And in the praise thereof spends all his might To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame. The humblest as the proudest sail doth bear, On your broad main doth wilfully appear, The worst was this, my love was my decay! Marlowe might have written this justly of Shakespeare, but Shakespeare could not justly have written it of Marlowe, or any other contemporary poet; though the Rev. Alexander Dyce, in his edition of the Sonnets, believing them all to be by Shakespeare, suggests that the better spirit in Shakespeare's estimation was Spenser.' In the 82nd Sonnet, the sonneteer mentions the dedicated words which writers use of their fair subject,' and in the 83rd, in a burst of personal flattery-too gross for the taste of the present day, though not extraordinary in the age of Elizabeth-he asserts to his patron: 'Both your poets' could have been none other than Shakespeare and Marlowe. In the following sonnet, the 86th, the allusion to and praise of Shakespeare are palpable, and show how highly Marlowe, the generous and unenvious writer, he of the mighty line, as Ben Jonson rightly called him, admired and appreciated the superior genius : Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Bound for the prize of all too-precious you, Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor his compeers by night I was not sick of any fears from thence. The references to the 'spirits' who taught the spirit of the poet to write above a mortal pitch,' and to 'the affable familiar ghost,' are unintelligible in our day, though doubtless they were intelligible enough to the writer and receiver of the poem at the time at which it was written. That Shakespeare must have been intended, it is VOL. XVI.-No. 90. S impossible to disbelieve, whatever may have been the occult meaning of the allusions. Sonnets 37 and 89 point clearly to Marlowe. After the melancholy death of that unfortunate man of genius, in his thirtieth year, in a disgraceful brawl, in a tavern or worse place, about a prostitute, a ballad was sung in the streets of London called The Atheist's Tragedie, in which Marlowe was accused of denying God and the Trinity, and represented as lame.' A poet he was of repute And wrote full many a playe, He had also a player beene Upon the Curtaine stage, But brake his legge in one lewd scene There is no record or tradition that Shakespeare was 'lame,' or had broken his leg, though some commentators have believed that such were the facts on the sole authority of these sonnets. As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, I make my love engrafted to this store; So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give, That I in thy abundance am sufficed, And by a part of all thy glory live. Look what is best, that best I wish in thee; This wish I have; then ten times happy me. The 89th Sonnet has a further allusion to the lameness of the writer : Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt. Another allusion in The Atheist's Tragedie clearly supports the idea conveyed in this series of sonnets, that Marlowe was their author. Shakespeare, from the earliest period of his London career, was never in such pecuniary straits, or it may be said such destitution, as Marlowe notoriously was. Shakespeare was a respectable and substantial man, prosperous in his career from the beginning; Marlowe was what we call in our day a Bohemian, living from hand to mouth, subject to sudden fluctuations of fortune, and, in the words of the scurrilous ballad, 'sometimes in a silken suit,' now begging by the 6 way.' In Sonnet 37, the writer states that in the abundance of his patron he is sufficed, and in the 40th I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty. In the 112th Sonnet he speaks of the 'vulgar scandal' of which he was the object, and expresses his unconcern at it. For what care I who calls me well or ill, To know my shames and praises from your tongue. That many vulgar scandals were repeated against Marlowe is but too evident from contemporary literature; but that no similar aspersions were ever cast on the character of Shakespeare is equally certain. There were never any charges made against Shakespeare for his vices or his loose life; although there were a few envious charges made against him, by unsuccessful authors whose plays were presented to him as manager of a theatre, because he corrected their crude compositions and fitted them for representation, and by his masterly touches turned their common brass into gold by the wondrous alchemy of his genius; and got credit for the whole work, and not for the emendation only. But this was all. His moral character was absolutely unassailed; and even professional jealousy found him without a chink or flaw in the armour of his high and pure character. It was not so with the unfortunate Marlowe, one of whose contemporaries-the author of the Return from Parnassus-wrote of him and his genius: Pity it was that wit so ill should dwell, Wit sent from heaven, but vices sent from hell. Marlowe, who was unsuccessful, may have been discontented with the unprofitable vocation of a writer of plays-the successful Shakespeare had no reason to be so. Marlowe may have complained of his profession as an actor, more especially after his accident at the Curtain Theatre, which partially disqualified him; but Shakespeare was never disqualified from acting. Moreover, he did not need to be an actor, but acquired a competent, and even a handsome, fortune by his success as a manager and proprietor of theatres. For these and other reasons that might be cited, the unconnected sonnets scattered through the third series may well be ascribed to Marlowe, whose position they so faithfully portray, and not to Shakespeare, into whose character and circumstances they do not fit in the slightest respect. In this group of sonnets may be included several that seem to refer to the jealousy excited in the minds of inferior poets by the success of the greater dramatists of the time, in which Shakespeare must, and Marlowe may be, included. The attacks upon Marlowe and Shakespeare were led by a scurrilous dramatist of the day, named Robert Greene, an utter Bohemian of the most disreputable class, without a tithe of the genius or character of Marlowe, or without a tithe of the tithe either of the genius or the character of Shakespeare. Greene, shortly before his death-1593-wrote a tract, pamphlet, or libel, entitled A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, in which he disparaged and calumniated all who wrote plays, and especially held up Marlowe and Shakespeare to the reprobation of their contemporaries. He spoke of Shakespeare as having 'a tiger's head wrapt in a player's hide,' as a 'Johannes Factotum,' as a Shake-scene,' and as an upstart crowe;' and of Marlowe as 'a broacher of diabolical Atheism,' of the two as 'buckram gentlemen.' This pamphlet was afterwards published by Henry Chettle, another play-writer of inferior mark. Both Marlowe and Shakespeare very naturally took offence at Chettle's publication, and are reported to have been convinced that these attacks were not really written by Greene, but were the forgeries of Chettle, foisted by him into Greene's ill-written manuscript in copying it after the author's death. Chettle, however, denied the charge, and publicly regretted the imputations which Greene had made, and which he, Chettle, had allowed to be published. With neither of them (he said in the preface to Kind-Hart's Dream) was I acquainted, and with one of them (Marlowe) I care not if I never be. The other (Shakespeare) at that time I did not so much spare as I wish I had.... because myselfe have seene his demeanor, no less civil than he excellent in the qualitie he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art. Ben Jonson, afterwards the firm friend of Shakespeare, had at an early period of his career joined the pack of curs that were jealous of the great dramatist's success, so far surpassing theirs, and yelped at his heels- as is the fashion of curs-writing even more scurrilously than Greene had done, in his lines to A Poet Ape': Poor poet ape; that would be thought our chief, From brokage is become so bold a thief, As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it. He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own; The sluggish gaping auditor devours. He marks not, whose 'twas first, and after times May judge it to be his, as well as ours. Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece. There can be no doubt that when Ben Jonson, twenty years the junior of Shakespeare, wrote these lines, which he evidently meant to apply to Shakespeare, he was infected with the jealousy of the minor dramatists of his day, against one who was not alone their superior in poetry, but their master as an employer of poetic and dramatic labour, and that he spoke the feelings of the smaller fry. But he came to know Shakespeare better by-and-bye, recognised the superiority which, in his ignorance, he had decried, was his boon companion in many a joyous bout; and, after his death, wrote the wellknown and beautiful tribute to his memory which reflects honour alike on his head, his heart, and his repentance. That Shakespeare forgave the spiteful attack cannot be doubted, and that Ben Jonson was sincere in his recantation is equally certain, when, after Shakespeare's death, he addressed him as Soul of the age, The applause, delight, and wonder of the stage; and declared in the same poem that He was not for an age but for all time. In none of the sonnets in which Marlowe certainly, and Shakespeare possibly, appear to complain of slanders, do they appear to show enmity towards traducers. The great soul of Shakespeare, if not too great to express personal annoyance, was much too great to take vengeance or damn the ill-natured snarlers to immortal disgrace, as he might easily have done. The fourth group of the sonnets can only be claimed as Shakespeare's work on the supposition that these love-poems were written in an assumed character, and as exercises of his fancy, rather than the expression of his feelings, towards a real person or persons of the female sex. At what period, before their publication in 1609, they were written cannot be ascertained by internal evidence; but, whatever the period may have been, between the years 1586 and 1609, the writer, if he were Shakespeare, cannot have truly described himself as an old man. Taking the earliest date, he was only twenty-two, and at the latest no more than forty-five. The writer of Sonnet 62 says: But when my glass shows me myself indeed Shakespeare cannot have so written of himself; and again in Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn, What young man of twenty-two, or what middle-aged man of fortyfive, would, without hypocrisy, or scarcely veiled depreciation, so exaggerate his infirmity or his age? Two beautiful sonnets, numbered 73 and 74, describe the writing person and his thoughts :- |