Frederick Fleay - A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

To 1606 no other play than Macbeth can with certainty be traced: and the marked change of metrical style at this epoch points to a period of rest. In all his subsequent plays, many lines end with unemphatic words, such as and , if , which , but and the like, and this change was not introduced gradually but suddenly and decisively. Hence its value as indisputably separating the Fourth Period plays from the preceding. On this ground it is pretty certain that Timon was Shakespeare's next production; he only wrote the chief scenes in it, however, and it was finished for the stage by another hand. At this time also, in my opinion, Shakespeare began to write Cymbeline , which he afterwards completed himself. This arrangement of his work seems natural; Lear , Macbeth , Cymbeline closing the series founded on Holinshed, and Timon , Antony , Coriolanus – the series from Plutarch – succeeding them. A minuter examination of the question will be found in a later part of this work. Of other play-writers' contributions to the Globe in 1606 there is only one — Pericles , as originally produced by Wilkins, which was ridiculed in The Puritan by Middleton – acted by the Paul's children of this year. Wilkins left writing for the King's men, and (1607) joined the Queen's men at the Curtain. This was probably rumoured to have been caused by some quarrel with Shakespeare, for on 6th August 1607, S. R., The Puritan Widow was published as by W. S., evidently meaning William Shakespeare. Of all the instances in which Shakespeare's name or initials were fraudulently inserted on title-pages, this play and Sir John Oldcastle were the only two in which they were prefixed to plays not even acted by his company. At the Court in the 1606-7 season three Globe plays were presented to the King of Denmark on the occasion of his visit to England, and nine others in the usual course. Antony and Cleopatra may be confidently assigned to 1607. It was entered for publication S. R. on 20th May 1608 with Pericles (no doubt as originally written by Wilkins), but both plays were stayed; the former as having been on the stage only one year, the latter to be superseded by the issue in 1609 of the version as altered by Shakespeare. On 22d October The Merry Devil of Edmonton was entered S. R. for A. Johnson. The entry for Hunt and Archer on 5th April 1608 is that of the prose story by Thomas Brewer. The initials T. B. in this latter entry have misled Mr. Halliwell and others to assign the authorship of the play to Tony Brewer. On 26th November Shakespeare's King Lear was entered S. R. as it was played before the King on 26th December 1606, "Saint Stephen's Night at Christmas last." This settles two important questions; first, the relation of the Quarto text to the Folio – the Quarto being the version played at Court, the Folio that retained by the players for the public stage; secondly, the existence of a custom in the Globe company of allowing, in cases of altered or revised plays, the version not required for future stage purposes to be issued to the public in print. Many instances of this custom are brought to light in the present treatise. On October 7, Cyril Tourneur's (?) Revenger's Tragedy was entered S. R. The date of production on the stage is uncertain. It had "been sundry times acted by the King's players." Nor am I aware of the grounds on which the authorship is assigned to Tourneur. It was published anonymously. On 25th June, Susanna, Shakespeare's daughter, married John Hall, M.A., physician at Stratford. There were thirteen performances this winter at Court by the King's men. In 1608 Shakespeare probably produced Coriolanus . On 21st February Elizabeth Hall was baptized, within eight months from her parents' marriage. The prospect of a continuation of his family, though not of his family name, was some alleviation for Shakespeare of the loss of his youngest brother Edmund, "a player," buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, 31st December 1607, "with a forenoon knell of the great bell," ætatis 27. Of Edmund's career in London we know nothing; but surely he must have belonged to the Globe company. His absence from the actors' lists offers no obstacle to this supposition; they are, after that of The Seven Deadly Sins in 1594, confined to names of shareholders and principal actors. And if player for the Globe, why not author? May he not, for instance, have written The Yorkshire Tragedy under his brother's superintendence, and may not this account for its being published as William Shakespeare's? All attempts to assign it to any known author have egregiously failed. However this may be, and however poignantly William felt the loss of the Benjamin of the family, a severer bereavement awaited him in the death of his mother, buried at Stratford 9th September 1608. It has always been a favourite hypothesis with me that Volumnia was drawn from her as a model of matronly virtue, and it is certain that at this date a final change took place in Shakespeare's manner of writing. His plays since the accession of James had been, with scarcely an exception, tragedies; from this time they are really, under whatever head they may have hitherto been classed, tragi-comedies, and all turn, as I pointed out many years ago, on the reuniting of separated members of families. The first of this final group is Marina , the part of Pericles which replaced Wilkins' work, and which was written in this winter and hurriedly printed in 1609 as a practical answer to Wilkins' prose version, published in 1608, in which he claimed the story as an "infant of his brain." Shakespeare's version must, I think, be placed after his return to London from Stratford, where he remained after his mother's funeral till 16th October, when he stood godfather for William Walker. The Court performances this winter were twelve. On 28th January 1609, Troylus and Cressida was entered S. R., not for Roberts, whose intended publication in 1603 had been stayed, but for Bonian and Whalley, who issued it with a preface stating that it had never been "staled with the stage." This false statement was withdrawn in their subsequent re-issue during the same year, but it proves that the period during which the play had been performed in 1602 must have been a very short one; such a statement could not have otherwise been put forward with any plausibility. On 20th May the Sonnets were published, with a dedication to their "only begetter," Mr. W. H. I think that these initials designate Sir William Hervey, to whom Lord Southampton's mother left at her death in November 1607 the greatest part "of her stuff." He was her third husband, and may have been the original suggester to Shakespeare, as a friend to Lord Southampton, that he should write a series of Sonnets to him recommending marriage in 1594, when Southampton had not yet become devoted to "the fair Mrs. Vernon," and was entangled in the affair of the frail Avisa. In 1609 he was busily occupied with the Virginian company, and promoting voyages for American discovery, an allusion to which underlies the Dedication "wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth," adventurer being the current phrase for explorer of unknown regions. On 7th June Shakespeare's cousin, Thomas Green, then residing at New Place, Stratford, issued a final precept in his behalf against one Hornby, who had become bail for John Addenbroke, in a matter of debt for £6. This litigation had begun in August 1608: juries had been summoned on 21st December and 15th February, and then Addenbroke absconded, leaving Hornby to be answerable. The plague being prevalent this year, there were no Christmas performances at Court, and not many on the public stage. Cymbeline was Shakespeare's only production. In its present state it has evidently been subjected to revision and to alteration for some revival after Shakespeare's death, when the doggerel in the vision in iv. 4 was inserted; originally, no doubt, the ghosts appeared in dumb show to music. The Globe players received £30 as a compensation for being restrained from playing in London during six weeks, i. e. , during August and September, when the bills of mortality show the plague to have been at its height.