WILLIAM SHAKSPERE and ROBERT GREENE THE EVIDENCE

By WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN

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Tribune Publishing Co. OAKLAND, CAL.

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COPYRIGHTED BY William H. Chapman SANTA MONICA, CAL. FEBRUARY 26, 1912

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To the Memory of My Mother

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PREFACE.

The design of this work is to give some account of the conspicuous events and of some of the personages connected with the literary history of England in that wonderful Renaissance which took place in the Elizabethan age. All that the writer has attempted is a concise narrative of some of the facts, grouping them together in a compact form, with such reflections as seemed to him to be just and appropriate. To secure this end he has labored to strip from Shakspere’s biography the manufactured traditions which date from a considerable period after Shakspere’s death. Where all is conjecture let the reader do his own guessing and strive for the abatement of that new Freak called Esthetic Criticism with which some of our critics and commentators designate their own absurdities.

The writer has given unusual prominence to several distinguished personages amongst Shakspere’s contemporaries, notably Robert Greene, William Kemp and[viii] Ben Jonson. The work is sketchy in execution because the materials do not exist for more than an outline figure.

The readers familiar with the old English dramatic poets do not believe in an exclusive authorship, or uniform workmanship, of the greatest of the Elizabethan English works. While they set up no claimant for the writings so commonly credited to William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon, they believe, nevertheless, that the Stratfordian canon is open to demurrer.

Conspicuous among modern and recent writers on the subject of Robert Greene, who show the courage of their convictions by their valiant strokes in defense of that poet’s reputation, are Professor J. M. Brown of New Zealand, Dr. A. B. Grossart, and Professor Storojenko. The citations borrowed from their works attest the writer’s obligation to them, and are sufficiently indicated in the text.

WILLIAM H. CHAPMAN

Santa Monica, California.

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WILLIAM SHAKSPERE AND ROBERT GREENE

THE EVIDENCE

I

This book was written primarily for private satisfaction, the author having no desire for approbation, and to disclose merely the true William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon; to find him as a man; to feel his personal presence; to know him as he was known by his neighbors as landowner, money lender, captain of amusements, actor, play-broker and litigant. From dusty records that do not awaken a deific impulse may be read the true story of his life, but, before directing the readers’ attention to the documentary evidence, which can be entirely depended upon in regard to himself, his family, neighbors, fellow-actors and associates,[2] we desire to cut out the worthless conjectures which are contained in most, if not all, of the recent works on the subject of Shakespeare. Circumstances, however slight, may give rise to idle conjectures, but their worthlessness may be best discerned by setting up against them reasonable ones. To repeat apocryphal anecdotes and manufactured traditions that are not reasonable inferences from concurrent events is to dissipate mental energy;

antiquity per se adds nothing to confirmation or probability. In that digest of biography, so often quoted, George Stevens tells his readers in less than fifty words all he knew with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspere, with the exception of his conjectures as to the authorship of the poems and plays. This great Shaksperean commentator indulges in no aesthetic dreams or whimsical conjectures which taint the credibility of his successors by their statement of them as proven facts.

Of all kinds of literature, biography[3] extends the most generous hospitality. Its subjects live an after life in affiliation with the readers without regard to condition. In seeking to renew the enthusiasm of our youth for this species of writing we visit the public library and find many changes in biographical history, such as the elimination of spurious tradition and fanciful conjecture. For instance, instead of the traditional life of Washington, there is a life of the true Washington: and, instead of a caricatured life of Cromwell, there is a record of the duly attested facts of the many-sided and wondrous Cromwell. With what astonishment we survey the huge issue of books on Shakspere which stand conspicuous on the shelves! There are more than ten thousand books and pamphlets—many of them of the memoir order—almost every one of which has a biographical preface; but we find that most, if not all, the biographers of Shakspere still lead the reader into the shadow of chaotic conjecture and might-have-been, and that[4] Shaksperean literature still lacks a book

on the personal life of William Shakspere that shall be to most, if not all others, a pruning hook cutting out the reveries and guess work which unfortunately have seduced the historian and misled the reader. We hold in our hand one of the more recent of these books of fictitious biography, transmissive “fraud of the imagination” which authenticates nothing!

As co-readers, we will now focus our attention and thoughts intently upon the celebrated letter written by the dying hand of Robert Greene, and addressed to three brother poets to whom he administers a gentle reproof on account of their by-gone and present faults, of which, play-writing was most to be shunned. This remarkable letter reveals Robert Greene as the most tragical figure of his time—a sad witness of his ultimate penitence and absolute confession, a character of pathetic sincerity, weirdness and charnel-like gloom that chills the soul. This letter,[5] so often referred to, and seemingly so little understood, is one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing in our literary annals. It has all the credibility that a dying statement can give, but it also evidences the fact that Robert Greene had previously drawn the fire of the improvising actors “who wrought the disfigurement of the poet’s work.” There is one in particular at whom he hurls a dart and hits the mark.

“Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our (poet’s) feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.”

This sorrow-stricken man wrote these words of censure with the utmost sincerity. Earlier biographers made no attempt to read Shakspere into these lines of reproof, but those only of later times regard[6] the allusion invaluable as being the first literary notice of Shakspere, and find pleasure in reading into Shakspere’s life the fact of his having been satirized in 1592 under the name “Shake-scene,” used by Greene contumeliously.

The letter is contained in a little work entitled “Greene’s Groats Worth of Wit,” “Bought with a Million of Repentance, originally published in 1592, having been entered at Stationers Hall on the 20th of September in that year.” “To those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plaies.”

“With thee (Marlowe) will I first begin, thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene, who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, there is no God, should now give glorie unto His greatnesse; for penetrating is His power, His hand lies heavy upon me, He hath spoken unto me with a voice of thunder and I have felt He is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy[7] excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded that thou shouldst give no glory to the giver?”....

“With thee I joyne young Juvenall, (Nash) that byting satyrist that lastlie with mee together writ a comedie. Sweete boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enimies by bitter words.... Blame not schollers vexed with sharp lines, if they reprove thy too much libertie of reproofe.”

“And thou (Peele) no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driven (as myselfe) to extreame shifts; a little have I to say to thee; and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would swear by sweet S. George thou are unworthie better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. (theatre) Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned; for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to cleave; those puppits, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is[8] it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all have beene beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum,’ is in his own conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.”...

“But now returne I againe to you three, knowing my miserie is to you no news; and let me heartily entreate you to be warned by my harmes.... For it is a pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.”

Those biographers and critics who have written concerning Shakspere and Greene misapprehensively compound an integrate letter and pamphlet. It should be made clear that Greene’s letter to his fellow[9] poets is not an integral part of “Groats Worth of Wit,” though appended towards the end of this pamphlet. The letter is strikingly personal and impressive, not a continuance of a pamphlet describing the folly of youth, but a mere appendage not properly constituting a portion of it. It was the classical commentator, Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-85), we believe, who first made current the groundless opinion that purports to identify Shakspere as the one pointed at, but most, if not all, recent biographers and commentators state as a “proven fact” that Robert Greene was the first to bail Shakspere out of obscurity by the “reprehensive reference” to an “upstart crow.”

The effect of conjectural reading is to raise a tempest of depreciation by which Shakspere’s biographers and commentators have succeeded in handing down to posterity Greene’s reputation as a preposterous combination of infamy and envy, harping with fiendish delight on the[10] irregularities and defects of Robert Greene’s private life, which were not even shadowed in his writings. The writings of Greene “whose pen was pure” are exceptionally clean. Why then this unmerited abuse so malignant in disposition and passion? We answer that it is because the biographers of Shakspere have been seduced from truth by a vagrant conjecture into the belief that William Shakspere was the object and recipient of Greene’s censure. It is apparent that the statement which affirms this is false, and we shall endeavor to show that Robert Greene’s detractors are on the wrong trail.

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II

There now arises the crucial enquiry concerning the charge that William Shakspere was thus lampooned in 1592 by Robert Greene in his celebrated address “To those Gentlemen of his own fellowship that spend their wits making plaies”—inferentially, Marlowe, Nash and Peele. The exigency of the case demands, in the opinion of Shakspere’s modern biographers, the appropriation of Greene’s reproachful reference to Shakspere, (though no name is mentioned) yet the actor referred to by Greene the children in London streets well knew and acclaimed; and every student of Elizabethan literature, history and bibliography, should know that the reference is identifiable with William Kemp, the celebrated comic actor, jig-dancer, and jester, who was, in his own conceit, the “only Shake-scene (dance-scene) in a country,” “Shake-scene”[12] and (dance-scene) being interchangeable compounds in the old meaning; but the votaries of Shakspere, posing as his biographers, in the urgency of their desire to remove doubts which had existed respecting the beginning of Shakspere’s early

literary productivity as play-maker, or as an elaborator of the works of other men, prior to the year 1592, crave some notation of literary activity in the young man who went up from Stratford to London in 1587 (probably).

As the immortal plays were coming out anonymously and surreptitiously, there is a very strong desire to appropriate or embezzle “the only Shake-scene” reference, for, in the similarity and sound of the compound word “Shake-scene” in one of its elements there is that which fits it to receive a Shakespearean connotation, thus catching the popular fancy of Shakespere’s biographers and academic commentators. The compound word “Shake-scene” is made by the joining of two words generic in both its elements, and, in[13] combination having generic characteristics pertaining to a large or comprehensive class—that is to say, the words “shake” and “scene” bear a sense in which they are descriptive of all the various things to which they are applied, and of all other things that share their common properties. The fanciful biographers of William Shakspere rely on these words of reproof and censure as being the initial notice of his worth and work which was to lift him from his place of obscurity in the year 1592. The meaning of Greene’s

words in the idiom of the times, as in their contextural and natural sense, yield nothing which is confirmatory of such contention; for “dance” is connoted under the term “shake,” answering to the first element in “Shake-scene,” which in the old meaning meant “dance,” generic for quick action; and “scene” meant “stage” instead of “scenery” as in the modern meaning, for the theatres were then in a state of absolute nudity—in other words, “Shake-scene” meant a[14] dancing performance upon the stage. In the plain unobtrusive language of our day, as well as in Elizabethan English, the word “shake”—the first element in “Shake-scene” is interchangeable with “dance,” and, when given a specialized meaning with a view to theatrical matters in the year 1592, with Kemp and Shakspere claimants for Greene’s reproof, who could doubt that the name which was so loudly acclaimed is identifiable with the spectacular luminary of the times, William Kemp? In setting up the comic actor and jig-dancer as claimant for Greene’s objurgation, we promise the

reader attestative satisfaction by establishing the truth of our contention by particular passages in “the address” when explained by the context as transcriptive of Kemp’s actual history.

We now direct the attention of the reader specifically to the arrogant and boastful comedian, William Kemp. This man, according to Robert Greene’s view, was the personification of everything[15] detestable in the actor—whose profession he despised. We think the biographers and commentators have mistaken the spectacularity of William Kemp for the rising sun of William Shakspere. In the closing years of the sixteenth, and the early years of the seventeenth, century there lived in London the most spectacular comic actor and clown of his day, the greatest “Shake-scene” or (dance-scene) of his generation, William Kemp, the worthy successor of Dick Tarlton. He had a continental reputation in 1589. This year also Nash dedicated to Kemp one of his attacks upon Martin Marprelate entitled “An Almond for a Parrot.” “There is ample contemporary evidence that Kemp was the greatest comic actor of his time in England, and his notoriety as a morris-dancer was so great that his journeyings were called dances. He was the court favorite famous for

his improvisions, and loved by the public,” but hated by academic play-writers and ridiculed by ballad-makers. Kemp,[16] in giving his first pamphlet “The Nine Days Wonder” to the press in 1599, turned upon his enemies and in retaliation called them “Shake-rags,” which he used derisively and as contumeliously as Greene had used “Shake-scene.” The use of the word “Shake-rags” by Kemp in his first and only published work is prima-facie evidence, that he also made use of the same term, orally and in his usual acrimonious manner, either against Greene, or those of his fellowship. The first element in the compound words “Shake-scene” and “Shake-rags” is governed by the same general law of movement or rhythmic action exemplified in dancing and rhymery. In 1640 Richard Brown in his “Antipodes” refers to the practice of jesters, in the days of Tarlton and Kemp, of introducing their own wit into poet’s plays, Kemp, writing in 1600, asserts that he spent his life in mad jigs and merry jests, although he was entrusted with many leading parts in farce

or broad comedy. His dancing of jigs at[17] the close of a play gave him his chief popularity (“Camden Society Papers”). “The jigs were performed to musical accompaniment and included the singing of comic words. One or two actors at times supported Kemp in his entertainment, dancing and singing with him. Some examples of the music to which Kemp danced are preserved in a manuscript collection of John Dowland now in the library of Cambridge University. The words were, doubtless, often improvised at the moment, but, on occasions, they were written out and published. The Stationers Register contains licenses for the publication of at least four sets of words for the jigs in which Kemp was the chief performer.”

According to Henslowe’s Diary, William Kemp was on June 15, 1592, a member of the company of the Lord Strange players under Henslowe and Alleyn, playing a principal comic part in the “Knack to Know a Knave,” and introducing into it what is called on the title[18] page his “Applauded Merriments,” a technical term for a piece of theatrical buffoonery. In 1593 Nash warned Gabriel Harvey “lest William Kemp should make merriment of him.” “As early as 1586, Kemp was a member of a company of great importance which had arrived at Elsinore where the king held court. He remained two months in Denmark, and received a larger amount of board money than his fellow actors. In a letter of Sir Phillip Sidney, dated Utrecht March 24, 1586, he says, ‘I sent you a letter by Will (Kemp), my Lord Leicester’s jesting player.’ It was after his return from these foreign expeditions that we find Kemp uniting his exertions with those of Alleyn at the Rose and Fortune theatres, as Prince Henry’s servants. During this whole period from his return in 1586 from Denmark,

to the year 1598, he did not stay uninterruptedly at the theatres of the Burbages. From February 19, to June 22, 1592, a part of Lord Leicester’s company[19] played under Henslowe and Alleyn. In 1602 Kemp was again in London, acting under Henslowe and Alleyn as one of the Earl of Worcester’s men. We gather from Henslowe’s Diary that on March 10th, he borrowed in ready money twenty shillings.