IV

THE GREATEST OF LITERARY PROBLEMS

In order to place our subject in right perspective, we have considered the conditions existing in England during the period in which the "Shakespeare" Works were produced; their character, as regarded by the literary world, and the personality of their titular author. As much of a fragmentary nature has been written respecting the validity of this title, we should consider this branch of the subject. No biographer of the Stratford actor has escaped the painful dilemma in which he found himself, when he considered the wonderful erudition and poetic genius displayed in the works in question, and attempted to form an acquaintance with their putative author. This feeling is not peculiar to the student of the twentieth century; it has often found expression in the past. Let us place ourselves in London at the time of the future actor's arrival in 1587, and keep him and his surroundings in view amid the conditions we have described, during his life there.

At first, it is conceded, he found temporary employment in the Burbage stables, and, later, held the horses of the patrons of "The Theater," which stood in the pleasant fields of the Liberty at Shoreditch, then a rural suburb of the metropolis. His diligence and readiness to make himself useful led to his employment as call boy, and here he was in a position to become acquainted with the business of the theater, to form friendly relations with the actors, and, through them, with some of the writers who supplied his employers with plays. Just how long it took him to reach this position we cannot determine, probably not long, nor, indeed, very long to be able to take minor parts in plays, for he had been from youth

familiar with the acting of strolling players, some of whom he must have known when they visited Stratford and were entertained by his father. This rough but good-natured and resourceful rustic of twenty-three, speaking the rude but amusing dialect of Warwickshire, was in a position to make himself useful to the Burbages, and to become in time, as Greene designates him, an "absolute Factotum” and man of affairs. Before his arrival in London, "Euphues," herald of the English novel, and the "Shepherd's Calendar," harbinger of a new era in poetry, had aroused a fresh interest in literature, and from this time works of a higher order of genius began to appear. Plays of a new type found their way to the stage, and supplanted those of the past. Though anonymous, they seem to have passed as the work of men who were known as petty actors and playwrights.

If we allow a couple of years for this raw rustic to arrive at the position accorded him, namely, 1589, - we easily recognize the men who composed the literary Bohemia of London, with several of whom he probably had some acquaintance. Robert Greene, who had received a degree from Cambridge, was about twenty-eight, a man of the vilest habits, who picked up a subsistence by acting minor parts on the stage, and by writing; Thomas Lodge, thirty-two, who was then of some repute as a writer; John Lyly, graduate of Oxford, thirty-four, regarded as a promising author; Christopher Marlowe, a Cambridge graduate, twenty-four, a reprobate doomed by his violent nature to an untimely end; Thomas Middleton, Gray's Inn, twenty, soon to be a popular playwright; Thomas Nash, also a Cambridge man, twentyone, and sometimes a co-worker with Greene; John Webster, co-worker with the two former; George Peele, an Oxford graduate and reckless sot; Anthony Munday, thirty-six, Poet Laureate of London; and Michael Drayton, twenty-five, since honored with a monument in Westminster Abbey; Ben Jonson, then unheard of, was in school, being but fourteen or

fifteen years old. These men, too many of them of dissolute habits, were professional workers who obtained a precarious living wholly or partly by their pens, several of them eking out their incomes by taking minor parts on the stage. Besides these were young men connected with the Inns of Court who wrote anonymously or under pseudonyms; indeed, it was a common practice for authors to use the names of others on their title-pages, and for publishers to issue their wares under well-known names or suggestive initials. No book, however, could be published without a registered license. Then, as now, the market was overstocked with literary material which never received sufficient encouragement to be honored with registration. Plays accepted for the stage were sent to a scrivenry, where copies in sufficient number for the use of the actors were made, and these became one of the "properties" of the theater. It was not necessary for the author's name to appear on the Stationers' Register, that of the owner of the manuscript who had purchased it for profit being sufficient.

Leaving the future actor amid the conditions we have described, we will endeavor to get a glimpse of him as he appeared to his contemporaries while pursuing his life in the London of his time.

AS SEEN BY CONTEMPORARIES

We are not to regard it as strange that so little personal notice was taken of him, especially when we consider how the players' profession, of which he was an inferior member, was regarded during his life. It is stranger that what was said did not identify him with works which bear his name. Every attempt has been made, not always intentionally, to befog this issue. We know how writers have pressed into their service Lord Southampton, who, when the actor went to London, was a lad of fourteen, having been born in 1573. At a later age he was an intimate friend and imitator of the

unfortunate Essex, and when in 1592 the "Venus and Adonis " was dedicated to him by its author, was a hopelessly dissolute young blade of nineteen at court. Like other titled court favorites who were regarded as superior beings by the humble actors, whose greatest joy it was to sport their garb, and imitate their manners for a brief hour upon the stage, the gay young nobleman patronized the playhouses, and, being a somewhat conspicuous person, naturally attracted the attention of the actors; hence it was but natural for writers to dedicate their effusions to this influential youth, and to couch their dedicatory epistles in the most respectful and amiable terms. Several did so, notably Barnes, who addressed Southampton's eyes as "The heavenly lamps that gave the Muses light," and even the graver Florio, in his dedication to him of a dictionary, effervesces in this fashion: "As to me and many more the glorious and generous sunshine of your honour, hath infused light and life."

Dedications to wealthy noblemen by needy authors were plentiful, and do not indicate personal relations or even a speaking acquaintance between them. The volumes that have been written, based solely upon assumption, some of them offensively sentimental, to prove intimate personal relations between the actor and Southampton are pure fiction. Even poor young Ireland, who seems to have possessed a sense of research unusually keen, being unable to find satisfactory evidence of such a personal friendship, thought it would be well to fabricate it, and, to one who is willing to waste time on such a subject, it is curious to observe how Ireland's fictions have been reflected in much that has been written upon it since.

Perhaps the gossip respecting the gift of a thousand pounds by Southampton to the actor, which seems to be now fast growing into an historical fact, should be alluded to in passing. Rowe first gave it currency a century and a half after the actor's death:

There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's, that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William Davenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted, that my lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.1

Evidently Rowe was unacquainted with the character of Davenant, who he had been "assured" by some one was the source of the story, nor would he have suggested that he was "very well acquainted with his affairs" had he been aware that Davenant was but ten years old when the actor died, and unborn when he acquired New Place, which some commentators have inferred was the purchase alluded to, and which cost but sixty pounds. Phillipps, who thinks the supposed gift was for the Asbies lawsuit, computes the relative value of money, when he wrote in 1886, at twelve times its value then; that is, twelve thousand pounds or sixty thousand dollars. Other writers have made equally unwarranted estimates. Lee authoritatively assures us that the purchasing power of money was then "eight times what it is now"; 2 and White, that it was six times;3 while Malone informs us that it was three and a half times greater. The difference in the comparative purchasing value of money at the time these authors wrote does not at all account for their widely varying estimates. The fact is, that to make an estimate of the relative purchasing power of money at widely separated periods would require precise knowledge of the value of all commodities at both periods, something in this case not obtainable, and writers on the very fruitful theme of the authorship of the “Shakespeare" Works have as usual regaled us with guesses.

1 Rowe's Life of Shakespeare; George Steevens, Esq., The Plays of William Shakespeare, vol. 1, p. ix. London, 1803.

2 Lee, A Life of Shakespeare, p. 3.

3 White, The Writings of Shakespeare, p. xli.

4 Johnson and Steevens, The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare, vol. 1, p. 73. London, 1803.