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standing in society; he had the means, without doubt, of maintaining his family; as he advanced in the proprietorship of the same theatre, he realized a fortune. How had he been principally occupied from the time he left Stratford, to have become, somewhat rapidly, a person of importance amongst his "friends and fellows?" We think, by making himself useful to them, beyond all comparison with others, by his writings. He may have begun badly; he may have written, wholly or in part, Andronicus.' But even in that play there is writing such as no other but Shakspere could have produced. We are apt always to measure Shakspere with himself, because we have been unaccustomed to look at him as a boy-writer. Ben Jonson, in his Induction to Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 1614, makes one of the speakers say, "He that will swear Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays, yet shall pass unexcepted at here, as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty years." Five-and-twenty years before this time Shakspere was in his twenty-fifth year; whether he wrote or altered 'Andronicus,' he was two years younger than at the period when Malone considers that he commenced as a writer for the stage. Dr. Percy conjectures that Andronicus' was not Shakspere's, because Jonson refers it to a period when our poet was only twentyfive. We think the passage proves that Shakspere had written or revised Andronicus,' amongst other plays, before he was twenty-five. If we take the extreme period mentioned by Jonson, ‘Andronicus' might have been produced by the Shakspere of twenty.

It appears to us, then, not improbable that even before Shakspere left Stratford he had attempted some play or plays which had become known to the London players. Thomas Greene, who, in 1586, was the fourth on the list of the Blackfriars shareholders, was said to be Shakspere's fellow-townsman. But the young poet might have found another and more important friend in the Blackfriars company :-Richard Burbage, the great actor, who in his own day was called "the English Roscius," was also of Shakspere's county. In a letter of Lord Southampton to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (written about 1608), introducing Burbage and Shakspere to the Chancellor, it is said:" They are both of one county, and, indeed, almost of one town." It is perfectly clear, therefore, that Shakspere, from the easy access that he might have procured to these men, would have received inviting offers to join them in London, provided he had manifested any ability which would be useful to them. That ability, we have no doubt, was manifested by the production of original plays (as well as by acting) some time before he had attained the rank and profit of a shareholder in the Blackfriars company.

In 1589, the date of the document which proves that Shakspere was then a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre, the 'First Part of Henry VI.' was in existence. We must take the liberty of referring the reader to our Essay on Henry VI. and Richard III.' for the proof, according to our belief, that the First Part was altogether written by Shakspere, and not merely repaired by him, and also to various passages which exhibit the state of the drama principally as regarded the treatment of an historical subject just previous to the period when Henry VI.' was acted.

Rude as is the dramatic construction, and coarse the execution, of the relics of the period which preceded the transition state of the stage, there can be no doubt that these had their ruder predecessors,-dumb shows, with here and there explanatory rhymes, adapted to the same gross popular taste that had so long delighted in the Mysteries and Moralities which even still held a divided empire. The growing love of the people for "the storial shows," as Laneham calls the Coventry play of Hock Tuesday,' was the natural result of the active and inquiring spirit of the age. There were many who went to the theatre to be instructed. In the prologue to 'Henry VIII.' we find that this great source of the popularity of the early Histories was still active :

• Such as give

Their money out of hope they may believe, May here find truth too.'

Heywood, in his Apology for Actors,' thus writes in 1612:— "Plays have made the ignorant more apprehensive, taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of our English Chronicles: and what man have you now of that weak capacity that cannot discourse of any notable thing recorded even from William the Conqueror, nay, from the landing of Brute, until this day, being possessed of their true use?" There is a tradition reported by Gildon, (which Warton believes, though Malone pronounces it to be a fiction,) that Shakspere, in a conversation with Ben Jonson upon the subject of his historical plays, said that, "finding the nation generally very ignorant of history, he wrote them in order to instruct the people in that particular." It is not necessary that we should credit or discredit this anecdote to come to the conclusion that, when Shakspere first became personally interested in providing entertainment and instruction for the people, there was a great demand already existing for that species of drama, which subsequently became important enough to constitute a class apart from Tragedy or Comedy. Our belief is that he was the first who saw the possibility of conducting this species of entertainment with dramatic skill-with integrity, if not unity, of action-with action interrupted indeed by the succession of events, but not dissevered-with force and consistency of character with spirited dialogue and harmonious versification.

Looking at all the circumstances, we are inclined to believe that the First Part of Henry VI.' was Shakspere's earliest dramatic production;--and in the Essay above mentioned we have stated our reasons for that belief. They bear somewhat on the poet's early life; and we may therefore not improperly reprint, in an abridged form, that short portion of the Essay.

When William Shakspere was about five years of age a grant of arms was made by the College of Heralds to his father. This is the grant to which we have already alluded. It is not difficult to imagine the youthful Shakspere sitting at his mother's feet to listen to the tale of his "antecessor's" prowess; or to picture the boy led by his father over the field of Bosworth,-to be shown the great morass which lay between both armies, and Radmoor Plain, where the battle began, and Dickon's Nook, where the tyrant harangued his army,-and the village of Dadlington, where the graves of the slain still indented the ground. Here was the scene of his antecessor's "faithful and approved service." In the humble house of Shakspere's boyhood there was, in all probability, to be found a thick squat folio volume, then some thirty years printed, in which might be read, "what misery, what murder, and what execrable plagues this famous region hath suffered by the division and dissention of the renowned houses of Lancaster and York." This, to the generation of Shakspere's boyhood, was not a tale buried in the dust of ages; it was one whose traditions were familiar to the humblest of the land, whilst the memory of its bitter hatreds still ruffled the spirits of the highest. "For what nobleman liveth at this day, or what gentleman of any ancient stock or progeny is clear, whose lineage hath not been infested and plagued with this unnatural division ?" In that old volume from which we quote, "the names of the histories contained" are thus set forth I. The Unquiet Time of King Henry the Fourth. II. The Victorious Acts of King Henry the Fifth.' III. The Troublous Season of King Henry the Sixth.' IV. The Prosperous Reign of King Edward the Fourth.' V. The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth.' VI. 'The Tragical Doings of King Richard the Third.' VII. The Politic Governance of King Henry the Seventh.' VIII. The Triumphant Reign of King Henry the Eighth. This book was Hall's Cronicle.' How diligently the young man Shakspere had studied the book, and how carefully he has followed it in four of his chronicle histories,* there are abundant examples. The three Parts of Henry VI., and Richard III.

:

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With the local and family associations, then, that must have belonged to his early years, the subject of these four dramas, or rather the subject of this one great drama in four parts, must have irresistibly presented itself to the mind of Shakspere, as one which he was especially qualified to throw into the form of a chronicle history. It was a task peculiarly fitted for the young poet during the first five years of his connexion with the theatre. Historical dramas, in the rudest form, presented unequalled attractions to the audiences who flocked to the rising stage. Without any undue reliance on his own powers, he might believe that he could produce something more worthily attractive than the rude dialogue which ushered in the "four swords and a buckler" of the old stage. He had not here to invent a plot; or to aim at the unity of action, of time, and of place, which the more refined critics of his day held to be essential to tragedy. The form of a chronicle history might appear to require little beyond a poetical exposition of the most attractive facts of the real Chronicles. It is in this spirit, we think, that Shakspere approached the execution of the First Part of Henry VI. It appears to us, also, that in that very early performance he in some degree held his genius in subordination to the necessity of executing his task, rather with reference to the character of his audience and the general nature of his subject than for the fulfilment of his own aspirations as a poet. There was before him one of two courses. He might have chosen, as the greater number of his contemporaries chose, to consider the dominions of poetry and of common sense to be far sundered; and, unconscious or doubtful of the force of simplicity, he might have resolved, with them, to substitute what would more unquestionably gratify a rude popular taste,-the force of extravagance. On the other hand, it was open to him to transfer to the dramatic shape the spirit-stirring recitals of the old chronicle writers; in whose narratives, and especially in that portion of them in which they make their characters speak, there is a manly and straightforward earnestness which in itself not seldom becomes poetical. Shakspere chose this latter course. When we begin to study the Henry VI.,' we find in the First Part that the action does not appear to progress to a

catastrophe: that the author lingers about the details, as one who was called upon to exhibit an entire series of events rather than the most dramatic portions of them ;-there are the alternations of success and loss, and loss and success, till we somewhat doubt to which side to assign the victory. The characters are firmly drawn, but without any very subtle distinctions,-and their sentiments and actions appear occasionally inconsistent, or at any rate not guided by a determined purpose in the writer. It is easy to perceive that this mode of dealing with a complicated subject was the most natural and obvious to be adopted by an unpractised poet, who was working without models. But although the effect may be, to a certain extent, undramatic, there is impressed upon the whole performance a wonderful air of truth. Much of this must have resulted from the extraordinary quality of the poet's mind, which could tear off all the flimsy conventional disguises of individual character, and penetrate the real moving principle of events with a rare acuteness, and a rarer impartiality. The wonderful thing about the First Part of Henry VI.' is, that these men, who stood in the same relation of time to Shakspere's age as the men of Aune do to ours, should have been painted with a pencil at once so vigorous and so true. The English Chroniclers, in all that regards the delineation of characters and manners, give us abundant materials upon which we may form an estimate of actions, and motives, and instruments; but they do not show us the instruments moving in their own forms of vitality; they do not lay bare their motives; and hence we have no real key to their actions. Froissart is, perhaps, the only contemporary writer who gives us real portraits of the men of mail. But Shakspere marshalled them upon his stage, in all their rude might, their coarse ambition, their low jealousies, their factious hatreds,mixed up with their thirst for glory, their indomitable courage, their warm friendships, their tender natural affections, their love of country. They move over his scene, displaying alike their grandeur and their littleness. He arrays them, equally indifferent whether their faults or their excellences be most prominent. This is the truth which Shakspere substituted for the vague delineations of the old stage.

"Where be the sweet delights of learning's treasure,

That wont with comic sock to beautify

The painted theatres, and fill with pleasure
The listeners' eyes, and ears with melody;
In which I late was wont to reign as queen,
And mask in mirth with graces well beseen?
O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee,
Which wont to be the glory of gay wits,
Is lay'd a-bed, and nowhere now to see;
And in her room unseemly Sorrow sits,
With hollow brows and grissly countenance,
Marring my joyous gentle dalliance.
And him beside sits ugly Barbarism,
And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late

Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm,

Where being bred, he light and heaven does hate;
They in the minds of men now tyrannize,
And the fair scene with rudeness foul disguise.

All places they with folly have possess'd,
And with vain toys the vulgar entertain;
But me have banished, with all the rest
That whilom wont to wait upon my train,
Fine Counterfesance, and unhurtful Sport,
Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort."

It can scarcely be affirmed that this poem was written in 1591, as well as published. Spenser was in England in 1590-1, having returned from Ireland with Raleigh, where he had composed the first three books of 'The Fairy Queen' by the side of Mulla's stream, which flowed near the old Castle of Doneraile, where he dwelt amidst his grants of forfeited lands. In 1590 he published these three first books of his great poem. But in the collection in which The Tears of the Muses'

appears, the publisher, who was also the publisher of "The

6

Fairy Queen,' says that, "finding that that poem had found a favourable passage among all gentle readers," he "collected such small poems of the author as were dispersed abroad in sundry hands." It is likely that The Tears of the Muses' was written in 1590, and that Spenser described the prevailing state of the drama in London during the time of his visit. But we have tolerable evidence that the performances of the company at the Blackfriars Theatre, of which Shakspere was then a shareholder, were exceptions to the character of the general performances. In 1579 the actors at that theatre, then called the players of the Earl of Leicester, had a protection granted to them, that they should "be not restrained nor in any wise molested in the exercise of their quality, so that they may be enabled the better to perform before her Majesty for her solace and recreation." Under this sort of encouragement, the company to which Shakspere belonged had greatly flourished. But there were several other theatres in London. In some of these their licence to entertain the people was abused by the introduction of matters connected with religion and politics; so that in 1589 Lord Burghley not only directed the Lord Mayor to inquire what companies of players had offended, but a commission was appointed for the same purpose. How Shakspere's company proceeded during this inquiry has been made out most clearly by the valuable document discovered at Bridgewater House by Mr. Collier, wherein they disclaim to have conducted themselves amiss. They are now, it will be seen, "Her Majesty's poor players." The paper, which is as follows, is a petition to the Privy Council:

"These are to certify your Right Honourable Lordships that her Majesty's poor players, James Burbadge, Richard Burbadge, John Laneham, Thomas Greene, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, Anth. Wadeson, Thomas Pope, George Peele, Augustine Phillips, Nicholas Towley, William Shakespeare, William

OF KNOWLEDGE.]

C

Kempe, William Johnson, Baptiste Goodale, and Robert Armyn, being all of them sharers in the Black Fryers playhouse, have never given cause of displeasure in that they have brought into their plays matters of state and religion, unfit to be handled by them or to be presented before lewd spectators; neither hath any complaint in that kind ever been preferred against them or any of them. Wherefore they trust most humbly in your Lordships' consideration of their former good behaviour, being at all times ready and willing to yield obedience to any command whatsoever your Lordships in your wisdom may think in such case meet, &c.

"November, 1589."

Here, then, Shakspere, a sharer in the theatre, but with others below him in the list, says, and they all say, that "they have never brought into their plays matters of state and religion." The public mind in 1589-90 was furiously agitated by "matters of state and religion." A controversy was going on which is now known as that of Martin Marprelate, in which the constitution and discipline of the Church were most furiously attacked in a succession of pamphlets; and they were defended with equal violence and scurrility. Isaac Walton says, "There was not only one Martin Marprelate, but other venomous books daily printed and dispersed,-books that were so absurd and scurrilous, that the graver divines disdained them an answer." Walton adds,-" And yet these were grown into high esteem with the common people, till Tom Nashe appeared against them all, who was a man of a sharp wit, and the master of a scoffing, satirical, merry pen." Connected with this controversy, there was subsequently a more personal one between Nashe and Gabriel Harvey; but they were each engaged in the Marprelate dispute. Nashe was a writer for the theatre, and so was John Lyly, the author of one of the most remarkable pamphlets produced on this occasion, called, Pap with a Hatchet.' Harvey, it must be observed, was the intimate friend of Spenser; and in a pamphlet which he dates from Trinity Hall, November 5, 1589, he thus attacks the author of 'Pap with a Hatchet,' the more celebrated Euphuist, whom Sir Walter Scott's novel has made familiar to us :

"I am threatened with a bable, and Martin menaced with a comedy-a fit motion for a jester and a player to try what may be done by employment of his faculty. Bables and comedies are parlous fellows to decipher and discourage men (that is the point) with their witty flouts and learned jerks, enough to lash any man out of countenance. Nay, if you shake the painted scabbard at me, I have done; and all you that tender the preservation of your good names were best to please Pap-Hatchet, and fee Euphues betimes, for fear lest he be moved, or some one of his apes hired, to make a play of you, and then is your credit quite undone for ever and ever. Such is the public reputation of their plays. He must needs be discouraged whom they decipher. Better anger an hundred other than two such that have the stage at commandment, and can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure."

The "bable" is the fool's bauble. We thus see that Har

vey, the friend of Spenser, is threatened by one of those who "have the stage at commandment" with having a play made of him. Such plays were made in 1589, and Nashe thus boasts of them in one of his tracts printed in 1589:-" Methought Vetus Comoedia began to prick him at London in the right vein, when he brought forth Divinity with a scratched face, holding of her heart as if she were sick, because Martin would have forced her; but missing of his purpose, he left the print of his nails upon her cheeeks, and poisoned her with a vomit, which he ministered unto her to make her cast up her dignities." Lyly, taking the same side, writes,-"Would those comedies might be allowed to be played that are penned, and then I am sure he [Martin Marprelate] would be deciphered, and so perhaps discouraged." Here are the very words which Harvey has repeated,"He must needs be discouraged whom they decipher." Harvey, in a subsequent passage of the same tract,

*Pierce's Supererogation.' Reprinted in 'Archaica,' p. 137.

refers to this prostitution of the stage to party purposes in very striking words:-"The stately tragedy scorneth the trifling comedy, and the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism." These circumstances appear to us very remarkable, with reference to the state of the drama about 1590; and we hope that we do not attach any undue importance to them from the consideration that we are now the first to point out their intimate relation with Spenser's 'Tears of the Muses,' and the light which, as it appears to us, that poem thus viewed throws upon the dramatic career of Shakspere.

The four stanzas which we have quoted from Spenser are descriptive, as we think, of a period of the drama when it had emerged from the semi-barbarism by which it was characterised, “from the commencement of Shakspere's boyhood, till about the earliest date at which his removal to London can be possibly fixed."* This description has nothing in common with those accounts of the drama which have reference to this "semi-barbarism." Nor does the writer of it belong to the school which considered a violation of the unities of time and place as the great defect of the English theatre. Nor does he assert his preference of the classic school over the romantic, by objecting, as Sir Philip Sidney objects, that "plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies mingling kings and clowns." There had been, according to Spenser, a state of the drama that would

"Fill with pleasure

The listeners' eyes, and cars with melody.”

Can any comedy be named, if we assume that Shakspere had, in 1590, not written any, which could be celebrated-and by the exquisite versifier of the Fairy Queen'-for its "melody"? Could any also be praised for

"That goodly glee

Which wont to be the glory of gay wits"?

Could the plays before Shakspere be described by the most competent of judges-the most poetical mind of that age next to Shakspere-as abounding in

"Fine counterfesance, and unhurtful sport,

Delight, and laughter, deck'd in seemly sort"

We have not seen such a comedy, except some three or four of Shakspere's, which could have existed before 1590; we do not believe there is such a comedy from any other pen. What, according to the Complaint of Thalia,' has banished such comedy? "Unseemly Sorrow," it appears, has been fashionable;-not the proprieties of tragedy, but a Sorrow

6

"With hollow brows and grissly countenance ;"

the violent scenes of blood which were offered for the excitement of the multitude, before the tragedy of real art was devised. But this state of the drama is shortly passed over. There is something more defined. By the side of this false tragic sit "ugly Barbarism and brutish Ignorance." These are not the barbarism and ignorance of the old stage;—they are "Yerept of late

Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm." They "now tyrannize;" they now "disguise" the fair scene "with rudeness." This description was published in 1591; it was probably written in 1590. The Muse of Tragedy, Melpomene, had previously described the "rueful spectacles" of "the stage." It was a stage which had no "true tragedy." But it had possessed

"Delight, and laughter, deck'd in seemly sort." Now "the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism." The words of Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser agree in this. The bravos that "have the stage at commandment can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure," says Harvey. This describes the Vetus Comœdia-the old comedy-of which Nashe boasts; and Mr. Collier tells us that the expression Vetus Comadia shows that such a scurrilous performance as Nashe glories in was "evidently in the nature of an old Moral, not partaking of the improvements which, in 1589, had been introduced into dramatic poetry."† Can there be any doubt that Spenser had this state of things in view when he denounced the * Edinburgh Review '-previously quoted.