WE have a distinct record when the theatres were re-opened after the plague. The Diary' of Philip Henslowe records that "the Earl of Sussex his men acted Huon of Bordeaux' on the 28th of December, 1593. Henslowe appears to have had an interest in this company. It is probable that Shakspere's theatre of the Blackfriars was opened about the same period. We have some evidence to show what was the duration of the winter season at this theatre; for the same diary shows that from June, 1594, the performances of the theatre 2 B2 371 at Newington Butts were a joint undertaking by the Lord Admiral's men and the Lord Chamberlain's men. How long this association of two companies lasted is not easy to determine; but during the month of June we have entries of the exhibition of Andronicus, of Hamlet, and of The Taming of a Shrew No subsequent entries exhibit the names of plays which have any real or apparent connection with Shakspere.* It appears that in December, 1593, Richard Burbage entered into a bond with Peter Streete, a carpenter, for the performance on the part of Burbage of the covenants contained in an indenture of agreement by which Streete undertook to erect a new theatre for Burbage's company. This was the famous Globe on the Bankside, of which Shakspere was unquestionably a proprietor. We thus see that in 1594 there were demands to be made upon his invention; and we may reasonably conclude that the reliance of Burbage and his other fellows upon their poet's unequalled powers was one of their principal inducements to engage in this new enterprise. new In the midst of his professional engagements, which doubtless were renewed with increased activity after their long suspension, Shakspere published his Rape of Lucrece. He had vowed to take advantage of all idle hours till he had honoured Lord Southampton with some graver labour than the first heir of his invention. The Venus and Adonis was entered in the Registers of the Stationers' Company on the 18th of April, 1593. The Lucrece appears in the same Registers on the 9th of May, 1594. That this elaborate poem was wholly or in part composed in that interval of leisure which resulted from the shutting of the theatres in 1593 may be reasonably conjectured; but it is evident that during the year which had elapsed between the publication of the first and the second poem, Shakspere had been brought into more intimate companionship with his noble patron. The language of the first dedication is that of distant respect, the second is that of grateful friendship : "To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield. "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness. Your Lordship's in all duty, "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.” Henry Wriothesly was born October 6th, 1573. His grandfather, the first Earl, was the celebrated Chancellor of Henry VIII., a fortunate statesman and lawyer, whose memory, however he was lauded by his contemporaries, is infamously associated with the barbarous cruelties of that age in the torture of the heroic Ann Askew. His son Henry, the second Earl, bred up by his father in the doctrines opposed to the Reformation, adhered with pertinacity to the old forms of religion, and was of course shut out from the honours and employ * See our Introductory Notice to Hamlet. ments of the government. He was unmolested, however, till his partisanship in the cause of Mary Queen of Scots occasioned his imprisonment in the Tower, in 1572. The house in which his father the Chancellor dwelt was also his London residence; and its site is still indicated by the name of Southampton Buildings. In Aggas's map the mansion appears to have been backed by extensive gardens. Gervase Markham, in his curious book, printed in 1624, entitled Honour in his Perfection; or, a Treatise in Commendation of the Vertues and Renowned Vertuous Vndertakings of the Illustrious and Heroicall Princes Henry Earle of Oxenford, Henry Earle of Southampton, Robert Earle of Essex, &c.,' thus describes the state with which the father of Shakspere's friend was surrounded :-"His muster-roll never consisted of four lackeys and a coachman, but of a whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen and yeomen; he was not known in the streets by guarded liveries, but by gold chains; not by painted butterflies, ever running as if some monster pursued them, but by tall goodly fellows, that kept a constant pace, both to guard his person and to admit any man to their lord which had serious business." The pomp with which he was encircled might in some degree have compensated for the absence of courtly splendour. But he lived not long to enjoy his solitary dignity, or, as was sufficiently probable, to conform to the opinions which might have opened to him the road to the honours of the crown. He died in 1581, leaving two children, Henry and Mary. The boy earl was only eight years old at the death of his father. During his long minority the accumulation of the family property must have been great and we may thus believe that the general munificence of his patronage in after-life has not been overrated. He appears to have had careful guardians, who taught him that there were higher honours to be won than those which his rank and wealth gave him. At the age of twelve he became a student of St. John's College, Cambridge; and four years afterwards took the degree of Master of Arts by the usual exercises.* He subsequently became, according to one account, a member of Gray's Inn. At the period when Shakspere dedicated to him his Venus and Adonis, he was scarcely twenty years of age. He is supposed to have become intimate with Shakspere from the circumstance that his mother had married Sir Thomas Heneage, who filled the office of Treasurer of the Chamber, and in the discharge of his official duties, would be brought into frequent intercourse with the Lord Chamberlain's players. This is Drake's theory. The more natural belief appears to be that he had a strong attachment to literature, and, with the generous impetuosity of his character, did not regard the distinctions of rank to the extent with which they were regarded by men of colder temperaments and more worldly minds. Shakspere appears to have been the first amongst the writers of his day that offered a public tribute to the merits of the young nobleman. Both the dedications, and especially that of Lucrece, are conceived in a modest and a manly spirit, entirely different from the ordinary language of literary adulation. Nash, who dedicates a little book to him "Cum prius disputasset publicè pro gradu."-Harleian MS. 7138. at the same period, after calling him "a dear lover and cherisher, as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves," gives us one of the many proofs that the characters of satirist and flatterer may have some affinity :-" Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit, both in heroic resolution and matters of conceit. Unreprievably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste paper which on the diamond rock of your judgment disasterly chanceth to be shipwracked." Gervase Markham, who many years after became the elaborate panegyrist of Southampton, dedicates a tragedy to him in the following sonnet, in 1595: "Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill, From graver subjects of thy grave assays, And when the stubborn stroke of my harsh song So shall my tragic lays be blest by thee, This hyperbolical praise is something different from Shakspere's simple expres- 4 was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time, and almost equal to that profuse generosity the present age has shown to French dancers and Italian. singers." This is one of the many instances in which we are not warranted in rejecting a tradition, however we may look suspiciously upon the accuracy of its details. D'Avenant could scarcely be very well acquainted with Shakspere's affairs, for he was only ten years old when Shakspere died. The sum mentioned as the gift of the young nobleman to the poet is so large, looking at the value of money in those days, that it could scarcely consist with the independence of a generous spirit to bear the load of such a prodigality of bounty. The notions of those days were, however, different from ours. Examples will readily suggest themselves of the most lavish rewards bestowed by princes and nobles upon great painters. They received such gifts without any compromise of their intellectual dignity. It was the same then with poets. The public, now the best patron, was then but a sorry paymaster; and the great stepped in to give the price for a dedication as they would purchase any other gratification of individual vanity. According to the habits of the time, Shakspere might have received a large gift from Lord Southampton, without any forfeiture of his self-respect. Nevertheless, Rowe's story must still appear sufficiently apocryphal : "My Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." It is not necessary to account for the gradual acquisition of property by Shakspere that we should yield our assent to this tradition, without some qualification. In 1589, when Lord Southampton was a lad at College, Shakspere had already acquired that property which was to be the foundation of his future fortune. He was then a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre. That the adventure was a prosperous one, not only to himself but to his brother shareholders, may be inferred from the fact that four years afterwards they began the building of another theatre. The Globe was commenced in December, 1593; and being constructed for the most part of wood, was ready to be opened, we should imagine, in the summer of 1594. In 1596 the same prosperous company were prepared to expend considerable sums upon the repair and extension of their original theatre, the Blackfriars. The name of Shakspere occupies a prominent position in the document from which we collect this fact it is a petition to the Lords of the Privy Council from "Thomas Pope, Richard Burbadge, John Hemings, Augustine Philips, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Slye, Nicholas Tooley, and others, servants to the Right Honorable the Lord Chamberlain to her Majesty;" and it sets forth that they are the owners and players of the private theatre in the Blackfriars ; that it hath fallen into decay; and that it has been found necessary to make the same more convenient for the entertainment of auditories coming thereto." Rowe's 'Life of Shakspeare.' |