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

/> _Those heavenly lamps which give the muses light_
To view my muse with your judicial sight," etc.

The words italicised evidently refer to Southampton's acceptance of _Venus and Adonis_ in the preceding year. Later in 1594, Thomas Nashe dedicated _The Life of Jack Wilton_ to Southampton, and in a dedicatory Sonnet to a poem preserved in the Rawlinson MS. in the Bodleian Library, entitled _The Choice of Valentines_, Nashe apologises for the salacious nature of the poem, and in an appended Sonnet evidently refers to Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_ in the line italicised below:

"Thus hath my pen presumed to please my friend,
Oh might'st thou likewise please Apollo's eye;
No, honor brooks no such impietie,
_Yet Ovids Wanton Muse did not offend_,
He is the fountain whence my streams do flow,
Forgive me if I speak as I were taught."

In 1595 Gervase Markham, in a Sonnet prefixed to his poem on Richard Grenville's fight in the _Revenge_, addresses Southampton as:

"Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill,
_Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen_,
Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill
Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men."

The line italicised not only refers to Shakespeare but gives evidence also of the assured standing among poets which he had now attained in unbiased judgments.

In addition to these evidences of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, we have the poet's own acknowledgment of the recent receipt of a valuable gift in the _Lucrece_ dedication: "_The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance_."

In his _Hymns to the Shadow of Night_ (1594) and its dedication, Chapman complains of his lack of patronage and refers to what he designates as Shakespeare's "_idol atrous platts for riches_."[27] In the body of the poem he writes:

"Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices,
Wisdom conforms herself to all earth's guises,
_Good gifts are often given to men past good
And noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood_."

In view of the general knowledge of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, and of the anti-Shakespearean intention which I have demonstrated in Chapman's poem, it is apparent that these lines refer to the nobleman's gift as well as to the intimacy between the peer and the player at this period.

In this same year (1594) the scholars devised a plan to disrupt the intimacy between Shakespeare and Southampton by producing and publishing a scandalous poem satirising their relations, entitled _Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest maid and a chaste and constant wife_. In this poem Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is represented as "Henry Willobie a young man and a scholar of very good hope," while Shakespeare is indicated as "W.S.," an "old actor." "W.S." is depicted as aiding and abetting Henry Willobie in a love affair with Avisa, the wife of an Oxford tavern keeper who conducts a tavern described as follows:

"See yonder house where hangs the badge
Of England's saint when captains cry
Victorious land to conquering rage."

In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long before had tryed the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered of the like infection." _Willobie his Avisa_ in some measure reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authorship as well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem. In 1595 George Chapman published his _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ and his _A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, in both of which poems, as well as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare. Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as definitely establishing the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to Shakespeare as well as his identity as the rival poet of the Sonnets.[28]

Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in 1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and literary prestige.

The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friendship and patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.

Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when _Venus and Adonis_ was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two years before that date.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: _English Dramatic Companies_, 1558-1641, by John Tucker Murray.]

[Footnote 21: In 1594 Cuthbert Burbie published a play entitled _The Cobbler's Prophecy_, the authorship of which is ascribed to "R. Wilson" on the title-page. The textual resemblances between this play, _The Pedlar's Prophecy_, _The Three Ladies of London_, and _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, and certain parallels between the two latter and _Fair Em_, all of which plays were published anonymously, led Mr. Fleay to credit all of them to Wilson, in which--excluding _Fair Em_--he was probably correct. All of these plays, with the exception of _The Pedlar's Prophecy_, were either Burbage's or Admiral's properties. _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_ was published for Richard Jones in 1590, and _The Cobblers Prophecy_ for Cuthbert Burbie in 1594. All plays published for Richard Jones were formerly old Admiral's properties, and nearly all the early plays published for Cuthbert Burbie old Burbage properties. _Fair Em_, while not published until 1631, records on the title-page that it was acted by Lord Strange's company. _The Pedlar's Prophecy_ was, however, published by Thomas Creede, all of whose publications Mr. Fleay has found were old Queen's properties. Admitting, then, that all of these plays were written by Robert Wilson, the latter play must have been written by him for the Queen's company later than 1582-83, when he left Leicester's company. It appears probable also that the earlier plays--_The Three Ladies_ and _The Cobbler's Prophecy_--were written for Leicester's company before that date, and retained by Burbage when he severed his connection with Leicester's men, or else, that they were retained by Leicester's men as company properties and brought to Strange's men in 1588-89 by Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, when their old company disbanded. It is evident, then, _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, which Mr. Fleay admits is merely an amplification of the old play of _The Three Ladies_, which he dates as being first published in 1584, was a revision made when all these plays became Strange's properties, and that the scriptural parallels between _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, _The Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_, which are quite absent in _The Pedlar's Prophecy_--the only one of these plays ascribed in the publication itself to Wilson--are due to the revisionary efforts of the "theological poet" referred to by Greene as doing such work for Strange's company, and as having had a hand in _Fair Em_, which was acted in about 1590, in which year _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, which shows similar scriptural characteristics, was published. From a time reference in the earlier form of this play--_The Three Ladies_--in the first scene, "not much more than twenty-six years, it was in Queen Mary's time," Mr. Fleay arbitrarily dates from the last year of Mary's reign, and concludes that it may have been acted by the Queen's company in 1584. He admits, however, that it does not appear in the list of the Queen's men's plays for this year, and later on infers from other evidence that the allusion to twenty-six years from Queen Mary's time probably referred to the first date of publication, which is unknown, but which he places, tentatively, in 1584. "That it was played by the Queen's men," he writes, "is shown under the next play,--_The Three Lords and Three Ladies_,--which is an amplification of the preceding play performed shortly after Tarleton's death in about 1588." Mr. Fleay writes further: "If I rightly understand the allusions, Tarleton acted in _Wit and Will_ in 1567-68. The allusion to Tarleton's picture shows that _Tarleton's Jests_, in which his picture appears, had already been published. The statement that Simplicity (probably acted by Wilson himself), Wit, and Will had acted with Tarleton, proves that the present play was acted by the Queen's men."

In arguing to place Robert Wilson as a member of Strange's company in 1588-89, Mr. Fleay borrows both premises and inference from the facts to support his theory. He is no doubt right in dating the original composition of _The Three Ladies of London_ before 1584, and probably also in attributing all of these plays to Wilson, but, seeing that they were all Burbage properties in 1589-90, is it not evident that _The Three Ladies of London_ was an old Leicester play produced by Wilson before 1582-83, when he and Burbage left that company, and either that Burbage then retained possession of it, or, that it was brought to Strange's men by Pope, Kempe, and Bryan in 1589? Mr. Fleay admits that _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_ is merely an amplification of _The Three Ladies_ made after Tarleton's death, which occurred in 1588. It seems apparent, then, that the scriptural phraseology noticeable in _The Three Ladies_, _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_, and _Fair Em_, which led Mr. Fleay to impute the last to Wilson's pen, and also to connect him as a writer and an actor with Lord Strange's company in 1589-90, is the work of the "theological poet" indicated by Greene and Nashe as having had a hand in _Fair Em_ in 1589. It is also evident that the actors who took the parts of Simplicity, Wit, and Will,--in _The Three Lords and Three Ladies_,--who had formerly acted with Tarleton, were Kempe, Pope, and Bryan, Strange's men, who were all formerly Leicester's men. It is much more likely that these old members of Leicester's company, who in Tarleton's time would have been juniors in the company, would recall and boast of their old connection, than that his late associates in the Queen's company would do so within a year or two of his death.]

[Footnote 22: Bentley was a Queen's player in 1584, and probably came from Sussex's company to the Queen's upon the organisation of that company in 1583.]

[Footnote 23: This letter and the verses are printed in _Henslowe's Papers_, p. 32, W.W. Greg, 1907, and in the works of several earlier editors.]

[Footnote 24: "The two more" here indicated by Greene are, I believe, Lodge and Matthew Roydon, both of whom are mentioned by Nashe in his address "To the Gentlemen of the two Universities" prefixed to