'^' '^''if ■^ /'-%. If lew." .x-*^ ' o . X ■* /\ a'-V c " " '' xo ^^. "*^ •^A 1 xQ°. SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM H. EDWARDS Author of " The Butterflies of North America," "A Voyage up the River Amazon," etc. Cttitb portraits and ■Fac-similes IvKT EVERY TUB STAND ON ITS OWN BOTTOM — Apt Proverb CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CIvARKE COMPANY 1900 tjciruji 4. n TWO COPIES RECEIVED, Library of Ceiigrei% Office of the Uegl»t«r of Copyrlgbtf^ Copyright, 1900, BY THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY, Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. H:RaT COPY, 51 %% ' ' The life of Shakspere is a fine mystery, and I tremble every day lest something should turn up.'' — Chari^ks Dicke;ns. INTRODUCTORY. It is full time that reasonable men should re-exam- ine the evidences on which they have beheved that an illiterate butcher, from an ignorant and bookless in- land village, who flew to lyondon in disgrace before the constable, and became a servitor, and later, a plaj'-er at a public theater, the then most degraded place of amusement, and who spent the greater part of every year in strolling through England with his troupe of comedians, sat himself down, and without preparation or knowledge, dashed off Hamlet, — and not only Ham- let, but nearly two score of the world's greatest plays. This exploit is so discordant with the facts of the man's life and environment, that his ablest and most authoritative biographer is obliged to suggest that these plays were written ' 'without effort' ' ; that is, without study or equipment, "by inspiration, not by design' ' , thus making of the Bard of his admiration, as he never wearies of calling him, a species of literary Blind Tom. He certainly did write by inspiration, if he wrote at all, for in his uninspired moments he pos- sessed not one accomplishment or characteristic that would help him to the writing of a play of any sort, — Cv) vi INTRODUCTORY. not even tlie manual art of writing. Another biogra- pher, of high authority, tells us that this man wrote the plays simply to fill the theater and his own pockets — not because, as a poet, he was compelled to sing. In the pages to follow, I assert and prove that the Shakespeare plays were not written for William Shaksper's theater, and that no one of them was ever played at his theater, except in special scenes, or in pantomime; and also that no man, during his lifetime, attributed the plays to "William Shaksper, or suspected him of any authorship whatever. I assert and prove that, until the issue of the First Folio of the Collected Plays, in 1623, years after the death of William Shak- sper, these plays, singly or collectively, had no repu- tation whatever; that they were not comprehended by the people, learned or unlearned, of that age; and that they are but just now, after a lapse of three hundred years, beginning to be comprehended. The Shaksper myth originated in the verses of Ben Jonson prefixed to the Folio, written as a paid advertisement, and in the bitterest ridicule of William Shaksper and the pre- tensions set up for him by the syndicate of publishers: also in the lying testimony, in the same Folio, which Heminge and Condell, Shaksper's ignorant fellow- players, are made by some unknown writer to stand sponsors for. I show that he died as devoid of ac- complishments as when he entered I^ondon, — ^unknown INTRODUCTORY. vil to any man of letters or of eminence, unnoticed and unlamented. The English speaking world has been humbugged in this matter long enough, but the labors of Halliwell-Phillipps, of Ingleby, and Furnivall, and Fleay, at length enable us to know exactly what Wil- liam Shaksper did do, and what he did not do. He made, and stuck to, and left behind him, a great heap of money, and that was the sole achievement of his fifty-two years on this planet. Began poor, died rich — ^which a Harvard professor, another biographer, thinks was as wonderful a feat as the writing of the Shakespeare plays. It is enough for me to prove that William Shaksper did not write these plays. Who did, I know not, and offer no suggestions; but when the venerable Shaksper image has tumbled, and the critics have a little ti,me to clear their eyes of dust and cobwebs, the real authors may be discovered, — authors, for I believe there were several associates who wrote under the assumed name of "William Shakespeare." Wii,i w o 3 i-i CA THE) THBJATEJRS IN I^ONDON. 1 73 greatest poet of tlie modern world", as Professor Symonds styles him, the "fullest head of which we have any record' ' , according to James Russell I^owell, the ' ' myriad-minded ' ' author of the Shakespeare plays, as Coleridge calls him, taking up his abode and remaining for twenty-five years with that disgusting crowd. William Shaksper could and did do that thing, but the author of the immortal plays could not have done it, and he did not do it. Can any one im- agine a heaven-born poet deliberately taking up his abode, and contentedly living the remainder of his days, with Snug the joiner. Bottom the weaver, and Snout the tinker ? — and those particular worthies were not tainted with every vice, we have reason to believe. "Acting" is not the word to describe the beggarly performances given by the Curtain company, or the Globe company, either at the Theater or on the tramp. They were players, not actors. Jonson intimates that their proper place was at Goose Fair, and he hints broadly at the character of the prevalent vices among them. Wendell takes pains to tell us that the theater was not a socially respectable place, — that it was the center of organized vice. And the quotations I have given from Phillipps and Symonds bear him out. William Shaksper, ex-butcher and poacher, escaped to lyondon, under the law that birds of a feather flock together, would naturally find his fellows at the public theater, and could lose no caste by it. But it is utterly impossible that the author of the Shakespeare plays, an educated and learned man, as well as a gen- tleman, of which the plays themselves give evidence, could have sunk into that unclean nest, and volun- 174 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPEAR:^. tarily have spent his hfe among pimps and panders, or strolhng about the land "with a blind jade and a hamper' ' , cutting his Jim Crow antics, in inn-yards, on boards and barrel-heads. Even as a player, William Shaksper was a failure. Burbage, and Alleyn, and Kempe, his associates, left some sort of a reputation to the next age, but of Shaksper there is nothing. According to Ro we, "the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet. There is some ground for thinking' ' (indefi- nite knowledge is definite ignorance) "that he played the part of Knowell in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour"; and there is a confused tradition handed down by William Oldys (i 696-1761), antiquarian, which makes it probable that he was the Adam of "As You lyike It". Dowden, 19. R. G. White says, Appleton's Enc. "Shakespeare": "We are tolerably well informed by contemporary writers of the per- formances of the eminent actors of that time, but of Shakespeare (Shaksper) we read nothing." A strange fact! No end of evidence of Shaksper' s money transactions, but nothing of him as a player — the occu- pation in which he spent the best half of his life, in contemporary annals. The truth unquestionably is that to his contemporaries he was known simply as proprietor of a theater, and as a trader' and money lender. Oldys says that one of William's younger brothers, whom he calls Charles, and who lived to a great age, when questioned in his later years, said that he could remember nothing of William's performances, but see- ing him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, THK THEATERS IN LONDON. 1 75 to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk that he was forced to be supported, and carried to a table, at which he was seated among some com- pany and one of them sang a song. ' ' This is circum- stantial enough, and indicates no loss of memory on the part of the venerable brother. The wonder is, if he could remember so much, and so minutely, that he could not have remembered more. Unfortunately, William did not have any such older brother, or any brother Charles, and that forgery goes with the many others. Fleay tells us, 170, (H.-P. I, 238), "that on the 4th Feby., 161 3, the poet's only surviving brother, Richard, was buried at Stratford. ' ' His memory as a player then rests only on what Rowe tells us, but if there is only some reason for thinking he played the part of old Knowell, there is as much reason for believing he did not. Evidently, William Shaksper played inferior parts, such as would not impress the spectators. He was not known to his contemporaries therefore as a player, nor as a writer of plays, but he had a reputa- tion which has reached our day as a jack-at-all-trades, a manager of a strolling company, and as proprietor of a public theater — the lowest, nastiest, place of entertainment. But always he was known as a man who had money to loan — for a sufficient consid- eration. And now we can understand why William Shaksper, player, manager, and part proprietor of the Globe, was unknown to the men of that age; that there is no mention of him in any letter, save in one instance where a Stratford neighbor writes to him for a loan of 176 shakspe;r not shakkspearb. money; or diary of that age, save one entry in Man- ningham's diary, (which makes him party to a dis- creditable amour) ; that there is no testimony to con- nect him with writing any sort of play; and there is not a tittle of evidence that any man or woman of mark, or any gentleman or lady, ever spoke to him. wii<];iAM shaksp:^r's thirst for we;ai,th. 177 CHAPTER VIII. WILI.IAM SHAKSPER'S THIRST FOR WEAIvTH. When I say there are few mentions of the man Shaksper, I mean as connected with the theater. There are many in other avocations, as buying and selling, investing money at Stratford and elsewhere, loaning money, and prosecuting debtors. In 1598, Adrian Quiney writes to him in London about money, and this is the only letter to-day extant addressed to the player. "The fact is somewhat startling in the life of a great poet that the only letter addressed to Shakespeare (Shaksper), which is known to exist, is one which asks for a loan of money' ' . R. G. White, lyife and Genius, 123. Very significant as well as startling, I should say! "He appears not only as an advancer of money, but also one who negotiates loans through other capital- ists". H.-P., I, 164. From the beginning of his career in London money was the object of his heart, and as Rowe tell us, "by his incessant attention to business' ' he attained it in an unusually large degree. Wendell, 433, says: "The son of a ruined tradesman, and saddled with a wife and three children, his busi- ness at 23 was to so conduct his life that he might end it not as a laborer, but as a gentleman. After five- and-twenty years of steady work, this end had been accomplished." Incessant attention to business, and twenty-five years of steady work in a player's life, 178 SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSPKARE. would seem to leave little time for anything outside of business. There are unreflecting persons who suppose William Shaksper was coining money by the Shake- speare plays, instead of by trading, buying and selling real estate in London, Stratford, and many other places; loaning his money at usurious interest, as the books plainly intimate; by farming and brewing beer. R. G. White says, Shakespeare Studies, 209: "The point to be constantly kept in mind in the critical con- sideration of Shakespeare's dramas is, that they were written by a second-rate actor (player Shaksper) whose first object was money, to get on in life. He wrote what he wrote merely to fill the theater and his own pockets". I think I have made it clear that had this man written the Shakespeare plays in order to fill the Theater, or Curtain, or Globe, the only theaters with which he was connected, he would have emptied instead of filled his own pockets. That theory may as well be dismissed. He did not write the Shakespeare plays, and his aim in life being what it was, he could not have written them, even if he had had the ability to do it. The passion for money-making is antago- nistic to the passion for study. The two cannot exist in the same mind. A man may become rich as a result of his passion for literature, but he cannot become learned by study, or distinguished in literature, when money-making has been his first ob- ject. There is no pretense that Shaksper had a passion for literature, or cared one stiver for it. "He wrote merely to fill his own pockets' ' . Then he never wrote the Shakespeare plays. He had an enormous capacity for getting money, else he would not have WIIvWAM SHAKSPKR'S THIRS']^ FOR WEJAI^TH. 1 79 accumulated a property that yielded an income equiva- lent to twenty-five thousand dollars to-day. His one feat was getting money; there is nothing else. He saved his earnings from his first months in I^ondon; even as a horse boy, he employed other boys to work for him, and so gained money. He invested in any good thing that came to hand, executed commissions, ne- gotiated loans with other capitalists, Phillips says. By and by he bought a share in a theater, which proved a very profitable investment; bought houses and lots in London, houses and lands in Stratford, farms here and there; was always trading, even to the buying and selling of agricultural products; was en- gaged in the making and sale of malt; buys for ^440 "the unexpired term of the moiety of a valuable lease of the tithes of four parishes, to wit: Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishop ton, and Welcombe." H.-P., I, 214. And all the while he was loaning money at a high rate of interest. Everything turned to money in this man's hands. He had a wife and children at Stratford, but he left them to shift for themselves. His father all the last part of his life was in distress for money, but the son for years wasted nothing on him. A very saving man this! He showed himself an unusually capable business man. Some of his admirers have been unable to see how he could have become rich without the apochryphal aid from Lord Southampton, told about by Rowe,at the beginning of the 1 8th century. According to Rowe, "there is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was l8o SHAKSPKR NOT SHAKKSP^ARK. probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my I^ord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to"; and H.-P., I, 147, thinks this purchase must have been New Place, in 1597; and 5^et he tells us, p. 131, that this property cost Shak- sper but ^60. As early as 1603, Crosse, in Phillipps' opinion, referred to Shaksper, when he spoke of "these copper-laced gentlemen (who) grow rich, pur- chase lands by adulterous plays, and not a few of them usurers and extortioners", etc. In 1602, he had bought 107 acres of land near Stratford. Plainly, he commanded money early in his London career, and there was no need of Southamp- ton's interposing as a deus ex machina. D'Avenant gave out that he was a natural son of Shaksper, and was a braggart as well as a blackguard, defiling the name as well as the fame of his own mother. (Both Phillipps and Fleay assert that there was not the least ground for the scandalous story. ) Naturally he would make the most of the Southampton chest- nut, testifying to the grand society the rich manager mixed in. One thousand pounds in 1596 was equal to $50,000 to-day. Blizabeth's dissipated nobles had no Golconda behind them; nor Pennsylvania oil-wells, nor Kaffir circles, nor Klon dikes, to fill their purses, and did not play at chuck farthing with thousands of pounds. If William Shaksper had been the recipient of so princely a gift, all the town would have rung with it. These things are not done in a corner. There would have been comments on it to suit In- WIIwIvIAM SHAKSPER'S thirst FOR WEJAI^TH, l8l gleby's book, record of it in the accounts or papers of the Karl of Southampton, mentions of it in the written gossip of the day. There is not merely a total absence of anything of the kind, but a notable lack of mention of a connection of any sort between Shaksper and Southampton. Halliwell-Phillipps, who was obliged to make a case to fit the personality of William Shaksper, says, I. 113: "It should be remembered that his dramas were not written for posterity, but as a matter of business . . . his task having been to construct out of certain given or selected materials successful dramas for the audiences of the day. ' ' The task of manager Shaksper, as well as of all managers of that day, was not ' "to construct successful dramas", but to find what would suit his or their au- diences from whatever sources they were able, and doubtless Shaksper catered to an approving audience. But the Shakespeare plays were written with no such aim as Mr. Phillipps lays claim to. They were written for posterity, and not for the audiences of Elizabeth or James, and not merely to fill the authors' pockets, and the theaters, public or private. As Goethe said, Shakespeare never thought of the stage. Had money been the aim the author of these plays would have gained but a pittance either by their sale* to the theater, or a royalty on their performance. They were not popular, they were beyond the understand- ing of the people, and appreciation of them was very slow even among the reading and educated classes. It * From Henslowe's Diary we learn that the price paid by the theater to the author for a play varied from ^2 to^7. i82 shaksp£;r not shake;spe;arb;. is one of the unexplained mysteries that no one seems to have had or exercised any ownership of these plays. Apparently any printer was at liberty to use them as he pleased. There is no evidence that any one ever received one penny of royalty on them or any of them. They were, so far as appears, cast on the waters, and certainly it was not till many days after that they bore fruit. "The constant thirst that he had for wealth is ex- hibited by his early acquisition of houses and lands in I^ondon and at Stratford; and the firmness of his grip on his accumulations is manifested by the paltry suits he brought to recover debts — one being for thirty-five shillings and tenpence — after he had come to the en- joyment of an income which would now be equal to twenty thousand dollars a year." Wilkes', "Shake- speare' ' . He carried on the business of money lending both in lyondon and at Stratford. The records of the courts in both places show that he sued his debtors, and got judgment against them. It is to be noted that the suits are always for small sums. He prosecuted Philip Rogers, a Stratford neighbor, for y 1.15,6, due for malt sold, and two shillings money loaned; another, John Addenbroke, for ^6. for malt. Follows this last suit for a couple of years until he gets the defendant into prison, whence he is bailed by Horneby. The legal proceedings are given in full by Phillipps in both these cases. Shaksper keeps a lawyer, one Thomas Greene, in his house, {teste Phillipps), and his name is appended to each of the processes in the Addenbroke suit. WII^IvIAM SHAKSPE;r'S thirst FOR WKAI^TH. 1 83 It is pleasant to know that Addenbroke ran away and escaped his tormentor, who however then com- menced operations on Horneby. R. G. White says: ' 'These stories grate upon my f eehngs. . . , The pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of im- prisoning him, and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts, and supporting himself and his family, is an instance in Shakspere's life which it requires the utmost allowance and consideration for the practice of the time and country to enable us to contemplate with equanimity — satisfaction is impossi- ble". Is it probable that this man was the Shakespeare of whom Dr. Drake wrote: "No person can study his writings without perceiving that throughout the vast range of being, whatever is lovely and harmonious, whatever is sweet in expression, or graceful in propor- tion, was constantly present to his mind"? Could that have been the persecutor of poor debtors, the man who kept a lawyer in his house, the rich player and theater-proprietor who brought up his daughters in ignorance, who neglected his distressed father, and forgot his wife when he came to make his Will? Drake had some other man in his mind, I think. Halliwell-Phillipps says: "Until this date (161 3), the personal notices of Shaksper which remain to us ex- hibit him as being very attentive to matters of busi- ness, rapidly growing in estate, purchasing farms, houses, and tithes in Stratford, bringing suits for small sums against various persons for malt delivered, money loaned, and the like; carrying on agricultural pursuits and other kinds of traffic, and executing 1 84 SHAKSPIIR NOT SHAKESPKARK. commissions in I^ondon for his Stratford neighbors. The best evidence we can produce exhibits him pay- ing more regard to his solid affairs than to his pro- fession." ' 'The four years and a half that intervened between the performance of the Tempest" (at Blackfriars the- ater, with which William Shaksper had no concern), "in 1611, and the author's death (161 6), could not have been one of his periods of great literary activity. So many of his plays are known to have been in exist- ence at the former date, it follows that there are only six which could by any possibility have been written after that time, and it is not likely that the whole of those belong to so late an era. These facts lead irre- sistibly to the conclusion that the poet (Shaksper) abandoned literary occupation a considerable period before his decease, and in all probability, when he disposed of his theatrical property." H.-P., I, 232. Fleay, 67, considers Shaksper' s "retirement from the stage in 16 10 nearly a certainty" . There is no tradition in the twenty-five years of his life in lyondon and the provinces, and the five or six in Stratford after his retirement, that he ever studied one hour, and being the kind of man he was, leading the life he led, he could by no possibility have studied anywhere or at any time. The life of a strolling player, and according to Halliwell-Phillipps, he led that life from the start, and nearly to the end of his connection with the theater, was antagonistic to study, even were there any inclination; while all the facts go to show there was no inclination. If the player acquired the learning necessary, as he WII^IvlAM SHAKSPEIr'S THIRST FOR WKAI^TH. 1 85 Strolled about the country, and wrote these plays on the tramp, (a proposition too absurd for consideration, one would think, but which nevertheless seems to be confidently entertained by many Shaksperolators) , spending the night in his cart, or the next bam, how many vans must have followed the much-studying man, bearing the ponderous tomes ("the ponderous folios so dear to the XVI century" Walter Scott), to be mastered and consulted. Nearly all of the learning of that day had to be drawn from original sources, for there were no compendiums , no encyclopedias, a?id almost no translations. If the tomes were carried, and the player sat up of nights exploring them, composing the plays, and writing them out in his peculiar hiero- glyphics, what became of the vast accumulations of books and manuscript; who interpreted the scrawls and transcribed them, and where are the interpreter's testimonies, and the traditions of him and them? Afterwards, at Stratford, in his retirement, accord- ing to Knight, but not according to Phillipps, he wrote plays that ' 'were the result of profound study of the whole range of Roman history including the nice details of Roman manners' ' . The Greek plays show exactly the same profound study of Greek history and manners. Where were the books and proofs of this assertion? There was not a book in William Shaksper's house at his death. As I write, an item is running through the newspapers to the effect that Dr. A. Conan Doyle states, in one of his lectures, that it took one year and a half hard reading of i , 500 books before he was well enough posted in the subject to write it out. And another writer of a popular romance 1 86 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. tells US that before she wrote it, she read a hundred and fifty books to get the necessary history. Yet as much reading and as much study must have been re- quired to enable the author of any one of twenty of the Shakespeare plays to write it, as it cost these recent authors to write their romances, and his dif&culties were immeasurably greater than theirs. A trifle that the apologists of the Stratford man have failed to note. ' 'There is preserved in the College of Arms the draft of a grant for coat-armour to John Shakespere, dated 1596. It may be safely inferred from the unprosperous circumstances of the grantee, that this attempt to con- fer gentility on the family was made at the poet's ex- pense." H.-P. I, 130. The player's profession pre- vented any hope of having a grant of this kind made directly to himself. In former times, only the sover- eign could make a gentleman, but before Elizabeth's day, the herald king-at-arms had obtained the right. "In our days," says an old writer, "all are accounted gentlemen that have money, and if he has no coat-of- arms, the king-at-arms can sell him one." "It ap- pears that Sir William Dethick, garter king-at-arms, in 1596 and 1599, was subsequently called to account for having granted coats to persons whose station in society and circumstances gave them no right to the distinction. The case of John Shakspere was one of those complained of". Collier, I^ife. "His (Shaksper's) most notable act was to obtain on two occasions by flagrant fraud with the complicity of the Garter King-at-arms, a gross rascal named John Dethick, a grant of armorial bearings, to which WII.I.IAM shakspsr's Thirst for weai^th. 187 he had no right whatever, a transaction which caused bitter complaint against the management of the Her- ald's College, although it refused to confirm Dethick's action in both instances," O'Connor, Hamlet's Note- book, 74, The application of John Shakspere claimed that his ancestors had been advanced by Henry VII, and that they had received lands in Warwickshire, and that his mother was the daughter of one of the heirs of Robert Arden, Gentleman. All which representations were false, and the application was not granted. "Toward the close of the year 1599, a renewed attempt was made by the poet to obtain a grant of coat-armour for his father. It was now proposed to impale the arms of Shakespere with those of Arden, and on each occasion ridiculous statements" (which means lying statements) ' 'were made respecting the claims of the family. Both were really descended from obscure country yeomen. But the heralds made out that the predecessors of John Shakspere were rewarded by the crown for distinguished services, and that his wife's ancestors were entitled to armorial bearings. Although the poefs relations at a later date asstimed the right to the coat suggested for his father, in 1596, zV does not appear that either of the proposed grants were ratified by the College, and certainly nothing more is heard of the Arden impalement". H.-P., I, 178. "The rolls of that reign (Henry VII) have been recently and care- fully searched, and the name of Shakespeare, accord- ing to any mode of spelling it, does not occur in them." Collier, Life, 18. "If the reader who is curious in such matters will 1 88 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKESPEARE. turn to the drafts of tlie applicant, that of 1596, on page 56, vol. 2, H.-P., and that of 1599, on page 60, and examine the interlineations that were made from time to time and which are indicated by italics, he will see how the applicant was drawn from falsehood to falsehood to meet the objections which were made against his claims of gentility. "In the first appHcation, it was stated that it was John Shaksper's 'parents and late ancestors', who ren- dered valiant service to King Henry VII, and were rewarded by him. This was not deemed sufiiciently explicit, and so it was interlined that the said John had married Mary, daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden, of Wilmecote, in the said county, Gent. But in the proposed grant of 1599, it is stated that it was John Shakspere's grandfather who had rendered these invaluable services to King Henry VII, and, be- ing driven to particulars, we are now told that this grandfather was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements given him in parts of Warwickshire where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit. This is wholesale lying. There were no such lands, and they had not descended by some descents in the family. But this is not all. Finding the application opposed, the fertile Shaksper falls back on a new falsehood, and declares that a coat of arms had already been given his father twenty years before. 'And he also produces this, his ancient coat of arms, heretofore assigned to him whilst he was her Majesty's officer and bailiff at that time.' And White tells us that upon the margin of the draft of 1596, John Shakspere 'sheweth a patent thereof under Clar- WII.I.IAM SHAKSPEJr's THIRST ?OR WEjAI^TH. 1 89 euce Cook's hands in paper, twenty years past'. (lyife and Genius. ) But his patent can no more be found than the land which Henry VII granted, etc. The whole thing was a series of lies and forgeries, a tissue of frauds from beginning to end." Donnelly, 53. Richard Grant White says that when he saw the mean house in which John Shaksper lived, "I knew that Shakspere himself must have felt what a sham was the pretension of gentry set up for his father, when the coat of arms was asked for and obtained by the actor's money from the Herald's College, that coat of arms which Shakspere prized because it made him a gentleman by birth. This it was more than the squalid appearance of the place which saddened me. ' ' England Without and Within, 526. Nevertheless, there is a persistent effort on the part of recent biographers of Shaksper, and of Shak- sperean writers, to fix that coat of arms upon the player. Rolfe (Shakespeare the Boy) is so enamored of it that he presents it twice on the cover, on back and side; and the Temple Shakespeare stamps it on the cover of each volume; Cargill's paper on "Shake- speare as an Actor' ' , elsewhere referred to, is prefaced by the same coat of arms; and even Sidney lyce's book, 1898, bears this bogus coat on the cover. Yet the biographers and writers, every one of them, knew and know that the thing is a lie. Look out for frauds wherever William Shaksper is mentioned. Ratsie said that the player was penurious. As to this feature of his character there is some curious evi- dence. "In the Chamberlain's accounts of Stratford is found a charge, in 1614, for 'one quart of sack, and igo SHAKSPKR NOT" SHAKElSPElARS. one quart of claret wine, given to a preacher at the New Place' (Shaksper's own house). What manner of man must he have been who would require the town to pay for the wine furnished to his guests?" Donnelly, 57. What would a Virginian think of a man who charged a visiting preacher's whiskey to the county ? He continued to buy and sell land, loan money, prosecute his debtors, collect the tithes, manage his farm, brew beer, and sell malt; and was one of the several parties who were engaged in a conspiracy to force the enclosure of the common land in the vicinity of Stratford; in other words, to rob the poor of their immemorial rights of pasturage. "An attempt is made by W. Combe, the squire of Welcombe, to en- close a large portion of the neighboring common fields; this attempt was opposed by the corporation but was supported by Mainwaring and Shakspere. The latter clearly acted simply with a view to his own personal interest". Fleay, 173. "It is certain that the poet was in favor of the en- closures, for on Dec. 23rd, 16 14, the corporation ad- dressed a letter of remonstrance to him on the subject, and another on the same day to a Mr. Wainwaring. The latter, who had been practically bribed by some land agreements at Welcombe, undertook to protect the interest of Shakspere. So there can be no doubt that the three parties (one Replingham acting with the other two named) were acting in unison." H.-P., I, 247. "Three greedy cormorants combined to rob the people of their ancient rights." Donnelly, 60. William Shaksper, of Stratford-on-Avon, lived fifty- WIIvIvlAM SHAKSPE;R*S I^HIRST I^OR Wi^AI.I'H. I9I two years in Stratford and in I^ondon. He is the reputed author of at least thirty-six world famous plays, and half a dozen no less remarkable poems. As his knowledge, if we may judge by these productions, was all-embracing, and his wit and humor superlative, it is to be supposed that his conversation was in keep- ing. It is also to be supposed that he, when in I^on- don, associated with other poets and literary men, who would often have taken notes of his wise and felicitous sayings. It is therefore odd that there should have been found in all the writings of that age — in books, letters, diaries, memoranda — record of but two conver- sations ever held by any persons with this William Shaksper, and that those should not relate to poetry, the dramatic art, or any kindred matter, even his the- ater, but simply to the enclosure of the common-land above spoken of ? The town clerk of Stratford made the following entry in his record book: "17 Nov., (1614), My cosen Shakespeare corny ng yesterday to town, I went to see how he did. He told me that they assured him they ment to inclose noe further than to Gospell Bush and so upp straight (leaving out the part of the Dyngles to the Field) to the Gate in Clopton hedge, and take in Salisburyes peece; and that they mean in April to survey the land, and then to give satisfaction and not before; and he and Mr. Hall say that they think ther will be nothyng done at all." And the further entry, in Sept. 1615: "Mr. Shake- speare telling J. Greene that 'I was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe' ". Mr. Phillipps adds, ' 'why the last observation should have been chronicled at all is a mystery." 192 SHAKSPE^R NOT SHAKE^SPKARB;. In the well-known anecdote found written in Man- ningliam's diary, player Shaksper is said to have spoken eight words, to-wit: "William the Conqueror was before Richard 3rd." Which words, with the others heard by the town clerk, are the sum total of the recorded utterances of the "myriad-minded poet and dramatist", if William Shaksper was William Shakespeare! the; i^:^stimony oi'' the; pi,ays. 193 CHAPTER IX. THE TESTIMONY OE THE PlyAYS. I have shown the sort of people WiUiam Shaksper sprang from, and the sort he associated with in his youth, the sordid environment, the lack of all oppor- tunity for mental improvement, the character of the people he went to, and all the rest of his life associated with, in lyondon, the nature of the public theater and the audiences that frequented it. So far the possibil- ities of Shaksper having been capable of writing the Shakespeare plays are all against him. I now propose to show by the evidence of the plays themselves that the question of his authorship is not worth one mo- ment' s consideration. What kind of language did young Shaksper use when he reached lyondon, at the age of 22 or 23? It certainly was not English; that he had never learned. He must have spoken the language of his parents and grandparents, of his relations and neighbors, the only language he could have heard since he was born. Mr. Phillipps tells us that nearly every one of the boy's connections was a farmer, and farmers, the world over, use no language other than the language of the soil. That, in the present case, was the Warwickshire dia- lect, and it was in great degree unintelligible to the I94 SHAKSPKR not SHAKElSPKAREi. inhabitants of other counties.* "The members of Elizabeth's Parliament could not comprehend each other. When the soldiers Elizabeth summoned were grouped about the camp, they could not understand a word of command unless given by officers from their own shire." Morgan. Macaulay, Hist. Eng. I, 298, describing the English country gentlemen of the time of the accession of William III, said: "His language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to have only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests and scurrilous terms of abuse were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to dis- cern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire' ' . This was a full hundred years after William Shaksper carried his patois to l/ondon. And of this patois, what would be the extent of the young man's vocabulary? Certainly not more than * Morgan gives some pages of eighteentii century Warwick- sliire patois, in part as follows: Old man: (meeting lad with fishing pole on his way to the Avon) " 'E waund thu bist agwain fishun'?" Lad: "Yus, gaffer, E be gwan pint umbit." Old man: "Oy Breckling, E 'ad gist spurt times. Thee mindst Red-nob, doesn't? Ah, thee shoodst sin un, reklin, when Ivard Coventry come age, when Brud Strit long o' Pashaws wuz a chock tables un foolks sittin down dinner at un and cad- die enow to phaze divil 'imself!" etc., etc. The patois two hundred years earlier, in the days of Shak- sper, must have been by many degrees more barbarous than the sample here given. Truly, a fine equipment for a young man ambitious for literary honors, coming to I/ondon at the age of 22! TH:^ ^EJSl^IMONY OIC THE^ PlvAYS. 1 95 four or five hundred words, at the outside. The first thing he had to do was to divest himself of the patois and begin to learn English. Max Muller in ' 'Science of lyanguage", says: "We are told by a country cler- gyman that some of the laborers in his parish had not three hundred words in their vocabulary. A well educated person in Kngland,who has been at a public school, and at the university, who reads the Bible, the Times, and all the books of Mudie's I^ibrary, seldom uses more than 3,000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close reasoners . . . sel- dom employ a larger stock, and eloquent speakers may rise to the command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than proba- bly any writer in any and all languages, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton's works were built up with 8,000." In a course of three lec- tures delivered at Oxford, and reprinted at Chicago, Professor Muller said: "Few of us use more than 3,000 or 4,000 words; Shakespeare used about 15,000." Craik estimates the Shakespeare vocabulary (poems and plays) at 21,000 words, and Clark agrees with Craik, as also does Meiklejohn. This extraordinary vocabulary seems entirely too great for one individual, and hence it has been argued that this alone is enough to show that several hands took part in the Shakespeare plays. Thus Stotsen- burg, Indianapolis News, 5th May, 1897, says: "Such voluminous and learned writers as Thackeray or Dick- ens (or Fiske) do not use over 5,000 words. John Milton surpassed all other writers as to word use by stretching the number to seven thousand. Presump- 196 shae:spb)r no'T shake^sp^are;. lively, therefore, if the writers of the plays were as prolific in words as Milton, there were three of them at least. If judged by the Thackeray stand- ard there were not less than four". Inasmuch as, with four writers as prolific in words as Thackeray, one-half the words in their respective vocabularies would be identical, there would be required eight such writers to make up one vocabulary as extensive as "Shakespeare's". This agrees with T. W. White's estimate. He assigns certain of the plays to Greene, Marlowe, Peele, Nash, Lodge, Chapman, Daniel and Bacon. Stotsenburg finds positive evidence that the Sonnets were written by Sidney, and the Venus and lyucrece by Marlowe. The vocabulary of Shakespeare from this point of view is not unreasonable. Marsh, Lectures on the Kng. Language, 182, says: "If a scholar were to be required to name without ex- amination, the authors whose English vocabulary was the largest, he probably would specify the all-embrac- ing Shakespeare, and the all-knowing Milton. And yet, in all the works of the great dramatist there occur not more than 15,000 words, in the poems of Milton not more than 8,000." The English language of to-day is comparatively settled, but in the time of Elizabeth, the number of words was small — the language was in process of mak- ing. The great writers. Bacon, Spenser, Hooker, the author or authors of the Shakespeare poems and plays, and others, were compelled to coin multitudes of new words from Latin and Greek; from French and other modern languages; but above all from Latin, to give expression to their thoughts; and thus, within a few THK TESTIMONY OP THE PI,AYS. 1 97 years, an enormous number of new words were brought into the language. Dr. Johnson says that from the works of Bacon alone a dictionary of the English language could be compiled. [Donnelly says: "Even as this book is being printed, a writer in the Chicago Tribune calls attention to the surprising fact that the New English Dictionary now being published in England, and in which is given the time and the place when and where each English word made its first appearance, proves that in the first two hundred pages of the work there are 146 words, now in common use, which were invented, or formed out of the raw materials of his own and other lan- guages, by the man who wrote the Shakespeare plays. And the writer shows that at this rate our total in- debtedness to the man we call Shakespeare for addi- tions to the vocabulary of the English tongue would be not less than 5,000 words. We owe to the poet the first use of the word air in one of its senses as a noun, and three as a verb or participle. He first said air- drawn, and airless. He added a new significance to airy and aerial. Nobody before him had written aired. . . . In no previous writer have Dr. Mur- ray's argus eyes detected accide?itly, nor any of the fol- lowing: abjectly, acutely, admiringly, adoptedly, ad- versely. To absolutely, accordingly, actively and affec- tionately, 'Shakespeare' added a new sense. It is not a little surprising that the word abreast was never printed before the couplet: 'My soul shall thine keep company in heaven; Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast,' 198 SHAKSPER NOT SHAKKSPE;ARE;. Of the words aud meanings first given by Shake- speare, at least two-thirds are of classic origin."] How came the untaught William Shaksper by the extraordinary and prodigious vocabulary exhibited in the Shakespeare plays? Macaulay (Essay on Dryden) tells us that, "Genius will not furnish the poet with a vocabulary; it will not teach him what word exactly corresponds to his idea, and will most fully convey it to others. Information and experience are necessary; not for the purpose of strengthening the imagination, which is never so strong as in people incapable of reasoning — savages, children, etc.; but for the purpose of enabling the artist to communicate his conceptions to others. . . . Should a man, gifted by nature with all the genius of Canova, attempt to carve a statue without instruction as to the management of his chisel, or attention to the anatomy of the human body, he would produce some- thing compared with which the Highlander at the door of the snuff- shop would deserve admiration. If an uninitiated Raphael were to attempt a painting, it would be a mere daub. ' ' I asked a Professor of Rhetoric in one of our great Western universities what he considered the extent of the vocabulary of a laborer or small farmer in his region. He replied, "Krom 250 to 400 words, accord- ing to his location. ' ' I asked another Professor of Rhetoric, this time in one of the Eastern universities, who had for many years taught L^atin and Greek, what course he would advise a young man of limited opportunities in his early years to pursue in order to attain a fairly copi- THK TESTIMONY OF TH:^ PLAYS. 1 99 ous vocabulary; not telling him however that the youth I had in mind was one William Shaksper. He laid me out a course that would require hard study for years, and practice; reading especially and always the Bible; the best prose authors and poets, above all Shakespeare; translating English into Latin, and re- translating in English. ' 'Practice is the greatest thing, versate majiu diu nocteque' ' . Above all (the best poets and prose writers) Shakespeare! Study him, young man, if you wish to enlarge your vocabulary, and learn what the English language is capable of! Hartley Coleridge, in his hfe of Massinger, says of that poet: "His classical allusions are frequent, but not like those of Ben Jonson, recondite, nor like those of Shakespeare and of Milton, amalgamated and con- substantiated with his native thought." ■ That is to say. Hartley Coleridge, a competent judge of education and literary attainments, ranks the author of the Shakespeare plays with Milton for profundity of classical learning, and both above the learned Jon- son. There is as clear evidence of classical learning in Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, Midsum- mer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and many other plays, as in Milton' s Lycidas. "The marvelous accuracy, the real substantial learn- ing, of the three Roman plays of Shakespeare present the most complete evidence to our mind that they were the results of profound study of the whole range of Roman history, including the nice details of Roman manners, not in those days to be acquired in a compendious 200 shakspe;r not Shakespeare. form, but to be brought out by diligent reading alone." Knight, 528. "In his Roman plays he appears co-existent with his wonderful characters, and to have read all the obscure pages of Roman history with a clearer eye than philosopher or historian. When he emploj^ed lyatinisms in the construction of his sentences and even in the creation of new words, he does so with singular facility and unerring correctness' ' , Id. , 1. c. Any one who has studied an ancient language knows that years of hard work were passed before such language became "amalgamated and consubstantiated with his native thought' ' , if it ever did (and in most cases it did not); that is, became to him as his native tongue. Every Professor and every educated man will agree to this in the case of John Robinson. The circumstances were far more adverse in the day of William Shaksper. Trench, "On the Study of Words", Lecture IV, says: "We must not omit him who is a maker (of words) by the very right of his name — I mean the poet. . . . The passion of such times, the all- f using imagination, will at once suggest and justify audacities in speech upon which in calmer moods he would not venture, or if he ventured would fail to carry others with him; for only the fluent metal runs easily into novel shapes and moulds. . . . He will enrich his native tongue with words unknown and non-existent before — non-existent, that is, save in their elements; for in the historic period of a language it is not permitted to any rnan to bring new roots into it, but 07ily to work on already giveji materials; to evolve THK TESTIMONY OF THE) PI