A Life of William Shakespeare Part 27

This forged paper is in the Public Record Office, and was first printed in Collier's 'History of English Dramatic Poetry' (1831), vol. i. p.

297, and has been constantly reprinted as if it were genuine.

{367b} 1596 (_circa_). A letter signed H. S.(_i.e._ Henry, Earl of Southampton), addressed to Sir Thomas Egerton, praying protection for the players of the Blackfriars Theatre, and mentioning Burbage and Shakespeare by name.

First printed in Collier's 'New Facts.'

1596 (_circa_). A list of sharers in the Blackfriars Theatre, with the valuation of their property, in which Shakespeare is credited with four shares, worth 933 pounds 6s. 8d. This was first printed in Collier's 'New Facts,'

1835, p. 6, from the Egerton MSS. at Bridgewater House.

1602 (August 6). Notice of the performance of 'Oth.e.l.lo' by Burbage's 'players'

before Queen Elizabeth when on a visit to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord-keeper, at Harefield, in a forged account of disburs.e.m.e.nts by Egerton's steward, Arthur Mainwaringe, from the ma.n.u.scripts at Bridgewater House, belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere. Printed in Collier's 'New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' 1836, and again in Collier's edition of the 'Egerton Papers,' 1840 (Camden Society)) pp. 342-3.

1603 (October 3). Mention of 'Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe' in a letter at Dulwich from Mrs. Alleyn to her husband; part of the letter is genuine. First published in Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 63. {368} 1604 List of the names of eleven players (April 9). of the King's Company fraudulently appended to a genuine letter at Dulwich College from the Privy Council bidding the Lord Mayor permit performances by the King's players.

Printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 68. {368b} 1605 (November-December). Forged entries in Master of the Revels' account-books (now at the Public Record Office) of performances at Whitehall by the King's players of the 'Moor of Venice'--_i.e._ 'Oth.e.l.lo'--on November 1, and of 'Measure for Measure' on December 26.

Printed in Peter Cunningham's 'Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court' (pp. 203-4), published by the Shakespeare Society in 1842. Doubtless based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda (now in the Bodleian Library) of researches among genuine papers formerly at the Audit Office at Somerset House. {369a} 1607. Notes of performances of 'Hamlet' and 'Richard II' by the crews of the vessels of the East India Company's fleet off Sierra Leone. First printed in 'Narratives of Voyages towards the North-West, 1496-1631,'

edited by Thomas Rundall for the Hakluyt Society, 1849, p. 231, from what purported to be an exact transcript 'in the India Office' of the 'Journal of William Keeling,'

captain of one of the vessels in the expedition. Keeling's ma.n.u.script journal is still at the India Office, but the leaves that should contain these entries are now, and have long been, missing from it.

1609 (January 4). A warrant appointing Robert Daborne, William Shakespeare, and others instructors of the Children of the Revels. From the Bridgewater House MSS. first printed in Collier's 'New Facts,' 1835.

1609 List of persons a.s.sessed for poor (April 6). rate in Southwark, April 6, 1609, in which Shakespeare's name appears.

First printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 91. The forged paper is at Dulwich. {369b} 1611 (November). Forged entries in Master of the Revels' account-books (now at the Public Record Office) of performances at Whitehall by the King's Players of the 'Tempest' on November 1, and of the 'Winter's Tale' on November 5.

Printed in Peter Cunningham's 'Extracts from the Revels Accounts,'

p. 210. Doubtless based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda of researches among genuine papers formerly at the Audit Office at Somerset House.

{369c} II.--THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY.

Its source. Toby Matthew's letter.

The apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's Stratford career and the breadth of observation and knowledge displayed in his literary work has evoked the fantastic theory that Shakespeare was not the author of the literature that pa.s.ses under his name, and perverse attempts have been made to a.s.sign his works to his great contemporary, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the great contemporary prose-writer, philosopher, and lawyer. It is argued that Shakespeare's plays embody a general omniscience (especially a knowledge of law) which was possessed by no contemporary except Bacon; that there are many close parallelisms between pa.s.sages in Shakespeare's and pa.s.sages in Bacon's works, {370} and that Bacon makes enigmatic references in his correspondence to secret 'recreations' and 'alphabets' and concealed poems for which his alleged employment as a concealed dramatist can alone account. Toby Matthew wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Albans) at an uncertain date after January 1621: 'The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lords.h.i.+p's name, though he be known by another.' {371} This unpretending sentence is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote works of commanding excellence under another's name, and among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his 'most prodigious wit' was some Englishman named Bacon whom he met abroad--probably a pseudonymous Jesuit like most of Matthew's friends. (The real surname of Father Thomas Southwell, who was a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the Low Countries, was Bacon. He was born in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near Walsingham, Norfolk, being son of Thomas Bacon of that place, and he died at Watten in 1637.)

Chief exponents. Its vogue in America.

Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, _d._ 1855), in his 'Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shakespeare's authors.h.i.+p. There followed in a like temper 'Who wrote Shakespeare?' in 'Chambers's Journal,' August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnams'

Monthly,' January, 1856. On the latter was based 'The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, London and Boston, 1857. Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first to spread abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 1859. {372} Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?--a letter to Lord Ellesmere' (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who published at New York in 1866 'The Authors.h.i.+p of the Plays attributed to Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2 vols.) Bacon's 'Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' a commonplace book in Bacon's handwriting in the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian theory; it contained many words and phrases common to the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremest limits. The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance in America. There it achieved its wildest manifestation in the book called 'The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays' (Chicago and London, 1887, 2 vols.), which was the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota. The author pretended to have discovered among Bacon's papers a numerical cypher which enabled him to pick out letters appearing at certain intervals in the pages of Shakespeare's First Folio, and the selected letters formed words and sentences categorically stating that Bacon was author of the plays. Many refutations have been published of Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless contention.

Extent of the literature.

A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a magazine (named since May 1893 'Baconiana'). A quarterly periodical also called 'Baconiana,' and issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. 'The Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy' by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the t.i.tles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject, published since 1848; the list was continued during 1886 in 'Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its original number.

The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry a.s.signed to Shakespeare.

Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone render any other conclusion possible.

III.--THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON.

Southampton and Shakespeare.

From the dedicatory epistles addressed by Shakespeare to the Earl of Southampton in the opening pages of his two narrative poems, 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 'Lucrece' (1594), {374a} from the account given by Sir William D'Avenant, and recorded by Nicholas Rowe, of the earl's liberal bounty to the poet, {374b} and from the language of the sonnets, it is abundantly clear that Shakespeare enjoyed very friendly relations with Southampton from the time when his genius was nearing its maturity. No contemporary doc.u.ment or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shakespeare was the friend or _protege_ of any man of rank other than Southampton; and the student of Shakespeare's biography has reason to ask for some information respecting him who enjoyed the exclusive distinction of serving Shakespeare as his patron.

Parentage. Birth on Oct. 6, 1573.

Southampton was a patron worth cultivating. Both his parents came of the New n.o.bility, and enjoyed vast wealth. His father's father was Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, and when the monasteries were dissolved, although he was faithful to the old religion, he was granted rich estates in Hamps.h.i.+re, including the abbeys of t.i.tchfield and Beaulieu in the New Forest. He was created Earl of Southampton early in Edward VI's reign, and, dying shortly afterwards, was succeeded by his only son, the father of Shakespeare's friend. The second earl loved magnificence in his household. 'He was highly reverenced and favoured of all that were of his own rank, and bravely attended and served by the best gentlemen of those counties wherein he lived. His muster-roll never consisted of four lacqueys and a coachman, but of a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen.' {375a} The second earl remained a Catholic, like his father, and a chivalrous avowal of sympathy with Mary Queen of Scots procured him a term of imprisonment in the year preceding his distinguished son's birth. At a youthful age he married a lady of fortune, Mary Browne, daughter of the first Viscount Montague, also a Catholic. Her portrait, now at Welbeck, was painted in her early married days, and shows regularly formed features beneath bright auburn hair.

Two sons and a daughter were the issue of the union. Shakespeare's friend, the second son, was born at her father's residence, Cowdray House, near Midhurst, on October 6, 1573. He was thus Shakespeare's junior by nine years and a half. 'A goodly boy, G.o.d bless him!'

exclaimed the gratified father, writing of his birth to a friend. {375b} But the father barely survived the boy's infancy. He died at the early age of thirty-five--two days before the child's eighth birthday. The elder son was already dead. Thus, on October 4, 1581, the second and only surviving son became third Earl of Southampton, and entered on his great inheritance. {375c}

Education.

As was customary in the case of an infant peer, the little earl became a royal ward--'a child of state'--and Lord Burghley, the Prime Minister, acted as the boy's guardian in the Queen's behalf. Burghley had good reason to be satisfied with his ward's intellectual promise. 'He spent,'

wrote a contemporary, 'his childhood and other younger terms in the study of good letters.' At the age of twelve, in the autumn of 1585, he was admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge, 'the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all the University.' Southampton breathed easily the cultured atmosphere. Next summer he sent his guardian, Burghley, an essay in Ciceronian Latin on the somewhat cynical text that 'All men are moved to the pursuit of virtue by the hope of reward.' The argument, if unconvincing, is precocious. 'Every man,' the boy tells us, 'no matter how well or how ill endowed with the graces of humanity, whether in the enjoyment of great honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that yearning for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour.' The paper, still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of calligraphy; every letter is shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refinement most uncommon in boys of thirteen. {376a} Southampton remained at the University for some two years, graduating M.A. at sixteen in 1589. Throughout his after life he cherished for his college 'great love and affection.'

Before leaving Cambridge, Southampton entered his name at Gray's Inn.

Some knowledge of law was deemed needful in one who was to control a landed property that was not only large already but likely to grow.

{376b} Meanwhile he was sedulously cultivating his literary tastes. He took into his 'pay and patronage' John Florio, the well-known author and Italian tutor, and was soon, according to Florio's testimony, as thoroughly versed in Italian as 'teaching or learning' could make him.

'When he was young,' wrote a later admirer, 'no ornament of youth was wanting in him;' and it was naturally to the Court that his friends sent him at an early age to display his varied graces. He can hardly have been more than seventeen when he was presented to his sovereign. She showed him kindly notice, and the Earl of Ess.e.x, her brilliant favourite, acknowledged his fascination. Thenceforth Ess.e.x displayed in his welfare a brotherly interest which proved in course of time a very doubtful blessing.

Recognition of Southampton's youthful beauty.

While still a boy, Southampton entered with as much zest into the sports and dissipations of his fellow courtiers as into their literary and artistic pursuits. At tennis, in jousts and tournaments, he achieved distinction; nor was he a stranger to the delights of gambling at primero. In 1592, when he was in his eighteenth year, he was recognised as the most handsome and accomplished of all the young lords who frequented the royal presence. In the autumn of that year Elizabeth paid Oxford a visit in state. Southampton was in the throng of n.o.blemen who bore her company. In a Latin poem describing the brilliant ceremonial, which was published at the time at the University Press, eulogy was lavished without stint on all the Queen's attendants; but the academic poet declared that Southampton's personal attractions exceeded those of any other in the royal train. 'No other youth who was present,' he wrote, 'was more beautiful than this prince of Hamps.h.i.+re (_quo non formosior alter affuit_), nor more distinguished in the arts of learning, although as yet tender down scarce bloomed on his cheek.' The last words testify to Southampton's boyish appearance. {377a} Next year it was rumoured, that his 'external grace' was to receive signal recognition by his admission, despite his juvenility, to the Order of the Garter.

'There be no Knights of the Garter new chosen as yet,' wrote a well-informed courtier on May 3, 1593, 'but there were four nominated.'

{377b} Three were eminent public servants, but first on the list stood the name of young Southampton. The purpose did not take effect, but the compliment of nomination was, at his age, without precedent outside the circle of the Sovereign's kinsmen. On November 17, 1595, he appeared in the lists set up in the Queen's presence in honour of the thirty-seventh anniversary of her accession. The poet George Peele pictured in blank verse the gorgeous scene, and likened the Earl of Southampton to that ancient type of chivalry, Bevis of Southampton, so 'valiant in arms,' so 'gentle and debonair,' did he appear to all beholders. {378}

Reluctance to marry.

But clouds were rising on this sunlit horizon. Southampton, a wealthy peer without brothers or uncles, was the only male representative of his house. A lawful heir was essential to the entail of his great possessions. Early marriages--child-marriages--were in vogue in all ranks of society, and Southampton's mother and guardian regarded matrimony at a tender age as especially inc.u.mbent on him in view of his rich heritage. When he was seventeen Burghley accordingly offered him a wife in the person of his granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Vere, eldest daughter of his daughter Anne and of the Earl of Oxford. The Countess of Southampton approved the match, and told Burghley that her son was not averse from it. Her wish was father to the thought. Southampton declined to marry to order, and, to the confusion of his friends, was still a bachelor when he came of age in 1594. Nor even then did there seem much prospect of his changing his condition. He was in some ways as young for his years in inward disposition as in outward appearance.

Although gentle and amiable in most relations of life, he could be childishly self-willed and impulsive, and outbursts of anger involved him, at Court and elsewhere, in many petty quarrels which were with difficulty settled without bloodshed. Despite his rank and wealth, he was consequently accounted by many ladies of far too uncertain a temper to sustain marital responsibilities with credit. Lady Bridget Manners, sister of his friend the Earl of Rutland, was in 1594 looking to matrimony for means of release from the servitude of a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Her guardian suggested that Southampton or the Earl of Bedford, who was intimate with Southampton and exactly of his age, would be an eligible suitor. Lady Bridget dissented. Southampton and his friend were, she objected, 'so young,' 'fantastical,' and volatile ('so easily carried away'), that should ill fortune befall her mother, who was 'her only stay,' she 'doubted their carriage of themselves.' She spoke, she said, from observation. {379}

Intrigue with Elizabeth Vernon.

In 1595, at two-and-twenty, Southampton justified Lady Bridget's censure by a public proof of his fallibility. The fair Mistress Vernon (first cousin of the Earl of Ess.e.x), a pa.s.sionate beauty of the Court, cast her spell on him. Her virtue was none too stable, and in September the scandal spread that Southampton was courting her 'with too much familiarity.'

Marriage in 1598.

The entanglement with 'his fair mistress' opened a new chapter in Southampton's career, and life's tempests began in earnest. Either to free himself from his mistress's toils, or to divert attention from his intrigue, he in 1596 withdrew from Court and sought sterner occupation.

Despite his mistress's lamentations, which the Court gossips duly chronicled, he played a part with his friend Ess.e.x in the military and naval expedition to Cadiz in 1596, and in that to the Azores in 1597. He developed a martial ardour which brought him renown, and Mars (his admirers said) vied with Mercury for his allegiance. He travelled on the Continent, and finally, in 1598, he accepted a subordinate place in the suite of the Queen's Secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, who was going on an emba.s.sy to Paris. But Mistress Vernon was still fated to be his evil genius, and Southampton learnt while in Paris that her condition rendered marriage essential to her decaying reputation. He hurried to London and, yielding his own scruples to her entreaties, secretly made her his wife during the few days he stayed in this country. The step was full of peril. To marry a lady of the Court without the Queen's consent infringed a prerogative of the Crown by which Elizabeth set exaggerated store.