We are not to imagine the word royal to be a random sounding epithet. It is used with great propriety by the poet, and designed to shew him well acquainted with the history of the people, whom he here brings upon the stage. For when the French and Venetians in the beginning of the thirteenth century, had won Constantinople, the French under the Emperor Henry endeavoured to extend their conquests, in the provinces of the Grecian empire on the Terra firma, while the Venetians being masters of the sea, gave liberty to any subject of the Republic, who would fit out vessels to make themselves masters of the isles of the Archipelago and other maritime places, to enjoy their conquests in sovereignty, only doing homage to the Republic for their several principalities. In pursuance of this licence the Sanudo's, the Justiniani, the Grimaldi, the Summaripa's, and others, all Venetian merchants, erected principalities in the several places of the Archipelago, and thereby became truly, and properly Royal Merchants.
But there are several places which one cannot forbear thinking a translation from classic writers.
In the Tempest Act V. Scene II. Prospero says,
————I have———
Called forth the mutinous winds
And 'twixt the green sea, and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread ratling thunder,
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak,
With his own bolt; the strong bas'd promontory,
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, op'd and let them forth
By my so potent art.
So Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Stantia concutio cantu freta; nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco, ventos abigoque, vocoque;
Vivaque faxa sua convulsaque robora terra
Et sylvas moveo; jubeoque tremiscere montes,
Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchris.
But to return to the incidents of his life: Upon his quitting the grammar school, he seems, to have entirely devoted himself to that way of living which his father proposed, and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hatchway, said to have been a substantial Yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford. In this kind of domestic obscurity he continued for some time, till by an unhappy instance of misconduct, he was obliged to quit the place of his nativity, and take shelter in London, which luckily proved the occasion of displaying one of the greatest genius's that ever was known in dramatic poetry. He had the misfortune to fall into ill company: Among these were some who made a frequent practice of Deer-stealing, and who engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot near Stratford; for which he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge himself of this supposed ill usage, he made a ballad upon him; and tho' this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family for some time, and shelter himself in London. This Sir Thomas Lucy, was, it is said, afterwards ridiculed by Shakespear, under the well known character of Justice Shallow.
It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. Here I cannot forbear relating a story which Sir William Davenant told Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe; Rowe told it Mr. Pope, and Mr. Pope told it to Dr. Newton, the late editor of Milton, and from a gentleman, who heard it from him, 'tis here related.
Concerning Shakespear's first appearance in the playhouse. When he came to London, he was without money and friends, and being a stranger he knew not to whom to apply, nor by what means to support himself.——At that time coaches not being in use, and as gentlemen were accustomed to ride to the playhouse, Shakespear, driven to the last necessity, went to the playhouse door, and pick'd up a little money by taking care of the gentlemens horses who came to the play; he became eminent even in that profession, and was taken notice of for his diligence and skill in it; he had soon more business than he himself could manage, and at last hired boys under him, who were known by the name of Shakespear's boys: Some of the players accidentally conversing with him, found him so acute, and master of so fine a conversation, that struck therewith, they and recommended him to the house, in which he was first admitted in a very low station, but he did not long remain so, for he soon distinguished himself, if not as an extraordinary actor, at least as a fine writer. His name is painted, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play: and Mr. Rowe says, "that tho' he very carefully enquired, he found the top of his performance was the ghost in his own Hamlet." "I should have been much more pleased," continues Rowe, "to have learned from some certain authority which was the first play he writ; it would be without doubt, a pleasure to any man curious in things of this kind, to see and know what was the first essay of a fancy like Shakespear's." The highest date which Rowe has been able to trace, is Romeo and Juliet, in 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old; and Richard II and III the next year, viz. the thirty-fourth of his age. Tho' the order of time in which his several pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are passages in some few of them, that seem to fix their dates. So the chorus at the end of the fourth act of Henry V by a compliment very handsomely turned to the Earl of Essex, shews the play to have been written when that Lord was general to the queen in Ireland; and his eulogium upon Queen Elizabeth, and her successor King James in the latter end of his Henry VIII is a proof of that play's being written after the accession of the latter of these two princes to the throne of England. Whatever the particular times of his writing were, the people of the age he lived in, who began to grow wonderfully fond of diversions of this kind, could not but be highly pleased to see a genius arise amongst them, of so pleasurable, so rich a vein, and and so plentifully capable of furnishing their favourite entertainments. Besides the advantage which Shakespear had over all men in the article of wit, he was of a sweet, gentle, amiable disposition, and was a most agreeable companion; so that he became dear to all that knew him, both as a friend and as a poet, and by that means was introduced to the best company, and held conversation with the finest characters of his time. Queen Elizabeth had several of his plays acted before her, and that princess was too quick a discerner, and rewarder of merit, to suffer that of Shakespear to be neglected. It is that maiden princess plainly whom he intends by
——A fair vestal, throned by the West.