A Life of William Shakespeare Part 18

Two other pieces, 'The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen' and 'Henry VIII,' which are attributed to a similar partnership, survive. {259b} 'The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen' was first printed in 1634, and was written, according to the t.i.tle-page, 'by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare, gentlemen.' It was included in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher of 1679. On grounds alike of aesthetic criticism and metrical tests, a substantial portion of the play was a.s.signed to Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Dyce. The last included it in his edition of Shakespeare. Coleridge detected Shakespeare's hand in act I., act II. sc. i., and act III. sc. i. and ii. In addition to those scenes, act IV. sc. iii. and act V. (except sc. ii.) were subsequently placed to his credit. Some recent critics a.s.sign much of the alleged Shakespearean work to Ma.s.singer, and they narrow Shakespeare's contribution to the first scene (with the opening song, 'Roses their sharp spines being gone') and act V. sc. i. and iv. {260} An exact part.i.tion is impossible, but frequent signs of Shakespeare's workmanship are unmistakable. All the pa.s.sages for which Shakespeare can on any showing be held responsible develop the main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale' of Palamon and Arcite, and seems to have been twice dramatised previously. A lost play, 'Palaemon and Arcyte,' by Richard Edwardes, was acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called 'Palamon and a.r.s.ett' (also lost), was purchased by Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue of 'The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen' is disfigured by indecency and triviality, and is of no literary value.

'Henry VIII.'

A like problem is presented by 'Henry VIII.' The play was nearly a.s.sociated with the final scene in the history of that theatre which was identified with the triumphs of Shakespeare's career. 'Henry VIII' was in course of performance at the Globe Theatre on June 29, 1613, when the firing of some cannon incidental to the performance set fire to the playhouse, which was burned down. The theatre was rebuilt next year, but the new fabric never acquired the fame of the old. Sir Henry Wotton, describing the disaster on July 2, ent.i.tled the piece that was in process of representation at the time as 'All is True representing some princ.i.p.al pieces in the Reign of Henry VIII.' {261} The play of 'Henry VIII' that is commonly allotted to Shakespeare is loosely constructed, and the last act ill coheres with its predecessors. The whole resembles an 'historical masque.' It was first printed in the folio of Shakespeare's works in 1623, but shows traces of more hands than one. The three chief characters--the king, Queen Katharine of Arragon, and Cardinal Wolsey--bear clear marks of Shakespeare's best workmanship; but only act i. sc. i., act ii. sc. iii. and iv. (Katharine's trial), act iii. sc. ii.

(except ll. 204-460), act v. sc. i. can on either aesthetic or metrical grounds be confidently a.s.signed to him. These portions may, according to their metrical characteristics, be dated, like the 'Winter's Tale,' about 1611. There are good grounds for a.s.signing nearly all the remaining thirteen scenes to the pen of Fletcher, with occasional aid from Ma.s.singer. Wolsey's familiar farewell to Cromwell (III. ii. 204-460) is the only pa.s.sage the authorship of which excites really grave embarra.s.sment. It recalls at every point the style of Fletcher, and nowhere that of Shakespeare. But the Fletcherian style, as it is here displayed, is invested with a greatness that is not matched elsewhere in Fletcher's work. That Fletcher should have exhibited such faculty once and once only is barely credible, and we are driven to the alternative conclusion that the n.o.ble valediction was by Shakespeare, who in it gave proof of his versatility by echoing in a glorified key the habitual strain of Fletcher, his colleague and virtual successor. James Spedding's theory that Fletcher hastily completed Shakespeare's unfinished draft for the special purpose of enabling the company to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, which took place on February 14, 1612-13, seems fanciful. During May 1613, according to an extant list, nineteen plays were produced at Court in honour of the event, but 'Henry VIII' is not among them. {263a} The conjecture that Ma.s.singer and Fletcher alone collaborated in 'Henry VIII'

(to the exclusion of Shakespeare altogether) does not deserve serious consideration. {263b}

XVI--THE CLOSE OF LIFE

Plays at Court in 1613. Actor-friends.

The concluding years of Shakespeare's life (1611-1616) were mainly pa.s.sed at Stratford. It is probable that in 1611 he disposed of his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars theatres. He owned none at the date of his death. But until 1614 he paid frequent visits to London, where friends in sympathy with his work were alone to be found. His plays continued to form the staple of Court performances. In May 1613, during the Princess Elizabeth's marriage festivities, Heming, Shakespeare's former colleague, produced at Whitehall no fewer than seven of his plays, viz. 'Much Ado,'

'Tempest,' 'Winter's Tale,' 'Sir John Falstaff' (_i.e._ 'Merry Wives'), 'Oth.e.l.lo,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'and Hotspur' (doubtless 'Henry IV'). {264} Of his actor-friends, one of the chief, Augustine Phillips, had died in 1605, leaving by will 'to my fellowe, William Shakespeare, a thirty-shillings piece of gold.' With Burbage, Heming, and Condell his relations remained close to the end. Burbage, according to a poetic elegy, made his reputation by creating the leading parts in Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. Hamlet, Oth.e.l.lo, and Lear were roles in which he gained especial renown. But Burbage and Shakespeare were popularly credited with co-operation in less solemn enterprises. They were reputed to be companions in many sportive adventures. The sole anecdote of Shakespeare that is positively known to have been recorded in his lifetime relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, antic.i.p.ated the actor's visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that 'William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.' {265a}

Such gossip possibly deserves little more acceptance than the later story, in the same key, which credits Shakespeare with the paternity of Sir William D'Avenant. The latter was baptised at Oxford on March 3, 1605, as the son of John D'Avenant, the landlord of the Crown Inn, where Shakespeare lodged in his journeys to and from Stratford. The story of Shakespeare's parental relation to D'Avenant was long current in Oxford, and was at times complacently accepted by the reputed son. Shakespeare is known to have been a welcome guest at John D'Avenant's house, and another son, Robert, boasted of the kindly notice which the poet took of him as a child. {265b} It is safer to adopt the less compromising version which makes Shakespeare the G.o.dfather of the boy William instead of his father. But the antiquity and persistence of the scandal belie the a.s.sumption that Shakespeare was known to his contemporaries as a man of scrupulous virtue. Ben Jonson and Drayton--the latter a Warwickshire man--seem to have been Shakespeare's closest literary friends in his latest years.

Final settlement at Stratford.

At Stratford, in the words of Nicholas Rowe, 'the latter part of Shakespeare's life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends.' As a resident in the town, he took a full share of social and civic responsibilities. On October 16, 1608, he stood chief G.o.dfather to William, son of Henry Walker, a mercer and alderman. On September 11, 1611, when he had finally settled in New Place, his name appeared in the margin of a folio page of donors (including all the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of Stratford) to a fund that was raised 'towards the charge of prosecuting the bill in Parliament for the better repair of the highways.'

Domestic affairs.

Meanwhile his own domestic affairs engaged some of his attention. Of his two surviving children--both daughters--the eldest, Susanna, had married, on June 5, 1607, John Hall (1575-1635), a rising physician of Puritan leanings, and in the following February there was born the poet's only granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall. On September 9, 1608, the poet's mother was buried in the parish church, and on February 4, 1613, his third brother Richard. On July 15, 1613, Mrs. Hall preferred, with her father's a.s.sistance, a charge of slander against one Lane in the ecclesiastical court at Worcester; the defendant, who had apparently charged the lady with illicit relations with one Ralph Smith, did not appear, and was excommunicated.

[Picture: Signature on Purchase-Deed]

Purchase of a house in Blackfriars.

In the same year (1613), when on a short visit to London, Shakespeare invested a small sum of money in a new property. This was his last investment in real estate. He then purchased a house, the ground-floor of which was a haberdasher's shop, with a yard attached. It was situated within six hundred feet of the Blackfriars Theatre--on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly termed Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, in the near neighbourhood of what is now known as Ireland Yard. The former owner, Henry Walker, a musician, had bought the property for 100 pounds in 1604. Shakespeare in 1613 agreed to pay him 140 pounds. The deeds of conveyance bear the date of March 10 in that year. {267} Next day, on March 11, Shakespeare executed another deed (now in the British Museum) which stipulated that 60 pounds of the purchase-money was to remain on mortgage until the following Michaelmas. The money was unpaid at Shakespeare's death. In both purchase-deed and mortgage-deed Shakespeare's signature was witnessed by (among others) Henry Lawrence, 'servant' or clerk to Robert Andrewes, the scrivener who drew the deeds, and Lawrence's seal, bearing his initials 'H. L.,' was stamped in each case on the parchment-tag, across the head of which Shakespeare wrote his name. In all three doc.u.ments--the two indentures and the mortgage-deed--Shakespeare is described as 'of Stratford-on-Avon, in the Countie of Warwick, Gentleman.' There is no reason to suppose that he acquired the house for his own residence. He at once leased the property to John Robinson, already a resident in the neighbourhood.

[Picture: Signature on Mortgage-Deed]

Attempt to enclose the Stratford common fields.

With puritans and puritanism Shakespeare was not in sympathy, {268} and he could hardly have viewed with unvarying composure the steady progress that puritanism was making among his fellow-townsmen. Nevertheless a preacher, doubtless of puritan proclivities, was entertained at Shakespeare's residence, New Place, after delivering a sermon in the spring of 1614. The incident might serve to ill.u.s.trate Shakespeare's characteristic placability, but his son-in-law Hall, who avowed sympathy with puritanism, was probably in the main responsible for the civility.

{269a} In July John Combe, a rich inhabitant of Stratford, died and left 5 pounds to Shakespeare. The legend that Shakespeare alienated him by composing some doggerel on his practice of lending money at ten or twelve per cent. seems apocryphal, although it is quoted by Aubrey and accepted by Rowe. {269b} Combe's death involved Shakespeare more conspicuously than before in civic affairs. Combe's heir William no sooner succeeded to his father's lands than he, with a neighbouring owner, Arthur Mannering, steward of Lord-chancellor Ellesmere (who was ex-officio lord of the manor), attempted to enclose the common fields, which belonged to the corporation of Stratford, about his estate at Welcombe. The corporation resolved to offer the scheme a stout resistance. Shakespeare had a twofold interest in the matter by virtue of his owning the freehold of 106 acres at Welcombe and Old Stratford, and as joint owner--now with Thomas Greene, the town clerk--of the t.i.thes of Old Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton. His interest in his freeholds could not have been prejudicially affected, but his interest in the t.i.thes might be depreciated by the proposed enclosure. Shakespeare consequently joined with his fellow-owner Greene in obtaining from Combe's agent Replingham in October 1614 a deed indemnifying both against any injury they might suffer from the enclosure. But having thus secured himself against all possible loss, Shakespeare threw his influence into Combe's scale. In November 1614 he was on a last visit to London, and Greene, whose official position as town clerk compelled him to support the corporation in defiance of his private interests, visited him there to discuss the position of affairs. On December 23, 1614, the corporation in formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare imploring him to aid them.

Greene himself sent to the dramatist 'a note of inconveniences [to the corporation that] would happen by the enclosure.' But although an ambiguous entry of a later date (September 1615) in the few extant pages of Greene's ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tortured into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part at Combe's conduct, {271} it is plain that, in the spirit of his agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to lend Combe his countenance. Happily Combe's efforts failed, and the common lands remain unenclosed.

Death. Burial.

At the beginning of 1616 Shakespeare's health was failing. He directed Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warwick, to draft his will, but, though it was prepared for signature on January 25, it was for the time laid aside. On February 10, 1616, Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, married, at Stratford parish church, Thomas Quincy, four years her junior, a son of an old friend of the poet. The ceremony took place apparently without public asking of the banns and before a license was procured. The irregularity led to the summons of the bride and bridegroom to the ecclesiastical court at Worcester and the imposition of a fine. According to the testimony of John Ward, the vicar, Shakespeare entertained at New Place his two friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, in this same spring of 1616, and 'had a merry meeting,' but 'itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.' A popular local legend, which was not recorded till 1762, {272a} credited Shakespeare with engaging at an earlier date in a prolonged and violent drinking bout at Bidford, a neighbouring village, {272b} but his achievements as a hard drinker may be dismissed as unproven. The cause of his death is undetermined, but probably his illness seemed likely to take a fatal turn in March, when he revised and signed the will that had been drafted in the previous January. On Tuesday, April 23, he died at the age of fifty-two. {272c} On Thursday, April 25 (O.S.), the poet was buried inside Stratford Church, near the northern wall of the chancel, in which, as part-owner of the t.i.thes, and consequently one of the lay-rectors, he had a right of interment. Hard by was the charnel-house, where bones dug up from the churchyard were deposited. Over the poet's grave were inscribed the lines:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.

According to one William Hall, who described a visit to Stratford in 1694, {273} these verses were penned by Shakespeare to suit 'the capacity of clerks and s.e.xtons, for the most part a very ignorant set of people.'

Had this curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, the s.e.xton would not have hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to 'the bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive his wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried with her husband.

[Picture: Signatures from each sheet of the will]

The will. Bequest to his wife.

Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was drawn up before January 25, 1616, received many interlineations and erasures before it was signed in the ensuing March. Francis Collins, the solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas Russell, 'esquier,' of Stratford, were the overseers; it was proved by John Hall, the poet's son-in-law and joint-executor with Mrs.

Hall, in London on June 22 following. The religious exordium is in conventional phraseology, and gives no clue to Shakespeare's personal religious opinions. What those opinions were, we have neither the means nor the warrant for discussing. But while it is possible to quote from the plays many contemptuous references to the puritans and their doctrines, we may dismiss as idle gossip Davies's irresponsible report that 'he dyed a papist.' The name of Shakespeare's wife was omitted from the original draft of the will, but by an interlineation in the final draft she received his second best bed with its furniture. No other bequest was made her. Several wills of the period have been discovered in which a bedstead or other article of household furniture formed part of a wife's inheritance, but none except Shakespeare's is forthcoming in which a bed forms the sole bequest. At the same time the precision with which Shakespeare's will accounts for and a.s.signs to other legatees every known item of his property refutes the conjecture that he had set aside any portion of it under a previous settlement or jointure with a view to making independent provision for his wife. Her right to a widow's dower--_i.e._ to a third share for life in freehold estate--was not subject to testamentary disposition, but Shakespeare had taken steps to prevent her from benefiting--at any rate to the full extent--by that legal arrangement. He had barred her dower in the case of his latest purchase of freehold estate, viz. the house at Blackfriars. {274} Such procedure is pretty conclusive proof that he had the intention of excluding her from the enjoyment of his possessions after his death.

But, however plausible the theory that his relations with her were from first to last wanting in sympathy, it is improbable that either the slender mention of her in the will or the barring of her dower was designed by Shakespeare to make public his indifference or dislike.

Local tradition subsequently credited her with a wish to be buried in his grave; and her epitaph proves that she inspired her daughters with genuine affection. Probably her ignorance of affairs and the infirmities of age (she was past sixty) combined to unfit her in the poet's eyes for the control of property, and, as an act of ordinary prudence, he committed her to the care of his elder daughter, who inherited, according to such information as is accessible, some of his own shrewdness, and had a capable adviser in her husband.

His heiress. Legacies to friends.

This elder daughter, Susanna Hall, was, according to the will, to become mistress of New Place, and practically of all the poet's estate. She received (with remainder to her issue in strict entail) New Place, all the land, barns, and gardens at and near Stratford (except the tenement in Chapel Lane), and the house in Blackfriars, London, while she and her husband were appointed executors and residuary legatees, with full rights over nearly all the poet's household furniture and personal belongings.

To their only child and the testator's granddaughter, or 'niece,'

Elizabeth Hall, was bequeathed the poet's plate, with the exception of his broad silver and gilt bowl, which was reserved for his younger daughter, Judith. To his younger daughter he also left, with the tenement in Chapel Lane (in remainder to the elder daughter), 150 pounds in money, of which 100 pounds, her marriage portion, was to be paid within a year, and another 150 pounds to be paid to her if alive three years after the date of the will. {276a} To the poet's sister, Joan Hart, whose husband, William Hart, predeceased the testator by only six days, he left, besides a contingent reversionary interest in Judith's pecuniary legacy, his wearing apparel, 20 pounds in money, a life interest in the Henley Street property, with 5 pounds for each of her three sons, William, Thomas, and Michael. To the poor of Stratford he gave 10 pounds, and to Mr. Thomas Combe (apparently a brother of William, of the enclosure controversy) his sword. To each of his Stratford friends, Hamlett Sadler, William Reynoldes, Anthony Nash, and John Nash, and to each of his 'fellows' (_i.e._ theatrical colleagues in London), John Heming, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell, he left xxvj_s_.

viij_d_., with which to buy memorial rings. His G.o.dson, William Walker, received 'xx' shillings in gold.

The tomb.

Before 1623 {276b} an elaborate monument, by a London sculptor of Dutch birth, Gerard Johnson, was erected to Shakespeare's memory in the chancel of the parish church. {277} It includes a half-length bust, depicting the dramatist on the point of writing. The fingers of the right hand are disposed as if holding a pen, and under the left hand lies a quarto sheet of paper. The inscription, which was apparently by a London friend, runs: