He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my monies and my usances.
Sir Anthony, has he not often “sat on the Rialto”? has he not often watched the Argosies come “to road”? Has he not had ventures everywhere? Read over The Merchant of Venice, and say if it could possibly have been written but by one resident there and half Italian in his knowledge and familiarity with people and scenes in Italy itself. What is Antonio everywhere but Anthony “writ new”? See Sonnets, lxxvi.:
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
See also Sonnets passim illustrating and explaining “my papers yellowed with their age,” “my muse,” “my verse.”
What are the names of places mentioned? Tripolis, Mexico, England, Lisbon, Barbary, India, “where his argosies with portly sail,” “the pageants of the sea.” What in Othello? Cyprus on the brow of the sea “stand ranks of people and they cry a sail.” May—nay, must have witnessed it in person.
The leading qualifications for the author of Shakespeare’s Plays to possess are summed up on the medallion of Sir Anthony Sherley’s picture, Antonius Sherleyus Anglus Eques aurati (Annals of the Shirley Family, second edition, p. 297, “Multorum mores hominum qui vidit et urbes”), and it was his and his alone to fulfil them to the letter. He must have a familiarity with sylvan life, its beauties, its copses, and its ferns and flowers; must have mixed in youthful sports, hawked, hunted the hare, and chased the roe and conies in his father’s park at Wiston (there is an ancient picture of the Lord of the Manor there, issuing forth on a sporting expedition, p. 264). He no doubt visited Chartley (Erdeswick’s Staffordshire). “The park is very large and hath therein red deer, fallow deer, wild beasts, and swine,” passed on to Tamworth, the ancient seat of Ferrers family (see Shirley Annals, p. 183). “In the principal chamber is a very noble chimney piece of dark oak, reaching to the ceiling, carved with the story of Venus and Adonis, and the arms of Ferrers and the motto, [20] ‘only one.’” May be the young Southampton was with him there. His education must have been liberal—Oxford, Hart and All Souls’ Colleges—he was at them both. He must have studied at the bar and had great legal knowledge—“Inns of Court” gave him that. English court life, its pageants, its courtiers, he knew them well. Camps he had commanded at Zutphen. His friends and kinsmen were Essex, Lord Southampton, the latter to whom he dedicated his Venus and Adonis, had like himself married a sister Vernon, a cousin of Lord Essex. The fickleness of sovereigns he had felt, he had in some way offended Elizabeth, and that spiteful woman never him forgave; she cut off his kinsman Essex’s head and stole his books. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Val to Duke:
“These banished men that I have kept withal,
Are men endued with worthy qualities,
Forgive them what they have committed here,
And let them be recalled from their exile:
They are reformed, civil, full of good,
And fit for great employment.”
Sherley Brothers, p. 27, to Sir Cecill, “his whole object being if possible to conciliate the Queen, and to obtain leave to return to England. Elizabeth however remained inexorable.”—A.D. 1600.
P. 34. Venice, “which city remained his head quarters for some years.”—1601.
P. 50. A.D. 1605.—“Four months abode in Saphia, kept open house . . .; to supply his own turn for money he got credit of Jews to take up money, and pay them in moriscos, but at an excessive rate, almost fifty for an hundred.”