Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/840

 814 SHAKESPEARE in London in 1585 or 1586; the earlier date best according with all the facts and circum- stances to be considered. One tradition says that he was received into the company at first in a very mean rank ; and another that his earliest position was that of "a servitor," which is probable. Young players were then apprenticed ; he would have been expected to begin as an apprentice ; and apprentices were then called servants. Tradition also says that he began his London life by holding horses at the playhouse doors, a story which has nei- ther probability nor concurrent testimony to support it. Be this as it may, his rise to eminence was rapid ; though not as an ac- tor, for he seems never to have risen above the position known on the French stage as " general utility." We are tolerably well in- formed by contemporary writers as to the per- formances of the eminent actors of that time, but of Shakespeare's we read nothing. There is a tradition that he played the Ghost in his own "Hamlet;" and it is recorded by Oldys that one of his younger brothers, who lived to a great age, when questioned in his last days about William, said that he could remem- ber nothing of his performances but seeing him "act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, and one of them sung a song." If this story may bo believed, we know that Shakespeare played Adam in " As You Like It." There is a tradition also that lie played kingly parts, for which his fine person and graceful bearing fitted him. We learn from Ben Jonson's own edition of his comedies (folio, 1616) that Shakespeare played a principal part in "Every Man in his Hu- mour " when it was first performed in 1598, and also in "Sejanus" when it was brought out in Ifi03 ; but what characters he sustained in these plays we do not know. Shakespeare's pen seems to have been soon employed, but not at first in purely original composition. In his time there was an inordinate craving for new plays. Public taste was rapidly im- proving ; and plays the subjects of which were popular were rewritten again and again to meet the demands of an advancing standard of criticism. Young lawyers and poets produced plays rapidly. Each theatrical company not only "kept a poet," but had three or four in its pay; and there was hardly a theatre which could not boast of as many of its actors who could write as well as act. There was a never-ceasing writing of new plays and fur- bishing up of old ones. Two, three, and even half a dozen playwrights were employed upon one drama, when haste was necessary for the theatre, or when the junto needed money, which was almost always. It was upon this field of labor that Shakespeare entered; not seeking from it fame, but fortune ; not conse- crating himself to literature, but working for the wherewithal to return to the Stratford which he had left almost a fugitive to live there like a gentleman, under the very noses of the Lucys. It has been generally believed that Shakespeare on his arrival in London joined at once the company which played at the Blackfriars theatre, known as the lord cham- berlain's servants, and that he wrote for no other. But although there is no doubt that he soon became engaged with that company, and although it is quite possible that he never played in any other, there seems to be reason for believing that he began his career as a dramatist by writing in company with Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe, who were already playwrights of established reputation, and who wrote chiefly for a company known as the earl of Pembroke's servants. In con- junction with them he appears to have written a part of the " Taming of a Shrew," of " The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster," and of "The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York," which he afterward rewrote alone, and brought out as his own, as " The Taming of the Shrew " and the second and third parts of "King Henry VI." He soon obtained that degree of eminence which insures the enmity of surprised, eclipsed, and envious contempo- raries. The first public notice of him that has yet been discovered is the bitter sneer of an unworthy, dying, disappointed rival. Robert Greene, writing from the fitting deathbed of a grovelling debauchee, warns three of his literary companions to shun intercourse with actors, whom ho styles "puppits that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnished in our colours." He goes on to eny : " Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow beauti- fied with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart wrapped in a players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and beeing an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is, in his own conceyt, the only Shake-scene in a countrey." The allusion here to Shakespeare is unmistakable ; the words " Tygres heart," &c., are slightly altered from a line which is found both in the " Third Part of King Henry VI." and in " The True Tragedy;" and the former play is plain- ly indicated aa one of those in which the upstart crow is beautified with the feathers of Greene and of the friends whom he address' es, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele. The letter in which this exhortation occurs was published in 1592, shortly after th& writer's death, under the direction of his friend Henry Chettle. It gave offence to Marlowe and Shakespeare, as we know from a pamphlet published by Chettle three months after, in which he says : " With neither of them that take offence was I ac- quainted, and with one of them [Marlowe] I care not if I never be ; the other [Shakespeare] ... I am as sorry as if the original fault had