IN LONDON We would like to know the exact date of the future actor's flight from Stratford. Phillipps assumes it to have been in 1586-87, soon after the birth of the twins, and we will adopt it as an approximate date, and follow him to London, noting that Phillipps depicts him as "trudging thither on foot by way of Oxford and High Wycombe." His life thus far had been discreditable. Penniless and uneducated, the outlook would have been discouraging to one, the horizon of whose life had not been bounded by the most sordid experience; but, knowing what we do of him at this time, we need not doubt that he turned his face toward the great city careless of future possibilities. There is a tradition that he found employment at the stables of the elder Burbage. Phillipps connects this employment with the later horse-holding episode thus related by Cibber: When he came to London, he was without money and friends, and, being a stranger, he knew not to whom to apply, nor by what means to support himself. At that time, coaches not being in use, and as gentlemen were accustomed to ride to the playhouse, Shakspear, driven to the last necessity, went to the playhouse door, and pick'd up a little money by taking care of the gentlemen's horses who came to the door. And Malone, referring to him at a later period in his experiences: There is a stage tradition that his first office in the theatre was that of Callboy, or prompter's attendant; whose employment it is to give the performers notice to be ready to enter, as often as the business of the play requires their appearance on the stage. It was not until five years after reaching London that we hear of him. On the 3d of March, 1592, according to Phillipps, the first part of the drama of "Henry VI" was brought out by Lord Strange's servants, then acting either at Newington or Southwark under an arrangement with Henslowe, a wealthy stage manager, to whom no doubt the play was sold by its author. The actor's name was not associated with this play, nor was it printed until it appeared in the Folio of 1623. His biographers, however, assume the year 1592 as the beginning of his recognition as an author, and conveniently adopt the theory that previous to this date he had been acquiring a literary education. Among these, White, who, fully realizing that there is no royal road to knowledge, and the necessity of providing time for education, adopts the assumption, and declares that during this period, "When he was eating the bread of poverty, he must have found time to obtain some knowledge of books (of which except Bibles and the schoolhouse grammar, there were not a dozen in all Stratford, and of which he could have learned nothing from his mother, for she, like his father, could not write her own name), and then to show effectively his powers as a writer." It really seems too much to ask us to believe that a man past his majority, bred to the rudest of trades, and absolutely ignorant of books, who was according to tradition a frequenter of taverns, and a participator in drinking-bouts, far too much, indeed, to ask us to conceive that such a man, thrown upon his own resources in a city like sixteenth-century London, where he had to struggle for bread or die of starvation, would apply himself to the study of literature, law, medicine, science, philosophy, languages, even if he had the inclination and the time to do so, which this man could not have possessed, for it cannot be refuted that during these five years he was not only winning a living, but a foothold in the playhouse, and cultivating that hard business sense which stood him in good stead through life. Anders, the noted German critic, introduces his work on the erudition of the author of the "Shakespeare" Works in these words: The immense literature which centers around the name of Shakespeare renders a work of the present nature rather trying. It means tough fighting to grapple with this sea of books which threatens to drown all independence of thought, for it has been my constant aim not to accept a statement without convincing myself of its truth.1 Among the early playhouses the Blackfriars possessed an enviable popularity, having on its roll of actors some of the best in England, as James and Richard Burbage, John Laneham, Thomas Green, George Peele, Anthony Wadeson, and other public favorites; several of these were writers and playwrights. Shakspere appears as twelfth on this roll, which is indicative of his histrionic status in the company. To account for this, age has been assumed to determine rank on the stage, but this is easily disproved by a comparison of the ages of his associates. Phillipps, Lee, and others speak continually of "Shakespeare's Company," or "The Poet's Company," by which they intend to convey the idea that he was its manager. This is quite unwarranted. The Burbages owned the Globe and Blackfriars' theaters, and the only allusion to the Stratford actor's theatrical interest is found in a petition of the Burbages to the Earl of Pembroke in the Public Records Office, dated August 1, 1635. In this petition they state that their father was "the first builder of playhowses"; that "he built upon leased ground by which meanes the landlord and he had a great suite in law; and by his death the like troubles fell on us his sonnes; wee then bethought us of altering from this, and at like expence built the Globe; and to ourselves we joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips and others. Now for the Blackfriars - our father purchased it for extreame rates, and made it into a playhouse which after was leased to one Evans, that first set up boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chappell." They growing up, "It was considered that - 1 H. R. D. Anders, A Dissertation on Shakespeare's Reading and the Immediate Sources of his Works. Berlin, 1904. house would bee as fitt for ourselves, and so purchased the lease remaining from Evans — and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, &c." 1 This was in 1609, long after the actor returned to Stratford. Even Lee says that the actor's "interest in the Blackfriars was unimportant,' and that the Globe "was not occupied by Shakespeare's company until December, 1609, or January, 1610, when his acting days were nearing their end." Why not say "Burbage's Company, which it was? It was never "Shakespeare's Company" any more than Heminge's or Kemp's or Condell's, or of any one of a dozen others, who shared in the net receipts of the house for a limited period, a convenient and safe way of remunerating them. Yet from materials too flimsy to bear the breath of criticism, Lee constructs a plethoric balance sheet to show the income of his protégé from the theater and other sources, and ends by informing us that "it is probable" that he disposed of his share in 1611, the year after "his company" occupied the theater. What a waste of effort to bolster up a baseless theory! It might have been as well to have consulted Ratsey, who dubbed the actor "Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe," which seems suggestive.2 Perhaps it should be added that the records, showing the financial profits of the Blackfriars' and Globe theaters, yield no evidence of the Stratford actor's authorship of the plays. The nature of the actor's transactions has always been a subject of surprise to students, and none of his biographers, however much disposed to cover up his deficiencies, has been insensible to it. Mr. Appleton Morgan expresses this feeling mildly when he "At any says, 1 Phillipps, Outlines, etc., vol. 1, p. 317. Lee, A Life of Shakespeare, pp. 38, 264. 2 In a list, long ago dismissed by his biographers as spurious, his name appears as a holder of four shares in the Globe. Some of his devotees are now trying to show that it is genuine, as though this were a matter of consequence. Heretofore it was the Blackfriars in which he had a pecuniary interest; but even Lee has abandoned this, and says (A Life of Shakespeare, p. 196.), “It was not until 1599, when the Globe Theater was built, that he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse." rate we do know that the great William lived apart from his wife, and that such visits as he paid to Stratford may almost always be found indicated by an investment, a law suit, or an arbitration, whereby the thrifty poet did largely increase the body of wealth he left his children."1 A brilliant American author, whose genius could never brook the sober pace of a Rosinante, gives rein to his wit in this wise: Then, 1610-11, he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed. He lived five or six years till 1616 in the joy of these elevated pursuits. Then he made a will. It names in minute detail every item of property he owned in the world, houses, lands, sword, silver gilt bowl, and so on, — all the way down to his second-best bed and its furniture. It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's. 2 Richard Grant White thus alludes to this subject: -- The pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of imprisoning him and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts and supporting himself and his family, is an incident in Shakespeare's life which it requires the utmost allowance and consideration for the practice of the time and country to enable us to contemplate with equanimity — satisfaction is impossible. 3 Of several episodes in his London life it was not intended to speak, but since his recent biographer, Sidney Lee, has done so, it seems necessary to quote him verbatim. The first is this: 1 Appleton Morgan, A.M., LL.B., Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism, p. 277. New York, 1888. 2 Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare Dead? New York and London, 1909. 3 Richard Grant White, The Works of Shakespeare, vol. 1, p. lxxxviii. |