hide the dirt, but not the smell, so the people carried "casting bottles" containing perfumes to make the air endurable. Its inhabitants were so vicious and degraded that they flocked to witness the brutal executions which were of daily occurrence, railing and jeering at the victims, and finding delight in sports too cruel for description. The Queen, says Goadby, "dispite her culture, used terrible oaths, round and full; she stamped her feet, she thrust about her with a sword, she spat upon her attendants, and behaved as the French said, like 'a lioness."" 1 The theaters were sinks of corruption to which gravitated, if we may credit the Mayor of London's report in 1597, "thieves, horse stealers, whoremongers, cozeners, coney catchers, contrivers of treason, and other idle and dangerous persons." The actors were not much above the moral level of their patrons, "base and common fellows," according to the students of Gray's Inn; and to escape the penalty of the law against unlicensed players, which, for the first offense, condemned them to be "grievously whipped and burnte through the gristle of the right eare with an hot yron of the compasse of an ynch aboute," and for a third offense to suffer death, they were obliged to become servants to some one in power, under whose name and protection they plied their trade. Of course, no respectable woman could enter these "filthie haunts," as they were designated by Harvey, in which the customs of those frequenting them were unspeakably vulgar and obscene; hence they were the resort of the vilest women of the town, which added to their degradation. The reign of Elizabeth had passed its meridian when two events happened which marked a new epoch in literature. The "Euphues," forerunner of the English novel, appeared, and a few months later, in 1579, "The Shepherd's Calendar," harbinger of an illustrious era of English poetry, dropped 1 Edwin Goadby, The England of Shakespeare, p. 126. London, 1881. 2 J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, vol. 1, p. 214. London, 1882. anonymously into being, as it were from the clouds. These two events ushered in the glorious day of England's Renais sance. From this date, despite social strife, war and rumors of war, the new day advanced in splendor; the gentle Colin retuned his oaten pipe, and sang the joy of home-coming; "The Faerie Queene,” “Venus and Adonis," and "Lucrece" thrilled English hearts in hall and palace; above all, dramatic art felt the quickening impulse, and works of a new order, many anonymous, and many under the names of hitherto unknown men, - Marlowe, dead at twenty-nine in a brawl; Greene, at thirty-two from a debauch; Peele, before forty, from an unspeakable disease; and when these had finished their course, similar works, bearing the name "Shakespeare," imparted new life to the theater. We say similar works, because these men to-day lead the van in the history of the great literary revival of the sixteenth century, and the works accredited to them, some certainly without warrant, are marked by the same expressions, display a knowledge of the same literary sources, and publish to the world the same lofty sentiments; in fact, this has been so fully recognized that critics, almost without exception, have declared that they collaborated or duplicated the work of one another. That they should have done so unconsciously exceeds the limits of reason. We are confining our view to these men because they appear so early in the movement. There were others who fell into line during the forty or more years of its especial activity, and got their names on the Roll of Remembrance- - Drayton, Nash, Lodge, Dekker, Heywood, Sidney, Massinger, Fletcher, Kyd, Webster, Ben Jonson, and others; some with slight reason. This, however, is not a history of English literature; that has been written more or less acceptably by Hallam, Symonds, Saintsbury, Lee; and we mention these writers only in recognition of their place in the literary movement of which we have spoken. All must agree that it would be interesting to know who was really the moving spirit in this great movement. Across the Channel it was Ronsard who initiated and directed the French Renaissance. In England it has been accredited to Spenser, who was a poor exile in Ireland; it is quite evident that the men we have named were incapable of doing it. Who was the English Ronsard? Does he reveal himself in the 'Shepherd's Calendar" or the "Shakespeare" Works? These are questions which demand consideration, and they find suggestions to their solution in the criticisms, blind as many of them are, with which we have been surfeited. 66 In studying the "Shakespeare" Works we cannot fail to be impressed with the persistent purpose which they reveal of enlarging the scope of human thought, and leading the mind to loftier heights of knowledge. Their author reasoned wisely in selecting the drama for this purpose, for by it he could appeal through ear and eye to the common understanding, and open the readiest path to the popular mind, leaving upon it impressions less easily effaced than those of the novel. The dramas and poems which comprise these works were unlike anything which had been known heretofore to the English people, being saturated with the loftiest sentiments and the acutest philosophy, as well as the profoundest learning. We may well ask, Were these works, which were so far above the intellectual capacity of the patrons of the theater, written for mere gain? Halliwell-Phillipps, attributing their authorship to the Stratford actor, and having an intimate knowledge of his character, asserts that his "sole aim was to please an audience, most of whom were not only illiterate but unable either to read or write"; and Pope crystallizes the same opinion in a verse which everybody has read, that he For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight, But such an opinion of the author of the "Shakespeare" Works involves a paradox. We can conceive of him only as one who, conscious of being entrusted with an important message to man, makes its delivery his chief object. It is especially with these works that we have to do. II THE THEME THE GREATEST BIRTH OF TIME THE "Shakespeare" Works have been the admiration of lovers of literature for nearly three centuries. No other works have attracted to themselves so much conflicting criticism, and so much senseless exaggeration. So widely have commentators differed with regard to them that, if their countervailing opinions were eliminated, the residuum would be inconsiderable, and were the ravings of delirious devotees gathered into a single volume, it would be a curious addition to the library of the alienist. We are told that the works were "the Greatest Birth of Time";1 that their author was "the only Exemplar of his Species"; that "there is but one Christ, there has been but one Shakespeare"; that "Shakespeare service, if not worship, is now acknowledged over the World"; and a quarto of bulky proportions has been recently published echoing the praises of devotees during the first century of the world's knowledge of him, which, if continued to our time, would form a library by itself of forbidding magnitude.2 Moreover, an immense body of literature has grown up treating of every phase of the works in question, which, with numerous be-emendated editions, was estimated in 1885 to comprise at least ten thousand volumes. Since that time the 1 The title originated with Bacon, who, as early as 1586, "put together," as he says, "A youthful essay · which, with vast confidence, I called by the highsounding title, The Greatest Birth of Time." Dean Church remarks upon this, —“In very truth the child was born, and, . . . for forty years grew and developed." R. W. Church, Bacon, p. 170. New York, 1884. ... 2 C. M. Ingleby, LL.D., Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse. London, 1879. Frederick J. Furnivall, M.A., Some Three Hundred Fresh Allusions to Shakespeare. London, 1886. C. M. Ingleby et al., The Shakespeare Allusion Book. New York and London, 1909. |