Shakespeare's Lost Years in London by Arthur Acheson (audio ebook reader .txt) 📕

_Bonum quo communius eo melius._"

At the end of Greene's _Never Too Late_ in the host's tale a ballad maker and player is attacked under the name of Mullidor; he is described as follows: "He is said to be a fellow that was of honest parents, but very poor: and his person was as if he had been cast in AEsop's mould; his back like a lute, and his face like Thersites', his eyes broad and tawny, his hair harsh and curled like a horse-mane, his lips were of the largest size in folio.... The only good part that he had to grace his visage was his nose, and that was conqueror-like, as beaked as an eagle.... Into his great head (Nature) put little wit, that he knew rather his sheep by the number, for he was never no good arithmetician, and yet he was a proper scholar, and well seen in ditties."

When we discount the caricature and spiteful animus of this description it closely matches the presentments of Shakespeare given by the most authoritative portraits which have come down to us. His parents, as we know, were undoubtedly poor, otherwise he would not have been in London as a servitor to Burbage. His eyes are invariably shown as hazel in colour and widely set apart; his hair heavy, curled, and falling to his shoulders; his lips very full, his nose large and "beaked," and his brow, or "great head," of unusual height and breadth. It is apparent, then, that this is a spiteful and distorted, but recognisable, description of Shakespeare, who, I infer from many indications in his opponents' plays, wore his hair in a peculiar manner, was not very tall, and was also somewhat thin-legged. The Chandos portrait which shows his shoulders, suggests that they were slightly sloping and somewhat round rather than square. On the whole, a physical type not calculated to inspire fear in a bully. Greene, on the other hand, is described by Chettle as a handsome-faced and well-proportioned man, and we may judge of a rather swash-buckling deportment.

Robert Greene died in September 1592. Shortly afterwards Henry Chettle published Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, which was his last literary effort, and appended a farewell letter of Greene's addressed "To those gentlemen, his quandam acquaintances, that spend their time in making plays, R.G. wisheth a better exercise and wisdom to prevent his extremities." In this epistle, addressing Marlowe, Nashe, and Peele, as well as two others at whose identity we can only guess, he says:

"If wofull experience may move you, gentlemen, to beware, or
unheard-of wretchedness intreat you to take heed, I doubt not but you
will look backe with sorrow on your time past, and endevour with
repentance to spend that which is to come. Wonder not (for with thee
will I first beginne), thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene,
who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, 'There is no
God,' should now give glorie unto his greatnesse; for penetrating is
his power, his hand lyes heavy upon me, he hath spoken unto me with a
voyce of thunder, and I have felt he is a God that can punish
enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded that
thou shouldest give no glory to the giver? Is it pestilent
Machivilian policie that thou hast studied? O peevish follie! What
are his rules but meere confused mockeries, able to extirpate in
small time the generation of mankinde? for if _sic volo, sic iubeo_,
holde in those that are able to command, and if it be lawfull _fas et
nefas_, to doo any thing that is beneficiall, onely tyrants should
possesse the earth, and they, striving to exceed in tiranny, should
each to other be a slaughterman, till, the mightyest outliving all,
one stroke were left for Death, that in one age mans life should
end.... With thee I joyne young Juvenall, that byting satyrist, that
lastly with mee together writ a comedie. Sweet boy, might I advise
thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words; inveigh
against vaine men, for thou canst doo it, no man better, no man so
well; thou hast a libertie to reproove all and name none; for one
being spoken to, all are offended--none being blamed, no man is
injured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage; tread on a
worme, and it will turne; then blame not schollers who are vexed with
sharpe and bitter lines, if they reproove thy too much liberty of
reproofe.

"And thou no lesse deserving then the other two, in some things
rarer, in nothing inferiour, driven, as myselfe, to extreame shifts,
a little have I to say to thee; and, were it not an idolatrous oath,
I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith
thou dependest on so mean a stay. Base-minded men all three of you,
if by my misery yee bee not warned; for unto none of you, like me,
sought those burs to cleave; those puppits, I meane, that speake from
our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange
that I to whom they have been beholding, is it not like that you to
whom they all have been beholding, shall, were yee in that case that
I am now, be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for
there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his _Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde_, supposes hee is as well able
to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you; and, beeing an
absolute Johannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceit the onely
Shake-scene in a countrey. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wittes
to bee imployed in more profitable courses, and let these apes
imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaynte them with your
admyred inventions! I knowe the best husband of you all will never
proove an usurer, and the kindest of them all will never proove a
kinde nurse; yet, whilst you may, seeke you better maisters; for it
is pitty men of such rare wits should bee subject to the pleasures of
such rude groomes.

"In this I might insert two more[24] that both have writte against
these buckram gentlemen; but let their owne worke serve to witnesse
against their owne wickednesse, if they persever to maintaine any
more such peasants. For other new comers, I leave them to the mercie
of those painted monsters, who, I doubt not, will drive the
best-minded to despise them; for the rest, it skills not though they
make a jeast at them...."

It is now accepted by critics that these allusions of Greene's were directed against Shakespeare, and that the line "Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde" refers to Shakespeare's revision of _The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York_, a play in the original composition of which Greene evidently had some hand. It has not before been suggested, however, that this play was performed by the Earl of Pembroke's company, under Shakespeare's management, in 1592. It was evidently the publicity given Marlowe's and Shakespeare's revision by the stage revival of the play by Pembroke's company at this time that called forth Greene's attack. This brings us to the end of the year 1592 in outlining chronologically the evidences of the antagonism of the scholars to Shakespeare.

In June 1593 George Peele shows animus against Shakespeare by echoing Greene's phrases in the introduction to _The Honour of the Garter_. In these verses, in complimenting several noblemen and "gentlemen poets," such as Sidney, Spenser, Harrington, Fraunce, Campion, and others, he refers also to

"ordinary grooms,
With trivial humours to pastime the world,
That favour Pan and Phoebus both alike."

This appears to be a reflection of Greene's "rude groomes" of the previous September and a reference to Shakespeare's theatrical work and his _Venus and Adonis_, which, though only recently published, had no doubt been read in MS. form for some time before.

I shall now proceed to show that at the end of 1593, after Lord Pembroke's company had returned from their unprofitable provincial tour when they were compelled to "pawn their apparel for their charges," George Chapman wrote a play satirising Shakespeare and the disastrous fortunes of this company. This play was revised by Marston and Chapman in 1599, under the title of _Histriomastix, or The Player Whipt_, as a counter-attack upon Shakespeare in order to revenge the satire which he, in conjunction with Dekker and Chettle, directed against Chapman and Marston in _Troilus and Cressida_, and in a play reconstructed from _Troilus and Cressida_ by Dekker and Chettle, called _Agamemnon_, in 1598-99. This latter phase of the matter shall be dealt with when I come to a consideration of the literary warfare of the later period.

It has never before been suggested that George Chapman had any hand in the composition of _Histriomastix_, though Mr. Richard Simpson shows clearly that it was an old play roughly revised in the form in which it was acted in 1599. Mr. Simpson suggests that it might have been written by Peele, in its original form, owing to certain verbal resemblances between portions of it and Peele's dedication to his _Honour of the Garter_. He dates its original composition in about 1590, but in doing so had evidently forgotten that he had already written: "The early Chrisoganus (of this play) seems to be of the time when the Earl of Northumberland, Raleigh, and Harriot strove to set up an Academy in London, and the spirit of the play, and even its expressions, were quite in unison with Peele's dedication of his _Honour of the Garter_,1593." All literary and historical references to the academical efforts of the Earl of Northumberland, Harriot, and others point to the years 1591-93 as the time in which this attempt to establish an Academy was made. Chapman in his dedication of _The Shadow of Night_ to Roydon, in 1594, refers to the movement as then of comparatively recent date. "But I stay this spleen when I remember, my good Matthew, how joyfully oftentimes you reported unto me that most ingenious Derby, deep-searching Northumberland, and skill-embracing Earl of