A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare. Fleay Frederick Gard
writing for the same company as Shakespeare, and necessarily in close connection with him. For Marlowe he certainly had a sincere regard: from his poem of Hero and Leander Shakespeare makes the only direct quotation to be found in his plays; on his historical plays Shakespeare, after his friend's decease, bestowed in addition, revision, and completion, a greater amount of minute work than on his own; and the earlier of his own histories were distinctly built on lines similar to those of Edward II. and Edward III. The relation of Shakespeare's Histories to Marlowe's is far more intimate than that of his Comedies or of Romeo to any predecessor's productions. I cannot find a trace of direct connection between Shakespeare and any other poet than these mentioned, during the life of Lord Strange. His connection with Lord Southampton seems to have been more intimate than any with his fellow-poets. In the Sonnets addressed to him there is mention of other pens who have dedicated poems to his lordship, and whom Shakespeare for poetical purposes professes to regard as dangerous rivals. The only persons known to have dedicated anything to Southampton are Nash and Markham, although George Peele had written a high eulogy of him in his Honour of the Garter in 1593. Markham's dedication is one of four prefixed to his poem on The Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenvile (S. R. 9th September 1595); (1.) to Charles Lord Montjoy (in prose); (2.) to Robert Earl of Sussex (Sonnet); (3.) to the Earl of Southampton (Sonnet); (4.) to Sir Edward Wingfield (Sonnet). I am not aware of any previous attempt to identify Markham with the rival alluded to in the Sonnets of Shakespeare, and yet there are many coincidences of language which would lead to this conclusion. Take Sonnet 78, for instance. "Thine eyes … have added feathers to the learned's wing and given grace a double majesty." In Markham we find in 1, "hath given wings to my youngling Muse;" and in 3, "whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen" (cf. in 1, "that thine eyes may lighten," &c.); and in 4, the double majesty of the grace, "vouchsafe to grace my work and me, Gracing the soul beloved of heaven and thee." I do not find in Markham the "affable familiar ghost" of Sonnet 86, but this and other allusions may have referred to his Thyrsis and Daphne (S. R. 23d April 1593, five days after the entry of Venus and Adonis) which is now unfortunately lost; and there is something like it in the Grenvile Tragedy, in which Markham calls on Grenvile's soul to "sit on his hand" while he writes, which the ghost apparently does until it is dismissed to its "rest" at the end of the poem. Markham was an exceedingly learned man and the "proud full sail of his great verse" would well apply to his stilted and conceited effusion. He does not in it allude to Southampton's beauty, though he may have done so in his Thyrsis, but he calls him "Bright lamp of virtue" with which compare Sonnet 79: "He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word from thy behaviour." On the whole I incline to regard Markham as the rival poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As to Nash, his supposed satirical allusions to Shakespeare, as set forth by the fertile fancy of Mr. Simpson, have no more real existence than the allusions discovered by other like imaginations in the writings of Spenser. His only notice of Shakespeare's writings is the well-known mention of the representation of Talbot on the stage, and that is highly complimentary. He may be included under the "every alien pen" of Sonnet 78, but he is not (as I once thought he was) the rival poet alluded to. It may be of interest in connection with this matter to note that in The Dumb Knight, in which Markham certainly wrote i. 2, ii. 1, iii. 4, and iv. 2, Venus and Adonis is satirised as a lascivious poem.
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