170 



♦ KNOWLEDGK 



[June 1, 1887 



Compare with this the talk of Theseus and Hippolyta 

 about hunting ('-Midsummer Night's Dream," act iv. 

 scene 1). 



The " Lucrece," like " Venus and Adonis," was dedicated 

 to the E.irl of Southampton ; and here the testimony of this 

 powerful patron of Shakespeare's may be quoted as decisive 

 against the fancy of the Baconian paradoxists, though it 

 would be of no weight with the paradoxists themselves. 

 The man to whom Shakespeare dedicated these poems, who 

 knew at once of Shakespsare's powers and of his life, who 

 must have suspected (if he had not known all about) the 

 imagined compact between Bacon and Shakespeare, by which 

 the ignorant piradoxist strives to blast the fame of both, 

 had so contemptible a compact ever existed, wrote in 1608 

 to another nobleman, Lord Ellesmere, the Lord Chancellor, 

 that William Shakespeare, his " special friend," " till of late 

 an actor of good account in the company " (he was writing 

 about the Blackfriars Theatre), " now a sharer in the same, 

 and writer of some of our best English plays, which, as your 

 lordship knoweth, were most singularly liked of (Jueen 

 Elizabeth, when the company was called upon to perform 

 before Her Majesty at court at Christmas and Shiovetide. 

 His most gracious Majesty King James also, since his 

 coming to the crown, has extended his royal favour to the 

 company in divers ways and at divers times." To those 

 who know in what respect nobility was held, and held 

 itself, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, 

 and the almost divine light which surrounded royalty in 

 men's imaginations (Shakespeare presents his worst king 

 as claiming that "divinity doth hedge a king"), the 

 Eai'l of Southampton's testimony will appear most strik- 

 ing. The very fact that to us the honour is all the 

 other way makes his expressions the more remark- 

 even from the common fault 

 offence of condescension. We 

 that the man whom, though 

 his friend was known to 

 works he attributed to him. 

 " Right famous is he," Southampton said of Shakespeare, 

 " in his qualities." Yet the Baconian paradoxist must still 

 believe that Shakespeare was an illiterate, uncultured 

 countryman, ready to be the apt tool of Bacon's scheme — 

 even though the paradoxist cannot tell us what imaginable 

 reason Bacon had for entering on so contemptible a plot, or 

 why, desiring to associate a likely name with his masterly 

 plays, he should have selected a man of whom they say that 

 it is utterly impossible (the extremest form of unlikelihood) 

 that he should have produced even the weakest of them. 



The " Lucrece," more than the "Venus," shows touches 

 indicating sti^dy of Spenser, especially in the freer use of 

 alliteration. Thus, in verse 8 — 



When virtue bragg'd, beauty would blush for shame ; 

 Wlien beauty boasted blushes, in despite 

 Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white. 



That Shakespeare could not have admired Spenser's more 

 exaggerated use of alliteration, as in the fearful line, " The 

 sad soothsayer seeing so sad sight " (though he has in 

 " Lucrece " " To see sad sights moves more than hear them 

 told "), we may guess from his jesting use of it in " Henry 

 VIII." in the lines- 

 Born by butcher, but by bishop bred, 

 How high his haughty highness holds his head. 



(The last must have taxed the aspirations of the Londoners 

 if they were as bad in his time as now), and again in the 

 prologue to the " very tragical mirth " of the play presented 

 by Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snout, and Starveling — 



Whereat with blade, with bloody, blameful blade, 

 He bravely broached his boiling, bloody breast. 



able — free as they ai-e 

 of titled patronage, the 

 may be well assured 

 but a plebeian, he esteemed 

 him as the true author of the 



In "Lucrece" the dramatic power of the poet shows 

 itself as well as the descriptive. The soliloquies of Tarquin 

 (there are four), in the longer of which he is Shakespeareanly 

 presented, not as a weaker poet would have shown him, 

 striving to justify the evil he proposes, but urging all reasons 

 which should move him to desist, his words to Lucrece, her 

 appeals to him and his final answer (which closely resembles 

 the threat of Proteus to Sylvia in the " Two Gentlemen of 

 Verona "), all these, though the poet has expanded them 

 more than in a play would have been just, are strictly 

 dramatic in character ; and they are such passages as only 

 the creator of Cthello and Cymbeline could have produced. 

 Passing over several dramatic passages, we find still more 

 strikingly Shakespearean in dramatic power the closing 

 scene where Lucrece tells her husband and father of the 

 wrong done her. Only a Lucrece pictured by a Shakespeare 

 could speak and plead as Lucrece here. The silence of Col- 

 latinus is in itself Shakespearean — 



Which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth, 

 And his untimely frenzy thus awaketh : 

 Dear lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth 

 Another power ; no flood by raining slaketh. 

 My woe too sensible thy passion maketh, 

 More feeling * painful ; let it then suffice 

 To drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes. 

 And for my sake —when I might charm thee so — 

 For she that was thy Lucrece — now attend me. 



(These two last lines are singularly beautiful, and very fine 

 is the sudden change of tone in what follows) : — 



Be suddenly revenged on my foe, 



Thine, mine, his own. Suppose thou dost defend me 



From wliat is past : the help that thou shalt lend me 



Comes all too la'e, yet let the traitor die ; 



For sparing justice feeds iniquity. 



Her appeal to the lords standing round to give their 

 promise that the wretch as yet unnamed shall die, her 

 anxious question whether she may acquit herself of blame, 

 is followed at once (when- — 



they all at once began to say 

 Her body's stain her mind untainted clears) 



by Tarquin's name, and the death-stroke, with the dying 

 words (like ^Eneas' tamed Pallas t« hoc vulnere, Pallas 

 imniolat) : " He, he, fair lords, 'tis he, that guides this hand 

 to give this wound to me." All this is such as only the 

 Shakespeare of the plays could have produced. 



I find I have left no room to touch upon the sonnets as 

 manifesting authorship by the same hand which wrought 

 the plays. I leave them then to another occasion, only 

 noting here further the use in " Lucrece," as in " Venus and 

 Adonis," of words and phrases such as Shakespeare uses in 

 his di'amatic works. The "bloody, blameful blade" used 

 jestingly in the " Midsummer Night's Dream " may be 

 compared with the " cursed crimeful night " of Lucrece — 

 even the quaint turn of expression being matched in — • 



She sheathed in her harmless breast 

 A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheath'd. 



Such strange words as " sneap'd," "rigol," "key-cold," 

 and such expressions as "a barebon'd death," a "com- 

 fortable star " (like the " comfortable hour " of Richard III.), 

 attest the common authorship of the plays and poems. But 

 it is in such passages as the description of Lucrece sleeping, 

 and her impassioned outcry against Opportunity, that the 

 oneness of the Shakespeare of the plays and the Shakespeare 

 of the poems is most clearly seen. The former should be 

 compared with lachimo's description of Imogen as he creeps 

 from his trunk and robs her of the bracelet wliich is to be 



* " Feeling " is here used adverbially for feelingly. 



