"KING JOHN" I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus AN 211 EXCELLENT conceited Tragedie OF Roineo and Juliet. As it hath been often (with great applause) Composed in haste to meet an emergency, King John misses many occasions for effective dramatic presentation. More might have been made of the character of John. On the other hand, the play gains in spirit and fire. All its strong points are very strong. Constance is the type of the mother whose world revolves solely upon her son, made selfish and aggressive, and eventually driven to frenzy by the pride and passion of maternal love. Faulconbridge is the ideal John Bull. Arthur's situation is surpassed in pathos by no other in Shakespeare, unless Lear's. The haste with which Shakespeare worked is shown by his dependence on the old drama which afforded him his framework, although he borrows none of its diction; and his alterations evince consummate judgment. One, the omission of a farcical scene offensive to the Church of Rome, has, notwithstanding the obvious tendency of his play, been made an argument to prove him a Roman Catholic. If his good taste is not sufficient reason, it is possible to allege another, prosaic but conclusive. Shakespeare was not the man to quarrel either with his friend or his bread and butter, and his friend and patron, Southampton, was a Roman Catholic at that time. LONDON, Printed by John Danter. 1597 Title-page of "Romeo and Juliet," 1597 quarto All's Well that Ends Well and The Taming of the Shrew are usually referred to 1595 as an approximate period, but it appears to us that they must have come later. It is commonly believed, and with good reason, that one or the other must have been a later version of the play termed by Meres in 1598 Love's Labour's Won. If this version had appeared before 1598 Meres would "The Mer chant of Venice" relations with his family surely have mentioned it by its new title; if neither is identical with Love's Labour's Won, Meres does not mention either. There is much in both plays suggestive of a later date, and traces of an earlier origin are easily explained by the circumstances that All's Well that Ends Well is probably a reconstruction of one of Shakespeare's first pieces, and that The Taming of the Shrew is founded upon an anonymous play produced in 1594. Edward Alleyn, the Actor After the portrait at Dulwich College The following year, 1596, is the most likely date for The Merchant of Venice, unless Mr. Lee's identification of it with the Venetian Comedy acted in 1594 (but not by Shakespeare's company) should be established. The first mention of it is by Meres in 1598. It is needless to dwell upon a play so universally known; nor is it possible sufficiently to praise the enthralling interest of the main action, the art with which the spectator is carried triumphantly over a series of the grossest improbabilities, only remarked in the study, and the deep humanity of Shakespeare's conception of the Jew, too kindred to ourselves ever to forfeit our sympathy, vindictive murderer in intention though he be. Marlowe's Barabas is at hand to show into what a pit a less gifted dramatist and a less genial nature might have fallen We have no particulars respectShakespeare's ing Shakespeare's private life during this period, except the patronage of Southampton and his summons to act before the Queen in December 1594. The investigations of his biographers have shown that as actor and dramatist he must have enjoyed a considerable income. He cannot, however, have done anything for his father up to at least December 1592, when, in the records of Stratford, John Shakespeare's habitual absence from church, which had led to his being proceeded against as a recusant, is accounted for by his unwillingness to leave home for fear of process for debt. Shakespeare, nevertheless, was so little of a niggard that in 1598 a townsman, Richard Quiney, is found confidently applying to him for a loan of thirty pounds in a sudden strait. It can only be concluded that what seemed an irreparable breach between Shakespeare and his family had been occasioned by the circumstances under which he left Stratford. After 1595, however, nothing more is heard of the elder Shakespeare's lawsuits and pecuniary troubles, and in October 1596 he is found incurring expense and asserting a higher position than he had previously enjoyed by an application for a coat of arms, which he did not then obtain, but which three years afterwards was discovered to have always belonged to him. This can only have been at the instigation of his son, which implies a thorough reconciliation, and the provision of moneys for urgent occasions. Mr. Lee refers Shakespeare's revisitation of Stratford to ledge of their father, or trained in disesteem for him, would be as pathetic as any scene in his own works. There would be much to forget and forgive on all sides, but Shakespeare's full acceptance of the situation is shown by the important step he took next year in buying New Place, the largest house in Stratford, for which he gave sixty pounds, or between four and five hundred in our present currency, and which must have involved considerable additional expense in furniture and repairs. A tradition, unauthenticated, but intrinsically probable, of Southampton having assisted him to make a purchase on which he had set his heart, may have reference to this transaction. His desire to obtain a good position in his native county is further evinced by a suit, nominally instituted by his father, to regain the alienated property which had belonged to his mother. It led to no result. The time has now arrived to consider the question of the Sonnets, in some The "Sonrespects the most interesting of Shakespeare's writings, as they tell us most nets" about himself. The reader need not be informed that it is one of extreme difficulty, to which justice cannot be rendered in our space. Meres, in 1598, names among Shakespeare's works his "sugared sonnets among his private friends." In 1609, Thomas Thorpe, a bookseller, published the collection as we now have it, with a dedication to "Mr. W. H.," whom he describes as the only begetter" of the pieces, and to whom he wishes "the immortality promised by our ever-living poet." Begetter" obviously cannot here. mean "author," and until lately has been universally considered to mean 66 66 66 "subject." Mr. Sidney Lee, however, has recently contended that it means procurer," and interprets it of the person by whose instrumentality the Sonnets were obtained for publication, whom he plausibly identifies with a certain William Hall. "Begetter" may be used in this sense, but that this is not its signification here is shown by the circumstance that the "begetter" has the poet's, not the publisher's, promise of immortality, no fiction of Thorpe's but made repeatedly in the Sonnets themselves. Granted that the appropriation' involving the publication, of the MS. of the Sonnets was a laudable action, deserving undying fame, how could Shakespeare, writing between 1590 and 1600, foreknow that Mr. William Hall would entitle himself to this renown in 1609? Nothing, to our appre hension, can be clearer than that, since "begetter" cannot denote the writer, it denotes the cause and subject of the poems, the person for whom and upon whom they were written, and but for whom they would not have been written at all; the person to whom Shakespeare made that promise which Thorpe is now about to enable him to redeem. For the identification of "Mr. W. H." we have no other Iclue than the internal evidence of the Sonnets themselves. Five circumstances appear incontestable: that he was a very young man; that he was greatly Shakespeare's superior in rank; that he was a patron of poets, and himself endowed with literary accomplishments; that he was of attractive personal appearance; that his friends greatly desired him to marry. It further appears to us that, with the exception of the group evidently addressed to a woman. all or nearly all were addressed to the same person-a conclusion established, in our opinion, by the prevalent unity of tone, and by the consideration that, had they been inscribed to a number of different persons, no one could have brought them together but Shakespeare himself. In this case they must have been published with his sanction, and he would never have allowed the misdescription of "Mr. W. H." as their "only begetter." Most of the circumstances above named concur in two persons, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South Macklin and Miss Pope as Shylock and Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" 1 This has been made an objection to the identification of the subject of the Sonnets with "Mr. W. H.," it being contended that a person of title would not be addressed as "Mr." Certainly not, if his identity was to be disclosed; but if concealment was desired, such additional disguise would be natural. And if concealment was not intended, why use initials at all? SOUTHAMPTON AND PEMBROKE 215 ampton (born 1573), Shakespeare's especial patron, and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (born 1580), "the greatest Mæcenas to learned men of any peer of his time." The initials "W. H." would serve equally well for either, for, if Southampton were the man, they might well have been transposed for the sake of disguise. It seems almost impossible to doubt that either Southampton or Pembroke is indicated when the poet addresses his friend |