working years, one of which, 1601, was perhaps the most prolific of his career, it is on the face of it most improbable to assume that he only began his dramatic authorship in 1590, as most of his critics are disposed to think. But if, on the contrary, we admit that The Comedy of Errors was written between 1585 and 1587, that the first Hamlet belongs to 1587 or 1588, and that not only the three parts of Henry VI. but even the two of Henry IV. (in their "first show" or form) were in existence before 1592, we shall have no difficulty in acknowledging the real applicability to Shakespeare of two allusions, one of 1590 and the other of 1589, which have indeed often been applied to him, and as often disclaimed, on the ground of his not having at the times in question written anything that could have provoked or justified such language. One of these is in Nash's letter prefixed to Greene's Menaphon, to which the date 1587 has been given on the authority of Mr. Dyce (no other critic having seen so early an edition), but which, so far at least as Nash's preliminary matter is concerned, must be of 1589. For in it Nash talks of the Marprelate divinity, which only began in 1589. This epistle is the very counterpart of Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit already quoted. In it Nash attacks the school and scholars of "vain-glorious tragedians who contend not so seriously to excel in action as to embroil the clouds in a speech of comparison," "to get Boreas by the beard, and the heavenly bull by the dewlap," together with the play-writers, "their idiot artmasters, that intrude themselves to our ears as the alchemists of eloquence who, mounted on the stage of arrogance, think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse." With one of these "idiot art-masters" Nash is especially provoked; particularly with his "kill-cow conceit," governed by an "imagination overcloyed with drunken resolution." "Amongst these men," he says, "that repose eternity in the mouth of a player, I can but engross some deep-read schoolmen or grammarians, who, having no more learning in their skulls than will serve to take up a commodity, nor art in their brains than was nourished in a serving-man's idleness, will take upon them to be the ironical censors of all, when God and poetry doth know they are the simplest of all." But all these he leaves "to the mercy of their mother tongue, that feed on nought but the crumbs that fall from the translator's trencher." Then, after a panegyric on Greene, and an attack on non-university divines and the Marprelate writers, he attacks "our trivial translators," whom, however, he blames most for the assistance which they give to the unscholarly dramatists. And then he once more attacks one of these dramatists: "It is a common practice now-a-days among a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of noverint whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need. Yet English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences, as 'blood is a beggar,' and so forth. And if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches." This almost seems to be the text on which critics of Shakespeare founded their judgments for the next century. The "idiot [private, unqualified by university education] art-master," bis "intrusion," his "arrogance," his "swelling bombast of bragging blank verse," his "kill-cow conceit," his "drunken resolution," his being a "deep-read schoolman or grammarian,' i.e. one whose education stopped at the grammar-school, with learning enough for a tradesman and art enough for a serving-man, his ironical censuring of all men, his dependence on the translator's trencher, his shifting life, running through every art and thriving by none, inability to latinize his neck-verse, his way of gathering conceits and sentences from any source that came to hand, were all matters objected to Shakespeare by subsequent critics. The hint that the man attacked had already written a tragedy of Hamlet, and the advice that if he wanted any more sentences like "blood is a beggar " he might go to the English translation of Seneca, which might supersede the midnight lamp by furnishing him conceits, and might obviate the need of soliciting his frozen imagination for tragic speeches by giving them to him ready made, both agree with Shakespeare, who had written his first Hamlet, who probably in an early Henry VIII. had already complained that his "A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood," but who abstained in a most marked manner from borrowing anything from the English Seneca. The passage in Spenser's Tears of the Muses which Dryden considered to be meant for Shakespeare has generally been applied by modern critics to Lily or Sydney, first because, though published in 1591, it may perhaps have been written ten years earlier, before Shakespeare had written anything, and secondly because, even in 1590, Shakespeare had produced nothing that could deserve so high an encomium. But, in the first place, the date of Spenser's poem is clearly 1590; he was then in London bringing out the first edition of his Fairy Queen. The public and private allusions in the Tears of the Muses both relate to this time. The Queen granted him a pension of £50, the punctual payment of which Lord Burghley prevented. To this Clio in the poem alludes: "Ne only they that dwell in lowly dust, The sonnes of darknes and of ignoraunce, But they, whom thou, great Jove, by doome unjust poem Did'st to the type of honour earst advaunce, They now, puft up with sdeignfull insolence Despise the brood of blessed sapience." The public allusions show that the was written at a time when tragedy was silent, and when the comic stage was ed by a movement thoroughly opposed to all real art. Melpomene, the tragic muse, asks, usurp "Why doo they banish us, that patronize The name of learning?" And Thalia, the comic muse, complains that all the sweet delight of learning's treasure which used in comic sock to beautify the painted theatres, and fill the listener's eyes and ears with pleasure and melody, is gone; the goodly glee of gay wits is laid abed; and unseemly sorrow, with hollow brows and grisly countenance, has usurped her place. With sorrow comes barbarism and brutish ignorance : "They in the mindes of men now tyrannize, And the faire Scene with rudenes foul disguize, All places they with follie have possest, And with vaine toyes the vulgar entertaine, But me have banished." And with Thalia also counterfesance and unhurtful sport have departed-Delight and Laughter, "By which man's life in his likest image Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced, And those sweet wits, which wont the like to frame Are now despizd and made a laughing game." It was in 1589 and 1590 that this temporary eclipse of the "painted theatres " took place. The Marprelate controversy seized upon the stage, and made it hateful alike to the Puritan authorities of the city, the Puritanical members of the government, and the men of true dramatic taste. Against the government the Lord Chamberlain's men could protect themselves by the declaration that "they had never meddled with affairs of religion and state." But this was the very cause of their unpopularity. The tragedians were obliged to travel because "novelty carried it away, and the principal public audience that came to them were turned to private plays, and to the humour of children." The children of Pauls, backed up by their ecclesiastical masters, entered with rare enthusiasm into the controversies of the day. Lily and Nash, fortified by the secret support of Whitgift and Bancroft, provided them with shows; and all London went to their theatre to see "Martin giving divinity a scratched face, and administering an emetic to make her bring up her benefices," or "the May game of Martinism," "very deftly set out with pomps, pageants, motions, masks, scutcheons, emblems, impresses, strange tricks and devices"-in fact, to see, not comedies, not even farces, but tained so exaggerated a success that the political pantomimes. But these shows obgovernment was obliged to inhibit them; and the children of Pauls were silent from 1591 to 1599, when they were again let loose to "berattle the common stages," to ridicule the adherents of Essex, and once more to divert the public favour from the legitimate drama to the humour of children. So, in 1590, Shakespeare felt his occupation gone, and Spenser wrote of him : "And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate In stead thereof scoffing Scurrilitie But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen Large streames of Honnie and sweete nectar flowe Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men forth so rashlic Which dare their follies throwe, Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell Than so himself to mockerie to sell." All this is completely consonant with Nash's scorn for Shakespeare in 1589, and Greene's in 1592. Nash was Lieutenant-general of the Paphatchet or anti-Martinist party; and Greene belonged to it also. Spenser belonged to the opposite set. Shakespeare considered to belong to Spenser's party, or Jaggard would hardly have printed with his name Barnefield's sonnet with the words Spenser to me is dear." Shakespeare, as 66 was the friend of Southampton and Essex, was naturally in this set, and, related as he was to the Stanleys on his mother's side, was naturally called "our Willy" in a poem dedicated by Spenser to the Countess of Derby. The same poet once again alluded to him in the Eclogue Colin Clout's come home again, written after the death of Ferdinando Earl of Derby, in 1594: "And there, though last not least, is Aetion; A gentler shepheard may no where be found; Whose muse, full of high thoughts invention, Doth like himselfe heroically sound." The second objection to the reference of Spenser's lines to Shakespeare, that the dramatist had not in 1590 written anything to deserve so strong a eulogium, falls of itself, when we consider that The Comedy of Errors was then four years old. The love-scenes in that play contain probably the sweetest poetry that had as yet been written in the English language. And Spenser was one of the few favoured friends who knew the secret of Shakespeare's authorship, or were permitted to read the manuscript of his plays. At any rate, and on any theory, it is not more difficult to apply Spenser's high praise to Shakespeare in 1590 than it is to accept Greene's declaration in 1592 that he was then the successful rival of Marlowe, Lodge, Peele, and Greene himself, and likely soon to supplant them all and monopolize the stage. Greene, as we have seen, accused Shakespeare of borrowing his plumes; and Chettle, who had published the accusation, with drew it, acknowledging his "uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty.' On the other hand, the writer of Greene's Funerals repeats the charge: the Quip for an Upstart Courtier, which he published as his own, was not much more than a reprint of Thynne's Debate between Pride and Lowliness. He is known to have published other men's works as his own; and his testimony is worthless, doubled though it be by the writer of his Funerals, who can have known nothing of the rights of a question about the disputed authorship of a play in the custody of the actors. We have only Greene's assertion and Shakespeare's denial. The assertion "beautified in our feathers" may be interpreted to mean either an accusation of theft or a mere envious carping at success; the denial is a testimony of the general honesty of Shakespeare, given by his friends as a special answer to the general accusation. If we believe Shakespeare's friends, he did not purloin the plumes of his rivals. Therefore, if the plays which he is said to have imitated really preceded his dramas as they now stand, we must suppose that those first sketches also were his own. And there is not a more striking difference between The Troublesome Raigne of King John and the present King John, or between the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster and Henry VI., than between the Hamlet of 1603 and the Hamlet of 1623, or between the Merry Wives of Windsor of 1602 and that of 1623. Pope believed the first King John to be by Shakespeare and Rowley; and Mr. Knight argues with great force that the first sketches of Henry VI. were by the author of the plays as we have them now. Or, if these plays are not by Shakespeare, there is very little to prove that they preceded his. Some of them may be copies from his, imitations got up in a hurry, and printed to be palmed off on the public when the stage was occupied with a new play by him, like to the spurious "books of the words" which used to be sold outside the theatres. Or they may have been imitations acted by rival companies of players. The marvellous superiority of Shakespeare's own versions is no proof that it was not found more profitable to water down his mighty draughts to the tastes of vulgar audiences. He owns in Hamlet that some of his plays were "caviare to the general." Why, then, may not plagiarists in the sixteenth century have been as tasteless as Cibber in the eighteenth? Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays have been made in many ages, with vast contemporary ap Chettle, as we have seen, did deny it, on the authority of Shakespeare's friends. The charge has been treated as a light one; and critics have generally been contented to accept it as true. It is evident, however, that Shakespeare and his friends did not think it unimportant. They considered that he was accused of a breach of "uprightness of dealing," arguing dishonesty of character. The charge concerned matters which would be very difficult of proof. At a time when plays were not printed, an anonymous writer of them might easily be accused of plagiar-lanse, and equal condemnation of posterity. ism by an unscrupulons opponent. Greene was a thoroughly unscrupulous man. His friend Nash called his Groat's-worth of Wit a scald lying pamphlet; and we know that Nash criticises the actors in 1589 as neglecting action for diction. There is no doubt that Shakespeare's style was less adapted to the sometimes ranting, sometimes stiff and statuesque, and always unnatural, method of | overseen and corrected by W. S."* It is the classical school which Nash and the throughout a quiz upon plays like Tambur"university wits" patronized, than were the lain, and upon all kinds of literary affectaformal and antithetical periods of Marlowe tions of the day. In character it is like one and Greene. The inferiority of what are of Thackeray's "novels by eminent hands," supposed to be the older plays is no proof It parodies Marlowe as the humourist paroof their precedence. Part of their badness dies Lord Lytton or Mr. Disraeli. The style, may be due to the stenographist, to the method, and opinions of the object of criticopyist, or the printer; and, for the rest, it cism are all exhibited in caricature. The is as easy to suppose them to be bad imitations big brag and swelling exaggerations of the of unapproachable and ill-understood mas- storming Scythian are mingled with the terpieces as to suppose Shakespeare's ac- frigid conceits and incongruous images knowledged dramas to be centos laboriously which appear at the proper moment to stifle compiled from bad models. Out of two a rising passion. The conceits are contrived bad books it is easy to make a third: it is to be absurd, as when the ploughman rips more difficult to make the bad tree bring the roots with his razors, or the temple is forth good fruit. The only instance in raised higher than the high pyramids which the date of publication seems to for"Which with their top surmount the firmabid this supposition is The Famous Vicment;" tories of Henry V. This worthless play was published in 1598, and Shakespeare's Henry V., as we have it, was written in 1599, while the Earl of Essex was in Ire- "O gods and stars, damned be the gods and land. But it is impossible to say whether the chorus in which the allusions to Essex occur was not an addition to the play. The play is as old as its parts; but each part need not be as old as the play. The date of publication of all the other so-called original plays is perfectly compatible with their being plagiarisms from Shakespeare, instead of Shakespeare's being plagiarisms from them. Once more. surers. When Nash accuses Shake speare of being an "ironic censurer of all," he gives a hint in what direction we ought to look for Shakespeare's retorts on his cenIt need not be supposed that his anger at Greene's accusations sought no further vindication of them than the expostulations of his friends and Chettle's apology. A poet who had written the poetry of The Comedy of Errors seven years previously must have felt that it was preposterous to consider him a plagiarist from Marlowe, Greene, or Peele. It was not necessary to argue against the imputation. The most effectual way to meet it would be to compose plays in the style of the poets he was accused of copying, and to let men see the difference between his natural and his assumed strain. Titus Andronicus, written before 1589, looks very like an " ironical censure upon the style of Marlowe and his imitators. Aaron is an excellent parody of Barabas. After Greene's accusation in 1592 we have two plays, The Taming of a Shrew or when hearty oaths are rapped out, such as stars; or when prayer is made like that of Locrine before he kills himself, which is quite in! Bottom's vein : แ "Forgive, forgive this foul accursed sin, Forget, O gods, this foul condemned fault; And now my sword," etc.; or when it is clearly indicated that the actor is to rattle the stage roll of the R, which Thackeray would show by doubling or trebling the letter, as "Turinus [Turrnus] that slew six hundred men-at-arms,' and "For with my sword [sworrd], this sharp curtle axe, I'll cut asunder my accursed heart"the very figure which Thackeray used when he was talking of "Meagher of the sword," ""Tis he will steep that battle-axe in Saxon gore." It is to be noted also that the historical ideas of the play are the same as Shakespeare's. We have Brutus, alias Posthumius, the husband of Innogen, and Hector, slain not by Achilles but by the Myrmidons. The Taming of a Shrew has been shown to be an imitation of Marlowe, whole handfuls of whose verses are transported into it. Shakespeare afterwards asserted his rights of property over this play by altering it, as he did over Titus Andronicus by having played by his own company. This is a it *Shakespeare only claims an editor's honours. Charles Tylney is said to have been the author. matter which requires explanation on any other supposition. The induction which Webster wrote to Marston's Malcontent shows that it was considered unjust for one company to play a drama which belonged to another; and the Lord Chamberlain's company only justify the annexation of the Malcontent on the plea that the rival company had previously stolen Jeronymo. Shakespeare seems to have given both The Taming of a Shrew and Titus Andronicus to the Earl of Pembroke's men, a company of which we have the first mention in the Chamberlain's accounts for Leicester in 1592, but which may have been established earlier. It is doubtful whether Locrine was ever acted at all; perhaps it was judged to be too absurd. But it is easy to believe that Shakespeare, intimate as he must have been with the circle to which the Earl of Pembroke, afterwards one of his great patrons, belonged, made a present of these two plays to the Earl's company, without altogether renouncing his right of property in them. time of Elizabeth favoured this representation of it on the stage. At the present day it would be difficult to make a serious drama turn on the fate of principles, or to write a tragedy or comedy on Reform or the Ballot. But political principles did not present themselves to the contemporaries of Shakespeare in an abstract form. They were all crystallized in persons. The Earl of Essex, for instance, was the concrete expression for toleration, aggressive instead of defensive war, independence of nobles, and privilege as opposed to universal absolutism in the prince; and as the symbol of those principles he commanded the favour of men who would have been the last to abet his childish sallies, his ungovernable impatience, and his incurable imprudence. Naunton tells us that the principal note of Elizabeth's reign was the government by faction and parties, which she made, upheld, and weakened, according to her own judgment. It was not till half a century afterwards that principles were independent of persons. In Elizabeth's day, the master, or reputed master, was the symbol and text-book of his doctrine. This lightened the labour of the political playwright, gave a dramatic tinge to his design, and enabled him at the same time to speak in riddles, and so to avoid the danger of open utterances in the presence of a StarChamber. All but one of Lily's plays are political; and their allusions are even yet perfectly intelligible. The only wonderful thing about them is that so plain-spoken and so insolent a play as The Woman in the Moon, the fickle Pandora who uses her gifts only to chase away her lovers, should have escaped censure. It clearly refers to the conduct of the Queen with the Duke of Anjou; and its date is probably 1581. A careful consideration of this play will show that it is very possible to refer the first act of Pericles to the same political situation. The black insinuation which is to be found In which to catch the conscience of the King." there as to the cause of the Queen's unwillingness to marry is only the echo of what Sidney had previously said that tragedy was whispered in many circles of English made kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants society. The princess of the country invites to manifest their tyrannical humours. A suitors; but she requires of them impossible quarter of a century afterwards, Heywood, conditions which drive them to distraction, after showing that the stage had been the and all because she is already bound in the great political schoolmaster of the people, toils of a degrading connection. Lily still summed up its merits, in the eyes of the continued the argument of his Pandora in Court at least, in the praise that it "had his later plays, Campaspe and Sapho and taught subjects obedience to their king, Phaon, in 1583 and 1584. Pericles seems shown the people the untimely ends of such to belong to one of the years between 1581 as moved tumults and insurrections, and pre- and 1584. Even the earliest of these dates sented the flourishing state of the obedient, is not quite incompatible with Shakespeare's thus exhorting men to allegiance, and warn- authorship of the play. According to Auing them from all treason and felony." The brey, and the tradition of Shakespeare's very construction of English policy in the marriage-feast upon Sir Thomas Lucy's The method which we have used to help to fix the date of The Comedy of Errors is one which has been unaccountably neglected by investigators. It is notorious that in Elizabeth's day the stage supplied the place now occupied by the press. The dramatist was both the novelist and the reviewer. When Parliaments were short and infrequent, and the debates secret, political discussion was carried on in public through the mouth of the actor. It was indeed only in front of the stage that the lay political essayist could periodically find his audience. Plays were reckoned amongst the engines of political propagandism; malcontents were often accused of indulging in private repre'sentations of dramas which exhibited the triumph of their party or their principles. Shakespeare makes Hamlet declare "The play's the thing |