A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare. Fleay Frederick Gard

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СКАЧАТЬ 1585 their twin children, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized; and in 1587, in the spring, Shakespeare gave his assent to a proposed settlement of a mortgage on his mother's Asbies estate. For ten years after there is no vestige of any communication with his family. It is at this point that his public life begins.

      In 1587 Leicester's players visited Stratford for the first time. The company, under the same name, that had performed there in 1576 had as well as Warwick's been dissolved in 1583, in order that the Queen's men might be selected from them. In 1586, during the prevalence of the plague in London, this more recent company had been travelling on the Continent, and on their return to England made a provincial tour. Shakespeare probably joined them during or immediately after their visit to Stratford, and during their travels received his earliest instruction in comic acting from Kempe and Pope, who soon after became noted performers; Bryan also belonged to the company at this date. They probably acted mere interludes, not regular five-act plays. On 4th September 1588 the Earl of Leicester died; and his players soon after found a new patron in Lord Strange. They then settled in London, and acted at the Cross Keys in Bishopsgate Street. The head of the company, in its altered constitution, was "Famous Ned Allen," who on 3d January 1588-9 bought up for £37, 10s. Richard Jones' share of "playing apparels, play-books, instruments, &c.," in order to set up his new company. These properties had belonged to Worcester's men under Robert Brown, and were no longer needed by him, as he and his players were about to visit the Continent.

      It was in this way that Shakespeare came to London as a poor strolling player, but nevertheless his position was not without its advantages; he was associated already with the most noted comedians of the time, Kempe and Pope; and in Alleyn he had the advantage of studying the method of the greatest tragic actor that had yet trod the English stage. But he did not remain content with merely acting; he now commenced as author. In order to ascertain under what conditions, it will be necessary to briefly state what was the position of the companies and authors in London in 1589.

      At that date there were two theatres in London: the better of the two, the Theater, was occupied by the Queen's men, for whom Greene was the principal play-writer. Marlowe, Kyd, and R. Wilson had also contributed plays to their repertoire, but just at this time left them and joined Pembroke's, which, like Leicester's, had been a strolling company, but were now settling in London. On the other hand, Peele and Lodge, who had previously written for the Admiral's company, acting at the other theatre, the Curtain, had also joined, and still remained with, the Queen's. Nearly all these writers, if not quite all, were actors as well as authors. Greene, the Johannes Factotum of the Queen's men, had evidently expected to establish a monopoly of play-acting in their favour, and was indignant at the arrival of vagrant troops of Thespians from the country, just when he had practically succeeded in crippling the rival company in London, by enlisting some of their best authors in the service of his own. Hence on 23d August 1589 his publication of Menaphon, with Nash's address, containing a virulent attack on Kyd and Marlowe, then writing for Pembroke's men, together with a glorification of Peele, then writing in conjunction with Greene. The absence of any allusion in this tract to Shakespeare or Lord Strange's company conclusively proves that they were not as yet dangerous rivals to the Queen's. Pembroke's men were, and there is indirect evidence that they had from their first settlement in London obtained possession of the second theatre, the Curtain. This evidence is connected with the first direct mention which is extant of Shakespeare's company. For in this same year, 1589, the Martinist controversy had been raging in London; Lyly, Nash, Greene, Monday, and Cooper were the anti-Martinist champions; the Martinists had been ridiculed on the stage in April, probably by Greene at the Theater, possibly by the Paul's children in some play of Lyly's, or by the Earl of Oxford's boys in one of Monday's. The authorities did not interfere. But in November certain players "within the city," to wit, Lord Strange's and the Admiral's, were silenced for "abuses or indecent reflexions" (Strype). A comparison of the worthies in Love's Labour's Lost with the anti-Martinist writers, of the Euphuist Armado with Lyly, the boy-satirist Mote with Nash, the curate with the Reverend Robert Greene, the schoolmaster-pedant with the pedagogue Cooper, and Antony Dull with Antony Monday, will I think confirm the theory developed by me in a separate essay, that this was the play suppressed on this occasion. It is characteristic of the independence of action shown by Shakespeare's company throughout the reign of Elizabeth that they refused to obey the injunction, and went and played at the Cross-Keys that same afternoon, while the subservient Admiral's company dutifully submitted. I do not suppose, however, that the play as then performed was in all parts from the hand of Shakespeare. It is extremely unlikely that he should have commenced his career by independent writing, and there is not a play of his that can be referred even on the rashest conjecture to a date anterior to 1594, which does not bear the plainest internal evidence to its having been refashioned at a later time. In all probability he began to compose plays, as we know so many of his contemporaries did, as an assistant to some experienced dramatist. It may seem idle, in the absence of any positive evidence, to guess who was his original tutor in composition, and yet, as the careers of Peele, Greene, and Marlowe conclusively show that none of them were in 1589 connected with Lord Strange's company, I venture to suggest that it was Robert Wilson. That dramatist is not heard of in connection with Pembroke's or any other company after August 1589, and he certainly continued to write for the stage. That Shakespeare was greatly influenced by him and Peele is evident from the metrical character of Shakespeare's earliest work, which abounds in heroic rhyme like Peele's in tragedy, and in doggerel and stanza like Wilson's in comedy. It is not till the Historic plays that the influence of Marlowe's blank verse is fully perceptible, and in the earliest of these, Richard II., rhyme is still dominant. Wilson was in this view a better teacher for the inexperienced Shakespeare than a greater man. Marlowe, for instance, might have biassed him on the tragic side, and deferred or prevented his comedy from its earlier pastoral development. Love's Labour's Won must have been written at about the same time as Love's Labour's Lost, and before the end of 1590 The Comedy of Errors probably appeared in its original form. In this same year was produced a play in which, although I cannot detect Shakespeare's hand as coadjutor with its probable author, R. Wilson, he most likely appeared as an actor —Fair Em; and that this comedy contained a satirical attack on Greene is evident from the offence he took at it, as shown in his virulent address prefixed to his Farewell to Folly. Up to this date Greene's chief attacks had been directed against Kyd in Menaphon and in Never too late, but as yet there has been found no allusion to Shakespeare in his writings anterior to 1592. Yet Shakespeare must have been known to him as at least part author of the plays acted by Lord Strange's men in 1589 and 1590. Of Romeo and Juliet, originally acted in 1591, we also possess a version anterior to Shakespeare's final remodelling, which palpably contains scenes not written by him. These scenes, however, seem due to a finer artist than Kyd, and there is independent evidence that George Peele had by 1591 also become a playwright for Lord Strange's men. One of the plays acted by them in this year was probably Peele's Edward I., here mentioned on account of a curious allusion which would seem to fix the character performed by Shakespeare. In scene 3 Elinor says to Baliol —

      "Shake [thou] thy spear in honour of his name

      Under whose royalty thou wear'st the same."

      Shakespeare is known to have acted "kingly parts," and this of Edward I. was probably one of them. To this same year may probably be assigned the original production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

      The Court festivities of Christmas 1591-2 mark an important epoch in the fortunes of Lord Strange's company, and consequently of Shakespeare, now rapidly coming to the front as their chief writer. During the period we have been considering, 1587-1591, the Queen's and the Admiral's were the only men's companies who performed at Court, but at Christmas 1591-2 the Admiral's did not act at all, and the Queen's, after one performance, gave place to Lord Strange's, and until the death of that nobleman in 1594, his players enjoyed almost a monopoly of Court performances. One presentation by the Earl of Hertford's men, of whom nothing else is recorded, one by the Earl of Sussex', and two by the Earl of Pembroke's, are all that can be balanced with six by Lord Strange's in 1591-2, and three in 1592-3. This pre-eminence at Court was retained by the company under all its changes of constitution far beyond Shakespeare's time, until СКАЧАТЬ