Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/384

 Shakespeare's plays; but his effort to publish ‘Troilus’ proved abortive owing to the interposition of the players. The metrical characteristics—the regularity of the blank verse—powerfully confirm the date of composition which Roberts's license suggests. Six years later, however, on 28 Jan. 1608–9, a new license for the issue of ‘a booke called the history of Troylus and Cressida’ was granted to Richard Bonian and Henry Walley (ib. p. 400), and these publishers, more fortunate than Roberts, soon printed a quarto with Shakespeare's full name as author. In a bombastic advertisement, in which they paid high-flown compliments to the author as a writer of comedies, they defiantly boasted that the ‘grand possessors’—i.e. the owners—of the play deprecated the publication, and they asserted, by way of enhancing the value of what were obviously stolen wares, that the piece was new and unacted. This statement was probably a commercial trick, rendered safe from immediate detection by the fact that the play had not been produced for six years. Perhaps, too, it was speciously justified by recent revisions which their edition embodied. At the time of publication a revival was in contemplation. Later in 1609 a second quarto appeared without the preliminary address, and bearing on the title-page the additional words, ‘As it was acted by the king's majesty's servants at the Globe.’

The story was mainly drawn from Chaucer's ‘Troilus and Cresseide,’ but Shakespeare seems also to have consulted Lydgate's ‘Troy Book’ and Chapman's translation of Homer's ‘Iliad.’ In defiance of his authorities, he invested with contemptible characteristics nearly all the Greek heroes who fought against Troy. Helen and Cressida are presented as heartless coquettes. In style the work is unequal, but in the speeches of Ulysses Shakespeare concentrates a mass of pithily expressed worldly wisdom, much of which has obtained proverbial currency.

Despite the association of Shakespeare's company with the rebellion of 1601, it retained its hold on court favour till the close of Elizabeth's reign, and as late as 2 Feb. 1603 entertained the dying queen at Richmond. Her death on 24 March 1603 drew from Shakespeare's early eulogist, Chettle, a vain appeal to him, under the fanciful name of Melicert, to   Drop from his honied muse one sable teare, To mourne her death that gracèd his desert, And to his laies opened her royall eare (England's Mourning Garment, 1603, sign. D. 3). But the withdrawal of one royal patron only supplied Shakespeare and his friends with another, who proved even more liberal and appreciative. On 19 May 1603, very soon after James I's accession, a royal license was granted to Shakespeare and other actors ‘freely to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralls, pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other like as they have already studied, or hereafter shall use or studie as well for the recreation of our loving subjectes as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall thinke good to see them during our pleasure.’ The Globe Theatre was noted as the customary scene of their labours, but permission was granted to them to perform in the town-hall or moot-hall of any country town. Ten actors are named. Lawrence Fletcher stands first on the list; he had already performed before James in Scotland in 1599 and 1601. Shakespeare comes second and Burbage third; the rest were doubtless all members of the lord chamberlain's company. The company was thenceforth styled the king's company, while its members became ‘the king's servants.’ Shakespeare's plays were repeatedly performed at court, and Oldys related that James wrote Shakespeare a letter in his own hand, which was at one time in the possession of Sir William D'Avenant, and afterwards, according to Lintot, in that of John Sheffield, duke of Buckingham. In December 1603 the company performed at Wilton while the king was on a visit to William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke. At the time the prevalence of the plague had led to the closing of the theatres in London, and James sent the king's players a gift of 30l. On 15 March 1604 the company walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the king on his formal entry into London, and in August they were all summoned to attend at Somerset House on the occasion of the arrival there of the new Spanish ambassador, Juan de Taxis, Conde de Villa Mediana.

Under the incentive of such exalted patronage, Shakespeare's activity redoubled. To other causes must be assigned his absorption during the next six years in the highest themes of tragedy, and the intensity and energy which thenceforth illumined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the composition of two of his greatest plays can be confidently assigned. ‘Othello’ was doubtless the first new piece by Shakespeare that was acted before James. It was produced at Whitehall on 1 Nov. ‘Measure for