winter comes, and then even the players are mixed up with the dangerous events of the time. Sir Gilly Merrick, one of the adherents of Essex, was accused, amongst other acts of treason, with "having procured the out-dated tragedy of the 'Deposition of Richard II.' to be publicly acted at his own charge, for the entertainment of the conspirators.' In the Declaration of the Treasons of the late Earl of Essex and his Complices,' which Bacon acknowledges to have been written by him at the Queen's command, there is the following statement :-"The afternoon before the rebellion, Merrick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard the Second ;-when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was." In the State Trials' this matter is somewhat differently mentioned: "The story of Henry IV. being set forth in a play, and in that play there being set forth the killing of the King upon a stage; the Friday before, Sir Gilly Merrick and some others. of the Earl's train having an humour to see a play, they must needs have the play of Henry IV. The players told them that was stale; they could get nothing by playing that; but no play else would serve and Sir Gilly Merrick gives forty shillings to Phillips the player to play this, besides whatsoever he could get." Augustine Phillips was one of Shakspere's company; and yet it is perfectly evident that it was not Shakspere's Richard II., nor Shakspere's Henry IV., that was acted on this occasion. In his Henry IV. there is no "killing of the king upon a stage. His Richard II., which was published in 1597, was certainly not an out-dated play in 1601. A second edition of it had appeared in 1598, and it was no doubt highly popular as an acting play. But if any object was to be gained by the conspirators in the stage representation of the deposing King Richard II.,' Shakspere's play would not assist that object. The editions of 1597 and 1598 do not contain the deposition scene. That portion of this noble history which contains the scene of Richard's surrender of the crown was not printed till 1608; and the edition in which it appears bears in the title the following intimation of its novelty: The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, with new additions of the Parliament Sceane, and the deposing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted by the Kinges servantes, at the Globe, by William Shake-speare.' In Shakspere's Parliament scene our sympathies are wholly with King Richard. This, even if the scene were acted in 1601, would not have forwarded the views of Sir Gilly Merrick, if his purpose were really to hold up to the people an example of a monarch's dethroneBut nevertheless, it may be doubted whether such a subject could be safely played at all by the Lord Chamberlain's players during this stormy period of the reign of Elizabeth. Her sensitiveness on this head was most remarkable. There is a very curious record existing of "that which passed from the Excel ment. This is the translation of the passage in Camden's 'Annales,' &c., as printed in Kennett's History of England.' The accusation against Merrick is thus, stated in the original:-" Quod exoletam tragœdiam de tragicâ abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram coniu ratis datâ pecuniâ agi curasset." lent Majestie of Queen Elizabeth, in her Privie Chamber at East Greenwich, 4o Augusti, 1601, 43° Reg. sui, towards William Lambarde," which recounts his presenting the Queen his Pandecta' of historical documents to be placed in the Tower, which the Queen read over, making observations and receiving explanations. The following dialogue then takes place :- "W. L. He likewise expounded these all according to their original diversities, which she took in gracious and full satisfaction; so her Majesty fell upon the reign of King Richard II., saying, 'I am Richard II., know ye not that?' W. L. Such a wicked imagination was determined and attempted by a most unkind gentleman, the most adorned creature that ever your Majesty made.' "Her Majesty. He that will forget God will also forget his benefactors: this tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses.'" The wicked imagination" that Elizabeth was Richard the Second is fixed upon Essex by the reply of Lambarde, and the rejoinder of the Queen makes it clear that the "wicked imagination" was attempted through the performance of the Tragedy of the Deposition of Richard the Second: "This tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses." The Queen is speaking six months after the outbreak of Essex; and it is not improbable that the outdated play-that performance which in the previous February the players "should have loss in playing "--had been rendered popular through the partisans of Essex after his fall, and had been got up in open streets and houses with a dangerous avidity. But there is a circumstance which renders it tolerably evident that, although Sir Gilly Merrick might have given forty shillings to Phillips to perform that stale play, the company of Shakspere were not the performers. In the Office Book of the Treasurer of the Chamber † there is an entry on the 31st of March, 1601, of a payment to John Heminge and Richard Cowley, servants to the Lord Chamberlain, for three plays showed before her Highness on St. Stephen's Day at night [26th of December, 1600], Twelfth Day at night [January 6th, 1601], and Shrove Tuesday at night [Easter Day being on the 12th of April in 1601, Shrove Tuesday would be on the 3rd of March]. Shakspere's company were thus performing before the Queen within a week of the period when Essex was beheaded. They would not have been so performing had they exhibited the offensive tragedy. In her conversation with Lambarde, Elizabeth uttered a great might not be unmingled with a retrospect of the fate of Essex. the days of her ancestors, she said,-" In those days force and arms did prevail, but now the wit of the fox is everywhere on foot, so as hardly a faithful or virtuous man may be found." When Raleigh was called upon the trial of Essex, and "his oath given him," Essex exclaimed, What booteth it to swear the fox?" The fox had even then accomplished his purpose. He had driven his victim onwards to that fatal movement of Sunday the 8th of February, which, begun without reasonable plan or fixed purpose, ended in casual bloodshed and death by the law. We may readily believe that the anxiety of Shakspere for truth, which Speaking of This was first printed from the original in Nicholls's 'Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.' Lam barde died in a fortnight after this interview. + Cunningham's 'Revels at Court.' [Essex.] " his friends and benefactors would have led him to the scene of that wild commotion. He might have seen Essex and Southampton, with Danvers, Blount, Catesby, Owen Salisbury, and a crowd of followers, riding into Fleet Street, shouting, “ For the Queen ! for the Queen ! ” He might have heard the people crying on every side, God save your honour! God bless your honour!" An nour or two later he might have listened to the proclamation in Gracechurch Street and Cheapside, that the Earl and all his company were traitors. By two o'clock of that fatal Sunday, Shakspere might have seen his friends fighting their way back through the crowds of armed men who suddenly assailed them, and, taking boat at Queenhithe, reach Essex House in safety. But it was surrounded with soldiers and artillery; shots were fired at the windows; the cries of women within mingled with the shouts of fury without. At last came the surrender, at ten o'clock at night. The axe with the edge turned towards the prisoners followed as a matter of course. The period at which Essex fell upon the block, and Southampton was under condemnation, must have been a gloomy period in the life of Shakspere. The friendship of Southampton in all likelihood raised the humble actor to that just appreciation of himself which could alone prevent his nature being subdued to what it worked in. There had been a compromise between the inequality of rank and the inequality of intellect, and the fruit had been a continuance and a strengthening of that "love" which seven years earlier had been described as "without end." Those ties were now broken by calamity. The accomplished noble, a prisoner looking daily for death, could not know the depth of the love of his "especial friend." * He was beyond the reach of any service that this * The expression is used by Southampton in his Letter to Lord Ellesmere introducing Shakspere and Burbage in 1608. See Collier's New Facts,' p. 33. friend could render him. All was gloom and uncertainty. All was gloom and uncertainty. It has been said, and we believe without any intention to depreciate the character of the great poet, that "There seems to have been a period of Shakspeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience; the memory of hours mis-spent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen associates. by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches;-these, as they sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary character, the censurer of mankind." The genius of Shakspere was so essentially dramatic, that neither Lear, nor Timon, nor Jaques, nor the Duke in Measure for Measure, nor Hamlet, whatever censure of mankind they may express, can altogether be held to reflect "a period of Shakspeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill content with the world." That period is referred to the beginning of the seventeenth century, to which the plays belong that are said to exhibit these attributes.+ But from this period there is certainly a more solemn cast of thought in all the works of the great poet. We wholly reject the opinion that this tone of mind. in the slightest degree partakes of "the memory of hours mis-spent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen associates, by choice or circumstance, pecu liarly teaches." There is a strong but yet tolerant censure of the heartlessness of worldly men, and the delusions of friendship, such as we have pointed out, in As You Like It. There is the fierce misanthropy of Timon, so peculiar to his character and situation that it is quite lifted out of the range of a poet's selfconsciousness: "the experience of man's worser nature" was not to make of Shakspere one "who all the human sons doth hate." Measure for Measure was, we believe, a covert satire upon the extremes of weak and severe government it interprets nothing of unrequited affections and an evil conscience. The bitter denunciations of Lear are the natural reflections of his own dis turbed thoughts, seeking to recover the balance of his feelings out of the vehemence of his passion. The Hamlet, such as we have it in its altered state, as compared with the earlier sketch, does indeed contain passages which have a peculiar fitness for Hamlet's utterance, but which, at the same time, might afford relief in their expression to the poet's own wrestlings with the problem of existence. An example or two of these new passages will suffice: "I have of late (but, wherefore, I know not) lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a * Hallam's 'Literature of Europe,' vol. iii., p. 568. Mr. Halla un refers to Hamlet in its altered form. steril promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,-this brave o'erhanging-this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." We can conceive this train of thought to be in harmony with the temper in which Shakspere must have regarded the public events of 1600. We may even believe that those events might have directed his mind to a more passionate and solemn and earnest exercise of its power than had previously been called forth. We may fancy such tragic scenes having their influence in rendering the great master of comedy, unrivalled amidst his contemporaries for the brilliancy of his wit and the genuineness of his humour, turn to other and loftier themes : "I come no more to make you laugh; things now, That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, - But the influence of time in the formation and direction of the poetical power must also be taken into account. Shakspere was now thirty-seven years of age He had attained to the consciousness of his own intellectual strength, and he had acquired by long practice the mastery of his own genius. He had already learnt to direct the stage to higher and nobler purposes than those of mere amusement. It might be carried farther into the teaching of the highest philosophy through the medium of the grandest poetry. The epoch which produced Othello, Lear, and Macbeth has been described as exhibiting the genius of Shakspere in full possession and habitual exercise of power, "at its very point of culmination." The year 1601 was also a year which brought to Shakspere a great domestic affliction. His father died on the 8th of September of that year. It is impossible not to feel that Shakspere's family arrangements, imperfectly as we know them, had especial reference to the comfort and honour of his parents. When he bought New Place in 1597, his occupations then demanding his presence in London through great part of the year, his wife and children, we may readily imagine, were under the same roof with his father and mother. They had sighed over the declining health of his little Hamnet,-they had watched over the growth of his Susanna and Judith. If restricted means had at any previous period assailed them, he had provided for the comforts of their advanced age. And now that father, the companion of his boyhood-he who had led him forth. into the fields, and had taught him to look at nature with a practical eye-was gone. More materials for deep thought in the year 1601. The Register of Stratford thus attests the death of this earliest friend :— Sexternfig my Johor Septemb.g + Coleridge. |