Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

"To the Right Honourable HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield.

"The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end, whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the words of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship; to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

"Your Lordship's in all duty,

"WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."

There is no reference to pecuniary obligations in the dedication of Venus and Adonis;' but it is difficult to misunderstand what we are told here-" all I have, devoted yours." All I have! In truth, the thousand pounds given by Southampton formed nearly the whole property he ever possessed; and if he obtained high prices for his plays, even as much, we are informed, as a thousand a year, we are reduced to ask what became of the money-for no vestige of it can be traced.

"The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end.” Mr. Collier conjectures that Southampton's gift was in acknowledgment of the dedication of Venus and Adonis,' and every one who weighs the evidence must share his opinion. We will take the Dedication's word for a thousand pounds, though it is attested only by tradition. Mr. Collier, indeed, thought that he had discovered confirmation of it in other facts; for he found in the State Paper Office a document purporting to be a petition to the Privy Council from the "Owners and Players" of the Blackfriars theatre in

1596, soliciting permission to render the house more commodious; and here the thousand pounds appeared to have found an investment, as Shakespeare, before only a "sharer," stands on the roll as one of the owners, all of whom have "put down sums of money according to their shares in the said theatre." Malone thinks that it was about 1596 that the Blackfriars Company erected the Globe at Bankside, and it is adverted to in the petition as a portion of their property-" in the summer season your petitioners are able to play at their new-built house on the Bankside." But no inference is admissible from this document, as it has been pronounced spurious.

[ocr errors]

The Rape of Lucrece' is a more perfect work of art than Venus and Adonis,' because it adheres still closer to Nature. It throws off the trammels off the critics, which the first poem had infringed, and takes a range equal to the subject. The dramatic power rises to the sublime, imparting a living force to the illusion. We are reconciled to the absence of the charming scenery of Venus and Adonis' by graphic pictures of old Roman life, exhibiting its patriarchal simplicity, its virtue and heroism, while we are interested. alike by the rapid succession of the incidents, the exciting tenour of the narrative, and the grandeur of the characters. The art of representation by words is carried to perfection, and the truthful colouring of the poem stamps it an English "Eneid."

1 The petition will be found in the Appendix.

2 It may be desirable to give the report upon it :-" We, the undersigned, at the desire of the Master of the Rolls, have carefully examined the document hereunto annexed, purporting to be a petition to the Lords of Her Majesty's Privy Council, from Thomas Page, Richard Burbage, John Hemings, Augustine Philips, William Shakespeare, &c., in answer to a petition from the inhabitants of the Liberty of Blackfriars, and we are of opinion that the document in question is spurious." The report is signed by Sir Francis Palgrave, Sir Frederick Madden, J. S. Brewer, T. D. Hardy, and N. E. S. A. Hamilton.

There is nothing to guide us to the date of the two minor poems of Shakespeare, The Lover's Complaint,' and The Passionate Pilgrim,' but they are obviously early productions, and but for his own declaration, we should place them before Venus and Adonis.' They are of far inferior merit, being trifles in comparison, but they are happy and sprightly, and, as the effusions of an idle hour, no reproach to his genius.

His Muse threw off Venus and Adonis,' and the Rape of Lucrece,' as the printing-press throws off the sheets-with a resistless effort, which at once achieves the object. Their publication created a demand for his dramatic productions which excited the cupidity of piratical booksellers, and the 'Rape of Lucrece' was soon followed by what we must consider a surreptitious edition of the Second Part of 'King Henry VI.' This was published as the First Part, and in a very crude form, for which poor compensation was made in the fullness of the title-" The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, with the Death of the Good Duke Humphrey and the Banishment and Death of the Duke of Suffolk, and the Tragical End of the proud Cardinal of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Jack Cade, and the Duke of York's first Claim unto the Crown." It was the fashion of the day to make a title speak volumes. Shakespeare knew that such a result was best attained by brevity, and this principle is carried out in the first collected edition of his works, where the same play appears as the 'Second Part of King Henry the Sixth.' The surreptitious edition was so favourably received, that it encouraged the publication in 1595 of The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and the Death of good King Henry the Sixth, with the whole Contention between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York, as it was several times acted by the Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke's

[ocr errors]

King Henry

servants.' Here we meet the Third Part of VI.,' but in a form so different from what we have received it from Shakespeare in the collected plays, that a disposition prevails to consider it as a mere rudiment by some other hand, on which his play was built, but looking at it as his first conception, the differences are not greater than might be expected in that age in a copy printed from notes taken while the play was being performed.

S

258

XXV.

THE USES OF THIS WORLD.

THE tide of Shakespeare's prosperity was immediately felt by his father. We have seen that he employed his first good fortune for his benefit, and there is proof that this was a mere windfall, such as a gift from Leicester, in the relapse of John Shakespeare in 1592, when he appears in the black list of the Warwickshire Commissioners. But his affairs were again soon arranged, leaving him to go peacefully to church, for his name is not included in the next list of recusants, though he figures in a squabble in the Bailiff's Court just before the publication of Venus and Adonis.' We hear nothing more of him for a couple of years, and as we now understand his case as one in which no news is good news, it is a safe conclusion that he was held up by the hand of his It is difficult, however, to throw off old habits, and he gravitated towards the Bailiff's Court, as to a natural centre, so that we are not surprised to meet him there again in 1595. But in this instance he is apparently involved by others, being a joint defendant with Philip Green, chandler, and Henry Rogers, butcher. The action was brought by Adrian Quiney, for the recovery of five pounds; and his liability, whatever it might be, was promptly met; for the subsequent notices of the action omit his name, confining it to Green and Rogers. It is his last appearance in the Bailiff's Court, and we have already pointed to it as showing him to be connected with a butcher, who was probably his

« VorigeDoorgaan »