the patron who protected a company and the poet who wrote for it. Indirectly it led to much freedom of access between nobles who, though not themselves patrons, were the friends or relatives of others that were, and the leading dramatists and players. Noblemen are associated with Poets, i.e. Playwrights, in contemporary satires. In Ben Jonson's Poetaster, for example, Cloe, the wife of a self-made man, asks, as she sets out for the Court: And will the Lords and the Poets there use one well too, lady?' These artistic relations often ripened into close personal friendships: Ben Jonson, for example, left his wife to live during five years as the guest of Lord Aubigny ;1 and Shakespeare's friendships with Southampton and William Herbert are so fully attested as to preclude the omission of all reference to their lives from any, attempt at reconstituting the life of Shakespeare. Doubtless they arose in the manner I have suggested. In 15992 we read the Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland came not to the Court; the one doth very seldom; they pass away the time in London, merely in going to plays every day'; and from Baynard's Castle to the Blackfriars Theatre was but a step for Pembroke's son, William Herbert, 'the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of his age.'s Shakespeare wrote to Southampton :- The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end'; apart from any inference deduced from the William Herbert also befriended our poet. and we know, Sonnets, that His comrades 1 Esme Stewart, Lord Aubigny, Duke of Lennox (cf. Jonson's Epigrams, 19, and the dedication of Sejanus). Five years he had not bedded with her, but had remained with my lord Aulbany,' Drummonds Conversations, 13, quoted by Fleay. 2 Letter from Rowland White to Sir Robert Sidney. Rowe, on the authority of Sir William Davenant, states that Southampton once gave Shakespeare £1000. The story, if it be true, probably refers to an investment in the Blackfriars Theatre. $ Clarendon. • Dedication of Lucrece. dedicated the Folio (1623) after his death to William Herbert and his brother Philip, as the most incomparable paire of brethren,' in memory of the favour with which they had 'prosequuted' both the Plays and their Authour living.' Shakespeare was the friend of both Southampton and Herbert; and in his imagination, that mirror of all life, the bright flashes and the dark shadows of their careers must often have been reflected. IV Southampton was scholar, sailor, soldier, and lover of letters.1 Born in 1573, he graduated at sixteen as a Master of Arts at St. John's College, Cambridge.2 At twenty-four he sailed with Essex as captain of the Garland, and, attacking thirtyfive Spanish galleons with but three ships, sank one and scattered her fellows. And for his gallantry on shore in the same year (1597), he was knighted in the field by Essex before Villa Franca, ere he could dry the sweat from his brows, or put his sword up in the scabbard.' Now, in 1598 Essex was already out of favour with the Queen-she had been provoked to strike him at a meeting of the Council in July; but he was popular in London, and had come, oddly enough, to be looked on as a deliverer by Papists and Puritans both. In April 1599 he sailed for Ireland, accompanied by Lord Southampton; and we need not surmise, for we know, how closely Shakespeare followed the fortune of their arms. In 1 Qui in primo aetatis flore praesidio bonarum literarum et rei militaris scientia nobilitatem communit, ut uberiores fructus maturiore aetate patriae et principi profundat.'-Camden's Britannia, 8vo, 1600, p. 240. 2 Southampton was admitted a student in 1585 (aet. 12). Note that Tom Nash, who in after years 'tasted the full spring' of Southampton's liberality (Terrors of Night, 1594) matriculated at the same College in 1582, and ever cherished its memory:-'Loved it still, for it ever was and is the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all that university' (Lenten Stuff). 3 Gervois Markham, Honour In Its Perfection, 4to, 1624. London, the quick forge and working-house of thought,' Shakespeare weaves into the chorus to the Fifth Act of his Henry V. a prophetic picture of their victorious return :— 'Were now the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, The play was produced in the spring of that year, but its prophecy went unfulfilled. Essex failed where so many had failed before him; and, being censured by the Queen, replied with impertinent complaints against her favours to his political opponents, Cecil, Raleigh, and that Lord Cobham who had two years earlier taken umbrage at Shakespeare's Henry IV.1 In September he returned suddenly from a futile campaign, and on Michaelmas Eve, booted, spurred, and bespattered, he burst into the Queen's chamber, to find her with her hair about her face.'2 He was imprisoned and disgraced, one of the chief causes of Elizabeth's resentment being, as she afterwards alleged, 'that he had made Lord Southampton general of the horse contrary to her will.' For Southampton was already under a cloud. He had presumed to marry Elizabeth Vernon without awaiting the Queen's consent, and now, combining the display of his political discontent with the indulgence of his passion for the theatre, he, as I have said, is found avoiding the Court and spending his time in seeing plays. The combination was natural enough, for theatres were then, as newspapers are now, the cock-pits of political as of religious and literary contention. Rival companies, producing new plays, or 'mending' old ones each month, and almost each week, 1 Infra. 2 Rowland White to Sir Robert Sidney, Michaelmas day, 1599. $ Ibid., 25th October 1599. were quick to hail the passing triumphs, or to glose the passing defeats of their chosen causes. Whilst high-born ladies of the house of Essex besieged the Court clad in deep mourning,1 and the chances of his being forgiven were canvassing among courtiers wherever they assembled, Dekker in Patient Grissel (1599), Heywood in his Royal King and Loyal Subject,2 hinted that probation, however remorseless, might be but the prelude to a loftier honour. Now, just at this time there occurs a strange reversal in the attitudes of the Court and the City towards the Drama. One Order of Council follows another,3 enjoining on the Mayor and Justices that they shall limit the number of play-houses; but the City authorities, as a rule 1 Rowland White, passim. 2 I venture to date this play 1600, although printed much later, on the following grounds :-(1) It was published with an apology for the number of its rhyming lines,' which pleaded that such lines were the rage at the date of its first production, though long since discarded in favour of blank verse and 'strong lines.' The plea would hardly tally with a later date. (2) The allusion to Dekker's Phaethon, produced 1598, and re-written for the Court, 1600, points to Heywood's play having been written whilst Dekker's, referred to also in Jonson's Poetaster, 1601, was attracting attention. In Poetaster, iv. 2, Tucca calls Demetrius, who is Dekker, Phaethon. (3) The passage of Heywood's play in which this allusion occurs is significant : 'Prince. The Martiall's gone in discontent, my liege. This trial of the Marshal, who is stripped of all his offices and insignia, seems moulded on the actual trial of Essex in June 1600, as described by Rowland White in a letter to Sir Robert Sidney of June 7th, 1600:- The poore Earl then besought their Honors, to be a meane unto her Majestie for Grace and Mercy; seeing there appeared in his offences no Disloyalty towards Her Highness, but Ignorance and Indiscretion in hymself. I heare it was a most pitifull and lamentable sight, to see hym that was the Mignion of Fortune, now unworthy of the least Honor he had of many; many that were present burst out in tears at his fall to such misery.' A writer (probably Mr. R. Simpson) in The North British Review, 1870, p. 395, assigns Heywood's play to 1600. 3 June 22, 1600. March 10, 1601. May 10, 1601. December 31, 1601. Quoted by Fleay. most Puritanical, are obstinately remiss in giving effect to these Mr. Fleay attributes this waywardness to a jealous vindication of civic privileges: I would rather ascribe it to sympathy with Essex, 'the good Earl.' The City authorities could well, had they been so minded, have prevented the performance of Richard II., with his deposition and death, some 'forty times' in open streets and houses, as Elizabeth complained; and, indeed, it is hard to account for the Queen's sustained irritation at this drama save on the ground of its close association with her past fears of Essex.2 Months after the Earl's execution, she exclaimed to Lambard :—' I am Richard the Second, knowe yee not that?' 3 And we have the evidence of Shakespeare's friend and colleague, Phillips, for the fact that Richard II. was performed by special request of the conspirators on the eve of their insane rising (February 7, 1601)—that act of folly, which cost Essex his head and Southampton his liberty during the rest of Elizabeth's reign. 4 But if Shakespeare's colleagues, acting Shakespeare's Plays, gave umbrage to Essex's political opponents in Henry IV., applauded his ambition in Henry V., and were accessories to his disloyalty in Richard II., there were playwrights and players ready enough to back the winning side. Henslowe, an apparent time-server, commissioned Dekker to re-write his Phaethon for presentation before the Court (1600), with, it is fair to suppose, a greater insistence on the presumption and 1 Nichols, iii. 552. 2 Cf. Elizabeth to Harrington :-'By God's Son I am no Queen; this man is above me.' 3 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 359. Lambard, August 1601, had opened his Pandecta Rotulorum before her at the reign of Richard II. ✦ 'Examination of Augustyne Phillypps servant unto the Lord Chamberleyne, and one of his players,' quoted by Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ii. 360. Phillips died, 1605, leaving by will to my fellow William Shakespeare, a thirty shillings piece of gold.' |