisite stimulus for a man of genius, and the poet responded to it nobly.

"Othello" was the first play written by Shakespeare in the reign of King James, but he seems to have had "Measure for Measure" on the stocks at the same time, for each was produced at Whitehall towards the close of 1604. "Macbeth," written in 1605 and 1606, was clearly intended as a compliment to the king, who was a descendant of the unfortunate Banquo whose royal line Macbeth saw "stretch to the crack of doom." Dr. Lee makes the shrewd suggestion that inasmuch as this is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, we may have no more than an abbreviated acting version. Other critics of note find certain corrupt passages in the text that go far to justify this contention. We may be sure that Shakespeare, then at the zenith of his power, would not have stinted the measure of a work which seems to have taken more of his time than any previous play. Following closely upon "Macbeth" came "King Lear," produced at Whitehall for the Christmas festivities of 1606, and founded, like several of its predecessors, upon Holinshed's Chronicles.

After this supreme effort the pace of genius faltered for a while. "Timon of Athens" and "Pericles" are not pure Shakespeare; they do not show us the master at his best—though the first named is fine enough to have given enduring reputation to a lesser man. The question of his collaboration is a difficult one to settle, but leading critics have picked out the gold and rejected the dross, and their analyses prove that Shakespeare's part in these works was not predominant.

MICHAEL DRAYTON
In the National Portrait Gallery. (Painter unknown)

It is no function of a simple record like the present to inquire into this critical question closely; a dozen editions of Shakespeare's plays published in the last ten years set down the latest researches of scholars. To not a few of us the tragedy that followed "Pericles" is among the finest of all that carry Shakespeare's name; surely, in some passages of sheer undying beauty, "Antony and Cleopatra" stands well-nigh alone. It dates from 1608, and, like "Coriolanus," the play that followed (1609), is taken largely from Plutarch (North's translation). "Cymbeline" is founded on Holinshed, and probably may be dated 1610. "The Winter's Tale" belongs to 1611, and to this year may be assigned the poet's moderate part in "Henry VIII."—he is far from being responsible for the whole play. "The Tempest" belongs, at latest, to 1612. This, the latest and last work of the master-hand, was given with all its beautiful songs set to music by Robert Johnson, a player and composer of renown.

So, leaving Miranda and Prospero to console us, the greatest dramatist of all time laid down his pen. Many a critic and lover of the poet has seen in the last words of Prospero, spoken when he gives up his magic wand, a reflection of the poet's mind. His life-work, too, was done. Unaided, save by his own genius, he had moved from the obscurity of Warwickshire's by-ways to a place by the side of the Immortals. In all the firmament of poetry there was no star to outshine his. It may be he knew that the years still left to him were likely to be few, and that his heart turned more from the bustle of a great city's ways to the quiet fields and lanes wherein his earliest inspiration had come to him. He had written a few scenes of plays that other men would seem to have designed and completed, but these fragments are of small importance and may be passed over here. Whatever he had given to lend a lustre to the work of his contemporaries would seem to have afforded him little concern. Henceforward his life was to be spent far from the busy centre of theatrical life, though he was compelled to come to town at short intervals in the first two or three years following his retirement, and there must have been ample atonement for the trouble, in the way of association with old friends who still laboured in the metropolis.