A Life of William Shakespeare with portraits and facsimiles. Sir Sidney Lee
in 1598, but a manuscript version by Thomas Wilson, which was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton in 1596, was possibly circulated far earlier. Some verses from ‘Diana’ were translated by Sir Philip Sidney and were printed with his poems as early as 1591. Barnabe Rich’s story of ‘Apollonius and Silla’ (from Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’), which Shakespeare employed again in ‘Twelfth Night,’ also gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the ‘Two Gentlemen,’ but passages of high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, Launce and Speed—the precursors of a long line of whimsical serving-men—overflow with farcical drollery. The ‘Two Gentlemen’ was not published in Shakespeare’s lifetime; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having, in all probability, undergone some revision. [53]
‘Comedy of Errors.’
Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the ‘Comedy of Errors’ (commonly known at the time as ‘Errors’), at boisterous farce. It also was first published in 1623. Again, as in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost,’ allusion was made to the civil war in France. France was described as ‘making war against her heir’ (III. ii. 125). Shakespeare’s farcical comedy, which is by far the shortest of all his dramas, may have been founded on a play, no longer extant, called ‘The Historie of Error,’ which was acted in 1576 at Hampton Court. In subject-matter it resembles the ‘Menæchmi’ of Plautus, and treats of mistakes of identity arising from the likeness of twin-born children. The scene (act iii. sc. i.) in which Antipholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house, while his brother and wife are at dinner within, recalls one in the ‘Amphitruo’ of Plautus. Shakespeare doubtless had direct recourse to Plautus as well as to the old play, and he may have read Plautus in English. The earliest translation of the ‘Menæchmi’ was not licensed for publication before June 10, 1594, and was not published until the following year. No translation of any other play of Plautus appeared before. But it was stated in the preface to this first published translation of the ‘Menæchmi’ that the translator, W. W., doubtless William Warner, a veteran of the Elizabethan world of letters, had some time previously ‘Englished’ that and ‘divers’ others of Plautus’s comedies, and had circulated them in manuscript ‘for the use of and delight of his private friends, who, in Plautus’s own words, are not able to understand them.’
‘Romeo and Juliet.’
Such plays as these, although each gave promise of a dramatic capacity out of the common way, cannot be with certainty pronounced to be beyond the ability of other men. It was in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Shakespeare’s first tragedy, that he proved himself the possessor of a poetic and dramatic instinct of unprecedented quality. In ‘Romeo and Juliet’ he turned to account a tragic romance of Italian origin, [55a] which was already popular in English versions. Arthur Broke rendered it into English verse from the Italian of Bandello in 1562, and William Painter had published it in prose in his ‘Palace of Pleasure’ in 1567. Shakespeare made little change in the plot as drawn from Bandello by Broke, but he impregnated it with poetic fervour, and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the humour of Mercutio, and by grafting on the story the new comic character of the Nurse. [55b] The ecstasy of youthful passion is portrayed by Shakespeare in language of the highest lyric beauty, and although a predilection for quibbles and conceits occasionally passes beyond the author’s control, ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ as a tragic poem on the theme of love, has no rival in any literature. If the Nurse’s remark, ‘’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years’ (I. iii. 23), be taken literally, the composition of the play must be referred to 1591, for no earthquake in the sixteenth century was experienced in England after 1580. There are a few parallelisms with Daniel’s ‘Complainte of Rosamond,’ published in 1592, and it is probable that Shakespeare completed the piece in that year. It was first printed anonymously and surreptitiously by John Danter in 1597 from an imperfect acting copy. A second quarto of 1599 (by T. Creede for Cuthbert Burbie) was printed from an authentic version, but the piece had probably undergone revision since its first production. [56]
Of the original representation on the stage of three other pieces of the period we have more explicit information. These reveal Shakespeare undisguisedly as an adapter of plays by other hands. Though they lack the interest attaching to his unaided work, they throw invaluable light on some of his early methods of composition and his early relations with other dramatists.
‘Henry VI.’
On March 3, 1592, a new piece, called ‘Henry VI,’ was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange’s men. It was no doubt the play which was subsequently known as Shakespeare’s ‘The First Part of Henry VI.’ On its first performance it won a popular triumph. ‘How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French),’ wrote Nash in his ‘Pierce Pennilesse’ (1592, licensed August 8), in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot’s death (act iv. sc. vi. and vii.), ‘to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!’ There is no categorical record of the production of a second piece in continuation of the theme, but such a play quickly followed; for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI’s reign, attracted much attention on the stage early in the following autumn.
Greene’s attack. Chettle’s apology.
The applause attending the completion of this historical trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical profession. The older dramatists awoke to the fact that their popularity was endangered by the young stranger who had set up his tent in their midst, and one veteran uttered without delay a rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on September 3, 1592, wrote on his deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled ‘A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.’ Addressing three brother dramatists—Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge—he bade them beware of puppets ‘that speak from our mouths,’ and of ‘antics garnished in our colours.’ ‘There is,’ he continued, ‘an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his owne conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie. … Never more acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.’ The ‘only Shake-scene’ is a punning denunciation of Shakespeare. The tirade was probably inspired by an established author’s resentment at the energy of a young actor—the theatre’s factotum—in revising the dramatic work of his seniors with such masterly effect as to imperil their hold on the esteem of manager and playgoer. The italicised quotation travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VI:’
Oh Tiger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide.
But Shakespeare’s amiability of character and versatile ability had already won him admirers, and his successes excited the sympathetic regard of colleagues more kindly than Greene. In December 1592 Greene’s publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for Greene’s attack on the young actor to his ‘Kind Hartes Dreame,’ a tract reflecting on phases of contemporary social life. ‘I am as sory,’ Chettle wrote, ‘as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his [i.e. Shakespeare’s] demeanour no lesse civill