when the sudden appearance of the one to be loved revealed to her her destiny: Go, ask his name: if he be married, She has the vivacity, the impulsiveness, the violent impressions, the tenacious determination of her far away sisters, the semi-savage heroines of the epic tales of Ireland. Love absorbs her entire being, and a love which is not content with poetry and ethereal discourse; such discourse enchants her, but is only the music of the feast. No link save love binds her to life; she is not such as can discover other interests, and be consoled. To sever that link is to kill her. IV. In 1594, all these plays had been performed, and not one had been printed; Shakespeare's name, however, was already well known in the theatrical world; his troupe was proud of him and happy to possess him; it had as its poet, one whose plays made money. It was indeed, to say nothing of the honour, a great convenience to have him. He was always found ready to write, was neither quarrelsome nor envious; people could say and print about him no matter what, he never replied; he was not vain of his merit, and nothing makes a man more easy to live with than the absence of vanity. Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, But, with a rear-ward following Tybalt's death, ' Story of Derdriu in "The Murder of the sons of Usnech "; love at first sight, in "How Cuchulainn courted Emer." D'Arbois de Jubainville, "Littérature Celtique," vol. v. pp. 44, 220, ff.; above, vol. I. pp. 15 ff. Thus is explained the even tenor of his life, his regular course toward affluence, the absence of quarrels and tragic incidents, his persistency in habits once formed. He remains where he is; he changes theatre and troupe as little as he can; he does the next year what he had done the year before. Having begun life as a player, he continues to play to the end, even when he has become wealthy, is a "gentleman," and bears the coat of arms secured by him for his father, cash down. Fellow-player of the Burbages at the start, he continues so until his death, following their fortunes from the Shoreditch theatres where he began, to the Globe and Blackfriars, which saw his greatest triumphs. Early a member of the Lord Chamberlain's troupe, he remained with it to the last. Let Greene, Nash, Dekker, Marston, Jonson, and the others quarrel; let them know prison, debts, duels, and all the accidents of a bohemian life; let them fight their friend and befriend their foe, change ideas, theatres, troupes, profession; let them be actors first and then parsons, like Marston and Daborne: no wonder with such restless people. In the midst of their tumults, Shakespeare, who depicted all the tempests of passions, leads his quiet life, devoid of incidents. Friendly with all, he does not associate intimately with any; none of his contemporaries so seldom worked in He could justly say, like the poet in one of his plays: One of his fellow-actors, Augustine Phillipps, bequeaths to him a gold piece of thirty shillings in friendly remembrance (1605); he himself, in his will, leaves souvenirs to three of his comrades. Cf. infra, 277 and App. II. collaboration with others as he; his promptitude and his fecundity were so great that he had apparently no need of help; even for a pressing work he went as fast as those squads of four or five employed by Henslowe. In the innumerable series of eulogistic pieces that the poets of his day were wont to ask of their friends when they ventured upon the printing of a book, his name is not once to be found. Reciprocally he asked nothing of any one when he published his two poems. When Elizabeth died, the whole chorus of authors, unanimously, bewailed her death. Again he kept apart and said nothing. Whilst from his pen came forth dramas more and more wonderful and stormy, he preserved as his ideal of life the existence of a worshipful citizen living at ease in his native town. Information concerning him is scant, as is usual with uneventful biographies, but all concurs in showing that such were really his dispositions and none can be quoted to the contrary. During this period of his career he made an effort, however, to take rank among recognised men of letters, which mere dramatic compositions did not readily allow a writer to do. One of his fellow-townsmen, of his own age, Richard Field, the son of a Stratford tanner, had, as we know, settled in London as a printer; Shakespeare gave him his first poem, and, at the beginning of 1593, one could see announced on the posts which served for booksellers' advertisements: "Venus and Adonis.-Imprinted by Richard Field, and are to be sold at the signe of the White Greyhound in Paules Churchyard." The following year the same Field printed "Lucrece," second and last poetical work published by Shakespeare.1 "Lucrece.-Printed by Richard Field for John Harrison, and are to be sold at the signe of the White Greyhound in Paules Church-yard," 1594, 4to. Modern text, e.g.: "The Poems of Shakespeare," ed. Wyndham, London, 1898, 8vo. Both poems have been published in facsimile, with important introductions by Sidney Lee, Oxford, 1905, 2 vols. 4to. The two texts are correct, printed with care; they have none of those "long-tailed" titles invented by booksellers, and were, to all appearances, seen through the press by the author, a unique phenomenon in his career, but these were in his eyes important ventures. No preliminary pieces from friends of the poet precede his two works, but they have at least (also a unique case with him) the customary dedication to an aristocratic patron, the same in both instances, a young, valorous, and brilliant nobleman, of no austere morals, fond of literature and of the stage, "the right honorable Henre Wriothesly, earle of Southampton and baron of Tichfield," not yet twenty years of age. Shakespeare, ætatis suæ twentynine, recommends to him his "Venus," "first heire of his invention," his dramas evidently not counting for him as works, properly speaking, literary. It is, moreover, his firm intention that this attempt shall be followed by some graver labour," to which he will not fail to devote all his "idle hours." He offered him "Lucrece " in 1594, in token of "love without end." As with his plays, Shakespeare, instead of looking for new subjects, chose well-known ones, often treated and constantly alluded to; their popularity was, in his eyes, an inducement. To provide for well-known airs the orchestral score that would fill the land with its melody was his constant practice throughout his career. The myth of Venus and Adonis, drawn from the most popular of Latin poets, Ovid, had been told in English by Spenser,1 1 The wals were round about aparelled The faire Adonis, turned to a floure. And there follows the whole story. The walls are those of Malecasta's "Castle Joyeous."-" Faerie Queene " book iii. canto 1, 11. 303 ff (Grosart's summed up by Lodge, alluded to by Marlowe, Greene, and others. The story of Lucrece, drawn from Livy and Ovid, had been told by Chaucer,2 Gower, Lydgate, Paynter, Barnabe Googe, and had been the subject of numerous ballads.3 The two pictures were as a foil one for the other, the first being devoted to sensual love and the second to constancy. But both dealt with physical love, and were sure to please the inmates of "Castle Joyeous." In contrast to the sombre group of the puritans, still glittered and frisked in the sunlight the group of the young noblemen, all beribboned and gilded, superb, ed.). Thomas Heywood put this subject on the stage, "Brazen Age," act ii., 1603. On Southampton as a protector of men of letters, see above, II. 544. 'Livy, book i. ch. 57, 58; Ovid, "Fasti," book ii. Shakespeare made use of both, either directly (as he well could, according to probabilities) or indirectly; there was in any case a French translation of Livy (an English one was registered in 1577): "Le premier [etc.] volume des grans décades de titus livius . . . nouvellement corrigées," Paris, fol., privilege of 1514. Lucrece's reason for killing herself is drawn by Shakespeare from Livy, not from Ovid: "No, no," quod she, "no Dame hereafter living, By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving." In Livy: "Ego me etsi peccato absolvo, supplicio non libero; nec ulla deinde impudica Lucretiæ exemplo vivet." In the French translation she declares that her body must not survive: "S'il est quitte du péchié je ne veulx pas qu'il soit quitte du tourment; ne ne seray exemple que nulle chaste femme qui ait perdu sa chasteté doive vivre apres moy," fol. xxii. Incipit Legenda Lucrecie," in Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women." Cf. Gower, "Confessio Amantis," book vii. 11. 4754 ff. 3 "The grevious complaynt of Lucrece," licensed 1568-9; "A Ballett intituled the death of Lucryssie," licensed 1569-70, etc. Thomas Heywood wrote later a play on this ever popular subject: "The Rape of Lucrece, a true Roman Tragedie," 1608, full of ludicrously, not to say revoltingly, inappropriate merry songs (5th ed. 1638). |