66 treats the story as an arrant fable." I am willing, however, to believe, that the friendship of these great men originated in an act of kindness on the part of Shakespeare, and that, though the above anecdote may be in some respects erroneous, it is yet an adumbration of the truth. If this were the place for such discussions, I could show from authentic documents, that a certain ludicrous tale concerning Jonson, which Mr. Gifford rejected with scorn, is fully entitled to belief. Private dwellings in those days did not present the accommodations and comforts which they now afford; and conviviality was confined almost entirely to taverns and ordinaries. At the Mermaid in Friday Street, Sir Walter Raleigh had instituted a club, which included among its members, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, and others eminent for genius and learning. There, probably, it was, that Shakespeare and Jonson delighted their associates with those brilliant and good-humoured repartees, of which no memorial now remains, except in Fuller's honest page. "Many," says that worthy man, were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion, and an English Manof-War; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his performances; Shakespeare with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage 66 of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." 69 The Sonnets of Shakespeare, some of which Fuller's Worthies. fol. p. 126, A a a. The following specimens of our poet's wit are poor enough. Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the christning being in a deepe study, Jonson came to cheere him up, and askt him why he was so melancholy? No faith, Ben (sayes he), not I, but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my God-child, and I have resolved at last ; I pry'the what, sayes he?' I faith, Ben, Ile e'en give him a dozen good Lattin spoones, and thou shalt translate them." From a Collection of Merry Passages and Jeasts, by L'Estrange (Sir Roger's nephew), Harleian MSS. 6395.-Latten is a mixed kind of metal; lexicographers have variously explained its composition. It is now generally said to have been brass, which I doubt: Brathwait has the following line, "Of lattin silver make, and gold of brasse." The Honest Ghost, 1658, p. 124. "Verses by Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, occasioned by the motto to the Globe theatre, Totus mundus agit histrionem. JONSON. "If, but stage actors, all the world displays, SHAKESPEARE.. "Little, or much, of what we see, we do; We are all both actors and spectators too." Poetical Characteristicks, 8vo MS. vol. I. formerly in the Harleian Library. "Mr. Ben Jonson and Mr. Wm. Shakespeare being merrie at a tavern, Mr. Jonson begins this for his epitaph, Here lies Ben Jonson, Who was once one had been composed as early as the year 1598,70 were first printed in 1609. Concerning these exqui site productions I shall have more to say hereafter. A beautiful piece, called The Lover's Complaint, was appended to them. Before noticing the final retirement of Shakespeare from the metropolis, let us inquire what were his merits as an actor, and what were the characters he performed. His contemporary Chettle (in a passage already quoted, p. xxix.) terms him "excellent in the qualitie he professes;" and though the Preface in which the words occur was intended to be apologetical to Shakespeare, yet he gives it to Mr. Shakespeare to make up, who presently writte, That, while he liv'd, was a slow thing, And now, being dead, is no-thing." Ashmole MSS. 38. The letter from Peele to Marlowe, concerning Shakespeare and Jonson, which has been given in several publications, is undoubtedly a forgery: see my Life of Peele, p. iii. prefixed to his Works, sec. ed. 1829. My friend, Mr. Collier, in his excellent Hist. of English Drum. Poet. iii. 276, committed a slight oversight in printing, as Shakespeare's, four lines concerning the wine at the Mitre, which he found attributed to our author in a MS. Collection of Poems: they are merely four verses of Ben Jonson's cist Epigram, a little altered. 70 'As the soule of Euphorbus," says Meres, was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus ad Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c." Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, 1598, fol. 28'. 66 Chettle would hardly have ventured to use so strong an epithet as excellent, unless our author's histrionic powers had been of a superior order. Aubrey, too, had been informed that he "did act exceedingly well."71 Other testimonies are somewhat at variance with these. Wright had heard that Shakespeare was a much better poet than player:"72 and Rowe tells us, that soon after his admission into the company, he became distinguished, "if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer."73 Perhaps his execution did not equal his conception of a character; but we may rest assured, that he who wrote the incomparable instructions to the player in Hamlet, would never offend his audience by an injudicious performance. In Every Man in his Humour, produced with alterations at the Blackfriars in 159874, and in Sejanus, brought out in 1603, Shakespeare had a part; but from the arrangement of the list of performers, which Jonson appended to those dramas in the folio of 1616, it is impossible to determine what were the characters he played. Rowe could only learn that "the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet."75 According to a tradition, which Malone 71 MSS. Aubrey. Mus. Ashmol. Oxon. 72 Historia Histrionica, a tract printed in 1699. 73 Life of Shakespeare. 74 Dr. Drake (Shakespeare and his Times, i. 424.) says that Every Man in his Humour was "first acted in 1598:" but it was played at the Rose either in 1595 or 1596. 75 Life of Shakespeare. e disbelieved, but did not confute, he used to personate Adam in As you Like it.76 It is probable that Shakespeare soon conceived a distaste for the profession of a player, and regarded himself as degraded by being 76" One of Shakespeare's younger brothers [Gilbert, probably, see p. vii.], who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles the Second, would in his younger days come to London to visit his brother Will, as he called him, and be a spectator of him as an actor in some of his own plays. This custom, as his brother's fame enlarged, and his dramatic entertainments grew the greatest support of our principal, if not of all our theatres, he continued, it seems, so long after his brother's death, as even to the latter end of his own life. The curiosity at this time of the most noted actors to learn something from him of his brother, &c., they justly held him in the highest veneration. And it may be well believed, as there was besides a kinsman and descendant of the family, who was then a celebrated actor among them, [Charles Hart, see p. lviii.] this opportunity made them greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in his dramatic character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened with infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station was, the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song.' Oldys's MSS. |