slaughter-house and the marriage he composed
a quatrain. This quatrain, directed against the
neighboring villages, is his maiden effort in poetry.
He there says that Hillborough is illustrious for its
ghosts, and Bidford for its drunkards. He made
this quatrain (being tipsy himself) in the open
air, under an apple-tree still celebrated in the
country in consequence of this midsummer-night's
dream. In this night and in this dream, where
there were lads and lasses, in this drunken fit
and under this apple-tree, he discovered that Anne
Hathaway was a pretty girl.^ The wedding fol-
lowed. He espoused this Anne Hathaway, older
than himself by eight years, had a daughter by her,
then twins, boy and girl, and left her; and this
wife disappears from Shakespeare's life, to reappear
only in his will, where he leaves her his second-best
bed, " having probably," says a biographer, " em-
ployed the best one with others." Shakespeare,
like La Fontaine, did but sip at married life. His
wife being put aside, he was a schoolmaster, then
clerk to an attorney, then a poacher. This poach-
ing was made use of later to justify the statement
1 For the story, which Victor Hugo has, after his fashion, very
much improved upon, see Halliwell-Phillipps's ' Outlines of the
Life of Shakespeare,' 3d ed., pp. 205, 206, and the accompanying
" illustrative notes," pp. 354-359- The quatrain referred to runs
as follows : ā
" Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborougli, Hungrj' Grafton,
Dadgeing EjLhall, Papist Wicksford,
Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford." ā Tk.
12 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
that Shakespeare had been a thief. One day he
was caught poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park.
They threw him into prison ; they began proceed-
ings. These being spitefully followed up, he saved
himself by flight to London. In order to gain a
livelihood, he began by holding horses at the doors
of theatres. Plautus had turned a millstone. This
business of holding horses at the doors still existed
at London in the last century, and it brought to-
gether a kind of small band or corps that they
called " Shakespeare's boys."
3. You may call London the black Babylon ā
gloomy by day, magnificent by night. To see
London is a sensation; it is uproar under smoke
ā mysterious analogy: uproar is the smoke of
noise. Paris is the capital of one side of hu"
manity; London is the capital of the opposite;
side. Splendid and melancholy town ! There
activity is tumult, and the people swarm like
ants. One is free there, and yet confined. Lon-
don is an orderly chaos. The London of the
sixteenth century did not resemble the London
of our day ; but it was already an immense town.
Cheapside was the main street; St. Paul's, now a
dome, was then a spire. The plague was nearly
as much at home in London as in Constantinople.
There was not, in fact, much difference between
Henry VIIL and a sultan. Fires (as in Constanti-
nople, again) were frequent in London, on account
of the populous parts of the town being built
entirely of wood. In the streets there was but
one carriage, ā the carriage of her Majesty; not
a cross-road where they did not cudgel some.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 13
pickpocket with the flail,^ which is still retained
at Groningen for thrashing wheat. Manners were
rough, almost savage; a fine lady rose at six,
and went to bed at nine. Lady Geraldine Kildare,
to whom Lord Surrey inscribed verses, break-
fasted off a pound of bacon and a pot of beer.
Queens ā the wives of Henry VIIL ā knitted
mittens, and did not even object to their being
of coarse red wool. In this London the Duchess
of Suffolk took care of her hen-house, and, with
her dress tucked up to her knees, threw corn
to the ducks in the court below. To dine at
midday was to dine late. It was the delight of
the upper classes to go and play at " hot cockles "
at my Lord Leicester's. Anne Boleyn played
there; she knelt down, with eyes bandaged, for
this game, without knowing that she was rehears-
ing for a play of a different kind upon the scaffold.
This same Anne Boleyn, destined for the throne,
whence she was to go still farther, was perfectly
dazzled when her mother bought her three linen
chemises, at sixpence the ell, and promised her,
for the Duke of Norfolk's ball, a pair of new shoes
worth five shillings.
4. Under Elizabeth, in spite of the wrath of
the Puritans, there were in London eight compa-
nies of actors, ā those of Newington Butts, Earl
Pembroke's company, Lord Strange's retainers,
the Lord Chamberlain's troop, the Lord High
Admiral's troop, the company of Blackfriars, the
children of St. Paul's, and, in the first rank, the
^ A purely conjectural translation, Victor Hugo's word being
" drotschbloch." ā Tr.
14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Bear-baiters. Lord Southampton went to the play
every evening. Nearly all the theatres were situ-
ated on the banks of the Thames, ā a fact which
increased the number of watermen. The play-
rooms were of two kinds : some merely open
tavern-yards, a platform set up against a wall,
no ceiling, rows of benches placed on the ground,
for boxes the windows of the tavern. The per-
formance took place in the broad daylight and
in the open air. The principal of these theatres
was the Globe. The others, which were mostly
closed play-rooms, lighted with lamps, were used
at night, the most frequented being Blackfriars.
The best actor of Lord Pembroke's troop was
named Henslowe ; the best actor at Blackfriars
was Burbage. The Globe was situated on the
bank-side. This is known by a document at Sta-
tioners' Hall, dated the 26th of November, 1607:
" His Majesty's servants playing usually at the
Globe, on the Bank Side." The scenery was
simple. Two swords laid crosswise ā sometimes
two laths ā signified a battle; a shirt over the
coat signified a knight; a broom-handle draped
with the petticoat of the players' hostess signified
a palfrey caparisoned. A rich theatre, which made
its inventory in 1598, possessed "the limbs of
Moors, a dragon, a big horse with his legs, a
cage, a rock, four Turks' heads and that of old
Mahomet, a wheel for the siege of London, and
a hell's mouth." Another had " a sun, a target,
the three plumes of the Prince of Wales, with the
device Ick Dien, besides six devils, and the Pope
on his mule." An actor besmeared with plaster.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 5
and motionless, signified a wall ; if he spread his
fingers, it meant that the wall had crevices. A
man laden with a faggot, followed by a dog, and
carrying a lantern, meant the moon; his lantern
represented the moonshine. People have laughed
at this mise en sdne of moonlight, made famous
by the ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' without im-
agining that there is in it a gloomy suggestion
from Dante. (See ' The Inferno,' canto xx.) The
dressing-room of these theatres, where the actors
robed themselves pell-mell, was a corner separated
from the stage by a rag of some kind stretched on a
cord. The dressing-room at Blackfriars was shut off
by an ancient piece of tapestry which had belonged
to one of the guilds, and represented an ironmonger's
shop. Through the holes in this curtain, hanging in
tatters, the public saw the actors rouge their cheeks
with brick-dust, or make up their mustaches with a
cork burned at a candle-end. From time to time,
through an occasional opening of the curtain, you
might see a face begrimed as a Moor, peeping to
see if the time for going on the stage had arrived,
or the glabrous chin of an actor who was to play
the part of a woman. " Glabri histriones," said
Plautus. These theatres were frequented by no-
blemen, scholars, soldiers, and sailors. There was
acted Lord Buckhurst's tragedy, entitled ' Gor-
boduc, or Ferrex and Porrex;' Lyly's 'Mother
Bombie,' in which the cheep-cheep of sparrows was
heard ; ' The Libertine,' an imitation of the ' Con-
vivado de Piedra,' which was making the tour
of Europe; 'Felix and Philomena,' a fashionable
comedy performed for the first time at Greenwich
1 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
before "Queen Bess;" 'Promos and Cassandra,' a
comedy dedicated by the author, George Whetstone,
to WilHam Fleetwood, recorder of London ; ' Tamer-
lane ' and the ' Jew of Malta,' by Christopher Mar-
lowe ; farces and pieces by Robert Greene, George
Peele, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Kyd ; and lastly,
mediaeval comedies. For just as France has her
' I'Avocat Pathelin,' so England has her ' Gammer
Gurton's Needle,' While the actors gesticulated
and ranted, the noblemen and officers ā with their
plumes and bands of gold lace, standing or squat-
ting on the stage, turning their backs, haughty and
at their ease in the midst of the constrained actors
ā laughed, shouted, played at cards, threw them
at each other's heads, or played at " post and pair ; "
and below, in the darkness, on the pavement, among
pots of beer and pipes, the " stinkards," or ground-
lings, were dimly visible. It was by way of that
very theatre that Shakespeare entered upon the
dramatic career. From being a tender of horses,
he became a shepherd of men.
5. Such was the theatre in London about the
year 1580, under "the great Queen." It was not
much less wretched, a century later, at Paris, un-
der " the great King ; " and Moli^re, at his d^but,
had, like Shakespeare, to make shift with rather
miserable playhouses. There is in the archives of
the * Com6die Frangaise ' an unpublished manu-
script of four hundred pages, bound in parchment
and tied with a band of white leather. It is the
diary of Lagrange, a comrade of Moliere. La-
grange thus describes the theatre where Moli^re's
company played by order of Mr. Rataban, super-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 17
intendent of the King's buildings: "Three rafters,
the frames rotten and shored up, and half the room
roofless and in ruin." In another place, under date
of Sunday, the 15th of March, 1671, he says :
" The company have resolved to make a large ceil-
ing over the whole hall, which, up to the said date
(15th) has not been covered, save by a large blue
cloth suspended by cords." As for the lighting
and heating of this hall, particularly on the occa-
sion when such extraordinary sums were spent
upon the performance of * Psyche,' which was by
Moliere and Corneille, we read : " Candles, thirty
francs ; janitor for wood, three francs." This was
the style of playhouse which "the great King"
placed at the disposal of Moliere. These bounties
to literature did not impoverish Louis XIV. so
much as to deprive him of the pleasure of giving,
at one time, two hundred thousand livres to Lavar-
din, and the same to D'Epernon ; two hundred
thousand livres, besides the regiment of France, to
the Count de Medavid ; four hundred thousand
livres to the Bishop of Noyon, because this Bishop
was a Clermont-Tonnerre, a family that had two
patents of Count and Peer of France, one for Cler-
mont and one for Tonnerre ; five hundred thou-
sand livres to the Duke of Vivonne, seven hundred
thousand livres to the Duke of Quintin-Lorges,
and eight hundred thousand livres to Monseigneur
Clement of Bavaria, Prince-Bishop of Liege. Let
us add that he gave a thousand livres pension to
Moliere. We find in Lagrange's journal, in the
month of April, 1663, this remark : "About the
same time M. de Moliere received, as a great wit,
ā¢I 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
a pension from the King, and has been placed on
the civil list for the sum of a thousand livres."
Later, when Molifere was dead, and interred at St.
Joseph, " chapel of ease to the parish of St. Eus-
tache," the King pushed his patronage so far as to
permit his tomb to be " raised a foot out of the
ground."
6. Shakespeare, as we see, remained a long time
on the threshold of theatrical life, ā outside, rather,
and in the street. At length he entered. He
passed the door and got behind the scenes. He
succeeded in becoming call-boy, vulgarly, a " bark-
er." About 1586 Shakespeare was " barking " with
Greene at Blackfriars. In 1587 he gained a step.
In the piece called ' The Giant Agrapardo, King
of Nubia, worse than his late brother, Angulafer,'
Shakespeare was intrusted with the task of carry-
ing the turban to the giant. Then from supernu-
merary he became actor, ā thanks to Burbage, to
whom, long after, by an interlineation in his will,
he left thirty-six shillings to buy a gold ring. He
was the friend of Condell and Hemynge, ā his
comrades while alive, his publishers after his death.
He was handsome : he had a high forehead, his
beard was brown, his manner was gentle, his mouth
pleasant, his eye profound. He took delight in
reading Montaigne, translated by Florio. He fre-
quented the Apollo Tavern, where he would see
and keep company with two frequenters of his
theatre, ā Decker, author of * The Gull's Horn-
book,' in which a chapter is specially devoted to
*' the way a man of fashion ought to behave at the
play," and Dr. Simon Forman, who has left a
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 9
manuscript journal containing reports of the first
performance of ' The Merchant of Venice ' and
' The Winter's Tale.' ^ He used to meet Sir
Walter Raleigh at the Mermaid Club. Somewhere
about that time Mathurin Regnier met Philippe de
Bethune at La Pomme de Pin. The great lords
and fine gentlemen of the day were rather prone
to lend their names in order to start new taverns.
At Paris the Vicomte de Montauban, who was a
Crequi, had founded Le tripot des onze mille Diables.
At Madrid the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the un-
fortunate admiral of the Invincible Armada, had
founded the Puno-en-rostro, and in London Sir
Walter Raleigh had founded the Mermaid. There
drunkenness and wit kept company.
7. In 1589, while James VI. of Scotland, look-
ing to the throne of England, was paying his re-
spects to Elizabeth, who, two years before, on the
8th of February, 1587, had beheaded Mary Stuart,
mother of this James, Shakespeare composed his
first drama, 'Pericles' [1608].^ In 1591, while
the Catholic King was dreaming, after a scheme of
the Marquis d'Astorga, of a second Armada, more
lucky than the first, inasmuch as it was never
1 Inexact ; nothing is known of the first representation of ' The
Merchant of Venice.' Dr. Forman records representations of but
three plays, ā 'Macbeth,' 'Cymbeline,' and 'The Winter's Tale;'
and it does not appear that these were first representations. ā Tr.
"^ As the chronology of the plays here given is very different
from that accepted at present, the translator has inserted, in
brackets, after the name of each play, the dates found in Dow-
den's ' Shakspere Primer.' To that excellent little book the un-
initiated reader is referred for a general correction of Hugo's
biography of Shakespeare, which is to some extent legendary or
fabulous. ā Tr.
20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
launched, he composed 'Henry VI.' In 1593,
when the Jesuits obtained from the Pope express
permission to paint "the pains and torments of
hell" on the walls of "the chamber of meditation"
of Clermont College, where they often shut up a
poor youth who, the year after, became famous
under the name of Jean Chatel, he composed ' The
Taming of the Shrew' [1594-97 ?]. In 1594,
when, looking daggers at each other, and ready for
battle, the King of Spain, the Queen of England,
and even the King of France, all three were saying
" my good city of Paris," he continued and com-
pleted 'Henry VI.' [1591-92]. In 1595, while
Clement VIII. at Rome was solemnly striking
Henry IV. with his crosier over the backs of Car-
dinals du Perron and d'Ossat, he wrote ' Timon of
Athens' [1607-8]. In 1596, the year when Eliz-
abeth published an edict against the long points
of bucklers, and when Philip II. drove from his
presence a woman who had laughed while blowing
her nose, he composed ' Macbeth ' [1606]. In
1597, when this same Philip II. said to the Duke
of Alva, " You deserve the axe," not because the
Duke of Alva had put the Low Countries to fire
and sword, but because he had entered the King's
presence without being announced,^ he composed
'CymbeHne' [1609] and 'Richard III.' [1593].
In 1 598, when the Earl of Essex ravaged Ireland,
wearing on his hat the glove of the Virgin Queen
1 The Duke of Alva who put the Netherlands to fire and
sword died in 1582. His memory may therefore be relieved of
the stain of having entered the King's presence unannounced in
1597ā Tr.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 21
Elizabeth, he composed ' The Two Gentlemen of
Verona' [1592-93], * King John ' [1595], ' Love's
Labor's Lost' [1590], 'The Comedy of Errors'
[1591], 'All's Well that Ends Well' [1601-2],
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' [1593-94], and
'The Merchant of Venice' [1596]. In 1599,
when the Privy Council, at her Majesty's request,
deliberated on the proposal to put Dr. Hayward to
the rack for having stolen some of the ideas of
Tacitus, he composed * Romeo and Juliet ' [two
dates: 1591, 1596-97?]. In 1600, while the Em-
peror Rudolph was waging war against his rebel
brother, and sentencing his son, murderer of a
woman, to be bled to death, he composed * As
You Like It' [1599], 'Henry IV.' [1597-98],
'Henry V.' [1599], and 'Much Ado About No-
thing' [1598]. In 1601, when Bacon published
the eulogy on the execution of the Earl of Essex,^
just as Leibnitz, eighty years afterwards, was to
find out good reasons for the murder of Monaldes-
chi (with this difference, however, that Monaldeschi
was nothing to Leibnitz, and that Essex had been
the benefactor of Bacon), he composed ' Twelfth
Night ; or. What you Will' [1600-1]. In 1602,
while, in obedience to the Pope, the King of
France, styled by Cardinal-nephew Aldobrandini
" The Fox of Beam," was counting his beads every
day, reciting the litanies on Wednesday, and the
^ The author here confuses two works, ā the 'Declaration of
the Practices and Treasons of Essex' (1601), in which Bacon's
part was little more than that of amanuensis to the Government,
and his ' Apology in Certain Imputations concerning the Late
Earl of Essex' (1604) ā Tr.
22 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
rosary of the Virgin Mary on Saturday ; while
fifteen cardinals, assisted by the heads of the Or-
ders, were opening- the discussion on Molinism at
Rome ; and while the Holy See, at the request of
the Crown of Spain, was " saving Christianity and
the world " by the institution of the congregation
de Auxiliis, ā he composed 'Othello' [1604]. In
1603, when the death of Elizabeth made Henry
IV. say, " she was a virgin just as I am a Catholic,"
he composed 'Hamlet' [1602]. In 1604, while
Philip III. was losing his last footing in the Low
Countries, he wrote 'Julius Caesar' [1601] and
'Measure for Measure' [1603]. In 1604, at the
time when James I. of England, the former James
VI. of Scotland, wrote against Bellarmin the ' Tor-
tura Torti,' and, faithless to Carr, began to smile
upon Villiers, who was afterwards to honor him
with the title of " Your Piggishness," he composed
* Coriolanus ' [1608]. In 1607, when the Univer-
sity of York received the little Prince of Wales as
doctor, according to the account of Father St. Ro-
muald, " with all the ceremonies and the usual fur
gowns," he wrote ' King Lear ' [1605-6]. In 1609,
while the magistracy of France, placing the scaf-
fold at the disposition of the King, gave upon trust
a carte blanche for the sentence of the Prince of
Cond6 " to such punishment as it might please his
Majesty to order," Shakespeare composed ' Troi-
lus and Cressida ' [1603? revised 1607?]. In
1 6 10, when Ravaillac assassinated Henry IV. by
the dagger, and the French Parliament assassinated
Ravaillac by the process of quartering his body,
Shakespeare composed ' Antony and Cleopatra '
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 23
[1607], In 161 1, while the Moors, driven out by
Philip III., were crawHng out of Spain in the pangs
of death, he wrote ' The Winter's Tale ' [1610-1 1],
'Henry VIII. ' [1612-13], and 'The Tempest'
[1610].
8. He used to write on loose scraps of paper, ā
like nearly all poets, for that matter. Malherbe and
Boileau are almost the only ones who have written
on sheets folded and stitched. Racan said to Mile,
de Gournay, " I have this morning seen M. de Mal-
herbe sewing with coarse gray thread a fascicle of
white paper, on which will soon appear some son-
nets." Each of Shakespeare's dramas, composed
according to the wants of his company, was in all
probability learned and rehearsed in haste by the
actors from the original itself, as they had not time
to copy it; hence in his case, as in Moliere's, the
dismemberment and loss of manuscripts. There
were few or no entry books in those almost itine-
rant theatres; no coincidence in time between
representation and publication of the plays ; some-
times not even a printed copy, the stage remaining
the sole medium of publication. When the pieces
by chance are printed, they bear titles which bewil-
der us. The second part of ' Henry VI.' is entitled
* The First Part of the Contention betu^een York
and Lancaster.' The third part is called ' The True
Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York.'^ All this
enables us to understand why so much obscurity
rests on the dates when Shakespeare composed his
dramas, and why it is difficult to fix them with
^ The plays thus entitled are older ones, of which ' Henry VI.'
Parts II. and III. are recasts. ā Tr.
24 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
precision. The dates which we have just given ā
here brought together for the first time ā are pretty
nearly certain; notwithstanding some doubt still
exists as to the years when were written, or even
played, * Timon of Athens,' ' Cymbeline,' ' Julius
Csesar,' * Antony and Cleopatra,' * Coriolanus,' and
' Macbeth.' Here and there we meet with barren
years ; others there are of which the fertility seems
excessive. It is, for instance, on a simple note by
Meres, the author of ' The Wit's Treasury,' that
we are compelled to attribute to the year 1 598 the
creation of six pieces, ā * The Two Gentlemen of
Verona,' * The Comedy of Errors,' ' King John,'
* Midsummer Night's Dream,' ' The Merchant of
Venice,' and 'All's Well that Ends Well,' which
Meres calls ' Love's Labour 's Won.' ^ The date of
* Henry VL' is fixed, for the First Part at least, by
an allusion which Nash makes to this play in ' Pierce
Penniless.' The year 1604 is given as that of
* Measure for Measure,' inasmuch as this piece was
played on St. Stephen's Day of that year, ā a circum-
stance of which Hemynge makes a special note ;
and the year 161 1 for ' Henry VHL,' inasmuch as
* Henry VHL' was played at the time of the burning
of the Globe Theatre.^ Various circumstances ā a
disagreement with his company, a whim of the Lord
Chamberlain ā sometimes compelled Shakespeare
1 Francis Meres published in 1598 his ' Palladis Tamia : Wit's
Treasury,' in which he enumerates not six but twelve of Shake-
speare's plays. This mention of course merely proves the exist-
ence of the plays in 1598 ; he does not state that any of them were
produced in that year. ā Tr.
2 This " most celebrated theatre the world has ever seen " was
destroyed by fire on Tuesday, June 29, 1613. ā Tr.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 2$
to change from one theatre to another. * The
Taming of the Shrew ' was played for the first time
in 1593, at Henslowe's theatre ;i 'Twelfth Night'
in 1601, at Middle Temple Hall; ' Othello ' in 1602,
at Harefield Castle.^ 'King Lear' was played at
Whitehall during Christmas (1607) before James I.^
Burbage created the part of Lear, Lord South-
ampton, recently set free from the Tower of Lon-
don, was present at this performance. This Lord
Southampton was an old frequenter of Blackfriars,
and Shakespeare, in 1589,* had dedicated the poem
of ' Venus and Adonis ' to him. Adonis was the
fashion at that time ; twenty-five years a^ter Shake-
speare, the Chevalier Marini wrote a poem on
Adonis which he dedicated to Louis XIII.
9. In 1597 Shakespeare lost his son, of whom
the only trace on earth is one line in the death-
register of the parish of Stratford-on-Avon : " 1597.
August 17. Hamnet. Filius William Shakespeare"
On the 6th of September, 1601, the poet's father,
John Shakespeare, died. He was now the head of
his company of actors. James I. had given him in
1607 the management of Blackfriars, and afterward
the privilege of the Globe. In 1613, the Princess
Elizabeth, daughter of James, and the Elector Pala-
tine, King of Bohemia, whose statue may be seen
in the ivy at the angle of a great tower at Heidel-
berg, came to the Globe to see ' The Tempest '
1 This must have been the older play, ' The Taming of a Shrew,'