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William Shakespeare's Literarp Executor -The First Shakespearean Revival

IN the year 1680, Mr. John Aubrey - in the first morsel of Shakespearean criticism on the record said that William

Shakespeare's "comedies will remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood -for that he handles mores hominum: now our present writers reflect much upon particular persons and coxcombites that twenty years hence they will not be understood." But there was to come a time, and that not so greatly distant, when the very quality which Aubrey noted was to work the decadence of his poet;-a time when Englishmen - who had passed through the lashed and tossed days of tempest, revolution and plague which ended with the restoration of the second Charles - sought relief from the passions of humanity in artificiality and bagatelle, in trifles and infinities that should stir not too deeply their overtaxed and

overstrained souls, but should bring instead a respite from the mores hominum, until haply peace should come to stay a little. Little as Shakespeare had contributed to the climax (for he was always and everywhere the apostle of order- of the rule and of the throne as opposed to riot, or even an attempt at popular liberty) —he came very near to perishing in it. And there is very small doubt that his memory and works would have suffered seriously had it not been for a gentleman who claimed an other than sentimental interest in perpetuating him.

Whether connected with William Shakespeare by any natural tie or not, certainly Sir William Davenant was the nearest approach to a literary executor that William Shakespeare ever had. And that it was he, and he alone, who carried William Shakespeare through a cycle which cared nothing for him, but (as Pepys's and Evelyn's diaries sufficiently evince) preferred artificial Frenchiness and libertinism, ought to be remembered.

Davenant's death, Dryden wrote a preface to his own and Davenant's version of "The Tempest," in which he says: "Sir William Davenant did me the honor to join me with him in the alteration of this work. It was originally Shakespeare's, a poet for whom he had a particularly high veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire." And we shall see there is plenty of other proof of Sir William's sturdy, and as it had to be in that age-stubborn loyalty to the great poet of all time of every time, it seems, except that one.

Young William Davenant, after some preliminary schooling, entered Lincoln College in 1621.

But he scribbled poetry instead of studying, and soon left without taking any degree. He attracted the attention of the gay Duchess of Richmond, and for a while became her page, from which service he entered the household of Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who had been a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and was himself something of a poet. When Lord Brooke died, in 1628, Davenant was left unprovided for, and began to earn his liveli hood by his pen alone. His bent was for dramatic poetry, probably the most remunerative sort of verse, at that time, as now. At any rate, he produced a lot of plays, all of which were successful. Among the first were "Gondibert," "The Just Italian," and "The Cruel Brother." In 1637, Ben Jonson, the then poet-laureate, died. Davenant was appointed in his stead, with a salary of £100, but the "butt of sack" was, for some reason, withheld. Davenant now became one of that brilliant throng who, in the days of Charles I., the Parliament and Charles II., surrounded the varying fortunes of the royal family. His associates and literary contemporaries were Waller, Carew, Sir John Suckling, Dryden, and Abraham Cowley. Thomas Hobbes the philosopher, Lords Somerset, Clarendon, and Jermyn were his intimates. When Waller, Hobbes, and Suckling fled to France, in the troubled last days of Charles I., Davenant followed in the train of the wandering Queen Henrietta Maria. A dramatic poet, he was especially hated by the play-hating Puritans. In 1641 he was charged in Parliament with having taken part in a conspiracy to raise an army; was imprisoned, liberated on bail, forfeited it, and succeeded in

reaching the shores of France, from whence he published an ineffectual memorial pamphlet addressed "To the Hon. the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the House of Commons assembled in Parliament." Commissioned by the queen, he returned to England with supplies for the royal army; saw active service at the siege of Gloucester in 1643, as Lieutenant-General of Artillery, and there received the honor of knighthood at the royal hand.

He again returned to France, resumed his place in the court of Queen Henrietta Maria, and while there became a Catholic. After Charles's execution he headed a colonizing expedition to Virginia, with the queen's sanction, but his ship was captured, and he was thrown into prison at Cowes, becoming for the second time a parliamentary prisoner. From here he wrote, in imminent prospect of decapitation: "But 'tis high time to strike sail, and cast anchor- though I have run but half my course when, at the helm, I am threatened with death, who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome." He was released, however, and pardoned, owing to Milton's interposition (a favor he was able to reciprocate after the Restoration, when Cromwell's secretary, Milton, in turn, was threatened). After his release from the Tower he bade a long farewell to politics,- in whose service he had endured almost everything except actual decapitation,― and resumed his calling as a dramatist. He opened and managed, until his death, in 1668, the Duke of York's Theater, in Portugal street, London. He was honored in death by burial in Westminster

Abbey, under the inscription on his grave, "O rare Sir William Davenant." Such was Sir William Davenant's history-the history of a man of letters of those reckless and fitful days of anarchy and social upheaval; no higher, perhaps, but certainly no less illustrious than that of any of his compeers. We come now to the peculiar and memorable service he rendered not only England, but the transatlantic world-every world, indeed, which reads to-day its Shakespeare.

In 1623 had appeared the first collected edition of Shakespeare plays - dedicated, not to Shakespeare's supposed patron, Southampton, but to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery (whose names then appeared for the first and last time in a Shakespearean connection), and printed at the charges of W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount, I. Smithweeke, and W. Aspley. Evidently the plays had been in a decadence, since the editors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, apologize for this unexpected dedication on the ground that the above-named noblemen "had been pleased to speak approvingly" of the plays, and to show them (the plays) "some little favor." It is difficult, in these days of newspapers and magazines, to imagine England. without a periodical, with no such person as a book reviewer or literary critic; or that a volume, so priceless to-day as is this First Folio, could have attracted by its appearance no public attention whatever. Here came from the press for the first time what purported to be a complete collection of the works of a man, who, a few years before, had been not only a popular manager in the metropolis, but the known producer of magnificent