Prospero betrays foibles which Shakespeare would not have put to his own account, and his confession that he lost his dukedom through seclusion from The Inscription on the grave of Sha' espe re's Daughter in Stratford Church affairs of State, "rapt in secret studies," is manifestly intended as a warning to James, whose family concerns are the veiled subject of the piece, and whose ideal of himself is faithfully reproduced in Prospero's character. As we have written elsewhere, "A wise, humane, pacific prince, gaining his "HENRY THE EIGHTH " 253 ends not by violence but by policy; devoted to far-off purposes which none but himself can realise, much less fathom; independent of counsellors, safely contemptuous of foes, and controlling all about him by his superior wisdom; keeping in the background till the decisive hour has struck, and then interfering effectually; devoted to lawful knowledge, but the sworn enemy of black magic-such was James in James's eyes, and such is Prospero.' Shakespeare's magic book, nevertheless, was not cast so deeply into the Henry sea that it could not upon occasion, like Timon's gold in Lucian, be fished up VIII." Two views of Shakespeare's Bust at Stratford-on-Avon Specially photographed to show the curious difference between the two profiles again. The metre of Henry VIII. alone would betoken a very late date, even if we did not know that it was in course of performance when, on June 29, 1613, the Globe Theatre was burned down. These metrical peculiarities are not all of one kind; some portions indicate beyond dispute the authorship of Fletcher, while the metre of other parts is fully consistent with the authorship of Shakespeare. That Shakespeare had a hand in it is certain from its appearance in the First Folio during Fletcher's lifetime. The editors must certainly have known who wrote the play that burned down their own theatre! The play is evidently a hasty piece of work, produced in response to a popular 1 Essays of an Ex-Librarian. demand, which can hardly have been unconnected with the great event of the day, the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. It was not, like The Tempest, designed for representation at Court, but was meant to symbolise by the marriage of Anne Boleyn, the general relief at the Princess having made a Protestant match, and not espoused a Roman Catholic prince, which correspondence among the State Papers shows to have been much apprehended. The expedition necessary that the drama might appear while the marriage was still a topic of universal interest would involve the co-operation of two dramatists, and Shakespeare, by Ben Jonson's testimony the most facile writer of his day, and lately a proprietor of the theatre where the play was to be acted, was of all men the most likely to be invoked to help Fletcher. The portions that may be most confidently ascribed to him are Act I., scene I; Act II., scenes 2 and 3; Act V., scene 1. All are worthy of him, if regarded as improvisations, as in fact they were. Fletcher also has written well; the fine speech of Cranmer at Elizabeth's christening brings the subject to the most satisfactory conclusion of which it admits, and would be received with enthusiasm by an audience remembering that Elizabeth was also the christian-name of the Princess whom the play was written to honour. The dramatists have shown tact in availing themselves to the utmost of Katharine's pathetic situation, without blackening King Henry, which would have ruined their design. The participation of Massinger has been suspected; but if he was, as generally believed, a Roman Catholic, he cannot well have co-operated in so Protestant a play. Shakespeare's If our view of the origin of Henry VIII. is correct, our last glimpse of last years Shakespeare as an author reveals him in the act of rendering a good-natured service to a fellow dramatist, an attitude entirely in keeping with his character. His remaining years were few, and the notices of him are few also. In March 1613 he bought a house in Blackfriars, which he immediately leased; in November 1614 he was in London on apparently local business; in February 1616 his daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney. The serene spirit of his latest plays coincides with the date of his residence at Stratford, and could not well have been his if he had not been living in the enjoyment of domestic tranquillity. He can hardly have felt any deep affection for the wife with whose society he had dispensed for so long, but continuous dispeace would hardly have escaped the Stratford gossips. The eccentric bequest to his wife of his second-best bed must have been explicable by some circumstance unknown to us. Could it have been Mrs. Shakespeare's marriagebed? The will which conveyed it, and at the same time gave evidence of his affection for his daughters and his remembrance of his old theatrical comrades, was executed on March 25, 1616. The testator declares himself to be then "in perfect health," but by April 23 he was no more. According to a tradition preserved by Ward, his death was occasioned by a fever contracted at a jovial meeting with Ben Jonson and Drayton. It may be doubted whether Ben was sufficiently well affected to Shake SHAKESPEARE'S DEATH AND BURIAL 255 speare and Drayton to come down to Warwickshire to drink with either of them.1 Monument On April 25 Shakespeare was interred in the parish church, and honoured Shakespeare's with a tomb in the chancel, not as a poet, but as an impropriator of tithes. Tomb and His grave was covered with a flat stone, bearing the inscription known to all, artless indeed, but adapted to the capacity of the sextons for whose admonition it was designed. But ere long, certainly by 1623, when it is mentioned by Leonard Digges, an elaborate monument, including the famous bust, was Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, The temper of Sophocles no less than his genius resembled Shakespeare's, 1 In the very year of Shakespeare's death Jonson ridiculed The Tempest and Henry V. in a prologue to Every Man in his Humour, not in the first edition. His professed eulogium on Drayton appears to us a thinly disguised satire. but, instead of the expected Sophoclem, we get Socratem at the expense of a false quantity. One is led to suspect that the writer disapproved of plays, in which case he may well have been Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, a Latin scholar with Puritan leanings. If so, we have testimony to the affection with which Shakespeare was regarded in his own family; further evinced by the bestowal of his surname as a christian-name upon the eldest son of his daughter Judith, born in the November succeeding his death. The English lines upon the monument were probably composed by some friend in London. Space forbids our attempting any survey of Shakespeare's literary or intellectual character. Inexhaustible themes for discussion are afforded by his probable views on religion and politics, his obligations to predecessors and his relations to contemporaries, his appreciation in his own day and his influence on the after-world. The comparative fulness of the treatment which, nevertheless, we have been able to accord him, will not appear disproportionate when it is considered with what remoteness from all possible competition he stands forth as Britain's national poet. To remove any other great poet from our literature would be to lop off a limb from a many-branching tree, to remove Shakespeare would be to take the sun out of heaven. |