But the writer of Shakespeare’s plays was not content with this, an exact account, even to minute particulars, of the history of the three Sherley brothers; just compare that history and this “Yorkshire Tragedy” play, and then read the same story (Richard II. Act 2, scene 3).
King Richard II. Act 2, Scene 3.
“O, then, my father,
Will you permit that I shall stand condemn’d,
A wand’ring vagabond; my rights and royalties
Pluck’d from my arms perforce, and given away
To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born?* * * * *
I am deny’d to sue my livery here,
And yet my letters-patent give me leave:
My father’s goods are all distrained and sold;
And these, and all, are all amiss employ’d.
What would you have me do? I am a subject
And challenge law: Attornies are deny’d me,
And therefore personally I lay my claim
To my inheritance of free descent.Act 3, Scene 1.
Boling. “Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth;
Near to the king in blood; and near in love,
Till you did make him misinterpret me,
Have stoop’d my neck under your injuries,
And sigh’d my English breath in foreign clouds,
Eating the bitter bread of banishment:
Whilst you have fed upon my signories,
Dispark’d my parks, and fell’d my forest woods;
From my own windows torn my household coat,
Raz’d out my impress, [32] leaving me no sign,
Save men’s opinions and my living blood,
To shew the world I am a gentleman.
This, and much more, much more than twice all this,
Condemns you to the death. See them deliver’d over
To execution and the hand of death.”Act 1, Scene 3.
Boling. Your will be done: this must my comfort be,
That sun, that warms you here, shall shine on me;
And those his golden beams, to you here lent,
Shall point on me, and gild my banishment.North. A dearer merit, not so deep a maim
As to be cast forth in the common air,
Have I deserved at your highness’ hand.
The language I have learn’d these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego, etc., etc.
What is my sentence then, but speechless death,
Which robs my native tongue from breathing native breath?
Does not every thoughtful reader pause over it and say to himself, why does he bring forward Busby and Green and rate them and sentence them to death? What for? treason? rebellion? murder? sedition? some rash crime? No; but for having “disparked” his parks and pulled down “his impress” (only one!), and his “household coat,” and tells us what he would like to have done to his enemies at Court if he had had the chance, as they had done when they cut off his patron and his kinsman Essex’s head. Now to return to the reason why he should have written a play to unfold the reasons of his family decay. To Cecil from Anthony Sherley, “The worst sort of the world have taken advantage to lay upon me all sorts of defamation” (p. 37), and again, and therefore to clear himself, he shows how it came to pass, and that his father was not in his right senses who incurred “this great debt” (p. 37, Sherley Brothers). Elizabeth had actually “distrained” upon his father’s goods, had carried off even his blankets and sheets, chairs and arras hangings, feather beds, and silver spoons, and left his mother scanty and beggarly supply for her dowry house, not sufficient for the necessities of everyday life. She had seized and sold the vast lands and possessions of his ancestors. (Stemmata Shirleana, Roxburgh Club, p. 251.) “A description of the Manors sold, all save Wiston dowry.” “In 1578 Sir T. Sherley served the office of Sheriff for the counties of Surrey and Sussex. He afterwards became Treasurer at War in the Low Countries, and having fallen under the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth, and become indebted to the Crown, his estates and personal effects, with the exception of the Manor of Wiston, settled on his wife, were seized.” See Lansdowne MSS. Goods seized at Wiston by Sheriff, 1588. Here again I earnestly request comparison with the story in the “Yorkshire Tragedy.” Rowland Whyte, “he owed the Queen more than he was worth; his own doings have undone him.”
SCENE IV.—HUSBAND—YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY.
“What is there in three dice to make a man draw thrice three thousand acres into the compass of a little round table, and with the gentleman’s palsy in the hand shake out his posterity thieves or beggars? ’Tis done; I have don ’t i’ faith; terrible, horrible misery!—How well was I left! Very well, very well. My lands show’d like a full moon about me; but now the moon’s in the quarter—waning, waning; and I am mad to think that moon was mine; mine and my father’s, and my fore-fathers’; generations, generations.—Down goes the house of us; down, down it sinks. Now is the name a beggar’s; begs in me. That name, which hundreds of years has made this shire famous in me and my posterity, runs out.”
To the Rt. Hon. Sir R. Cecil, Knight, from Anthony Sherley:
“Arkangell, 1600, June 10.
“Either the unfairness of the ways or messengers have kept my letters from you. You have not vouchsafed me one only answer . . . your honour knoweth the fortunes of my house, and from how great expectations our sins or disasters brought it both in estate and in disgrace . . . my purpose was to satisfy the world in myself that I was too worthy to have the decay of myself laid on me.”—The Sherley Brothers, p. 28. S. P. O. From Sir R. Cecil, 1600. “Her Majesty has increased her former displeasure towards him so far in respect of this presumption as by no means she will suffer him to come into the kingdome; but wholly rejected any such offer” (p. 31).
The truth is, Elizabeth had been stung in her sorest point. Sherley the elder was paymaster to the forces in the Low Countries, and his accounts were deficient. That was never to be passed over. She, who exercised her ingenuity and talents in cheese-paring, who, whilst waiting for the coming of the Armada, spent her time in trying whether, if she gave her sailors fish and oil instead of salt beef, it would not save her a penny or two a day from each separate mess; who never would victual her ships or refit them, or give them shot or powder more than enough for the day. It was owing to the pluck of the half-starved, half-victualled British sailor in non-repaired ships, and in spite of every disadvantage, that the victory was won; not with her help, not with her providence, but in spite of it. Well was it expressed, “Her maddened grasp of passionate avarice.” Give the devil his due, as we say in the proverb, but don’t give one iota of credit to that stingiest, and vainest of womenkind. Ray’s Glossary of words—“Stingy, pinching, sordid, narrow spirited.” Read all these quotations from Shakespeare’s plays, and compare them line with line and the lives of Sherley’s brothers, and conviction must follow. I might just notice that Anthony Sherley’s knowledge of the localities and people where most scenes of the plays are fixed was unequalled. He told that which he had seen; he spoke of what he knew. Whateley on Shakespeare, “The characters which he has drawn are masterly copies from nature.”
Now to return to Sonnet 105, which has always been a stumbling block to commentators, as it clearly was intended to explain some mystery or enigma connected with the author of the plays. I have never yet noticed any reasonably satisfactory explanation of this Sonnet. Why even the person who wrote on the religion of Shakespeare claims it as a sort of William Shakespeare’s Athanasian creed, and meant to express a belief in the Trinity, “three in one!” “All’s one” I noticed may be met with often; but as for “one,” it crops up everywhere. In a single scene in a single page you may count in places six “ones” (“Henry V.” passim), in many cases “lugged” in where the sense and context show it would be far better otherwise, and commentators take trouble to emend it. This is the key to his broad hint (Sonnet lxxvi.), “Why write I still all ‘one,’ ever the same . . . that every word doth almost tell my name.” But, conjoined with his impress “one,” there is also a play upon his “armories,” the Sherley Trinity of virtues. I find in Lansdowne MSS., No. 49, leaf 28, which I have verified, “That armories were antiently introduced to distinguish noble and illustrious families. The house of Shirley of great estimation, ‘Noble light,’ ‘Gold,’ it cannot be corrupted, or the value diminished by earth, water, air, or fire. Gold and sunbeams signifies in virtues, alluding to the Shirley family in particular, ‘Field of gold,’ faith, charitie, wisdom, and fidelitie, and many others, all of which their arms are the true emblems.” There are several pages of this sort in MSS. of British Museum relating to the Shirley family. May not this be the Trinity of virtues mentioned in that puzzling Sonnet 105, “Three themes in one”? [36]
If Anthony Sherley did not write the plays and sonnets, why does the writer chronicle his every movement? (passim.) Why does he give an exact account of his family history (Yorkshire Tragedy), their ruin and his own banishment? Why again in Richard II. Act ii. sc. 3, transforming it to himself in a figure, give an account of their harsh treatment by Elizabeth? Why does that same company act the Brothers Sherley on the stage as well as the Yorkshire Tragedy (quarto W. Shakespeare)? Why in all other plays but that alone are there stage names, but in this play when acted (as he wishes it not so to be), a Sherley had interest enough to get his way? Why are all the scenes of the plays laid at places where Anthony Sherley tarries?
Why does Kemp (with “good new plaies”), one of this same company, go to meet him at places where he is then known to be, “over the Alpes,” “Venice,” “Emperor of Germany” (Nine Daies’ Wonder).