"About three months since died Mr. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' hands: among others his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter, written to divers playmakers, is offensively by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceits a living author, and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on me. How I have all the time of my conversing in printing hindered the bitter inveighing against scholars, it hath been very well known; and how in that I dealt I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted; and with one of them, I care not if I never be: the other, whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion (especially in such a case, the author being dead); that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art. For the first, whose learning 1 reverence, and at the perusing of Greene's book struck out what then in conscience I thought he with some displeasure writ, or had it been true, yet to publish it was intolerable, him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve." The comparison of the original tract proves that it is only from looseness of wording that the apology seems to indicate that the offended play-wrights were both of the number the letter was specially addressed to. The reference to the standing the poet had obtained with "divers of worship" is fully borne out by the terms in which, within a year, he dedicated his Venus and Adonis to Lord Southampton. The poet exclusively, complains bitterly of the advantage of a rival who was an actor also, and as productive and energetic as he was versatile in either faculty; and this combination of qualities seems, indeed, to have been a leading cause of Shakespeare's material success. There is an indication in Hamlet that appears much to the point. The prince was to write a scene for insertion in a stock piece of the players, and after its desired and marked effect, he exclaims in an excitement, perhaps chiefly of literary success-" Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me), with two Provençal roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players? Horatio. Half a share. Hamlet. A whole one, I." Even so it was when Shakespeare's own fortunes were none of the kindest, that he donned the buskin and cothurn, and with flowing pen and fancy free supplied corrections and completions, and then novelties of his own; and aided by vigilance, activity, and the talent for business, of which there is abundant proof, secured the way to more than independence; and yet with such a liberality of spirit, that he kept steadily in view, against many drawbacks, that dignity of social rank, which Greene had possessed but forfeited, and more than this, attracted the attachment and affectionate esteem of the finer spirits who were capable of such sentiments. It is on our appreciation of the distinction already attained by Shakespeare, as expressed in this notice, and of the length of career which it implies within the limits of the preceding seven years, that must depend whether we are prepared to apply to him another allusion, that, if brought home, is, at least as regards his literary history, of still greater interest. A single year, a single half year, may make vast difference in the history of Shakespeare and the stage at this point; but evidence is so lamentably deficient, that we must be content with generalities. Greene took his degree of M. A. in Shakespeare's nineteenth year; and, as on his own evidence he left the University young, he cannot have been very much his senior. Marlowe took the same degree when Shakespeare was twenty-three, in 1587, and his remarkable and celebrated play of Tamburlaine is mentioned the next year. Shakespeare's renown when he was taxed as an upstart, was at least not anterior to that of Marlowe in 1588, and yet it was confirmed before 1592. This cannot have been upon the strength of one or two plays only; and if not, we must conclude that, besides the alterations of Henry VI. and others that may have been less extensively touched by him, some of the earlier comedies must also have been brought out; and of these there is not one that would not fully suffice both a poetic and dramatic reputation. Now it is quite certain, as we shall see, that at least sixteen of Shakespeare's plays were in existence before 1598, the list including all the secondary plays and many of his masterpieces; and simple counting back upon our fingers. may convince us that his commencement as a dramatist could not have been later, and might have been some what earlier, than 1589. It would seem, then, that Shakespeare's authorship can scarcely be considered to have commenced later than that of Marlowe, though it may have been only after lapse of a year or two that his gentle and more tempered vein even in the fury of a passion, carried off the approval of the more numerous hearers, as well as of the select and the refined. The year 1589 furnishes a sarcastic allusion by Nash to an author of a play of Hamlet' in these terms :— "It is a common practise now a days among a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar, and so forth; and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches." This is certainly very much in the tone and style of Greene's invective, and the agreement confirms Knight's conjecture, that Nash, and not Lodge, was the youthful satirist the dying collegian addressed, as a quondam associate and ally. Nash is indignant at the success of a dramatist who meddles with art, who does not shun even classical subjects, though unqualified by university education, and helps himself out of Seneca's tragedies in an 1 It should be noted that Hamlet does not appear in the "Register of the Stationers' Company" until 1602, and in its present form cannot have been written much before that date. The above extract seems to point to an early form of the play, if it may be taken as referring to Shakespeare, English translation,- -so little Latin is he master ofa mere interloper from his original and deserted profession of the law. Noverint is the technical beginning of a bond. The satire, such as it is, evidently touches Shakespeare in several points, and the mention of Hamlet seems to prove that it was intended for him. The quarto Hamlet may easily be a badly reported copy of one of his earliest plays; and defective as it is, who shall say that the quoted phrase was not there originally; there is quite enough in Titus Andronicus to account for the reference to Seneca's Thyestes; and if Nash supposed Shakespeare had been a lawyer's clerk, it is no more than has been inferred by others in later times, on grounds, as we have seen, of high probability. The other report that has come down to us, that he had been a schoolmaster, loses in probability from not having provoked a cavil on this occasion. course an angry satirist does not sift even rumours, much less evidence; but there is a correspondence between the pique of Greene and that of Nash that would convince me that the object of it was the same, though Hamlet had not been mentioned. Nash, no doubt, in denouncing a sort of shifting companions," may have taken a characteristic from more than one, but he certainly individualizes at last. 66 Of I am strongly confirmed in my opinion that the sneer of Nash at Hamlets and handfuls of tragical speeches, was indeed a glance at Shakespeare and an early form of his great tragedy, by what appears like a manifest counterthrust in the rewritten and perfected play of a later year. Nobody supposes now that the recitations of the players in the later Hamlet either were intended to be or are ridiculous or bombastical,-how it is that they are not has been well explained by Schlegel; they are acting acted, imitation upon a ground of imitation, and only to be detached and distinguished from it by heightened colours and strengthened outlines, that would be inadmissible in the primary imitation. There is a second factitious medium interposed between them and the spectator, by which extravagance is toned into a relative sobriety; while, but for this extravagance, sobriety would have been flattened into tameness. Thus these speeches became the most remarkable exemplification of the critical precepts of the Prince which touched the contemporary drama so closely, by giving rein to the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion, yet so smoothed and tempered at its very height, as to be in the directest contrast to speeches that could be only opportunities for a "robustious periwig-pated fellow to tear a passion to tatters, to very rags." If this be so, it is certainly remarkable that it was from a play of Nash that Shakespeare took the theme for his introduced tragical speeches, and so rewrote them that it was impossible for an audience familiar with the model not to draw a comparison between the rude and the ideal, and by the appreciation of true tragic height, have a quickened sense for the detection of fustian, bombast, and rant, some sparks of poetry notwithstanding. The following, a speech from Dido, Queen of Carthage, written by Nash, in conjunction with Marlowe, I extract to illustrate and justify my inference: Pyrrhus has been described as striking off the hands of Priam at the sack of Troy : "At which the frantic queen leap'd on his face, And would have grappled with Achilles' son, 7 |