Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/58

* SHAKESPEARE. 42 SHAKESPEARE. stituted the arms of the Ardens of Alvanley in Cheshire, apparentlj' because these belonged to a younger branch of the family, from which Mary Ardeii was descended. John Shal^espeare died' in 1001, two years afterwards, and there is no evidence that either he or his son used the Arden arms. William did use the Shakespeare arms as tricked by the heralds, and he may have felt that they had" become honorable enough with- out displaying the connection with tlie Ardens. By l.j'J'J Villiam Shakespeare had made a name foV himself that needed no lustre borrowed from ancestral rank. He went to London in 1585 or 15SU a penniless adventurer, but in 1597 he had gained reputation and made money as actor and autlior, and could invest his surplus income in the purchase of the best house in Stratford. Besides defraying the expenses in obtaining the coat-of-arms, there is evidence that he helped to restore the fallen fortunes of his father. He re- paired New Place, and added other lands to the estate. In 1002 he spent the large sum of £320 in the purchase of 107 acres of land near Strat- ford, and also bought a cottage and garden in the town. The actor's business was then lucrative enough to excite the en-y of pamphleteers ; and if the actor got a share in the theatre or its profits, as Shakespeare did in 1599 when the Globe Theatre was built, it added materially to his income. Shakespeare's receipts as an actor Ijefore 1599 were probably £100 a year, to which perquisites from Court performances might add £15 or so. His returns from his work as a dramatist would be much smaller. Before 1599 the prices paid for plays ranged from £0 to £15, the most that is known to have been paid. To this a slight gratu- ity was added if the play was very successful, and the author sometimes had a share in the re- ceipts of a 'benefit' on a second production. Shakespeare's income from the revision and writ- ing of plays up to 1599 can hardly have been more than £20 a year, which, added to £110 or £115 from acting, would make his entire income £130 or £135, equal to from seven to ten times that amount in modern money. The quarto editions of his plays published at this time and afterwards were evidently all piratical ven- tures which yielded him nothing. From the successive editions of his poems — the only works printed under his personal supervision — he may have received something, but we have no means of estimating how much. According to Rowe's biogra|)hy (1709), Shakespeare once received a gift of £1000 from his generous patron, the Earl of Southampton, The amount (equal to at least £7000 or .'r35,000 now) is undoubtedly exagger- ated; but Southampton would be likely to make some substantial acknowledgment of the com- pliment paid him in the dedications of the Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. The only epistolary cor- respondence now extant in which Shakespeare was a party and the only letter addressed to him have reference to business matters. In Jan- uary. 1598. Abraham Sturley writes from Strat- ford to his brother-in-law. Richard Quiney, who was in London, where the poet then was, sug- gesting that he obtain help from Shakespeare in certain business for the town: and later Quiney himself wrote to Shakespeare, asking the large loan of £30. This letter somehow got into the Stratford archives. Thomas Quiney, who married the poet's daughter, Judith, was a son of Richard Quiney. We do not know in which of the London play- houses of 1585 (the Theatre and the Curtain) Shakespeare found employment. In 1592 the Rose was opened on the Bankside, and that was doubtless the scene of his early successes as ac- tor and dramatist. In 1594 he was connected with another new theatre at Newington Butts; and afierwards he returned to tlie Theatre and the Curtain. The Theatre was torn down in 1599, and most of the materials were used in the erec- tion of the Globe on the Bankside, which from that time appears to have been the only house with which he was regularly connected. At the Blackfriars Theatre (established in 1596) Shake- speare played a leading part in Jonson's Ercrii Man in His Humour, in September, 1598, after having secured the acceptance of the play, which the manager was on the point of refusing (Rowe). On Twelfth Night and Shrove Sunday. 1000, the Globe company acted before Elizabeth at Rich- mond Palace, and on December 26th at White- hall. In the following March they played at Somerset House before Lord Hiuisdon and some foreign ambassadors. At Whitehall in the Christmas holidays of 1601-02 they presented four plays before the Queen, They also acted at Rich- mond on Candlemas Day, February 2, 1603. less than two months before the death of Elizabeth (March 24, 1603). James arrived in London on the 17th of May, and ten days afterwards he granted a license to Shakespeare and his com- pany to perfonn in London and the provinces. In December, 1603, when the King was visiting the Earl of Pembroke, one of Shakespeare's patrons, at Wilton, the company played before the distinguished party there assembled ; in the following Chri-stmas holidays they acted several times at Hampton, and on Candlemas Da.v in the same palace before the Florentine ambassadors. On the 15th of March, 1604. when James made his formal passage from the Tower to West- minister, Shakespeare and the eight other ac- tors to whom the royal license had been granted in 1603 marched in the royal train, and each was presented with four and a half yards of scarlet cloth, the usual dress allowance of players be- longing to the household. They were now termed the King's servants, and took rank at Court among the grooms of the chamber. Of the parts played by Shakespeare himself we have little information. According to a credible tradition, he personated Adam in As You Like It; and Rowe says that he acted "the Ghost in his own Hamlet." John Da vies of Here- ford says that he "played some kingly parts in sport," ' In the list of "the principal actors in all these plays," prefixed to the Folio of 1623. hia name is placed first, but perhaps only because he was the author of the plays. There is no rea- son to suppose that he was ever a 'star' in the histrionic firmament of the period. If Shakespeare's Sonnets are entirely or large- ly autobiographical, as the great majority of crit- ics and commentators believe, they belong in all probability to this period (1595-1600) in his lit- erary and his personal history; and of all the puzzles concerning the man and his works none has been the subject of more speculation and controversy. What we really know about the Sonnets can be stated in a few sentences. The