304 



SHAKKSPKAKE 



when he was an actor and a rising playwright. 

 The dramatUt Robert Greene, living in that year, 

 addressed three of his brother-authors, Marlowe, 

 1'eele, and Nash or Lodge, in a passage of his pam- 

 phlet, lirftnt's Groatnoorth of Wit bought trtth a 

 million of Jiepentance, warning them against the 

 ungrateful and inconstant race of players : ' Yes, 

 trust them not : for there is an upstart crow, beau- 

 tified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart 

 wrapt in a player* 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 

 own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.' 

 The line of verse here parodied, 



Oh, tiger's heart wrapt in woman'! hide, 



occurs in the Third Part of Henry VI. and in the 

 old play, Richard Duke of York, on which it is 

 founded. Greene suggests that Shakespeare has 

 been pilfering from a play in which he and Mar- 

 lowe had each a hand. The editor of Greene's 

 pamphlet, Henry Chettle, soon after, in his pam- 

 phlet Kind-Hart* Dream (December 1592), made 

 a handsome apology to Shakespeare : ' I am as 

 sory as if the original! fault had been my faulte, 

 because my selfe have seene his [Shakespeare's] 

 demeanor no lease civil! than he exelent in the 

 qualitie he professes; besides, divers of worship 

 have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which 

 argues his honesty, and hi- facetious grace in 

 writ ting, that aprobves his art.' From these refer- 

 ences we infer tnat Shakespeare had already made 

 himself a valuable member of his dramatic com- 

 pany, that he was already known as a writer for 

 tin- stage, that his merit as an actor ('quality' 

 having special reference to this) was not incon- 

 siderable, and that as a man he was honourable in 

 all his acts. High eminence as an actor Shake- 

 speare did not attain, though it appears from 

 Hamlet's advice to the players that he nad a just 

 perception of the actor's merits and defects. Kowe 

 assures us that ' the top of his jierfoniiance was the 

 ghost in his own Hamlet.' It is believed that he 

 took the part of Old Knowell in Jonson's Every 

 Man in his Humour, and perhaps that of the vener- 

 able Adam in As You Like It. 



In 1593 appeared Shakespeare's first published 

 work, the narrative poem, written in a six-line 

 stanza, Venus and Adonis. It is dedicated to the 

 young Earl of Southampton, the poet's patron and 

 friend, who, according to a tradition derived from 

 D'Avenant, on one occasion proved his friendship 

 by a large gift of money to enable Shakespeare ' to 

 go through with a purchase he had a mind to.' 

 Venus and Adonis is described by its author as 

 ' the first heir of his invention ;' it is an elaborate 

 piece of Renaissance paganism, setting forth ideals 

 of sensuous beauty, male and female, in the i 

 of the amorous goddess and of the young hunter, 

 whose coldness meets and foils her passion. Close 

 observation of nature and much sweetness of versi- 

 fication characterise the poem ; the passages of 

 dialogue are, as it were, studies in the casuistry 

 of passion ; elaborate conceits, such as few Kliza- 

 ln-tlian poets could escape from, abound. The 

 dedication promises a 'graver labour,' and this 

 soon followed in the Lurrece (published 1594). 

 The theme of the Venut is here, as it were, re- 

 versed ; the lawless passion of Tarqnin is confronted 

 by the ardent chastity of the Roman wife. The 

 stanza is one of seven (ines ; the dedication i- again 

 to Southampton, and it words express strong and 

 deep devotion. JJoth the Venns and the I.u 

 became immediately popular, and were many times 

 reprinted. 



Shakespeare's earliest dramatic exercises con- 

 sisted probably in adapting to the stage plays by 

 other authors which had grown a little out of date. 



Many critics have pointed to Titus Aitdronieui ai 

 an example of surn work, and a tradition put on 

 record in 1687 confirms this view. The play cer- 

 tainly belongs to a moment in the history of 

 i-h tragedy which we may describe as'pre- 

 Shakespearian ; it reeks with blood; its effects 

 are rather those of horror than of dramatic terror 

 and pity; if Shakespeare wrote it we mu-t In-lieve 

 that lie wrote it before his genius had discovered 

 its true direction. Another of t lie early plays in 

 which Shakespeare proltably worked ujxui older 

 material is the Fiixt J'nrt tif J/mri/ I 1.; some 

 critics have held that in its construction three 

 hands can lie distinguished. However this may 

 be, we accept it as all but certain that the play 

 contains pre-Shakespearian work ; we are pleased 

 to think that the i-nol.].- jiortraiture of Joan of 

 Arc is not of our great dramatist's conceiving; in 

 the Temple-garden scene (ii. 4), which tells of the 

 plucking of the white rose and the reel, we have 

 perhaps Shakespeare s chief contribution to this 

 drama. 



\\e dare not say for certain at what precise date 

 Shakespeare's career as a dramatic author Ix'gan ; 

 but 1589-90 cannot be far astray. Among his 

 earliest experiments in comedy wereiojw's Labour's 

 Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and The Two tjentle- 

 men of Verona; among the earliest historical 

 dramas were the second and third parts of Henry 

 VI., King Richard III., and King liichardll.; the 

 first romantic tragedy (setting aside Titus A ndroni- 

 cus) was undoubtedly Humm <iml Juliet. The 

 evidence by which the chronology of Shakespeare's 

 several works is ascertained or inferred with more 

 or less probability is of various kinds, including 

 entries of publication or intended publication in 

 the Stationers' Registers; statements nbout the 

 (days and poems, or allusions to them, or quota- 

 tions from them by contemporary writers in works 

 of known dates; facts connected with the history 

 ol dramatic companies which piesented p|a\s (if 

 Shakespeare; allusions in the plays to historical 

 events, and quotations by Shakespeare from publi- 

 cations of the day. \\C cannot fail also to observe 

 the growth of Shakespeare's imaginative power, 

 his intellectual reach, his moral depth, his spiritual 

 wisdom ; with respect to each of these we must, 

 needs recognise a profound difference between 

 the earlier and the later plays. At the same time 

 we perceive a gradual change, or rather a group of 

 changes, taking place in the structure of liis dra- 

 matic verse. In his verse of early date the sense 

 closes with the line far more frequently than is the 

 case in his verse of a later period, and with this 

 growing tendency to carry tne sense beyond the 

 fine arises also an inclination or a reailiness to 

 place as the final word of the line some word such 

 as am, do, I ( ' light ending'), or even such as mid, 

 of,if(' weak ending'), which precipitates the reader 

 or prononncer of (lie passage into the next follow- 

 ing line. Thus in its structure the versification 

 becomes more varied and freer, or, if not freer, sub- 

 ject to subtler and less obvious laws. It is part of 

 the same process that Shakes|ieare gradually ceased 

 from employing rhyme for dramatic purjiosps, and 

 again that lie allowed the decasyllabic line to pass 

 much more frequently into one of eleven syllables 

 (' dou 1 ile ending' or 'feminine ending'). These 

 peculiarities of versification admit of statistical 

 calculations in their process of development, and 

 have formed the subject of much careful study 

 among recent Shakespearian scholars. 



In his early comedies Shakespeare is trying, as it 

 were, his 'prentice hand in various experiments. 

 Lore's Labour's Loft (c. 1590) is perhaps his 

 first original play ; no source is known ; some of 

 the leading characters seem to be named after 

 I persons of note in recent or contemporary French 



