preface to Kind-Harte's Dream,' in which he is very anxious to explain the share which he had in the publication of Greene's pamphlet, "I had only in the copy this share it was ill-written, as sometimes Greene's hand was none of the best; licensed it must be, ere it could be printed, which could never be if it might not be read. To be brief, I writ it over, and, as near as I could, followed the copy, only in that letter I put something out, but in the whole book not a word in; for I protest it was all Greene's, not mine, nor Master Nash's, as some unjustly have affirmed." In this pamphlet of Greene's an insult was offered to Shakspere; and it would appear from the allusions of Chettle that he was justly offended. Marlowe, also, resented, as well he might, the charge of impiety which was levelled against him. Chettle says, "With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted." By acquaintance he means companionship, if not friendship. He goes on, "And with one of them I care not if I never be." He is supposed here to point at Marlowe. But to the other he tenders an apology, in all sincerity: "The other, whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used, my cwn discretion. (especially in such a case), the author being dead, that I did not I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." In the Induction to Cynthia's Revels' Ben Jonson makes one of the personified spectators on the stage say, I would speak with your author; where is he?" It may be presumed, therefore, that it was not uncommon for the author to mix with that part of the audience; and thus Henry Chettle may be good evidence of the civil demeanour of William Shakspere. We may imagine the young "maker" composedly moving amidst the throng of wits and critics that fill the stage. He moves amongst them modestly, but without any false humility. In worldly station, if such a consideration could influence his demeanour, he is fully their equal. They are for the most part, as he himself is, actors, as well as makers of plays. Phillips says Marlowe was an actor. Greene is reasonably conjectured to have been an actor. Peele and Wilson were actors' of Shakspere's own company; and so was Anthony Wadeson. There can be little doubt that upon the early stage the occupations for the most part went together. The dialogue was less regarded than the action. A plot was hastily got up, with rude shows and startling incidents. The characters were little discriminated; one actor 'took the tyrant line, and another the lover; and ready words were at hand for the one to rant with and the other to whine. actors were not very solicitous about the words, and often discharged their mimic passions in extemporaneous eloquence. In a few years the necessity of pleasing more refined audiences changed the economy of the stage. Men of high talent sought the theatre as a ready mode of maintenance by their writings; but their connexion with the stage would naturally begin in acting rather than in authorship. The managers, themselves actors, would think, and perhaps The rightly, that an actor would be the best judge of dramatic effect; and a Master of Arts, unless he were thoroughly conversant with the business of the stage, might better carry his taffeta phrases to the publishers of sonnets. The rewards of authorship through the medium of the press were in those days small indeed; and paltry as was the dramatist's fee, the players were far better paymasters than the stationers. To become a sharer in a theatrical speculation offered a reasonable chance of competence, if not of wealth. If a sharer existed who was "excellent" enough in "the quality" he professed to fill the stage creditably, and added to that quality "a facetious grace in writing," there is no doubt that with "uprightness of dealing" he would, in such a company as that of the Blackfriars, advance rapidly to distinction, and have the countenauce and friendship of "divers of worship." One of the early puritanica. attacks upon the stage has this coarse invective against players: "Are they not notoriously known to be those men in their life abroad, as they are on the stage, roysters, brawlers, ill-dealers, boasters,, lovers, loiterers, ruffians? So that they are always exercised in playing their parts and practising wickedness; making that an art, to the end that they might the better gesture it in their parts?"* By the side of this silly abuse may be placed the modest answer of Thomas Heywood, the most prolific of writers, himself an actor: 'I also could wish that such as are condemned for their licentiousness might by a general consent be quite excluded our society; for, as we are men that stand in the broad eye of the world, so should our manners, gestures, and behaviours, savour of such government and modesty, to deserve the good thoughts and reports of all men, and to abide the sharpest censure even of those that are the greatest opposites to the quality. Many amongst us I know to be of substance, of government, of sober lives, and temperate carriages, housekeepers, and contributory to all duties enjoined them, equally with them that are ranked with the most bountiful; and if, amongst so many of sort, there be any few degenerate from the rest in that good demeanour which is both requisite and expected from their hands, let me entreat you not to censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some, but rather to excuse us, as Ovid doth the generality of women: -- " 'Parcite paucarum diffundere crimen in omnes; Those of Shakspere's early competitors who approached the nearest to him in genius possessed not that practical wisdom which carried him safely and honourably through a life beset with some temptations. They knew not the value of "government and modesty." He lived amongst them, but we may readily believe that he was not of them. The curtain is drawn back, slowly, and with little of mechanical contrivance. The rush-strewn stage is presented to the spectators. The play to be performed is Henry VI. The funeral procession of Henry V. enters to a dead march; a Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Players. † Apology for Actors. few mourners in sable robes following the bier. The audience is silent as the imaginary corse; but their imaginations are not stimulated with gorgeous scenery. There is no magical perspective of the lofty roof and long-drawn aisles of Westminster Abbey; no organ peals, no trains of choristers with tapers and censers sing the Requiem. The rushes on the floor are matched with the plain arras on the walls. Bedford speaks : "Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night.” Lofty in his tone, corresponding with the solemn and unvarying rhythm. It is the drumming decasyllabon" which Nash ridicules. The great master of a freer versification is not yet confident of his power. The attention of the auditory is fixed by the stirring introduction. There are old remembrances of national honour in every line. The action moves rapidly. The mourners disperse; and by an effort of imagination the scene must be changed from England to France. Charles the king marches with drum and soldiers. The English are encountered, the French are beaten. The Maid of Orleans appears. The people will see the old French wars which live in their memories fought over again; and their spirits rise with every alarum. But the poet will show too the ruinous course of faction at home. The servingmen of Gloucester and Winchester battle at the Tower gates. The Mayor of London and his officers suppress the riot. Again to Orleans, where Salisbury is slain by a fatal linstock. All is bustle and contention in France; but the course of intrigue in England is unfolded. The first page of the fatal history of York and Lancaster is here We see the growth of civil war at home; we trace the beginnings of disaster abroad. The action presents a succession of events, rather than de veloping some great event brought about by a skilful adjustment of many parts. But in a "chronicle history" this was scarcely to be avoided; and it is easy to see how, until the great principle of art which should produce a Lear and a Macbeth was evolved, the independent succession of events in a chronicle history would not only be the easiest to portray by a young writer, but would be the most acceptable to an uncritical audience, that had not yet been taught the dependences of a. catastrophe upon slight preceding incidents, upon niceties of character, upon passion evolved out of seeming tranquillity, the danger of which has been skilfully shadowed forth to the careful observer. It was in detached passages, therefore, that the young poet would put out his strength in such a play. The death of Talbot and his son was a fit occasion for such an effort; and the early stage had certainly seen nothing comparable in power and beauty to the couplets which exhibit the fall of the hero and his boy. Other poets would have noticed the scene. Shakspere painted it; and his success is well noticed by Thomas Nash, who for once loses his satirical vein in fervent admiration:-"How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that, after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least 'at several times), who, in the tragedian The that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!"* prejudices of the age are gratified by the condemnation of the Pucelle; but the poet takes care to make it felt that her judges are "bloody homicides." At the very close of the play a new series of events is opened, ending here with the mission of Suffolk to bring a bride for the imbecile king; but showing that the issue is to be presented in some coming story. The new play is a success : and the best of his brother poets have a ready welcome for the author, in spite of a sneer or two at "Shake-scene." • Pierce Pennilesso. NOTE ON THE DATE OF NASH'S EPISTLE PREFIXED TO THOMAS NASH took his degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge in 1585. In a tract published in 1595, Cambridge is said to have been unkind to Nash in weaning him before his time. As he never took a higher degree than that of Bachelor of Arts, he is supposed to have left the university in some disgrace. He is held to have travelled before he acquired a distinction amongst the satirical and controversial writers of London. In the address to Menaphon' he says to the gentlemen-students— "Read favourably to encourage me in the firstlings of my folly." It has been usual to assign the date of this epistle to 1589. The first recorded edition of Greene's 'Menaphon' bears the date of that year. Nash in the epistle promises a satirical work called 'Anatomy of Absurdities,' and in 1589 such a work appears. Mr. Dyce, however, fixes the date of the first edition of 'Menaphon' as 1587; but he cites the title from the earliest edition he has met with, that of 1589. It would be satisfactory to know upon what authority an earlier date than that of 1589 is given to Nash's edition. If Nash wrote the epistle in 1589, his high praise of Peele as the Atlas of poetry, and the omission of all mention of Marlowe, looks like partiality, if not prejudice. If it first appeared in 1587, there is less suspicion for an unworthy motive for the omission of Marlowe. The same reasoning applies to Shakspere. But we apprehend that the date of 1587 is a mistake. The reference made in the epistle of Nash to a play of Hamlet" whole Hamlets-I should say handfuls-of tragical speeches" (see p. 259)—has been held by persons whose opinions are entitled to more weight than our own to be an allusion to the Hamlet of Shakspere-an earlier Hamlet than any we possess. But this does not fall in with the theory that Shakspere first began to write for the stage about six or seven years after he became connected with the theatre. It is, therefore, convenienence adopt Mr. Dyce's date of 1587 without inquiry; and to say "there cannot be a moment's doubt" that the Hamlet alluded to by Nash "was written and acted many years before Shakspeare's tragedy." See Mr. Collier's Introduction to 'The History of Hamlet,' 1841; in which he says, without qualification, "Malone erred as to the date of Greene's 'Menaphon.'" Malone gives the date as 1589. But in his Introduction to Nash's 'Pierce Pennilesse,' 1842, Mr. Collier speaks more doubtingly :—“We take the date of Greene's ‘Menaphon,' 1587, from the edition of that author's Dramatic Works by the Rev. A. Dyce. He does not seem to have met with any copy of it of so early a date as 1587, and quotes the title-page of the impression of 1589." As regards the possible allusion to Shakspere's first Hamlet, we look upon the difference of two years as a matter of little importance; for a Hamlet whose characteristic was "whole handfuls of tragical speeches" might have been as readily produced by the Shakspere of twenty-three as by the Shakspere of twenty-five. (See our Notice on the Authenticity of Titus Andronicus, p. 58, and the Introductory Notice to Hamlet.) |