Part 3 The Facts About Shakespeare

Part 3

Similarly we can be certain that he had read many of the elaborate narrative poems then in vogue, a cla.s.s to which he contributed _Venus and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and _A Lover's Complaint_. Daniel's _Rosamond_ and Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_ especially have left many traces, and Daniel's _Barons' Wars_ is intimately related to _Richard II_ and _Henry IV_. The longer prose fictions of the time he also watched, and Lyly's _Euphues_ contributed the germ of a number of pa.s.sages, as Lodge's _Rosalynde_ and Greene's _Pandosto_ supplied the plots of _As You Like It_ and _The Winter's Tale_ respectively.

Reference has already been made to his knowledge of folk beliefs about fairies. To this should be added other supernatural beliefs, especially as to ghosts, devils, and witches, evidence of his familiarity with which will occur to every one. Matters of this sort were much discussed in his time, the frequency of ghosts in Senecan plays having made them conspicuous in Elizabethan imitations, and religious controversy having stimulated interest in demonology. Several important books appeared on the subject, and one of these at least Shakespeare read, Harsnett's _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_, for from it Edgar, as Poor Tom in _King Lear_, derived many of the names and phrases which occur in his pretended ravings.

The most useful book in all his reading, if we judge by the amount of his work that is based on it, was the second edition of the _Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, compiled by Raphael Holinshed. With it he used the work by Hall on _The Union of Lancaster and York_, the _Chronicles_ of Grafton and of Fabyan, and the _Annals_ of John Stowe.

On these were based the greater number of the historical plays, _Macbeth_, and the political part of _Cymbeline_. In the case of _Henry VIII_ there should be added the _Acts and Monuments_, better known as the _Book of Martyrs_, of John Foxe.

[Page Heading: Contemporary Drama]

To deal adequately with Shakespeare's reading in the plays of his time would be to write a history of the Elizabethan drama. Older dramatists, like Preston, Gascoigne, and Whetstone, he knew, for he quotes _Cambyses_, and from the two last he derives material for the plots of _The Taming of the Shrew_ and _Measure for Measure_. Anonymous writers supplied the older plays on which he based _King John, King Lear_, and _Hamlet_, parts of _Henry V_ and _VI_, and of _Richard III_, and probably others. Allusions prove a familiarity with all of Marlowe's dramas; _Hamlet_ is indebted to the tradition of which Kyd was one of the founders; Lyly taught him much in the handling of light comic dialogue; and he quotes lines from Peele. Greene's contribution is less specifically marked; but Shakespeare's profession of acting, as well as that of play-writing, of necessity made him acquainted with the whole dramatic production of the time. Thus, as has been stated in a previous chapter, he acted in several of Jonson's plays, and a good case has been made out for his modelling his last comedies on the new successes of Beaumont and Fletcher.

No Englishman of that day was insensible to what was going on in exploration and conquest of the Western World; and in _The Tempest_, _Oth.e.l.lo_, and other plays we have clear ground for stating that Shakespeare shared this interest, and read books like Eden's _History of Travayle in the West and East Indies_, Raleigh's _Discoverie of Guiana_, and such pamphlets as were used in the vast compilation of Richard Hakluyt. The scientific knowledge implied in the plays reflects current beliefs, and must have been derived from such works as Pliny, _Batman uppon Bartholome his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum_, and from conversation.

Finally, Shakespeare knew his Bible. Several volumes have been written to exhibit the extent of this knowledge, and it has been shown by Anders that he knew both the Genevan and the Great Bible, as well as the Prayer Book.

Taken all together, the amount of literature indicated by this summary account of the evidences in the plays and poems abundantly proves the statement that Shakespeare, if not a scholar, was a man of wide and varied reading. When it is further considered that only a fraction of what any author reads leaves a mark that can be identified on what he writes, we shall readily allow that in the matter of study Shakespeare showed an activity and receptivity of mind that harmonizes with the impression received from his creative work.

[Page Heading: His Reading Typical]

It agrees with our impressions of him derived from other sources also, that his reading reflects not so much idiosyncrasies of taste as the prevalent literary interests of the day. Thus in Latin literature the most conspicuous author among general readers, as distinguished from scholars, was Ovid, whose romantic narratives appealed to a time which reveled in tales gathered from all quarters; and this same prominence of Ovid has been shown to exist among the cla.s.sical authors known to the dramatist. Similarly his use of chronicles like that of Holinshed merely reflects a widespread interest in national history; and Shakespeare shared the popular interest in the translations of _novelle_ and the like that poured in from the Continent. The age of Elizabeth was an age of great expansion in reading--especially in the literature of entertainment. For the first time since the introduction of printing the people were free to indulge in books as a recreation, and the enormous growth of publishing in this era indicates the response to the new demand. In all this Shakespeare took part, and the evidences appear in his works so far as the nature of their themes permitted it. But the drama gave no opportunity for anything but pa.s.sing allusions to scientific, philosophical, and religious matters, so that direct evidence is lacking as to how far Shakespeare was acquainted with what was being written in these fields. On the other hand, the profundity of his insight into human motive and behavior, the evidences of prolonged and severe meditation on human life and the ways of the world, and the richness of the philosophical generalizations that lie just below the surface of his greater plays, make it difficult to believe that in these fields also he did not join in the intellectual activity of his day.

CHAPTER IV

CHRONOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

The value of a knowledge of the order in which an author's works were composed no longer needs to be argued. The development of power and skill which such knowledge reveals is an important part of biography, and an individual work is more surely interpreted when we know the period and the circ.u.mstances of the author's life in which it was written, and what other works, by himself and his fellows, lie nearest in point of time. Without a knowledge of chronology, the indebtedness of contemporary authors to one another and the growth of literary forms cannot be determined.

The fact, so often to be insisted upon, that at the beginning of Shakespeare's career stage plays were hardly regarded as literature at all and were not published by their authors, deprives us of the evidence usually afforded by date of publication. We are thus forced to have recourse to a variety of more or less casually recorded data, and to indications of differences of maturity in style and matter which are often much less clear than could be wished. Before giving the results of the research that has been pursued for a century and a half, it will be worth while to enumerate the most fruitful methods which have been employed, and the sorts of evidence available.

Of purely external evidence, the chief kinds are these: records of the performance of plays in letters, diaries, accounts, and the like; quotation, allusion, imitation, or parody in other works; entries in the books of the Master of the Revels at Court, and in the Register of the Stationers' Company; dates on the t.i.tle-pages of the plays themselves; facts and traditions about the life of the author; dates in the lives of actors and in the careers of companies known to have performed the plays, and in the histories of theaters in which they were presented.

Instances of some of these are the ma.n.u.script which tells of a performance of _The Comedy of Errors_ at Gray's Inn in 1594; the diary of the quack, Dr. Simon Forman, who witnessed performances of _Macbeth, Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_ at the Globe in 1610 and 1611; the appreciation of Shakespeare, with a list of a dozen plays by him, in the _Palladis Tamia_[4] of Francis Meres, 1598; and the pamphlets on Somers's voyage to Virginia, which offered suggestions for _The Tempest_.

[4] See Appendix A, 13.

Partly external and partly internal are the evidences derived from allusions in the plays to current events, personal or political, such as the reference in the Prologue to _Henry V_ to the expedition of Ess.e.x to Ireland in 1599; references to other books, like the quotation from Marlowe in _As You Like It_, III. v. 82; references from one play of Shakespeare's to another, like the promise in the Epilogue to _2 Henry IV_ to "continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France."

[Page Heading: Kinds of Evidence]

The purely internal evidence is seldom as specific as the external, and requires to be handled with much judgment and caution. Most difficult in this cla.s.s is the weighing of considerations of a moral or esthetic nature; for, though these are often powerful in their effect on the individual reader, they are usually incapable of proof to another person with different tastes and a different point of view. Of such tests, those afforded by a study of the methods used in the treatment of plot and in the development of character are perhaps the least subjective.

Somewhat more palpable are the changing characteristics of style. The number and nature of cla.s.sical allusions and Latin words and quotations; the kind and degree of elaboration of figures of speech, puns, conceits, and the like; diffuseness or concentration in the expression of thought; artificiality or lifelikeness in the treatment of dialogue; the use of prose or verse; the employment of oaths, checked by statute shortly after the accession of James I: these are the main aspects of style which can be used in determining, not exact dates, but the period of Shakespeare's activity within which a given work falls. More capable of mechanical calculation than the tests of either matter or style are those derived from changes in versification, though here too there is often a subjective element in the reckoning. The more important metrical tests include the following: the frequency of rhyme, whether in the heroic couplet or, as not uncommonly occurs in early plays, in alternates and even such elaborate arrangements as the sonnet; doggerel lines; alexandrines, or lines of twelve syllables; the presence of an extra syllable before a pause within the line; short lines, especially at the end of speeches; the subst.i.tution of other feet for the regular iambic movement of blank verse; weak and light endings; and, most valuable, the position of the pause in the line ("end-stopped" or "run on"), and feminine endings or hypermetrical lines, such as

"These many summers in a sea of glor-y."

Many of these variable features were not consciously manipulated by the author; and, even when a general drift in a certain direction is clearly observable in his practice with regard to them, it is not to be a.s.sumed that his progress was perfectly regular, without leaps forward and occasional returns to an earlier usage. It is to be noted also that the subject and atmosphere of a particular play might induce a metrical treatment of a special kind, in which case the verse tests would yield evidence not primarily chronological at all. Nevertheless, when all allowances have been made and all due caution exercised, it will be found that the indications of the versification corroborate and supplement the external evidences in a valuable way.

[Page Heading: Metrical Tests]

TABLE I

========================================================================= | | | | | % | | % | | | | | |BLANK | |SPEECHES|NO. OF |TOTAL | | |PENTA-|VERSE | % |ENDING |LIGHT |NO. OF| |BLANK |METER |W. FEM.|RUN-ON|WITHIN |AND WEAK |LINES |PROSE |VERSE |RHYMES|ENDINGS|LINES |THE LINE|ENDINGS ------------+------+------+------+------+-------+------+--------+-------- L. L. L. | 2789 | 1086 | 579 | 1028 | 7.7 | 18.4 | 10.0 | 3 C. of E. | 1770 | 240 | 1150 | 380 | 16.6 | 12.9 | 0.6 | 0 T. G. V. | 2060 | 409 | 1510 | 116 | 18.4 | 12.4 | 5.8 | 0 R. III | 3599 | 55 | 3374 | 170 | 19.5 | 13.1 | 2.9 | 4 K. J. | 2553 | 0 | 2403 | 150 | 6.3 | 17.7 | 12.7 | 7 R. & J. | 3002 | 405 | 2111 | 486 | 8.2 | 14.2 | 14.9 | 7 M. N. D. | 2251 | 441 | 878 | 731 | 7.3 | 13.2 | 17.3 | 1 R. II | 2644 | 0 | 2107 | 537 | 11.0 | 19.9 | 7.3 | 4 Merch. | 2705 | 673 | 1896 | 93 | 17.6 | 21.5 | 22.2 | 7 1 Hy. IV | 3170 | 1464 | 1622 | 84 | 5.1 | 22.8 | 14.2 | 7 2 Hy. IV | 3437 | 1860 | 1417 | 74 | 16.3 | 21.4 | 16.8 | 1 M. W. W. | 3018 | 2703 | 227 | 69 | 27.2 | 20.1 | 20.5 | 1 Hy. V | 3320 | 1531 | 1678 | 101 | 20.5 | 21.8 | 18.3 | 2 M. Ado. | 2823 | 2106 | 643 | 40 | 22.9 | 19.3 | 20.7 | 2 J. C. | 2440 | 165 | 2241 | 34 | 19.7 | 19.3 | 20.3 | 10 A. Y. L. I. | 2904 | 1681 | 925 | 71 | 25.5 | 17.1 | 21.6 | 2 T. N. | 2684 | 1741 | 763 | 120 | 25.6 | 14.7 | 36.3 | 4 T. & C. | 3423 | 1186 | 2025 | 196 | 23.8 | 27.4 | 31.3 | 6 A. W. W. | 2981 | 1453 | 1234 | 280 | 29.4 | 28.4 | 74.0 | 13 Hml. | 3924 | 1208 | 2490 | 81 | 22.6 | 23.1 | 51.6 | 8 Meas. | 2809 | 1134 | 1574 | 73 | 26.1 | 23.0 | 51.4 | 7 Oth. | 3324 | 541 | 2672 | 86 | 28.1 | 19.5 | 41.4 | 2 Lear. | 3298 | 903 | 2238 | 74 | 28.5 | 29.3 | 60.9 | 6 Mcb. | 1993 | 158 | 1588 | 118 | 26.3 | 36.6 | 77.2 | 23 A. & C. | 3064 | 255 | 2761 | 42 | 26.5 | 43.3 | 77.5 | 99 Cor. | 3392 | 829 | 2521 | 42 | 28.4 | 45.9 | 79.0 | 104 Cym. | 3448 | 638 | 2505 | 107 | 30.7 | 46.0 | 85.0 | 130 W. T. | 2750 | 844 | 1825 | 0 | 32.9 | 37.5 | 87.6 | 100 Tmp. | 2068 | 458 | 1458 | 2 | 35.4 | 41.5 | 84.5 | 67 =========================================================================

TABLE II

COLLABORATED PLAYS

The accompanying Tables[5] give the detailed results of investigations along these lines, and a study of the data therein contained will reveal both their possibilities and their limitations. In Tables I and II the order of the plays is approximately that of the dates of their composition (virtually the same as the dates of first performance). The second and third columns cannot be regarded as giving any clue to chronology, except that they show that in the dramas written under the influence of Marlowe prose is comparatively rare. Elsewhere Shakespeare employed prose for a variety of purposes: for low comedy, as in the tavern scenes in _Henry IV_, and the scenes in which Sir Toby figures in _Twelfth Night_; for repartee, as in the wit-combats of Beatrice and Bened.i.c.k; for purely intellectual and moralizing speeches, such as Hamlet's over the skull of Yorick. On the other hand, highly emotional scenes are usually in verse, as are romantic pa.s.sages like the conversation of Lorenzo and Jessica in the moonlight at Belmont, or the dialogues of Fenton and Anne Page, which contrast with the realistic prose of the rest of the _Merry Wives_ and also the artificial pastoralism of Silvius and Phbe in _As You Like It_. Few absolute rules can be laid down in the matter, but study of Shakespeare's practice reveals an admirable tact in his choice of medium.

[5] The figures here given are based in columns 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the calculations of Fleay; in 5, 6, and 7 on those of Konig; and in 8 on those of Ingram. (S) = Shakespeare's scenes.

[Page Heading: Metrical Tests]

The frequency of rhyme, as shown in the fourth column, has more relation to date. While there is no very steady gradation, it is clear that in his earlier plays he used rhyme freely, while at the close of his career he had practically abandoned it. The large number of rhymes in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ is accounted for mainly by the prevailing lyrical tone of a great part of these plays, while, on the other hand, in _All's Well_ it probably points to survivals of an earlier first form of this comedy. It ought to be noted that, in the figures given here, the rhyming lines in the play scene in _Hamlet_, the vision in _Cymbeline_, the masque in _The Tempest_, and the Prologue and Epilogue of _Henry VIII_ are not reckoned.

More significant are the percentages in columns five, six, and seven.

Before 1598, feminine endings never reach twenty per cent of the total number of pentameter lines; after that date they are practically always above that number, and show a fairly steady increase to the thirty-five per cent of _The Tempest_. The variations of run-on lines (which, of course, carry with them the frequency of pauses within the line, and inversely the growing rarity of end-stopped lines) are closely parallel to those of the feminine endings; while the increase in the proportion of speeches ending within the line is still more striking. In _The Comedy of Errors_ this phenomenon hardly occurs at all; in _The Tempest_ it happens in over eighty-four per cent of the speeches, the increase being especially regular after 1598. Yet in some cases other causes are operative. Thus cuts and revisions of plays were apt to leave broken lines at the ends of speeches, and the comparatively high percentages in _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Romeo and Juliet_, and _All's Well_ are probably in part due to these causes.

The phenomena recorded in the last column are peculiar. Previous to the date of _Macbeth_ it appears that Shakespeare practically avoided ending a line with light or weak words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs, but that from about 1606 to the end he employed them in proportions ranging from 3.53 per cent in _Antony and Cleopatra_ to 7.14 per cent in his part of _Henry VIII_.

[Page Heading: Risks of Error]

The figures for plays not wholly written by Shakespeare are naturally less significant, and have therefore been given separately; yet, on the whole, they show the same general tendencies in the use of meter.

It will be observed that while the developments suggested by the different columns are fairly consistent, they do not absolutely agree in any two cases, and can obviously be used, as has been said, only to corroborate other evidence in placing a play in a period, not to fix a precise year. Further, in the calculations involved, there are many doubtful cases calling for the exercise of individual judgment, especially as to what const.i.tutes a run-on line, or a light or weak ending. Thus Professor Bradley differs from Konig in several cases as to the figures given in the seventh column, counting the percentage of speeches ending within the line as 57 for _Hamlet_, 54 for _Oth.e.l.lo_, 69 for _King Lear_, and 75 for _Macbeth_. For Acts III, IV, and V of _Pericles_, the 71 per cent is Bradley's, for which Konig's 17.1 is clearly a mistake. Serious as are such discrepancies, and suggestive of a need for a general re-counting of all the more significant phenomena, they are not so great as to shake the faith of any scholar who has seriously studied the matter in the usefulness of metrical tests as an aid in the settling of the chronology.

TABLE III

========================================================================== PERIODS | COMEDIES | HISTORIES | TRAGEDIES ---------+-----------------------+-----------------+---------------------- | L. L. L. 1591 | 1 Hy. VI 1590-1 | | C. of E. 1591 | 2 Hy. VI 1590-2 | I | T. G. of V. 1591-2 | 3 Hy. VI 1590-2 | | | R. III 1593 | | | K. J. 1593 | T. And. 1593-4 ---------+-----------------------+-----------------+---------------------- | M. N. D. 1594-5 | R. II 1595 | R. and J. 1594-5 | M. of V. 1595-6 | | | T. of S. 1596-7 | 1 Hy. IV 1597 | II | M. W. of W. 1598 | 2 Hy. IV 1598 | | M. Ado 1599 | Hy. V 1599 | J. Caes. 1599 | A. Y. L. I. 1599-1600 | | | Tw. N. 1601 | | ---------+-----------------------+-----------------+---------------------- | T. & C. 1601-2 | | | A. Well 1602 | | | Meas. 1603 | | Ham. 1602, 1603 | | | Oth. 1604 III | | | Lear 1605-6 | | | Mach. 1606 | | | T. of Ath. 1607 | Per. 1607-8 | | A. & Cl. 1607-8 | | | Cor. 1609 ---------+-----------------------+-----------------+---------------------- | Cymb. 1610 | | | W. Tale 1611 | | IV | Temp. 1611 | | | T. N. K. 1612-13 | Hy. VIII 1612 | | | | ==========================================================================

[Page Heading: First Period]

Table III gives a summary of the results of all the kinds of evidence available as recorded in the introduction to individual plays in the Tudor Shakespeare. The cla.s.sification into Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies draws attention at once to the changes in the type of drama on which Shakespeare concentrated his main attention, and suggests the usual division of his activity into four periods. In the first of these, extending from the beginning of his writing (perhaps earlier than 1590) to the end of 1593, he attempted practically all the forms of drama then in vogue. Plays which were given him to revise, or in which he was invited to collaborate, may naturally be supposed to have preceded independent efforts, and his still undetermined share in _Henry VI_ is usually regarded as his earliest dramatic production. What he learned in this field of tragic history from his more experienced fellows may be seen in _Richard III_, in which he can be observed following in the footsteps of Marlowe in the treatment of meter, in the rhetorical and lyrical nature of the dialogue, and in the conception of the central character. Even less of his individual quality is to be discerned in the field of tragedy, for the most that can be claimed for him in _t.i.tus Andronicus_ is the re-combination of the repellent episodes of that crude specimen of the tragedy of blood, and the rewriting of the lines which occasionally cloak the horrors with pa.s.sages of poetry. If, as is unlikely, the first form of _Romeo and Juliet_ was written in this period, the extant form must show it so radically revised that it leaves us little ground for generalization as to his power in tragedy in this first period.

It was in comedy that Shakespeare first showed originality. _Love's Labour's Lost_ is one of the few plays whose plots seem to have been due to his own invention; and full of sparkle and grace as it is, it bears obvious marks of the _tour de force_, the young writer's conscious testing of his powers in social satire, in comic situation, and most of all in verbal mastery and the manipulation of dialogue. In _The Comedy of Errors_ he had the advantage of a definite model in the well-defined type of the Plautian comedy; but here again in the doubling of the twins and the elaboration of the entanglements there are traces of the beginner's delight in technic for its own sake. The clearly contrasted types in the two pairs of heroes and heroines of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ point to a conscious effort in characterization, as the author's attention had been concentrated on dialogue and on situation in the other two comedies of this group. Thus, regarding the variety of kind and the nature of his achievement in these first eight or nine plays, we can hardly fail to acquiesce in the general opinion that views the first period as one of experiment.

[Page Heading: Second Period]

The chronicle history was the Elizabethan dramatic form whose possibilities were first exhausted. _King John_ had been only a making over of an earlier work, and perhaps the most significant single change Shakespeare made was the excision of the anti-Romanist bias which in the older play had made John a Protestant hero. Yet this history voices, too, in the speeches of Faulconbridge, that patriotic enthusiasm which finds fuller expression in the dying Gaunt's eulogy of England in _Richard II_, and culminates in the triumphant heroics of _Henry V_.

This national enthusiasm, especially ebullient in the years following the Great Armada, is justly to be regarded as an important condition of the flourishing of these plays on English history; and it is natural to suppose that the ebbing of this spirit in the closing years of Elizabeth's reign is not unconnected with the decline of this dramatic type. There are, however, other causes clearly perceptible. The material was nearly exhausted. Almost every prominent national figure for the three hundred years before the founding of the Tudor dynasty had been put upon the stage; and to come down to more recent times was to meddle with matters of controversy, the ashes of which were not yet cold. The reign of Henry VIII was not touched till after the death of Elizabeth, and the nature of the treatment given to the court of her father by Shakespeare and Fletcher corroborates our view. Further, the growing mastery of technic which is so clearly perceptible in the comedies of the second period must have been accompanied by a restlessness under the hampering conditions as to the manipulation of character and plot which were imposed by the less plastic material of the chronicles. Some effort towards greater freedom the dramatist made in the later histories. The earlier plays of this cla.s.s had been prevailingly tragic; but now he supplemented and enlivened the political element with the comic scenes which gave us Falstaff; yet these scenes, brilliant as they are in dialogue and superb in characterization, are of necessity little more than episodes. The form had served its purpose as an outlet for national feeling, but it was now outgrown. So distinguished, however, is Shakespeare's achievement in this kind that we might be almost justified in calling this second period that of the culmination of the chronicle history.

The main objection to this t.i.tle lies in his contemporary accomplishment in comedy. _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, the one in its graceful poetic fancy and dainty lyricism, the other in its balanced treatment of all the elements of dramatic effectiveness--action, character, and dialogue,--exhibit the dramatist in complete control of his technical instruments, the creator of masterpieces of romantic comedy. _The Taming of the Shrew_ is a more or less perfunctory revision, probably in collaboration, of an older farce comedy; _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ bears on its face corroboration of the tradition that it was written to order in a fortnight. The power in high comedy first fully shown in _The Merchant of Venice_ reaches its supreme pitch in the three plays composed at the turn of the century, _Much Ado about Nothing_, _As You Like It_, and _Twelfth Night_. In each of these a romantic love-tale, laid in some remote holiday world, is taken up, given a specific atmosphere, acted out by a group of delightful creations who are endowed with intellect, wit, and natural affection, bathed in poetic imagination, and yet handled with sufficient naturalism to awaken and hold our human sympathies. No more purely delightful form of dramatic art has ever been contrived; none has ever been treated so as to yield more fully its appropriate charm; so that in view of the completeness of the artist's success we are bound to call the period which closed with the first year of the seventeenth century the triumph of comedy.

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