Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/364

Shakespeare visited Scotland with his company (cf. ;, Stage, pp. 135–6). In November 1599 English actors went to Scotland under the leadership of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin. The former was a colleague of Shakespeare in 1603, but is not known to have been one earlier. Shakespeare's company never included an actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the visit in October 1601 (MS. State Papers Dom. Scotland; P. R. O. vol. lxv. No. 64;, Stage, pp. 126–44). There is nothing to indicate that any of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's company. That Shakespeare visited any part of the continent is even less probable. He repeatedly ridicules the craze for foreign travel (cf. As you like it, . i. 22–40). His name appears in no extant list of English actors who paid professional visits abroad. To Italy, it is true, and especially to the northern towns of Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, he makes frequent and familiar reference, and he supplied many a realistic portrayal of Italian life and sentiment. But the fact that he represents Valentine in the ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ (I. i. 71) as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, and Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ as embarking on a ship at the gates of Milan (I. ii. 129–44), renders it almost impossible that he could have gathered his knowledge of northern Italy from personal observation (cf., Essays, 1874, pp. 254 seq.). He doubtless owed all to the verbal reports of travelled friends or to books, the contents of which he had a rare power of assimilating and vitalising.

Although the old actor William Beeston asserted that Shakespeare ‘did act exceedingly well’, the rôles in which he distinguished himself are very imperfectly recorded. Few surviving documents directly refer to performances by him. At Christmas 1594 he joined the popular actors William Kemp, the chief comedian of the day, and Richard Burbage in ‘two several comedies or interludes’ which were acted on St. Stephen's day and on Innocents' day (27 and 28 Dec.) at Greenwich Palace before the queen. The three players received ‘xiiili. vjs. viiid. and by waye of her Majesties rewarde vili. xiiis. iiijd., in all xxli.’ (, i. 121; Jahrbuch d. deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1896, xxxii. 182 seq.). Neither plays nor parts are named. Shakespeare's name stands first on the list of those who took part in the original performances of Ben Jonson's ‘Every Man in his Humour’ (1598) and of his ‘Sejanus’ (1603), but the character allotted to each actor is not stated. Rowe identified only one of Shakespeare's parts, ‘the Ghost in his own “Hamlet,”’ which Rowe asserted to be ‘the top of his performance.’ John Davies noted that he ‘played some kingly parts in sport’ (Scourge of Folly, 1610, epigr. 159). One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, assumably Gilbert, often came, wrote Oldys, to London in his younger days to see his brother act in his own plays, and in his old age, when his memory was failing, he recalled his brother's performance of Adam in ‘As you like it.’ In the 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare's ‘Works’ his name heads the prefatory list ‘of the principall actors in all these playes.’

That Shakespeare chafed under some of the conditions of the actor's calling appears from the sonnets. He reproaches himself with making himself ‘a motley to the view’ (cx. 2), and chides fortune for having provided for his livelihood nothing better than ‘public means that public manners breed,’ whence his name received a brand (cxi. 4–5). His ambitions lay elsewhere, and at an early period of his theatrical career he was dividing his labours as an actor with those of a playwright.

The whole of Shakespeare's dramatic work was probably begun and ended within two decades (1591–1611), between his twenty-seventh and forty-seventh year. If, on the one hand, the works traditionally assigned to him include some contributions from other pens, he was perhaps responsible, on the other hand, for portions of a few plays that are traditionally claimed for others. When the account is balanced, Shakespeare must be credited with the production, during these twenty years, of an annual average of two plays, nearly all of which belong to the supreme rank of literature. Three volumes of poems must be added to the total. Ben Jonson was often told by the players that ‘whatsoever he penned he never blotted out (i.e. erased) a line.’ The editors of the first folio attested that ‘what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.’ Signs of hasty workmanship are not lacking, but they are few and unimportant when it is considered how rapidly his numerous compositions came from his pen.

By borrowing his plots he to some extent economised his energy, but he transformed most of them, and it was not probably with the object of conserving his strength that he systematically levied loans on popular current literature like Holinshed's ‘Chronicles,’ North's translation of ‘Plutarch,’ widely read romances, and successful plays. In this