A Life of William Shakespeare Part 30

To the Right Worfhipfull and Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew Saunders, Efquire W.H. wifheth, with long life, a profperous achieuement of his good defires.

There follows in small type, regularly printed across the page, a dedicatory letter--the frequent sequel of the dedicatory salutation--in which the writer, 'W.H.,' commends the religious temper of 'these meditations' and deprecates the coldness and sterility of his own 'conceits.' The dedicator signs himself at the bottom of the page 'Your Wors.h.i.+ps unfained affectionate, W.H.' {401}

The two books--Southwell's 'Foure-fould Meditation' of 1606, and Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' of 1609--have more in common than the appearance on the preliminary pages of the initials 'W. H.' in a prominent place, and of the common form of dedicatory salutation. Both volumes, it was announced on the t.i.tle-pages, came from the same press--the press of George Eld. Eld for many years co-operated with Thorpe in business. In 1605 he printed for Thorpe Ben Jonson's 'Seja.n.u.s,' and in each of the years 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610 at least one of his ventures was publicly declared to be a specimen of Eld's typography. Many of Thorpe's books came forth without any mention of the printer; but Eld's name figures more frequently upon them than that of any other printer.

Between 1605 and 1609 it is likely that Eld printed all Thorpe's 'copy'

as matter of course and that he was in constant relations with him.

'W. H.' and Mr. William Hall.

There is little doubt that the 'W. H.' of the Southwell volume was Mr.

William Hall, who, when he procured that ma.n.u.script for publication, was an humble auxiliary in the publis.h.i.+ng army. Hall flits rapidly across the stage of literary history. He served an apprentices.h.i.+p to the printer and stationer John Allde from 1577 to 1584, and was admitted to the freedom of the Stationers' Company in the latter year. For the long period of twenty-two years after his release from his indentures he was connected with the trade in a dependent capacity, doubtless as a.s.sistant to a master-stationer. When in 1606 the ma.n.u.script of Southwell's poems was conveyed to his hands and he adopted the recognised role of procurer of their publication, he had not set up in business for himself. It was only later in the same year (1606) that he obtained the license of the Stationers' Company to inaugurate a press in his own name, and two years pa.s.sed before he began business. In 1608 he obtained for publication a theological ma.n.u.script which appeared next year with his name on the t.i.tle-page for the first time. This volume const.i.tuted the earliest credential of his independence. It ent.i.tled him to the prefix 'Mr.' in all social relations. Between 1609 and 1614 he printed some twenty volumes, most of them sermons and almost all devotional in tone. The most important of his secular undertaking was Guillim's far-famed 'Display of Heraldrie,' a folio issued in 1610. In 1612 Hall printed an account of the conviction and execution of a noted pickpocket, John Selman, who had been arrested while professionally engaged in the Royal Chapel at Whitehall. On the t.i.tle-page Hall gave his own name by his initials only. The book was described in bold type as 'printed by W. H.'

and as on sale at the shop of Thomas Archer in St. Paul's Churchyard.

Hall was a careful printer with a healthy dread of misprints, but his business dwindled after 1613, and, soon disposing of it to one John Beale, he disappeared into private life.

'W. H.' are no uncommon initials, and there is more interest attaching to the discovery of 'Mr. W. H.'s' position in life and his function in relation to the scheme of the publication of the 'Sonnets' than in establis.h.i.+ng his full name. But there is every probability that William Hall, the 'W. H.' of the Southwell dedication, was one and the same person with the 'Mr. W. H.' of Thorpe's dedication of the 'Sonnets.' No other inhabitant of London was habitually known to mask himself under those letters. William Hall was the only man bearing those initials who there is reason to suppose was on familiar terms with Thorpe. {403a} Both were engaged at much the same period in London in the same occupation of procuring ma.n.u.scripts for publication; both inscribed their literary treasure-trove in the common formula to patrons for whom they claimed no high rank or distinction, and both engaged the same printer to print their most valuable prize.

'The onlie begetter' means 'only procurer'.

No condition of the problem of the ident.i.ty of Thorpe's friend 'Mr. W. H'

seems ignored by the adoption of the interpretation that he was the future master-printer William Hall. The objection that 'Mr. W. H.' could not have been Thorpe's friend in trade, because while wis.h.i.+ng him all happiness and eternity Thorpe dubs him 'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' is not formidable. Thorpe rarely used words with much exactness. {403b} It is obvious that he did not employ 'begetter' in the ordinary sense. 'Begetter,' when literally interpreted as applied to a literary work, means father, author, producer, and it cannot be seriously urged that Thorpe intended to describe 'Mr. W. H.' as the author of the 'Sonnets.' 'Begetter' has been used in the figurative sense of inspirer, and it is often a.s.sumed that by 'onlie begetter' Thorpe meant 'sole inspirer,' and that by the use of those words he intended to hint at the close relations subsisting between 'W. H.' and Shakespeare in the dramatist's early life; but that interpretation presents numberless difficulties. It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a dedication with any cryptic significance, and thus mystify his customers.

Moreover, his career and the circ.u.mstances under which he became the publisher of the sonnets confute the a.s.sumption that he was in such relations with Shakespeare or with Shakespeare's a.s.sociates as would give him any knowledge of Shakespeare's early career that was not public property. All that Thorpe--the struggling pirate-publisher, 'the well-wis.h.i.+ng adventurer in setting forth' wares mysteriously come by--knew or probably cared to know of Shakespeare was that he was the most popular and honoured of the literary producers of the day. When Thorpe had the luck to acquire surrept.i.tiously an unprinted ma.n.u.script by 'our ever-living poet,' it was not in the great man's circle of friends or patrons, to which hitherto he had had no access, that he was likely to seek his own patron. Elementary considerations of prudence impelled him to publish his treasure-trove with all expedition, and not disclose his design prematurely to one who might possibly take steps to hinder its fulfilment. But that Thorpe had no 'inspirer' of the 'Sonnets' in his mind when he addressed himself to 'Mr. W. H.' is finally proved by the circ.u.mstance that the only identifiable male 'inspirer' of the poems was the Earl of Southampton, to whom the initials 'W. H.' do not apply.

Of the figurative meanings set in Elizabethan English on the word 'begetter,' that of 'inspirer' is by no means the only one or the most common. 'Beget' was not infrequently employed in the attenuated sense of 'get,' 'procure,' or 'obtain,' a sense which is easily deducible from the original one of 'bring into being.' Hamlet, when addressing the players, bids them 'in the very whirlwind of pa.s.sion acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.' 'I have some cousins german at Court,' wrote Dekker in 1602, in his 'Satiro-Mastix,' '[that] shall beget you the reversion of the Master of the King's Revels.' 'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe described as 'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' was in all probability the acquirer or procurer of the ma.n.u.script, who, figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first placing the ma.n.u.script in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by which a copy might be acquired. To a.s.sign such significance to the word 'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. {405} Thorpe described his _role_ in the piratical enterprise of the 'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wis.h.i.+ng adventurer in setting forth,' _i.e._ the hopeful speculator in the scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' doubtless played the almost equally important part--one as well known then as now in commercial operations--of the 'vendor' of the property to be exploited.

VI.--'MR. WILLIAM HERBERT.'

Origin of the notion that 'Mr. W. H.' stands for 'Mr. William Herbert.'

For fully sixty years it has been very generally a.s.sumed that Shakespeare addressed the bulk of his sonnets to the young Earl of Pembroke. This theory owes its origin to a speciously lucky guess which was first disclosed to the public in 1832, and won for a time almost universal acceptance. {406} Thorpe's form of address was held to justify the mistaken inference that, whoever 'Mr. W. H.' may have been, he and no other was the hero of the alleged story of the poems; and the cornerstone of the Pembroke theory was the a.s.sumption that the letters 'Mr. W. H.' in the dedication did duty for the words 'Mr. William Herbert,' by which name the (third) Earl of Pembroke was represented as having been known in youth. The originators of the theory claimed to discover in the Earl of Pembroke the only young man of rank and wealth to whom the initials 'W.

H' applied at the needful dates. In thus interpreting the initials, the Pembroke theorists made a blunder that proves on examination to be fatal to their whole contention.

The Earl of Pembroke known only as Lord Herbert in youth.

The n.o.bleman under consideration succeeded to the earldom of Pembroke on his father's death on January 19, 1601 (N. S.), when he was twenty years and nine months old, and from that date it is unquestioned that he was always known by his lawful t.i.tle. But it has been overlooked that the designation 'Mr. William Herbert,' for which the initials 'Mr. W. H.'

have been long held to stand, could never in the mind of Thomas Thorpe or any other contemporary have denominated the Earl at any moment of his career. When he came into the world on April 9, 1580, his father had been (the second) Earl of Pembroke for ten years, and he, as the eldest son, was from the hour of his birth known in all relations of life--even in the baptismal entry in the parish register--by the t.i.tle of Lord Herbert, and by no other. During the lifetime of his father and his own minority several references were made to him in the extant correspondence of friends of varying degrees of intimacy. He is called by them, without exception, 'my Lord Herbert,' 'the Lord Herbert,' or 'Lord Herbert.'

{407} It is true that as the eldest son of an earl he held the t.i.tle by courtesy, but for all practical purposes it was as well recognised in common speech as if he had been a peer in his own right. No one nowadays would address in current parlance, or even entertain the conception of, Viscount Cranborne, the heir of the present Prime Minister, as 'Mr. J.

C.' or 'Mr. James Cecil.' It is no more legitimate to a.s.sert that it would have occurred to an Elizabethan--least of all to a personal acquaintance or to a publisher who stood toward his patron in the relation of a personal dependent--to describe 'young Lord Herbert,' of Elizabeth's reign, as 'Mr. William Herbert.' A lawyer, who in the way of business might have to mention the young lord's name in a legal doc.u.ment, would have entered it as 'William Herbert, commonly called Lord Herbert.'

The appellation 'Mr.' was not used loosely then as now, but indicated a precise social grade. Thorpe's employment of the prefix 'Mr.' without qualification is in itself fatal to the pretension that any lord, whether by right or courtesy, was intended. {408}

Thorpe's mode of addressing the Earl of Pembroke.

Proof is at hand to establish that Thorpe was under no misapprehension as to the proper appellation of the Earl of Pembroke, and was incapable of venturing on the meaningless misnomer of 'Mr. W. H.' Insignificant publisher though he was, and sceptical as he was of the merits of n.o.ble patrons, he was not proof against the temptation, when an opportunity was directly offered him, of adorning the prefatory pages of a publication with the name of a n.o.bleman, who enjoyed the high official station, the literary culture, and the social influence of the third Earl of Pembroke.

In 1610--a year after he published the 'Sonnets'--there came into his hands the ma.n.u.scripts of John Healey, that humble literary aspirant who had a few months before emigrated to Virginia, and had, it would seem, died there. Healey, before leaving England, had secured through the good offices of John Florio (a man of influence in both fas.h.i.+onable and literary circles) the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke for a translation of Bishop Hall's fanciful satire, 'Mundus alter et idem.' Calling his book 'The Discoverie of a New World,' Healey had prefixed to it, in 1609, an epistle inscribed in garish terms of flattery to the 'Truest mirrour of truest honor, William Earl of Pembroke.' {409} When Thorpe subsequently made up his mind to publish, on his own account, other translations by the same hand, he found it desirable to seek the same patron. Accordingly, in 1610, he prefixed in his own name, to an edition of Healey's translation of St. Augustine's 'Citie of G.o.d,' a dedicatory address 'to the honorablest patron of the Muses and good mindes, Lord William, Earle of Pembroke, Knight of the Honourable Order (of the Garter), &c.' In involved sentences Thorpe tells the 'right gracious and gracefule Lord' how the author left the work at death to be a 'testimonie of grat.i.tude, observance, and heart's honor to your honour.'

'Wherefore,' he explains, 'his legacie, laide at your Honour's feete, is rather here delivered to your Honour's humbly thrise-kissed hands by his poore delegate. Your Lords.h.i.+p's true devoted, Th. Th.'

Again, in 1616, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second edition of another of Healey's translations, 'Epictetus Manuall. Cebes Table.

Theoprastus Characters,' he supplied more conspicuous evidence of the servility with which he deemed it inc.u.mbent on him to approach a potent patron. As this address by Thorpe to Pembroke is difficult of access, I give it _in extenso_:

'To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlaine to His Majestie, one of his most honorable Privie Counsell, and Knight of the most n.o.ble order of the Garter, &c.

'Right Honorable.--It may worthily seeme strange unto your Lords.h.i.+p, out of what frenzy one of my meanenesse hath presumed to commit this Sacriledge, in the straightnesse of your Lords.h.i.+p's leisure, to present a peece, for matter and model so unworthy, and in this scribbling age, wherein great persons are so pestered dayly with Dedications. All I can alledge in extenuation of so many incongruities, is the bequest of a deceased Man; who (in his lifetime) having offered some translations of his unto your Lords.h.i.+p, ever wisht if _these ensuing_ were published they might onely bee addressed unto your Lords.h.i.+p, as the last Testimony of his dutifull affection (to use his own termes) _The true and reall upholder of Learned endeavors_. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a Legacie unto your Lords.h.i.+p (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some impiety present it to any other; such a sad priviledge have the bequests of the _dead_, and so obligatory they are, more than the requests of the _living_. In the hope of this honourable acceptance I will ever rest,

'Your lords.h.i.+p's humble devoted, 'T. Th.'

With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep into the presence of the n.o.bility. In fact, the law which rigorously maintained the privileges of peers left them no option. The alleged erroneous form of address in the dedication of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'--'Mr. W. H.' for Lord Herbert or the Earl of Pembroke--would have amounted to the offence of defamation. And for that misdemeanour the Star Chamber, always active in protecting the dignity of peers, would have promptly called Thorpe to account. {410}

Of the Earl of Pembroke, and of his brother the Earl of Montgomery, it was stated a few years later, 'from just observation,' on very pertinent authority, that 'no men came near their lords.h.i.+ps [in their capacity of literary patrons], but with a kind of religious address.' These words figure in the prefatory epistle which two actor-friends of Shakespeare addressed to the two Earls in the posthumously issued First Folio of the dramatist's works. Thorpe's 'kind of religious address' on seeking Lord Pembroke's patronage for Healey's books was somewhat more unctuous than was customary or needful. But of erring conspicuously in an opposite direction he may, without misgiving, be p.r.o.nounced innocent.

VII.--SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE.

With the disposal of the allegation that 'Mr. W. H.' represented the Earl of Pembroke's youthful name, the whole theory of that earl's ident.i.ty with Shakespeare's friend collapses. Outside Thorpe's dedicatory words, only two sc.r.a.ps of evidence with any t.i.tle to consideration have been adduced to show that Shakespeare was at any time or in any way a.s.sociated with Pembroke.

Shakespeare with the acting company at Wilton in 1603.

In the late autumn of 1603 James I and his Court were installed at the Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton for a period of two months, owing to the prevalence of the plague in London. By order of the officers of the royal household, the King's company of players, of which Shakespeare was a member, gave a performance before the King at Wilton House on December 2. The actors travelled from Mortlake for the purpose, and were paid in the ordinary manner by the treasurer of the royal household out of the public funds. There is no positive evidence that Shakespeare attended at Wilton with the company, but a.s.suming, as is probable, that he did, the Earl of Pembroke can be held no more responsible for his presence than for his repeated presence under the same conditions at Whitehall. The visit of the King's players to Wilton in 1603 has no bearing on the Earl of Pembroke's alleged relations with Shakespeare. {411}

The dedication of the First Folio.

The second instance of the a.s.sociation in the seventeenth century of Shakespeare's name with Pembroke's tells wholly against the conjectured intimacy. Seven years after the dramatist's death, two of his friends and fellow-actors prepared the collective edition of his plays known as the First Folio, and they dedicated the volume, in the conventional language of eulogy, 'To the most n.o.ble and incomparable paire of brethren, William Earl of Pembroke, &c., Lord Chamberlaine to the King's most excellent Majesty, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, &c., Gentleman of His Majesties Bedchamber. Both Knights of the most n.o.ble Order of the Garter and our singular good Lords.'

The choice of such patrons, whom, as the dedication intimated, 'no one came near but with a kind of religious address,' proves no private sort of friends.h.i.+p between them and the dead author. To the two earls in partners.h.i.+p nearly every work of any literary pretension was dedicated at the period. Moreover, the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in 1623, and exercised supreme authority in theatrical affairs. That his patronage should be sought for a collective edition of the works of the acknowledged master of the contemporary stage was a matter of course. It is only surprising that the editors should have yielded to the pa.s.sing vogue of soliciting the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain's brother in conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain.

The sole pa.s.sage in the editors' dedication that can be held to bear on the question of Shakespeare's alleged intimacy with Pembroke is to be found in their remarks: 'But since your lords.h.i.+ps have beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles something, heretofore; and have prosequuted both them, and their Authour living, with so much favour: we hope that (they outliving him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be exequutor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference, whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or find them: This hath done both.

For, so much were your lords.h.i.+ps' likings of the severall parts, when they were acted, as, before they were published, the Volume ask'd to be yours.' There is nothing whatever in these sentences that does more than justify the inference that the brothers shared the enthusiastic esteem which James I and all the n.o.blemen of his Court extended to Shakespeare and his plays in the dramatist's lifetime. Apart from his work as a dramatist, Shakespeare, in his capacity of one of 'the King's servants'

or company of players, was personally known to all the officers of the royal household who collectively controlled theatrical representations at Court. Throughout James I's reign his plays were repeatedly performed in the royal presence, and when the dedicators of the First Folio, at the conclusion of their address to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, describe the dramatist's works as 'these remaines of your _Servant_ Shakespeare,'

they make it quite plain that it was in the capacity of 'King's servant'

or player that they knew him to have been the object of their n.o.ble patrons' favour.