Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/842

 816 SHAKESPEARE published in his lifetime as his, shows marks of his latest style, which increase in frequency toward its close ; it is doubtless the work of another hand which he undertook to embel- lish. Of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," pub- lished in 1634 as by Fletcher and Shakespeare, there can be hardly a question that he was in part the author ; but it was probably an old play to which he made additions, and to which again Fletcher, after Shakespeare's death, put a modifying hand. In addition to the works which have been enumerated, he wrote " A Lover's Complaint," a very charming amatory elegy, which bears the marks of his style in the earlier part of his " middle period;" some minor pieces, which were embodied in a mis- cellany called "The Passionate Pilgrim ;" and his sonnets. These sonnets, though deformed with occasional conceits, far surpass all other poems of their kind m our own language, or perhaps in any other. To whom they were written, and in whose person, is among the most difficult of unsolved literary problems. They were published in 1609 with a dedication by the publisher to a " Mr. W. H.," whom he styles their "onlie begetter;" and who this begetter was no man has yet been able satis- factorily to show. Most of them are addressed in terms of the warmest endearment to a beautiful young man ; many of them reproach, in the words of a man who is wroth with one he loves, a beautiful and faithless woman ; a few belong to the class called " occasional." It has been ingeniously argued by Mr. Boaden that the gentleman so unceremoniously ad- dressed by a bookseller as Mr. W. H. was Wil- liam Herbert, earl of Pembroke ; but Chalmers had almost as much reason for his notion that he was Queen Elizabeth in doublet and hose. Conjecture upon this subject has been various and futile ; and it has been reasonably sup- posed, in the words of the Rev. Alexander Dyce, one of the most accomplished, learned, and candid of Shakespeare's commentators, that " most of them were composed in an as- sumed character, on different subjects and at different times, for the amusement, if not at the suggestion, of the author's intimate asso- ciates." This opinion as to their origin is sus- tained by the first quotation from Francis Meres given below. But the sonnets them- selves forbid us to accept this theory as satis- factory. Meagre as this record is, compared with the eminence of its subject, we have nearly approached the limits of our knowledge of Shakespeare's life. A century ago George Steevens wrote : " All that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakespeare is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, married and had children there ; went to Lon- don, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." The assidu- ous researches of 100 years have discovered little more than this. The antiquaries have found his name in a few public documents and private letters, telling of the purchase of lands and tithes, the leasing of houses, and the borrowing of money. The notion for a long time prevailed, and to a certain extent still prevails, that Shakespeare was unappreciated and neglected in his lifetime, and owes his fame to the discovery of his genius by his posthumous critics. The fact is quite other- wise. We have seen what his reputation was both as an author and a man in 1592. His u Venus and Adonis," published in the next year, had run through five editions by 1602. Both it and " Lucrece " are highly extolled by contemporary writers. Spenser alludes to him in " Colin Clout," written in 1594, as one Whoso muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth like limit-rift- heroically sound. Francis Meres, in his "Palladis Tamia" (1598), said that " the sweete wittie soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' his sugred sonnets among his private friends." "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the La- tines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage." And this was before his greatest works were written. Meres adds : " As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus' tongue, if they would speake Latin, so I say that the Muses would speake with Shake- speare's fine filed phrase if they would speake English." We know, too, that his plays were as attractive to the public as they were satis- factory to those critics who were not his ri- vals. Leonard Digges, born in 1588, tells us, in verses not published till 1640, that when the audience saw Shakespeare's plays they were ravished and went away in wonder; and that, although Ben Jonson was admired, yet when his best plays would hardly bring enough money to pay for a sea-coal fire, Shakespeare's would fill " cock-pit, galleries, boxes," and scarce leave standing room. Wealth was the sure result of such success ; and so we find that as early as 1597 he had bought a fine mansion in his native town, built originally by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII., and known as "the great house," and afterward as New Place. It was the largest and best house in Stratford, and as such, when in the possession of Shake- speare's granddaughter, Mrs. Nash, afterward Lady Barnard, was occupied by Queen Henri- etta Maria in 1643, during the civil war. In 1597, also, Shakespeare opened a negotiation for the purchase of a part of the lease of the tithes of Stratford, which however was not perfected for some years, when he invested a sum equal to about $13,000 in this public se- curity. He otherwise increased in substance, and, like his own "Justice Shallow," had "land and beeves." In 1596 John Shake- speare obtained from the heralds' college a " confirmation " of an alleged previous grant of arms, in which confirmation it is said that