O poets all and some! for now we liet Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist.” The following advice is subsequently given to him "You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms, To stuff out a peculiar dialect; But let your matter run before your words. But let it pass; and do not think yourself Much damnified if you do leave it out, When nor your understanding nor the sense Marston, with all his faults, was a scholar and a man of high talent, and it is pleasant to know that he and Ben were friends after this wordy war. He appears to us to describe himself in the following narrative of a scholar in 'What You Will:' "I was a scholar: seven useful springs Did I deflour in quotations Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man; Knowledge and wit, faith's foes, turn faith about. Nay, mark, list! Delight, Delight, my spaniel, slept, Toss'd o'er the dunces, por'd on the old print Of titled words, and still my spaniel slept. Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, 'bated my flesh, Still on went I, first an sit anima, At that they are at brain buffets, fell by the ears, Stood banding factions, all so strongly propp'd, Mr. Dilke, in his valuable 'Selection from the Early Dramatic Writers,' prints three of Marston's plays. He says this word may be derived from baiser, to kiss; and that basse has boen used by Chaucer in this sense. How 't was created, how the soul exists; One talks of motes, the soul was made of motes; Another fire, t'other light, a third a spark of star-like nature; Hippo, water; Anaximenes, air; Aristoxenus, music; Critias, I know not what; A company of odd Phrenetici Did eat my youth; and when I crept abroad, I fell a railing." The light jest, the glancing wit, the earnest eloquence, the deep criticism, which would wear away the hours in such a company as that assembled at the Falcon, are to be interrupted. The festivity is about to close; when Marston, in the words o. one of his own characters, says "Stay, take an old rhyme first: though dry and lean, 'T will serve to close the stomach of the scene;" and then bursts out into a song which bears the stamp of his personal character: "Music, tobacco, sack, and sleep, The tide of sorrow backward keep. On us the end of time is come, Shakspere suddenly leaves the room, ere the song be ended; for one who bears the badge of the Earl of Essex waits without. His message is a brief but a sad one He returns just to hear the last lines of Marston's song, "When I can breathe no longer, then and to break up all revelry with the message-Spenser is dead. In the obscure lodging-house in King's Street, Westminster, where he lay down heart-broken, alone, has the poor fugitive died in his forty-sixth year. Jonson says, "He died for lack of bread in King's Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, and said he was sorry he had no time to spend them." The lack of bread could scarcely be. He could only have been a very short time in London when he came to seek that imperfect compensation which the government might afford him for some of his wrongs. His house was burnt; his wife and two children had fled from those outrages which had made : a place of terror and fatal recollections; his infant had perished in the flames which destroyed his property. But it seems impossible that one in his social position could die for lack of bread. He died most probably of that which kills as surely as hunger-the "hysterica passio" of Lear. In a few days most of those we have named would be gathered round Spenser's grave in Westminster Abbey his hearse attended by poets, and mournful elegies, and poems, with the pens that wrote them, thrown into his tomb."* One of the ablest writers of our day, in his quaint and pleasantCitation and Examination of William Shakspeare,' &c., says, "William Shakspeare was the only poet who abstained from throwing in either pen or poem,-at which no one marvelled, he being of low estate, and the others not having yet taken him by the hand." This is the language only of romance; for assuredly when Shakspere stood by the grave of Spenser, he of all the poets then living must have been held to be the head. Five years before, Spenser himself had without doubt thus described him : "And there, though last not least, is Aëtion; Jonson says " "He seems to shake a lance As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance" Fuller compares him to the poet Martial "in the warlike sound of his surname, whence some may conjecture him of a military extraction, hasti-vibrans, or Shake-speare.' We cannot doubt of the allusion. He could not have meant to compare the poet with the Roman painter Aëtion. The fancy of Spenser might readily connect the "high thoughts" with the soaring eagle-ȧerósand we might almost fancy that there was some association of the image with Shakspere's armorial bearings-"his crest or cognizance, a falcon, his wings displayed." The spring of 1599 saw Shakspere's friends and patrons, Essex and Southampton, in honour and triumph. The 27th of March, 1599, about two o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Earl of Essex, Vicegerent of Ireland, &c., took horse in Seeding Lane, and from thence, being accompanied with divers noblemen and many others, himself very plainly attired, rode through Grace Street, Cornhill, Cheapside, and other high streets, in all which places, and in the fields, the people pressed exceedingly to behold him, especially in the highways for more than four miles space, crying, and saying, God bless your Lordship, God preserve your honour, &c., and some followed him until the evening, only to behold him. When he and his company came forth of London, the sky was very calm and clear, but before he could get past Iseldon [Islington] there arose a great black cloud in the north-east, and suddenly came lightning and thunder, with a great shower of hail and rain, the which some held as an ominous • Camden. + 'Colm Clout's come Home again,' 1594. prodigy. It was perhaps with some reference to such ominous forebodings that in the chorus to the fifth Act of Henry V.-which of course must have been performed between the departure of Essex in March, and his return in September-Shakspere thus anticipates the triumph of Essex : "But now behold, In the quick forge and working house of thought, • Stow's 'Annals. MARSTON'S comedy, as it appears by the edition of 1605, was then played by Shakspere's company, "the King's Majesty's Servants;" but it had been previously played by another company, as we learn from the very singular Induction, in which some of the most eminent of Shakspere's fellows come upon the stage in their own characters. We have here William Sly, Harry Condell, and Dick Burbage; with Sinklow (of whom little is known beyond his twice being mentioned by accident instead of the dramatic character in the folio of Shakspere) and John Lowin, famous for his performance of Falstaff. The Induction itself presents so curious a picture of the theatre in Shakspere's time, that we may properly fill a little space with a portion of it : "Enter W. SLY; a Tire-man following him with a stool. Tire-man. Sir, the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here. Sig. Why, we may sit upon the stage at the private house. Thou dost not take me for a country gentleman, dost! Dost thou fear hissing? I'll hold my life thou took'st me for one of the players. Tire-man. No, sir. Sly. By God's-slid, if you had I would have given you but sixpence for your stool. Let them that have stale suits sit in the galleries. Hiss me! He that will be laughed out of a tavern, or an ordinary, shall seldom feed well, or be drunk in good company. Where's Harry Condell, Dick Burbage, and William Sly? Let me speak with some of them. Tire-mas. An't please you to go in, sir, you may. Sly. I tell you no; I am one that hath seen this play often, and can give them intelligence for their action. I have most of the jests here in my table-book. Sinklow. Save you, coz. Enter SINK LOW. Sly. O! cousin, come, you shall sit between my legs here. Sinklow. No indeed, cousin; the audience then will take me for a viol de gambo, and think that you play upon me. Sly. Nay, rather that I work upon you, coz. Sinklow. We staid for you at supper last night at my cousin Honeymoon's, the woollen-draper. After supper we drew cuts for a score of apricots; the longest cut still to draw an apricot; by this light, 't was Mrs. Frank Honeymoon's fortune still to have the longest cut. I did measure for the women. What be these, coz? Sly. The players. God save you. Enter D. BURBAGE, H. CONDELL, and J. LOWIN. |