Duke. Too old, by heaven: Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, Viola. I think it well, my lord. For women are as roses; whose fair flower, "These councils were uttered nearly twenty years after the event in his own life to which they probably look back; for this play is supposed to have been written in Shakspere's thirtyeighth year. And we may read an earnestness in pressing the point as to the inverted disparity of years, which indicates pretty clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experience." It is not our purpose in this place to enter into any minute examination of the reasonableness of the application of these lines to Shakspere's domestic history. Upon the general principle which we have stated,—that is, the wonderful subjection of his conception of what was individually true to what was universally true, he would, we think, have rejected whatever was peculiar in his own experience, if it had been emphatically recommended to his adoption through the medium of his selfconsciousness. In this belief we think that Mr. de Quincey's theory ought to be qualified by the consideration of the dramatic character of the person who proffers his advice to Viola. Although Olivia describes the Duke as of " fresh and stainless youth," his was not the youthfulness of which she was enamoured in Viola, "For they shall yet belie thy happy years That say, thou art a man.' The advice which he gives to Viola is clearly in keeping with the whole conception of his character, the romance even of which is staid and dignified. But be this as it may, there is one thing perfectly clear, whether the Duke dramatically speaks, or whether Shakspere, speaking from his own experience, uses an unwonted earnestness in pressing the caution against "disparity of years" in marriage-he casts no reproach upon the female. There are two lines, which Mr. de Quincey has omitted in his quotation, not without their point in reference to the possibility of Shakspere in this scene looking back upon his youthful history, and breathing forth prophetic counsel. The quotation we have given ends with, "For women are as roses, whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour." But Viola adds, "And so they are: alas that they are so ; To die, even when they to perfection grow!" If the passage, then, is to be received as evidence of Shakspere's own feelings, it is to be received also as being condemnatory of himself, and as just, also, toward the object of his early love, then grown "to perfection." In the same way, if some portions of his private history are to be held as shadowed forth in the Sonnets, if his fancies are there painted as giddy and unfirm,”—these representations are always accompanied with bitter self-reproach,-never with any extenuation arising out of such circumstances as those to which in "Twelfth Night' he is supposed to allude. The cause which drove Shakspere from Stratford is thus stated by Rowe :-"He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the • Mr. de Quincey's 'Life of Shakspere' in the Encyclopædia Britan, 7th edit., vol. xx. p. 179. ་ first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." All this, amongst a great deal of falsehood, probably contained some tissue of the truth-such as the truth appeared to the good old folks of Stratford in Betterton's time, who had heard stories from their grandfathers of what a wild young fellow the rich man was who bought the largest house in Stratford. Malone gravely undertakes to get rid of the deer-stealing tradition, by telling us that there was no park, properly so called, at Charlecote. It is more material that the statute of the 5th of Elizabeth, which Malone also recites, shows clearly enough that the hunting, killing, or driving out deer from any park was a trespass, punished at the most with three months' imprisonment and treble damages. Sir Thomas Lucy, who was on terms of intimacy with the respectable inhabitants of Stratford, acting as arbitrator in their disputes, was not very likely to have punished the son of an alderman of that town with any extraordinary severity, even if his deer had been taken away. To kill a buck was then an offence not quite so formidable as the shooting of a partridge in our own times. But we may judge of the value of the tradition from some papers, originally the manuscripts of Mr. Fulman, an antiquary of the 17th century, which, with additions of his own, were given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on the decease of the Rev. Richard Davies, Rector of Sandford, Oxfordshire, in 1707. The gossip of Stratford had no doubt travelled to the worthy rector's locality, and rare gossip it is :-" He (Shakspere) was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him OFT whipt, and sOMETIMES imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate; and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for his arms." Is it necessary to do more than recite such legends to furnish the best answer to them? Poor Shakspere! oft whipped, genius must have been wondrously harassed in your own good sometimes imprisoned, forced to fly your native country,-your town; and yet, we are inclined to think, you composed your "Venus and Adonis' there, and that there you were much given to something better than all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits! We shall have a few words to say about Rowe's "ballad" upon the prosecutor of poachers, and Davies's 'Justice Clodpate,' in some other place. Early in 1585 two other children were born to him,—and they were baptized on the 2nd of February as "Hamnet and Judeth." (See Fac-simile, No. 4.) Although John Shakspere, at the time of his son's early marriage, was not, as we think, " in distressed circumstances," his means were not such, probably, at any time, as to have allowed him to have borne the charge of his son's family. That William Shakspere maintained them by some honourable course of industry we cannot doubt. Scrivener or schoolmaster, he was employed. It is on every account to be believed that the altered circumstances in which he had placed himself, in connexion with the natural ambition which a young man, a husband and a father, would entertain, led him to London not very long after his marriage. There, it is said, the author of Venus and Adonis' obtained a subsistence after the following ingenious fashion :-" Many came on horseback to the play, and when Shakspere fled to London, from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the playhouse, and hold the horses of those who had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will Shakspere, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will Shakspere could be had." The author of 'Venus and Adonis,' before he engaged in this dignified employment, which is described in the most circumstantial history before us as opening to him "the dawn of better fortune," had then, as we believe, written the finest de- poem; and he did produce another the next year, which he also scription of a horse in the English language: "Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, At the door of the playhouse, having described the horse, Will Shakspere was to make acquaintance with the proud riders of Elizabeth's court; and from this experience he was afterwards to produce the celebrated passage of— "I saw young Harry with his beaver on, As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship."+ Steevens objects to this surpassing anecdote of the horseholding, and to the statement which follows, that Shakspere "hired boys to wait under his inspection," and that, "as long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakspere's boys,"he objects that the practice of riding to the playhouse never began, and was never continued, and that Shakspere could not have held horses at the playhouse-door because people went thither by water. We believe there is a stronger objection still until Will Shakspere converted the English drama from a rude, tasteless, semi-barbarous entertainment, into a high intellectual feast for men of education and refinement, those who kept horses did not go to the public theatres at all. There were representations in the private houses of the great, which men of some wit and scholarship wrote, with a most tiresome profusion of unmeaning words, pointless incidents, and vague characterization,—and these were called plays; and there were "storial shows" in the public theatres, to which the coarsest melodrama that is now exhibited at Bartholomew Fair would be as superior as Shakspere is superior to the highest among his contemporaries. But from 1580 to 1585, when Shakspere and Shakspere's boys are described as holding horses at the playhouse-door, it may be affirmed that the English drama, such as we now understand by the term, had to be created. We believe that Shakspere was in the most eminent degree its creator. He had, as we think, written his Venus and Adonis, perhaps in a fragmentary shape, before he left Stratford. It was first printed in 1593, and is dedicated to Lord Southampton. The dedication is one of the few examples of Shakspere mentioning a word of himself or his works:-" I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen: only if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and Honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation." The dedication is simple and manly. In 1593, then, Shakspere had an employment-a recognised one-for he speaks of "idle hours" to be devoted to poetry. He calls this poem, too, "the first heir of my invention." If it "prove deformed" he will "never after ear (plough) so barren a land." Will he give up writing for the stage then? It is a remarkable proof of the low reputation of the drama that even the great dramatic works which Shakspere had unquestionably produced in 1593 were not here alluded to. The drama scarcely then aspired to the character of poetry. The "some graver labour" which he contemplated was another your Venus and Adonis. Henry IV., Part I. dedicated to the same friend. This was the Rape of Lucrece." Perhaps these poems were published to vindicate his reputation as a writer against the jealousies of some of the contemporary dramatists. But we still think that he used the term "first heir of my invention" in its literal sense; and that Venus and Adonis- -or at least a sketch of it-was the first production of his imagination, his invention. It bears every mark of a youthful composition; it would have been more easily produced by the Shakspere of eighteen or twenty than any of his earliest dramas. He had models of such writing as the Venus and Adonis' before him. Chaucer he must have diligently studied; Spenser had published his "Shepherd's Calendar,' his Hymns to Love and Beauty, and other poems, when Shakspere's genius was budding amidst his native fields. But when he wrote 'Henry VI.' or the first Hamlet,' where could he seek for models of dramatic blank verse, of natural dialogue, of strong and consistent character? He had to work without models; and this was the real "graver labour" of his early manhood. Our belief has been repeatedly expressed, during the publication of The Pictorial Edition of Shakspere,' that the great poet became a writer for the stage at a much earlier period than has been usually determined. Our general reasons for this opinion were formed, upon the publication of the first play in that edition; and we have seen no evidence which cau induce us to depart from it. Up to the period when Shakspere reached the age of manhood there were no writers in existence competent to produce a play which can be called a work of art. The state of the drama generally is thus succinctly, but most correctly, noticed by a recent anonymous writer :— "From the commencement of Shakspere's boyhood, till about the earliest date at which his removal to London can be possibly fixed, the drama lingered in the last stage of a semi-barbarism. Perhaps we do not possess any monument of the time except Whetstone's 'Promos and Cassandra;' but neither that play, nor any details that can be gathered respecting others, indicate the slightest advance deyond a point of development which had been reached many years before by such writers as Edwards and Gascoyne. About 1585, or Shakspere's twentyfirst year, there opened a new era, which, before the same decad was closed, had given birth to a large number of dramas, many of them wonderful for the circumstances in which they arose, and several possessing real and absolute excellence."* Of the poets which belong to this remarkable decad we possess undoubted specimens of the works of Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Lodge, Greene, Kyd, and Nashe. There are one or two other inferior names, such as Chettle and Munday, connected with the latter part of this decad. We ourselves hold that Shakspere belongs to the first as well as to the second half of this short but most influential period of our literature. But the critics and commentators appear to have agreed that Shakspere, whose mental powers were bestowed upon him in the extremest prodigality of Nature, was of wonderfully slow growth towards a capacity for intellectual production. They have all amused themselves with imagining his careful progress, from holding horses at the playhousedoor, to the greater dignity of a candle-snuffer within its walls, till in some lucky hour, when his genius was growing vigorous-that is, at the age of twenty-seven-he produced a play. They have little doubt that Shakspere was in London, and connected with the theatre, as early as 1584; but then he had been a deer-stealer, and had seven years of probation to undergo! There was nothing extraordinary in Ben Jonson writing for the stage when he was only nineteen; but then Shakspere, you know, was an untutored genius, &c. &c.! A great deal of this monstrous trash has been swept away by the exertions of a gentleman equally distinguished for his acuteness and his industry. It has been discovered by Mr. Collier that in 1589, when Shakspere was only twenty-five, he was a joint proprietor in the Blackfriars Theatre, with a fourth of the other proprietors below him in the list. He had, at twenty-five, a * Edin, Review, July, 1840, p. 469. standing in society; he had the means, without doubt, of maintaining his family; as he advanced in the proprietorship of the same theatre, he realized a fortune. How had he been principally occupied from the time he left Stratford, to have become, somewhat rapidly, a person of importance amongst his "friends and fellows?" We think, by making himself useful to them, beyond all comparison with others, by his writings. He may have begun badly; he may have written, wholly or in part, Andronicus. But even in that play there is writing such as no other but Shakspere could have produced. We are apt always to measure Shakspere with himself, because we have been unaccustomed to look at him as a boy-writer. Ben Jonson, in his Induction to Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 1614, makes one of the speakers say, "He that will swear Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays, yet shall pass unexcepted at here, as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty years." Five-and-twenty years before this time Shakspere was in his twenty-fifth year; whether he wrote or altered 'Andronieus,' he was two years younger than at the period when Malone considers that he commenced as a writer for the stage. Dr. Percy conjectures that' Andronicus' was not Shakspere's, because Jonson refers it to a period when our poet was only twentyfive. We think the passage proves that Shakspere had written or revised Andronicus,' amongst other plays, before he was twenty-five. If we take the extreme period mentioned by Jonson, Andronicus' might have been produced by the Shakpere of twenty. It appears to us, then, not improbable that even before Shakspere left Stratford he had attempted some play or plays which had become known to the London players. Thomas Greene, who, in 1586, was the fourth on the list of the Blackfriars shareholders, was said to be Shakspere's fellow-townsman. But the young poet might have found another and more important friend in the Blackfriars company ::-Richard Burbage, the great actor, who in his own day was called "the English Roscius," was also of Shakspere's county. In a letter of Lord Southampton to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (written about 1608), introducing Burbage and Shakspere to the Chancellor, it is said:" They are both of one county, and, indeed, almost of one town." It is perfectly clear, therefore, hat Shakspere, from the easy access that he might have procured to these men, would have received inviting offers to join them in London, provided he had manifested any ability which would be useful to them. That ability, we have no doubt, was manifested by the production of original plays (as well as by acting) some time before he had attained the rank and profit of a shareholder in the Blackfriars company. In 1589, the date of the document which proves that ShakFere was then a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre, the First Part of Henry VI.' was in existence. We must take the liberty of referring the reader to our Essay on Henry VI. and Richard III.' for the proof, according to our belief, that the First Part was altogether written by Shakspere, and not herely repaired by him, and also to various passages which exhibit, the state of the drama principally as regarded the treatment of an historical subject just previous to the period when Henry VI.' was acted. Rude as is the dramatic construction, and coarse the exention, of the relics of the period which preceded the transition state of the stage, there can be no doubt that these had their ruder predecessors,-dumb shows, with here and there explanstory rhymes, adapted to the same gross popular taste that had so long delighted in the Mysteries and Moralities which even still held a divided empire. The growing love of the eople for "the storial shows," as Laneham calls the Coventry bay of Hock Tuesday,' was the natural result of the active and inquiring spirit of the age. There were many who went ⚫the theatre to be instructed. In the prologue to 'Henry VIII." we find that this great source of the popularity of the early Hisories was still active Heywood, in his Apology for Actors,' thus writes in 1612:- Looking at all the circumstances, we are inclined to believe that the First Part of Henry VI.' was Shakspere's earliest dramatic production;-and in the Essay above mentioned we have stated our reasons for that belief. They bear somewhat on the poet's early life; and we may therefore not improperly reprint, in an abridged form, that short portion of the Essay. When William Shakspere was about five years of age a grant of arms was made by the College of Heralds to his father. This is the grant to which we have already alluded. It is not difficult to imagine the youthful Shakspere sitting at his mother's feet to listen to the tale of his "antecessor's" prowess; or to picture the boy led by his father over the field of Bosworth,-to be shown the great morass which lay between both armies,-and Radmoor Plain, where the battle began,-and Dickon's Nook, where the tyrant harangued his army,-and the village of Dadlington, where the graves of the slain still indented the ground. Here was the scene of his antecessor's "faithful and approved service." In the humble house of Shakspere's boyhood there was, in all probability, to be found a thick squat folio volume, then some thirty years printed, in which might be read, "what misery, what murder, and what execrable plagues this famous region hath suffered by the division and dissention of the renowned houses of Lancaster and York." This, to the generation of Shakspere's boyhood, was not a tale buried in the dust of ages; it was one whose traditions were familiar to the humblest of the land, whilst the memory of its bitter hatreds still ruffled the spirits of the highest. "For what nobleman liveth at this day, or what gentleman of any ancient stock or progeny is clear, whose lineage hath not been infested and plagued with this unnatural division ?" In that old volume from which we quote, "the names of the histories contained" are thus set forth :- I. The Unquiet Time of King Henry the Fourth. II. The Victorious Acts of King Henry the Fifth.' III. "The Troublous Season of King Henry the Sixth.' IV. "The Prosperous Reign of King Edward the Fourth.' V. The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth.' VI. 'The Tragical Doings of King Richard the Third,' VII. 'The Politic Governance of King Henry the Seventh.' VIII. The Triumphant Reign of King Henry the Eighth.' This book was Hall's Cronicle.' How diligently the young man Shakspere had studied the book, and how carefully he has followed it in four of his chronicle histories, there are abundant examples. The three Parts of Henry VI., and Richard III. With the local and family associations, then, that must have belonged to his early years, the subject of these four dramas, or rather the subject of this one great drama in four parts, must have irresistibly presented itself to the mind of Shakspere, as one which he was especially qualified to throw into the form of a chronicle history. It was a task peculiarly fitted for the young poet during the first five years of his connexion with the theatre. Historical dramas, in the rudest form, presented unequalled attractions to the audiences who flocked to the rising stage. Without any undue reliance on his own powers, he might believe that he could produce something more worthily attractive than the rude dialogue which ushered in the "four swords and a buckler", of the old stage. He had not here to invent a plot; or to aim at the unity of action, of time, and of place, which the more refined critics of his day held to be essential to tragedy. The form of a chronicle history might appear to require little beyond a poetical exposition of the most attractive facts of the real Chronicles. It is in this spirit, we think, that Shakspere approached the execution of the First Part of Henry VI. It appears to us, also, that in that very early performance he in some degree held his genius in subordination to the necessity of executing his task, rather with reference to the character of his audience and the general nature of his subject than for the fulfilment of his own aspirations as a poet. There was before him one of two courses. He might have chosen, as the greater number of his contemporaries chose, to consider the dominions of poetry and of common sense to be far sundered; and, unconscious or doubtful of the force of simplicity, he might have resolved, with them, to substitute what would more unquestionably gratify a rude popular taste,-the force of extravagance. On the other hand, it was open to him to transfer to the dramatic shape the spirit-stirring recitals of the old chronicle writers; in whose narratives, and especially in that portion of them in which they make their characters speak, there is a manly and straightforward earnestness which in itself not seldom becomes poetical. Shakspere chose this latter course. When we begin to study the 'Henry VI.,' we find in the First Part that the action does not appear to progress to a a rarer catastrophe: that the author lingers about the details, as one who was called upon to exhibit an entire series of events rather than the most dramatic portions of them ;-there are the alternations of success and loss, and loss and success, till we somewhat doubt to which side to assign the victory. The characters are firmly drawn, but without any very subtle distinctions, and their sentiments and actions appear occasionally inconsistent, or at any rate not guided by a determined purpose in the writer. It is easy to perceive that this mode of dealing with a complicated subject was the most natural and obvious to be adopted by an unpractised poet, who was working without models. But although the effect may be, to a certain extent, undramatic, there is impressed upon the whole performance a wonderful air of truth. Much of this must have resulted from the extraordinary quality of the poet's mind, which could tear off all the flimsy conventional disguises of individual character, and penetrate the real moving principle of events with a rare acuteness, and impartiality. The wonderful thing about the First Part of Henry VI.' is, that these men, who stood in the same relation of time to Shakspere's age as the men of Anne do to ours, should have been painted with a pencil at once so vigorous and so true. The English Chroniclers, in all that regards the delineation of characters and manners, give us abundant materials upon which we may form an estimate of actions, and motives, and instruments; but they do not show us the instruments moving in their own forms of vitality; they do not lay bare their motives; and hence we have no real key to their actions. Froissart is, perhaps, the only contemporary writer who gives us real portraits of the men of mail. But Shakspere marshalled them upon his stage, in all their rude might, their coarse ambition, their low jealousies, their factious hatreds,mixed up with their thirst for glory, their indomitable courage, their warm friendships, their tender natural affections, their love of country. They move over his scene, displaying alike their grandeur and their littleness. He arrays them, equally indifferent whether their faults or their excellences be most prominent. This is the truth which Shakspere substituted for the vague delineations of the old stage. EDMUND SPENSER, in a poem entitled "The Tears of the Muses,' originally published in 1591, describes, in the 'Complaint of Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, the state of the drama at the time in which he is writing: "Where be the sweet delights of learning's treasure, That wont with comic sock to beautify Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm, Where being bred, he light and heaven does hate; All places they with folly have possess'd, It can scarcely be affirmed that this poem was written in 1591, as well as published. Spenser was in England in 1590-1, having returned from Ireland with Raleigh, where he had composed the first three books of The Fairy Queen' by the side of Mulla's stream, which flowed near the old Castle of Doneraile, where he dwelt amidst his grants of forfeited lands. In 1590 he published these three first books of his great poem. But in the collection in which The Tears of the Muses' appears, the publisher, who was also the publisher of "The No. 2. Fairy Queen,' says that, "finding that that poem had found a favourable passage among all gentle readers," he "collected such small poems of the author as were dispersed abroad in sundry hands." It is likely that The Tears of the Muses' was written in 1590, and that Spenser described the prevailing state of the drama in London during the time of his visit. But we have tolerable evidence that the performances of the company at the Blackfriars Theatre, of which Shakspere was then a shareholder, were exceptions to the character of the general performances. In 1579 the actors at that theatre, then called the players of the Earl of Leicester, had a protection granted to them, that they should "be not restrained nor in any wise molested in the exercise of their quality, so that they may be enabled the better to perform before her Majesty for her solace and recreation." Under this sort of encouragement, the company to which Shakspere belonged had greatly flourished. But there were several other theatres in London. In some of these their licence to entertain the people was abused by the introduction of matters connected with religion and politics; so that in 1589 Lord Burghley not only di rected the Lord Mayor to inquire what companies of players had offended, but a commission was appointed for the same purpose. How Shakspere's company proceeded during this inquiry has been made out most clearly by the valuable document discovered at Bridgewater House by Mr. Collier, wherein they disclaim to have conducted themselves amiss. They are now, it will be seen, "Her Majesty's poor players." The paper, which is as follows, is a petition to the Privy Council: "These are to certify your Right Honourable Lordships that her Majesty's poor players, James Burbadge, Richard Burbadge, John Laneham, Thomas Greene, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, Anth. Wadeson, Thomas Pope, George Peele, Augustine Phillips, Nicholas Towley, William Shakespeare, William [KNIGHT'S STORE OF KNOWLEDGE.] с |