on truth, the gift was made on the occasion of the pur-
chase of New Place in 1597; and it is probable that it
was larger than the sum required for that object, although
the amount named by Rowe must be an exaggeration.
Unless the general truth of the story be accepted, it is
difficult to believe that Shakespeare could have obtained,
so early in his career, the ample means he certainly pos-
sessed in that and the following year. The largest emolu-
ments that could have been derived from his professional
avocations would hardly have sufficed to have accomplished
such a result, and the necessity of forwarding continual
remittances to Stratford-on-Avon must not be overlooked.
It was not until the year 1597 that Shakespeare's public
reputation as a dramatist was sufficiently established for the
booksellers to be anxious to secure the copyright of his
plays. The first of his dramas so honored was the suc-
cessful and popular one of King Richard II, which was
entered as a tragedy on the books of the Stationers'
Company by Andrew Wise, a publisher in St. Paul's
Churchyard, on August 29, 1597. In the impression
heralded by this entry the deposition scene was omitted
for political reasons, objections having been made to its
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introduction on the public stage, and it was not inserted
by the pubHshers of the history until some years after the
accession of James. Considering the small space that it
occupies and its inoffensive character, the omission may
appear rather singular, but during the few years that
closed the eventful reign of Elizabeth, the subject of the
deposition of Richard II bore so close an analogy, in the
important respects of the wishes of those who desired a
repetition of a similar occurrence, it was an exceedingly
dangerous theme for the pen of contemporary writers.
One of the most popular subjects for the historical
drama at this period was the story of Richard III. A
piece on the events of this reign had been acted by the
Queen's Company in or before the month of June, 1594,
but there Is no evidence that this production was known
to the great dramatist. The earliest notice of Shake-
peare's play hitherto discovered is In an entry of it as
a tragedy on the books of the Stationers' Company in
October, 1597, and it was published by Wise in the same
year. The historical portions are to a certain extent
taken from More and Holinshed, but with an utter de-
fiance of chronology, the Imprisonment of Clarence, for
instance, preceding the funeral of Henry VI. There are,
also, slight traces of an older play to be observed, passages
which may belong to an inferior hand, and incidents, such
as that of the rising of the ghosts, suggested probably
by similar ones in a more ancient composition. That the
play of King Richard III, as we now have it, is essentially
Shakespeare's, cannot admit of a doubt; but as little can
it be questioned that to the circumstance of an anterior
work on the subject having been used do we owe some
of its weakness and excessively turbulent character. No
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SHAKESPEARE Life
copy of this older pla^' is known to exist, but one brief
speech and the two following lines have been accidentally
preserved — "My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is ta'en,
= And Banister is come for his reward" — from which it
is clear that the new dramatist did not hesitate to adopt
an occasional line from his predecessor, although he en-
tirely omitted the character of Banister. Both plays
must have been successful, for, notwithstanding the great
popularity of Shakespeare's, the more ancient one sus-
tained its ground on the English stage until the reign of
Charles I.
Uick Burbage, the celebrated actor, undertook the
character of Richard III, a part in which he was par-
ticularly celebrated. There was especially one telling
speech in this most fiery of tragedies, — "a horse ! a horse !
my kingdom for a horse !" — which was enunciated by him
with so much vigor and effect that the line became an
object for the imitation, and occasionally for the ridicule,
of contemporary w^riters. The speech made such an im-
pression on Marston that it appears in his works not
merely in its authentic form, but satirized and travestied
into such lines as, — "a man ! a man ! a kingdom for
a man" {Scourge of Villanie, ed. 1598) — "a boate,
a' boate, a boate, a full hundred markes for a boate"
(Eastzcmrd Hoe, 1605) — "a foole, a foole, a foole, my
coxcombe for a foole" (Parasitaster, 1606). Burbage
continued to enact the part of Richard until his death in
1619, and his supremacy in the character lingered for
many years in the recollection of the public ; so that
Bishop Corbet, writing in the reign of Charles I, and giv-
ing a description of the battle of Bosworth as narrated
to him on the field by a provincial tavern-keeper, tells us
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that, when the perspicuous guide — "would have said, King
Richard died, ^ And called, a horse ! a horse ! he Burbage
cried."
In the autumn of 1597, in the midst of the incipient
popularity of this animated drama, John and Mary
Shakespeare filed a bill in Chancery against Lambert for
the recovery of Asbies, a design that the poet must have
been very desirous of furthering to the utmost of his
ability. It is most likely that he furnished the means
for the prosecution of the suit, a course to which he
would have been impelled not merely from a knowledge
of the slender resources of his aged parents, but also from
his having, as his mother's heir, so large a prospective
interest in the success of the litigation. The acquisition
of the farm had now become a matter of special import-
ance. There were not merely the associations twining
around the possession of a family estate to stimulate a
desire for its restoration, but there was nearly at hand a
very large increase in its annual value through the ter-
mination of a lease under which all but the dwelling was
he'Jd from 1580 to 1601 at the inadequate rental of half
a quarter of wheat and half a quarter of barley. Our
knowledge of the course taken by the plaintiffs in further-
ance of their object is imperfect, Lambert, in his answer
to the above-mentioned bill, declaring that another one of
like import had been afterwards exhibited against him by
John Shakespeare in his individual capacity, and of this
independent action no explanatory records have been
discovered. The mere facts, however, of the last-named
suit having been instituted, and of John Shakespeare
having taken out two commissions under it for the
examination of witnesses, show that there was a tolerably
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SHAKESPEARE Life
well-furnished purse at his disposal, a circumstance which,
unless the expense were borne by the poet, is difficult to
reconcile with the plaintive appeal of his wife and himself
when they asked the Court to bear in mind that "the
sayde John Lamberte ys of greate wealthe and abilitie,
and well frended and alied amongest gentlemen and free-
holders of the countrey in the saide countie of Warwicke,
where he dwelleth, and your saide oratours are of small
wealthe, and verey fewe frends and alyance in the saide
countie." The terms of this sample of legal policy must
be attributed to the Counsel, but the facts, so far at least
as they affect the parents of the great dramatist, were
no doubt correctly stated. It appears that the suit was car-
ried on for very nearly two years, publication having been
granted in October, 1599, but, as no decree is recorded,
it is all but certain that either the plaintiffs retired from
the contest or that there was a compromise in favor of
the possession of the land by the defendants. Had it been
otherwise, something must have been afterwards heard of
the Shakespearean ownership of the estate.
Queen Elizabeth held her court at Whiteliall in the
Christmas holidays of 1597, and among the plays then
performed was, on December 26, the comedy of Love's
Labor's Lost, printed early in the following year, 1598,
under the title of, — A Pleasant Co-nceited Comedie called,
Loues labors lost. No record has been discovered of the
time at which this drama was first produced, but on the
present occasion it had been "newly corrected and aug-
mented," that Is to say, it had received some additions
and improvements from the hands of the author, but the
play itself had not been re-written. A few scraps of the
original version of the comedy have been accidentally pre-
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Life WILLIAM
ser\-ed, and are of extreme interest as distinctly exhibiting
Shakespeare's method of working in the revision of a play.
Thus, for example, the following three lines of the earlier
drama, —
"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire."
are thus gracefully expanded in the corrected version
which has so fortunately descended to us, —
"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes.
That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else none at all in ought proves excellent."
hcyve^s Labor's Lost is mentioned by Tofte and Meres
in 1598, and was no doubt successful on the stage, or other-
wise it would scarcely have been revised and published.
Burbage, at all events, had a high opinion of the comedy,
for when the company to which the author belonged
selected it for a contemplated representation before Queen
Anne of Denmark at Southampton House early in the
year 1605, he observed that it was one "which for wit and
mirth will please her exceedingly." That the great actor
correctly estimated its attractions may be gathered from
its being performed about the same time before the Court.
The Firt Part of Henry IV, the appearance of which
on the stage may be confidently assigned to the spring
of the year 1597, was followed immediately, or a few
months aftenvards, by the composition of the second part.
It is recorded that both these plays were very favorably re-
ceived by Elizabeth, the Queen especially relishing the
character of Falstaff, and they were most probably among
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SHAKESPEARE Life
the dramas represented before that sovereign in tlie
Christmas holidays of 1597-1598. At this time, or then
very recently, the renowned hero of the Boar's Head
Tavern liad been introduced as Sir John Oldcastle, but the
Queen ordered Shakespeare to alter the name of tlic
character. This step was taken in consequence of the
representations of some member or members of the Cob-
ham family, who had taken offense at their illustrious
ancestor, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the Protestant
martyr, being disparagingly introduced on the stage ; and,
accordingly, in or before the February of the following
year, Falstaff took the place of Oldcastle, the former being
probably one of the few names invented by Shakespeare.
The great dramatist himself, having nominally adopted
Oldcastle from a character who is one of Prince Henry's
profligate companions in a previous di'ama, a composition
which had been several years before the public, and had
not encountered effective remonstrance, could have had
no idea that his appropriation of the name would have
given so much displeasure. The subject, however, was
viewed by the Cobhams in a very serious light. This
is clearly shown, not merely by the action taken by the
Queen, but by the anxiety exhibited by Shakespeare, in
the epilogue to the second part, to place the matter
beyond all doubt by the explicit declaration that there
was in Falstaff no kind of association, satirical or other-
wise, with the martyred Oldcastle. The whole incident is
a testimony to the popularity of, and the importance at-
tached to, these dramas of Shakespeare's at their first
appearance, and it may be fairly questioned if any comedy
on the early English stage was more immediately or en-
thusiastically appreciated than was the First Part of Henry
105
Life WILLIAM
IV. Two editions of the latter play appeared in 1598,
and, in the same year, there were quoted from it passages
that had evidently already become familiar household words
in the mouths of the public. Strangely enough, however,
the earliest edition that bore the author's name on the title-
page was not published till the following year.
The inimitable humor of FaistafF was appreciated at
the Court as heartily as by the public. The Queen was
so taken with the delineation of that marvelous character
in the two parts of Henry IV, that she commanded Shake-
speare to write a third part in which the fat knight
should be exhibited as a victim to the power of love.
Sovereigiis in the olden time, especially one of Elizabeth's
temperament, would never have dreamed of consulting the
author as to the risk of the selected additional passion
not harmonizing with the original conception. Shake-
speare's business was to obey, not to indulge in what would
have been considered an insolent and unintelligible re-
monstrance. His intention of continuing the history of
the same Falstaff in a play on the subject of Henry V was,
therefore, abandoned, and thus we have, in the Merry
Wives of Windsor, a comedy in which some of the names
are adopted from the previous dramas, but the natures of
the characters to which those names are attached are
either modified or altogether transformed. The transient
allusions which bring the latter play into the historical
series are so trivial that they would appear to have been
introduced merely out of deference to the Queen's ex-
pressed wishes for a continuation. The comedy diverges
in every other respect from the two parts of Henry /F,
and remains, with the induction to the Taming of the
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SHAKESPEARE Life
Shrew, the only examples m the works of Shakespeare of
absolute and continuous representations of English life and
manners of the author's own time.
There is an old tradition which avers that the Merry
Wives of Wiruhor was written, at the desire of the Queen,
in the brief space of a fortnight, and that it gave immense
satisfaction at the Court. Nor in those days of rapid
dramatic composition, when brevity of time in the exe-
cution of such work was frequently part of an ordinary
theatrical agreement, could such a feat have been im-
possible to Shakespeare. It could have been no trouble
to him to write, and the exceptional celerity of his pen
is recorded by several of hi» friends. Hence, probably,
are to be traced most of the numerous little discrepancies
which, by a careful analysis, may be detected throughout
the works of the great dramatist, and which are seen per-
haps more conspicuously in this play than in most of the
others. Shakespeare had evidently, as a writer, neither
a topographical nor a chronometrical mind, and took small
care to avoid inconsistencies arising from errors in his
dispositions of localities and periods of time; provided
always of course that such oversights were not sufficiently
palpable in the action to disturb the complete reception
of the latter by the audience. We may rest assured
that the poet, when engaged in dramatic writing, neither
placed before his eyes an elaborate map of the scenes of
the plot; nor reckoned the exact number of hours to
be taken by a character in moving from one spot to
another; nor, in the composition of each line of verse,
repeated the syllables to ascertain if they developed the
style of meter it was his duty to posterity to be using at
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Life WILLIAM
that special period of liis life. Such precautions may best
be indefinitely resei-ved for the use of that visionary per-
sonage — a scientific and arithmetical Shakespeare.
The earliest notice of the Merry Wives of Windsor^
hitherto discovered, is in an entry on the registers of
the Stationers' Company bearing date in January, 1602,
in which year a catch-penny publisher surreptitiously
issued a very defective copy, one made up by some
poetaster, with the aid of short-hand notes, into the fonn
of a play. That it was composed, however, before the
death of Sir Thomas Lucy in July, 1600, may be safely
taken for granted, for it is contrary to all records of
Shakespeare's nature to believe that the more than play-
ful allusions it contains to that individual would have
been written after the decease of Shallow's prototype; and
most probably also before the production of King Henry
V in the summer of 1559, the royal command being the
most feasible explanation that can be given of the author's
change of purpose in the elimination of FalstafF from the
action of the latter drama.
The Second Part of Henry IV and the Merry Wives of
Windsor are, so far as we know, the only dramas of
Shakespeare that are in any way connected with his per-
sonal history. They include scenes that could not have
been written exactly in their present form if the great
dramatist had not entertained an acute grudge against
Sir Thomas Lucy. The knight of Charlecote was to be
lampooned on the stage, then by far the most effective
medium for public irrision, and hence arose the necessity
of making Falstaff take his circuitous journeys to the
"old pike's" house in Gloucestershire, to a locality within
reach of Stratford-on-Avon and Henley-in-Arden, towns
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SHAKESPEARE Life
that are faintly veiled under the names of Stamford and
Hinckley. Hence also the direct and practically undis-
guised banter of the Lucys in the Merry Wives, for no
one in Warwickshire could possibly have mistaken the
allusion to the luces, the fishes othenvise termed pikes,
that held so conspicuous a position in the family shield;
and lience the rapidity with which the quarrel with Falstaff
is dismissed after the object of its introduction had been
satisfied. And although it may be consistent with dra-
matic possibilities that Shallow, when he arrives at Wind-
sor on a mission of complaint to the King, should be
â– welcomed there by an intimate friend, an inhabitant of
that town, and at the same time a fellow-sportsman on the
Cotswold, — one may be pardoned for suspecting that the
Gloucestershire magistrate would not have been transferred
to the royal borough if his presence had not been required
for the effective illustration of the Charlecote escapade.
Be this as it may, there is sufficient outside the region of
conjecture to enable us to infer that the poet designed,
in his satirical notices of the justice, an individual as well
as a general application, and where could the listeners be
found that would be likely to appreciate the former.?
Certainly neither in London nor at the Court, even on
the very unlikely supposition that intelligence of the deer-
stealing affair had reached so far, for Sir Thomas's public
life, at the earhest date at which either of the comedies
could have been produced, had for many years been re-
stricted to the midland counties. It may, therefore, be
assumed that the great dramatist had in view representa-
tions of his pieces that he knew would be organized at
or near Stratford after the termination of their first runs
in the metropolis. But although a long-sustained re-
107
Life WILLIAM
sentment, under conditions of special insult or oppression,
is not incompcatible with the possession of an essentially
gentle nature, it is not at all necessary to fancy that
Shakespeare was here acting in the mere irrational spirit
of retaliation. The owner of New Place had a social
position to consolidate in his native town, and he took
the best means of neutralizing a vexatious piece of scandal
by holding up to local ridicule the individual whose line
of treatment had attached to him whatever there was in
the matter of personal degi'adation. And he would have
been encouraged by the sympathy of the many who de-
tested Sir Thomas's fanatical policy, even if the quarrel
with him had not been in itself a passport to their favor.
The news of the perfomnance would somehow or other
reach the ears of that potentate, who would naturally have
been highly incensed at the unpardonable liberty that had
been taken; the more so if, as it would appear, he was
pecuHarly sensitive to the opinion of his neighbors. The
flight to London is an incontestable evidence that Shake-
speare had no dread at that time of a metropolitan prosecu-
tion, and it was probably now, if ever, that Sir Thomas
threatened to make his conduct, even at that late day,
the subject of an appeal to the Star Chamber. Then
would have followed the more pointed attack in the
opening scene at Windsor, that in which his judicial
dignities and his coat-armor, as well as the poaching
adventure itself, are so mercilessly caricatured. It is not
probable, however, that the entire significance of that
dialogue will ever be ascertained. Much that is now
obscure was no doubt immensely relished by the con-
temporary Stratfordians. It is easy to imagine, for ex-
ample, the roars of laughter that might have greeted the
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SHAKESPEARE Life
poet's declaration made tlirough Falstaff, that he had never
kissed the keeper's daughter, if so be that the lady in
question had chanced to have been one of nature's scare-
crows ; and who will venture to be confident that there
is no quaint hidden meanings in the references to the
salt fish and the old coat? And again, as the assiduous
knight never appears to have declined an invitation to
take a glass of wine, it is very likely that the bacchanalian
tournament with Silence is no overdrawn picture, one,
moreover, that would have been thoroughly enjoyed in a
neighborhood in which the jovial host had taken an active
part in a commission for the reformation of tipplers.
Exaggeration is one of the legitimate resources of
satirical art, and that it has largely affected the dramatic
portraiture of Sir Thomas Lucy cannot admit of a
reasonable doubt. A tolerable degree of business and
even of administrative capacit}^ is, indeed,, sometimes to
be obsei'ved in men of no great wisdom, but there are
substantial reasons for believing that Sir Thomas could
not have been the precise intellectual counterpart of
Justice Shallow. This may be gathered from a perusal
of his correspondence, from the notices of his parlia-
mentary doings, and, so far as marble can be a faithful
guide in such matters, from the expression of his features
in the Charlecote effigy, the only authentic likeness of
him known to exist. Neither would it be inferred from
that memorial that he could have been correctly repre-
sented as a starveling, but here allowance must be made
for FalstafF's imagery having been in a great measure
dependent upon his relative estimate of the standard of
personal expanse. That there was much, however, of
existing personation in the dramatic character and sur-
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roundings of the Gloucestershire justice that would have
been readily interpreted b}^ the Stratford audience is un-
questionable. Although our supplies of iafonnation on
this point are very defective, there are still contemporary
records which tell us of the special interest taken by Sir
Thomas in the details of archery, of the hospitality that
was the order of his mansion, of his familiarity with
recruits and the muster-roll, of the antiquity of his family,
and, above all, of that appreciation of "friends at court"
through whose influence he contrived to bask in the diver-
gent sunshines of IMary and Elizabeth. Nor is there the
least reason for suspecting that his violent Protestantism,
so convenient in the latter reign, was in any way connected
with an asceticism that would have decried the stage or
excluded a festive evening with a brother magistrate. We
know, on the contrary, that he was the patron of a com-
pany of itinerant actors, and that he had an intelligent
estimate of the virtues of sack. Much, indeed, has been
said of his dislike to the Shakespeares on religious grounds,
but there is really nothing to warrant such an assumption
beyond the bare and inadequate fact that he served on a
commission under which the poet's father was named in a
list of suspected recusants.
Two plays, the titles of which have not been recorded,
were acted by Shakespeare's company in the early part
of the 3^ear 1598, the poet being then in London. It is
certain, however, that his thoughts were not at this time
absorbed by literature or the stage. So far from this
being the case there are good reasons for concluding
that they were largely occupied with matters relating to
pecuniary affairs, and to the progress of his influence at
Stratford-on-Avon. He was then considering the advisa-
110
SHAKESPEARE Life
bility of purchasing an "odd yard land or other" in the