REMOVAL TO STRATFORD

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed.

239

Shakespeare's annual emolument as an actor has been computed at £180, or about a third of his probable total income from the Globe Theatre. He had two residences to keep up, and his father having died in September 1601, leaving little if any property beside two houses in Henley Street, he was probably now the sole support of his mother. He would therefore be cautious

is settlement at Stratford

about quitting the actor's profession, little as he loved it. The precise time of his emancipation cannot be determined, but may well have been not very remote from his contemptuous mention of the poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.

A very likely date would be the spring or summer of 1607, in the June of which year his eldest daughter Susanna married Dr. John Hall, a physician of Stratford, and quitted New Place for her husband's house. This would leave Mrs. Shakespeare alone in the house with her second daughter. It may have become necessary that Shakespeare should live more at Stratford; the marriage of his daughter would certainly bring him there, and the conjecture that his residence then became permanent is at all events very plausible. Another motive might be the probably declining health of his aged mother,

Stratford tradition respecting Shakespeare

who died in the following year. So long as he continued to write plays he would, no doubt, be obliged to reside much in London. We may feel confident, however, that the more he accustomed himself to a country life the more he would be captivated by it, and the brighter and more cheerful character of his dramatic productions after the probable date of his settlement at Stratford may be traced in large measure to its wholesome influences. This settlement will be found to be connected with a peculiarity indisputably apparent in his later work, which will be best explained if considered along with one of the best authenticated of the Stratford traditions respecting him.

Between 1661 and 1663 the Rev. John Ward, Vicar of Stratford, recorded in a memorandum-book that Shakespeare, after he had taken up his residence there, regularly supplied the London theatre with two plays a year. He must have heard the story in his parish less than fifty years after the death of Shakespeare, and nothing can be more intrinsically probable than the existence of some such contract between Shakespeare and his partners in the Globe. If, nevertheless, the tradition proves at variance with any known facts, it ought to be rejected, but it is, on the contrary, entirely in harmony with a remarkable phenomenon attending Shakespeare's later dramatic work. This is his constant endeavour to diminish the labour of composition. In every play known with certainty to have belonged to his later period, A Winter's Tale alone excepted, recourse is had to some device tending to save trouble to the author. In Troilus and Cressida he revives a former play. The Tempest is the shortest of his dramas. In Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra he leans upon Plutarch. Pericles and Timon are largely, Cymbeline perhaps to some extent, by other hands. In Henry VIII. he collaborates with Fletcher. While this slackness is fully in harmony with the circumstances of his residence at Stratford, the alleged contract would explain why his productiveness should still be so considerable. The obligation would pull both ways. Its fulfilment would sometimes be irksome, but would always be necessary. The natural resource would be the employment of any device by which the dramatist's labour might be diminished without lowering the standard of his art. The labour-saving tendency, at all events, is undeniable, and the obligation to produce two plays a year with or without the goodwill of Minerva affords as plausible a way of accounting for it as can be conceived.

It must be inquired, however, whether it is possible so to allot Shakespeare's

DATES OF SHAKESPEARE'S LATER PLAYS

241

work during the last years of his dramatic activity as to justify the assertion of his having for several years regularly provided the theatre with two plays annually? This cannot be said unless the composition or, which would serve equally well, the first public representation of two plays can be brought lower than the generally accepted date. There are only two possible instances, Othello and Macbeth. Of Othello we have spoken. The versification of this play indicates a later period than that of Lear or Macbeth, and nearly that of Antony and Cleopatra. The absence of any trace of it until 1609--perhaps even 1610, when a performance was witnessed by a German prince on his travels in England--is remarkable in the case of a drama not only of transcendent merit, but admirably qualified for popularity. On the other side are two doubtful pieces of

external evidence: Malone's statement that he knew it to have been performed in 1604, and the forged entry of its performance at Court in 1605, which may have been transcribed from a genuine entry. Decision is difficult.

The question relating to Macbeth is curious. The evidence for the date of 1605 or 1606 seems satisfactory, but was there a public representation at that time? The brevity of the play, and the pointed compliments to James I., show that it was

The Falcon Tavern

Believed to have been frequented by Shakespeare and

his companions

From Wilkinson's "Londinia Illustrata," 1819

intended for performance at Court. This by no means excludes public Probable date representation, but would public representation be then permitted? The of "Macbeth" Gunpowder Plot had just exploded, and the air was full of treasons and conspiracies. Might not the representation of the murder of a King of Scotland have been thought unseemly and dangerous? The question would hardly have suggested itself but for the fact that in April 1610 the play is a new one to Dr. Simon Forman, a regular playgoer, who describes a performance of it in his diary with a minuteness proving that he had never seen it before, and suggesting that he had never heard of it. None of Shakespeare's dramas is more likely to have been frequently acted; if it had really been a stock-play for four years unknown to Forman, his nescience is extraordinary. On the other hand, there is an apparent allusion to Banquo's ghost in The Puritan, a play printed in 1607: "the ghost in white at the head of the table." This seems strong evidence, but would Banquo have been exhibited in a white sheet? This would be contrary to the precedent of Hamlet's father, "in his habit as he lived," and would

VOL. II

Q

interfere with the recognition of Banquo by the spectators. He ought not, in fact, to be visible to them any more than to the guests; but, if visible, he should appear as they have known him, only bearing the tokens of violent death, "blood-boltered," in Macbeth's parlance.

If the admitted difficulties do not prevent the acceptance of the Vicar's intrinsically most probable statement, the chronology of Shakespeare's plays after his settlement at Stratford might be as follows:

1607. Timon of Athens; Antony and Cleopatra.

It will be observed that the arrangement is in pairs, each year producing one complete work of Shakespeare's and one either revived or composed in collaboration with another writer. This is exactly the method likely to be adopted by one anxious to fulfil a burdensome obligation in the easiest way possible without prejudice to his genius and character. After 1611 Shakespeare ceases to write regularly for for the stage, and probably disposes of his share in the Globe, which he did not hold at his death.

The Tempest and Henry VIII. were, as will be shown, produced on special occasions, and belong to 1613.

The evidence of style and versification, and the still stronger testimony of a moody and embittered spirit, constrain us to place Timon of Athens chronologically at the head of Shakespeare's later writings. It is, indeed, possible that it may be earlier in composition than 1607. Timon's affinity to Lear has been frequently remarked, and it may be that Shakespeare began to write it soon after the completion of that drama, and after making some progress with it, laid it aside until its production was required by theatrical exigencies. If he had by that time escaped from his period of gloom, he could not but disrelish his own work, and would be likely to commit to another the shaping of what he had rough-hewn. This is a more probable supposition than that he himself completed the work of an inferior dramatist, for in that

"ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

243

case he must have had the last word, and there are faults which he would hardly have been able to forbear correcting. The aid of a coadjutor is manifest, a writer not devoid of talent for the comic and serio-comic, but incapable of tragic dignity. The portions most evidently non-Shakespearean are Act I from the entry of Apemantus to the end of the banquet; Act III., and Act V., after the last scene in which Timon appears. The genuine parts of the play are very fine, and in every way worthy of Shakespeare; the diction is frequently contorted, but so is Timon. Yet the play never could be popular, if only for want of a female character. Emile Augier has shown in his delightful comedy of La Cigue how a similar theme may be effectively treated, but his vein of light raillery would be impossible to Shakespeare in his actual mood. A Lucianic element

which may be detected is probably due to Shakespeare's acquaintance with Boiardo's comedy, Timone, which is mainly translated from Lucian. Shakespeare was beyond doubt fairly well versed in Italian.

The close relationship between Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is shown by the circumstance that, though only Pericles was printed, both were entered for publication on the same day, May 20, 1608. Which was first written cannot be known; the probability is that some play entirely from Shakespeare's hand would intervene between two, like Timon and Pericles, produced with the help of collaborators. The question, however, is not material, for both show Shakespeare's restoration to a sane and cheerful view of life. Antony and Cleopatra is pre-eminently the work of one interested "Antony and in "the world's great business." Hardly anywhere else is there such bustle, Cleopatra" such variety, such zest for political and military affairs. Shakespeare is thoroughly in charity with his principal characters. His treatment of Cleopatra is purely objective, there is no trace of personal resentment as in his portrait of Cressida. In Antony he has marvellously depicted "the average sensual man," on a far lower plane than a noble idealist like Brutus, but still capable of deep human feeling. This was shown in Julius Cæsar, by the great speeches beginning "O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth," and "This was the noblest Roman of them all." In Antony and Cleopatra this depth of feeling is entirely devoted to a woman; and so intense, especially under the influence of jealousy, so sincere, so single-minded, save for one vacillation under stress of politics, is it that we overlook the fact that we have before us an Antony in decay, no longer able to sway the Roman multitude or school Octavius. Wisdom and policy are gone for ever, even martial honour is dimmed,