Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/355

 M<"s. in. APRIL is, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

291

the term "gentle." But this does not help me. It is Jonson's view of the case which puzzles me. He (if what is asserted of him is true) had been ridiculing the actor's claim to heraldic gentility all his life, and applying to him terms the opposite of "gentle" as regards his character. Yet here (in the verses under the figure) we find that epithet applied by him to "Shakespeare," and not only applied, but, as it appears to me, specially selected, as if to distinguish the person addressed from some other "Shake- speare" who was not "gentle."

Of course, I may be all wrong, and this may be one of the mental " vagaries " which so amaze MR. HAINES. But amazement in one mind at processes of reasoning in the minds of others does not necessarily show those processes to be wrong. And when those others happen to be, as MR. HAINES says, "eminent judges and members of the legal profession " (not my case), the fact should, I think, arouse other sentiments rather than "amazement," and suggest the possibility at least of some error on the part of the observer.

But to proceed perhaps to some other myself to consider the application of the term "generosus" or "gent." to the actor in his will and elsewhere as sufficient to justify Jonson's marked attributive in the lines beneath the figure. Such complimentary terms were, even in James I.'s time, as now, liberally bestowed in legal documents, and would certainly not be omitted in the case of the Stratford rentier, ambitious of the title. But though, as I have said, it does not affect my point, is MR. HAIXES correct in saying that " the grant of arms was confirmed to John Shakspere in 1599'"? This is quite contrary to all I have ever read. Mr. Halliwell - Phillipps denies it, and even ridicules the claim, declaring both the Shakespeare and the Arden families " really descended from obscure English country yeomen." The poet's relatives, it is true, as he informs us, "assumed the right to the coat suggested in 1596," and this accounts for the arms on the monument ; but the grant, he tells us, was never ratified.
 * ' vagary." For my part, I cannot bring

But MR. HAINES remarks that in the First Folio the epithet ("gentle") occurs again in connexion with "Shakespeare." And so it does. But this only increases my perplexity. For not only does Jpnson here apply the word "gentle" to the (in his opinion) ungentle object (if " Shakespeare " stands for the Strat- ford man), but he applies other terms to him equally inconsistent with what is commonly

believed and affirmed of the Stratford Shake- speare. He speaks of his " art " (in the passage quoted by MR. HAINES) :

Thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.

Now that is just what the Stratford Shake- speare was supposed to be wanting in. Hia genius was sucn that he required no " art." All he wrote, we are told, came from him naturally and spontaneously. He never " blotted a line," and had no need to revise. But the " Shakespeare " whom Jonson ad- dressed, and whom he seems to distinguish from some other by calling him emphatically " mi/ gentle Shakespeare," was indebted, he gives us to understand, as much to "art" as to genius. He blotted many lines, he "sweated" over his work, "striking the second heat upon the Muses' anvil," and all his writings underwent laborious revision. This, I say, only increases my perplexity. So also does the mysterious paragraph in the ' Discoveries ' headed " De Shakespeare nos- trat." For of what " Shakespeare " is Jonson here speaking 1 It is evident (to me at least) that to Jonson " Shakespeare " represented a double personality, or else why the dis- criminative adjectives " my," as above, and "nostrati" here, whatever meaning we may choose to attach to the latter ] If there had been but one Shakespeare, why was a quali- fication necessary 1

The other references to " Shakespeare " mentioned by MR. HAINES are evidently intended for the author of the plays. The author of the plays no doubt, as Denham wrote, had a "gentler muse" than Jonson, who was unsparing and often virulent in his satire. But that does not tell us the author of the plays was the Stratford man. And so of the other epithets bestowed upon " Shake- speare" by his contemporaries. As for the occurrence of the word " gentle " and the like so frequently in " Shakespeare," and the con- stant inculcation of "gentleness" in the plays, that again but adds to my trouble. For it is more difficult to conceive them as coming from the man whose " saucy jests " Jonson alludes to, and who was, in his view, the chief of the " Poet-apes,"

whose forked tongues

Are steeped in venom, as their hearts in gall, described in ' The Poetaster,' than from the great philosopher, who, according to those who best knew him, was all gentleness, and " whose principal fault," according to Addi- son, "was the excess of virtue which covers a multitude of faults."

But I have said so much in reply to MR. HAINES that I fear being refused space for