A Life of William Shakespeare Part 15

In 1601 Shakespeare made a new departure by drawing a plot from North's n.o.ble translation of Plutarch's 'Lives.' {211a} Plutarch is the king of biographers, and the deference which Shakespeare paid his work by adhering to the phraseology wherever it was practicable ill.u.s.trates his literary discrimination. On Plutarch's lives of Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Antony, Shakespeare based his historical tragedy of 'Julius Caesar.'

Weever, in 1601, in his 'Mirror of Martyrs,' plainly refers to the masterly speech in the Forum at Caaesar's funeral which Shakespeare put into Antony's mouth. There is no suggestion of the speech in Plutarch; hence the composition of 'Julius Caesar' may be held to have preceded the issue of Weever's book in 1601. The general topic was already familiar on the stage. Polonius told Hamlet how, when he was at the university, he 'did enact Julius Caesar; he was kill'd in the Capitol: Brutus kill'd him.' {211b} A play of the same t.i.tle was known as early as 1589, and was acted in 1594 by Shakespeare's company. Shakespeare's piece is a penetrating study of political life, and, although the murder and funeral of Caesar form the central episode and not the climax, the tragedy is thoroughly well planned and balanced. Caesar is ironically depicted in his dotage. The characters of Brutus, Antony, and Ca.s.sius, the real heroes of the action, are exhibited with faultless art. The fifth act, which presents the battle of Philippi in progress, proves ineffective on the stage, but the reader never relaxes his interest in the fortunes of the vanquished Brutus, whose death is the catastrophe.

While 'Julius Caesar' was winning its first laurels on the stage, the fortunes of the London theatres were menaced by two manifestations of unreasoning prejudice on the part of the public. The earlier manifestation, although speciously the more serious, was in effect innocuous. The puritans of the city of London had long agitated for the suppression of all theatrical performances, and it seemed as if the agitators triumphed when they induced the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, to issue to the officers of the Corporation of London and to the justices of the peace of Middles.e.x and Surrey an order forbidding the maintenance of more than two playhouses--one in Middles.e.x (Alleyn's newly erected playhouse, the 'Fortune' in Cripplegate), and the other in Surrey (the 'Globe' on the Bankside). The contemplated restriction would have deprived very many actors of employment, and driven others to seek a precarious livelihood in the provinces. Happily, disaster was averted by the failure of the munic.i.p.al authorities and the magistrates of Surrey and Middles.e.x to make the order operative. All the London theatres that were already in existence went on their way unchecked. {213a}

The strife between adult and boy actors.

More calamitous was a temporary reverse of fortune which Shakespeare's company, in common with the other companies of adult actors, suffered soon afterwards at the hands, not of fanatical enemies of the drama, but of playgoers who were its avowed supporters. The company of boy-actors, chiefly recruited from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and known as 'the Children of the Chapel,' had since 1597 been installed at the new theatre in Blackfriars, and after 1600 the fortunes of the veterans, who occupied rival stages, were put in jeopardy by the extravagant outburst of public favour that the boys' performances evoked. In 'Hamlet,' the play which followed 'Julius Caesar,' Shakespeare pointed out the perils of the situation. {213b} The adult actors, Shakespeare a.s.serted, were prevented from performing in London through no falling off in their efficiency, but by the 'late innovation' of the children's vogue. {214a} They were compelled to go on tour in the provinces, at the expense of their revenues and reputation, because 'an aery [_i.e._ nest] of children, little eyases [_i.e._ young hawks],' dominated the theatrical world, and monopolised public applause. 'These are now the fas.h.i.+on,' the dramatist lamented, {214b} and he made the topic the text of a reflection on the fickleness of public taste:

HAMLET. Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ. Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.

Jealousies in the ranks of the dramatists accentuated the actors'

difficulties. Ben Jonson was, at the end of the sixteenth century, engaged in a fierce personal quarrel with two of his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker. The adult actors generally avowed sympathy with Jonson's foes. Jonson, by way of revenge, sought an offensive alliance with 'the Children of the Chapel.' Under careful tuition the boys proved capable of performing much the same pieces as the men. To 'the children'

Jonson offered in 1600 his comical satire of 'Cynthia's Revels,' in which he held up to ridicule Dekker, Marston, and their actor-friends. The play, when acted by 'the children' at the Blackfriars Theatre, was warmly welcomed by the audience. Next year Jonson repeated his manoeuvre with greater effect. He learnt that Marston and Dekker were conspiring with the actors of Shakespeare's company to attack him in a piece called 'Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of the Humourous Poet.' He antic.i.p.ated their design by producing, again with 'the Children of the Chapel,' his 'Poetaster,' which was throughout a venomous invective against his enemies--dramatists and actors alike. Shakespeare's company retorted by producing Dekker and Marston's 'Satiro-Mastix' at the Globe Theatre next year. But Jonson's action had given new life to the vogue of the children. Playgoers took sides in the struggle, and their attention was for a season riveted, to the exclusion of topics more germane to their province, on the actors' and dramatists' boisterous war of personalities.

{215}

Shakespeare's references to the struggle.

In his detailed references to the conflict in 'Hamlet' Shakespeare protested against the abusive comments on the men-actors of 'the common stages' or public theatres which were put into the children's mouths.

Rosencrantz declared that the children 'so berattle [_i.e._ a.s.sail] the common stages--so they call them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither [_i.e._ to the public theatres].' Hamlet in pursuit of the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the vogue of the 'child-actors' did them a poor service, because when the boys should reach men's estate they would run the risk, if they continued on the stage, of the same insults and neglect which now threatened their seniors.

HAMLET. What are they children? Who maintains 'em? how are they escoted [_i.e._ paid]? Will they pursue the quality [_i.e._ the actor's profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players--as it is most like, if their means are no better--their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tarre [_i.e._ incite] them to controversy: there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET. Is it possible?

GUILDENSTERN. O, there has been much throwing about of brains!

Shakespeare clearly favoured the adult actors in their rivalry with the boys, but he wrote more like a disinterested spectator than an active partisan when he made specific reference to the strife between the poet Ben Jonson and the players. In the prologue to 'Troilus and Cressida'

which he penned in 1603, he warned his hearers, with obvious allusion to Ben Jonson's battles, that he hesitated to identify himself with either actor or poet. {217} Pa.s.sages in Ben Jonson's 'Poetaster,' moreover, pointedly suggest that Shakespeare cultivated so a.s.siduously an att.i.tude of neutrality that Jonson acknowledged him to be qualified for the role of peacemaker. The gentleness of disposition with which Shakespeare was invariably credited by his friends would have well fitted him for such an office.

Jonson's 'Poetaster.'

Jonson figures personally in the 'Poetaster' under the name of Horace.

Episodically Horace and his friends, Tibullus and Gallus, eulogise the work and genius of another character, Virgil, in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson is known to have applied to Shakespeare that they may be regarded as intended to apply to him (act v. sc. i.) Jonson points out that Virgil, by his penetrating intuition, achieved the great effects which others laboriously sought to reach through rules of art.

His learning labours not the school-like gloss That most consists of echoing words and terms . . .

Nor any long or far-fetched circ.u.mstance-- Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts-- But a direct and a.n.a.lytic sum Of all the worth and first effects of arts.

And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life That it shall gather strength of life with being, And live hereafter, more admired than now.

Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched with telling truth upon every vicissitude of human existence.

That which he hath writ Is with such judgment laboured and distilled Through all the needful uses of our lives That, could a man remember but his lines, He should not touch at any serious point But he might breathe his spirit out of him.

Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Caesar to act as judge between Horace and his libellers, and he advises the administration of purging pills to the offenders. That course of treatment is adopted with satisfactory results. {218}

Shakespeare's alleged partisans.h.i.+p.

As against this interpretation, one contemporary witness has been held to testify that Shakespeare stemmed the tide of Jonson's embittered activity by no peace-making interposition, but by joining his foes, and by administering to him, with their aid, the identical course of medicine which in the 'Poetaster' is meted out to his enemies. In the same year (1601) as the 'Poetaster' was produced, 'The Return from Parna.s.sus'--a third piece in a trilogy of plays--was 'acted by the students in St.

John's College, Cambridge.' In this piece, as in its two predecessors, Shakespeare received, both as a playwright and a poet, high commendation, although his poems were judged to reflect somewhat too largely 'love's lazy foolish languishment.' The actor Burbage was introduced in his own name instructing an aspirant to the actor's profession in the part of Richard the Third, and the familiar lines from Shakespeare's play--

Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York--

are recited by the pupil as part of his lesson. Subsequently in a prose dialogue between Shakespeare's fellow-actors Burbage and Kempe, Kempe remarks of university dramatists, 'Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.' Burbage adds: 'He is a shrewd fellow indeed.' This perplexing pa.s.sage has been held to mean that Shakespeare took a decisive part against Jonson in the controversy with Dekker and Dekker's actor friends.

But such a conclusion is nowhere corroborated, and seems to be confuted by the eulogies of Virgil in the 'Poetaster' and by the general handling of the theme in 'Hamlet.' The words quoted from 'The Return from Parna.s.sus' hardly admit of a literal interpretation. Probably the 'purge' that Shakespeare was alleged by the author of 'The Return from Parna.s.sus' to have given Jonson meant no more than that Shakespeare had signally outstripped Jonson in popular esteem. As the author of 'Julius Caesar,' he had just proved his command of topics that were peculiarly suited to Jonson's vein, {220} and had in fact outrun his churlish comrade on his own ground.

'Hamlet,' 1602.

At any rate, in the tragedy that Shakespeare brought out in the year following the production of 'Julius Caesar,' he finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and reputation. This new exhibition of the force of his genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the adult actors who interpreted his work, and the boys' supremacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 Shakespeare produced 'Hamlet,' 'that piece of his which most kindled English hearts.' The story of the Prince of Denmark had been popular on the stage as early as 1589 in a lost dramatic version by another writer--doubtless Thomas Kyd, whose tragedies of blood, 'The Spanish Tragedy' and 'Jeronimo,' long held the Elizabethan stage. To that lost version of 'Hamlet' Shakespeare's tragedy certainly owed much. {221} The story was also accessible in the 'Histoires Tragiques' of Belleforest, who adapted it from the 'Historia Danica' of Saxo Grammaticus. {222} No English translation of Belleforest's 'Hystorie of Hamblet' appeared before 1608; Shakespeare doubtless read it in the French. But his authorities give little hint of what was to emerge from his study of them.

The problem of its publication.

The First Quarto, 1603.

Burbage created the t.i.tle-part in Shakespeare's tragedy, and its success on the stage led to the play's publication immediately afterwards. The bibliography of 'Hamlet' offers a puzzling problem. On July 26, 1602, 'A Book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his Servants,' was entered on the Stationers' Company's Registers, and it was published in quarto next year by N[icholas] L[ing] and John Trundell. The t.i.tle-page stated that the piece had been 'acted divers times in the city of London, as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere.' The text here appeared in a rough and imperfect state. In all probability it was a piratical and carelessly transcribed copy of Shakespeare's first draft of the play, in which he drew largely on the older piece.

The Second Quarto, 1604.

A revised version, printed from a more complete and accurate ma.n.u.script, was published in 1604 as 'The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy.' This was printed by I[ames] R[oberts] for the publisher N[icholas] L[ing].

The concluding words--'according to the true and perfect copy'--of the t.i.tle-page of the second quarto were intended to stamp its predecessor as surrept.i.tious and unauthentic. But it is clear that the Second Quarto was not a perfect version of the play. It was itself printed from a copy which had been curtailed for acting purposes.

The Folio Version.