THERE are at present, and have been for some years past, two very divergent theories regarding the manner in which Shakespearean biography should be undertaken. Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, who confined his efforts nearly altogether--especially during the last two decades of his life--to antiquarian research, and who, while attaining an authoritative standing in this capacity, has never been regarded as a critical authority by scholars, was the original exponent of one of these theories: which insists that it is hopeless to seek biographical light upon Shakespeare from his own works. In the preface to his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare without advancing any reason other than his opinion, he writes: "In the absence of some very important and unexpected discovery, the general desire to penetrate the mystery which surrounds the personal history of Shakespeare cannot be wholly gratified. Something, however, may be accomplished in that direction by a diligent and critical study of the materials now accessible, especially if determined care be taken to avoid the temptation of endeavouring to illustrate that history by his writings, or to decipher his character or sensibilities through their media . . . for it must surely be admitted that the exchange of the individuality of the man for that of the author is the very essence of dramatic genius, and, if that is so, the higher the genius the more complete will be the severance from the personality."

This singular affirmation appears now by repetition and the process of time to have gained an academic acceptance out of all proportion to the writer's critical authority, or its own intrinsic credibility, in view of the evidence that has been brought to bear against it and of the fact that Halliwell-Phillipps traverses his own theory in his Outlines when he finds two plays that coincide with biographical tradition. "The Second Part of Henry IV. and The Merry Wives of Windsor," he writes, "are, so far as we know, the only dramas of Shakespeare's that are in any way connected with his personal history. They include scenes that could not have been written exactly in their present form if the great dramatist had not entertained an acute grudge against Sir Thomas Lucy." Does not the explanation of this divergence between theory and practice lie in the phrase "so far as we know"?

Is it likely that in an age when the stage was one of the principal mediums for the expression of current opinion; when disabilities and penalties were constantly being imposed upon the actors for the infringement of laws and Court orders against the representation of political affairs; when Shakespeare himself refers to the actors as "the abstract and brief chronicles of the time," and says further that "The purpose of playing . . . is . . . to show . . . the very age and body of the time his form and pressure"; that the most popular stage poet of the time, writing for the most popular company, should not have introduced recognisable personal and topical features into more than the two plays mentioned? Is it not more likely that this ardent antiquarian's theory owes its birth to our lack of other co-ordinate biographical data at the time he wrote, coupled with his strong desire to preserve his limited but literal facts unclouded by mere surmise or conjecture, than to any fundamental truth in the dicta set forth?

At the present time the most unhesitating supporter of Halliwell-Phillipps' theory is naturally Sir Sidney Lee, whose Life of William Shakespeare is based upon the Outlines. Sir Sidney, like Halliwell-Phillipps, disallows the possibility of finding self-revelation in the plays or sonnets, and confines the biographical portions of his work largely to the literal details used by Halliwell-Phillipps; specifically eschewing what he refers to as "esthetic criticism."

Regarding the claims for the biographical value of the sonnets Sir Sidney Lee writes in his preface: "In my treatment of the sonnets I have pursued what I believe to be an original line of investigation. The strictly autobiographical interpretation that critics have of late placed on these poems compelled me, as Shakespeare's biographer, to submit them to a very narrow scrutiny. My conclusion is adverse to the claim of the sonnets to rank as autobiographical documents, but I have felt bound, out of respect to writers from whose views I dissent, to give in detail the evidence on which I base my judgment. Matthew Arnold sagaciously laid down the maxim that 'the criticism which alone can much help us for the future is a criticism which regards Europe as being for intelletual and artistic¹ purposes one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result.' It is criticism inspired by this liberalising principle that is especially applicable to the vast sonnet-literature which was produced by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It is criticism of the type Arnold recommended that can alone lead to any accurate and profitable conclusion respecting the intention of the vast sonnet-literature of the Elizabethan era. In accordance with Arnold's suggestion, I have studied Shakespeare's sonnets comparatively with those in vogue in England, France and Italy at the time he wrote. I have endeavoured to learn the view that was taken of such literary endeavours by contemporary critics and readers throughout Europe. My researches have covered a very small portion of the wide field. But I have gone far enough, I think, to justify the conviction that Shakespeare's collection of sonnets has no reasonable title to be regarded as a personal or autobiographical narrative."

To one not familiar with Arnold this might read as though that great critic had advocated a study of contemporary European sonnet-literature as a means to the solution of the mystery of Shakespeare's sonnets. This cannot be Sir Sidney Lee's meaning, as his initial avowal of originality makes clear.

The opposing and more eclectic theory, which has come down from the days of Malone, is at present most ably supported by Dr. Georg Brandes of Copenhagen in his William Shakespeare: A Critical Study, which was published in 1898, shortly after the publication of Sir Sidney Lee's Life of William Shakespeare. Here Dr. Brandes, who for years has been recognised as the foremost living literary critic, takes issue with the literalists and convincingly advocates, and illustrates for biographical purposes, a self-revelatory interpretation of the plays and the personal and biographical value of the sonnets. Regarding the plays Dr. Brandes writes: "It is three hundred years since his genius attained its full development, yet Europe is still busied with him as though with a contemporary. His dramas are acted and read wherever civilisation extends. Perhaps, however, he exercises the strongest fascination upon the reader whose natural bent of mind leads him to delight in searching out the human spirit concealed and revealed in a great artist's work. 'I will not let you go until you have confessed to me the secret of your being'--these are the words that rise to the lips of such a reader of Shakespeare. Ranging the plays in their probable order of production, and reviewing the poet's life-work as a whole, he feels constrained to form for himself some image of the spiritual experience of which it is the expression." Further on, regarding the sonnets, he writes: "No intelligent critic would think of looking to lyrical poems as to biographical sources, in the rough meaning of the term. The poetical is rarely identical with the personal ego. But on the other hand it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that books (I mean great, inspired books, such as are read for hundreds of years) are never engendered by other books, but by life. Nobody, who has a drop of artist's blood in his veins, can imagine that a poet of the rank of Shakespeare can have written sonnets by the score only as exercises or metrical experiments, without any bearing on his life, its passions and its crises. The formula for good epic poetry is surely this: that it must always be founded on real life, even if rarely or never an exact copy of it. Lyrical poetry, in which the poet speaks in his own name, and especially of himself, must necessarily, if first rate, be rooted in what the poet has felt so strongly that it made him break into song.

"The learned critics of Shakespeare's Sonnets regard them merely as metrical tours de force, penned in cold blood on subjects prescribed by fashion and convention. They look upon fancy as upon a spider, which spins chimera in all sorts of typical and artificial figures out of itself. It seems more natural to look upon it as a plant, extracting nourishment from the only soil in which it could thrive, namely, the observations and experiences of the poet."

Here, it will be noticed, are two very divergent points of view, practically irreconcilable, and as we progress in our knowledge of Shakespeare--if we do--it appears that one must necessarily give place to the other.

Sir Leslie Stephen, in an article in The National Review, published some years after the publication of Dr. Brandes' and Sir Sidney Lee's books, while championing neither side, critically considers the opposing views and reaches the conclusion that only by a spiritual interpretation, supported, as he anticipates, by further co-ordinate evidence, may we hope to realise a human conception of Shakespeare. I quote a few passages from Sir Leslie's article. "I spent some hours of a recent vacation in reading a few Shakespeare books, including Mr. Lee's already standard Life and Professor Brandes' interesting Critical Study. The contrast between the two raised the old question. Mr. Lee, like many critics of the highest authority, maintains that we can know nothing of the man. He shows that we know more than the average reader supposes of the external history of the Stratford townsman. But then he maintains the self-denying proposition that such knowledge teaches us nothing about the author of Hamlet. Professor Brandes, on the contrary, tries to show how a certain spiritual history indicated by the works may be more or less distinctly correlated with certain passages in the personal history . . . Now I confess that to me one main interest in reading is always the communion with the author. Paradise Lost gives me the sense of intercourse with Milton, and the Waverley Novels bring me a greeting from Scott. Every man, I fancy, is unconsciously his own Boswell, and, however 'objective' or dramatic he professes to be, really betrays his own secrets. Browning is one of the authorities against me. If Shakespeare, he says, really unlocked his heart in the sonnets, why 'the less Shakespeare he.' Browning declines for his part to follow the example, and fancies that he has preserved his privacy. Yet we must, I think, agree with a critic who emphatically declares that a main characteristic of Browning's own poetry is that it brings us into contact with the real 'self of the author.' Self-revelation is not the less clear because involuntary or quite incidental to the main purpose of a book. I may read Gibbon simply to learn facts; but I enjoy his literary merits because I recognize my friend of the autobiography who 'sighed as a lover and obeyed as a son.' I may study Darwin's Origin of Species to clear my views upon natural selection; but as a book it interests me even through the defects of style by the occult personal charm of the candid, sagacious, patient seeker of truth. In pure literature the case is, of course, plainer, and I will not count up instances because, in truth, I can hardly think of a clear exception. Whenever we know a man adequately we perceive that, though different aspects of his character may be made prominent in his life and his works, the same qualities are revealed in both, and we cannot describe the literary without indicating the personal charm.

"Is Shakespeare the sole exception?"

If the personal records we possess of Milton, Browning, Gibbon and Darwin were as scanty as those we possess of Shakespeare, and their times were as remote from ours, would it not be equally if indeed not more difficult to realise the personal equations in their literary productions? Does it not then appear that Shakespeare is no exception to the rule, but seems so only because of our ignorance of the personal facts of his career?

Sir Leslie Stephen writes further: (Shakespeare's) "life, so far from explaining the genius, makes it, as some people have thought, a puzzle. Is there any real incompatibility between Shakespeare's conduct and the theory of life implied by his writings?" This Sir Leslie answers in the negative by what is practically a synopsis of Dr. Brandes' general deductions, and adds: "I leave a full answer to the accomplished critic whom I desiderate but do not try to anticipate."

The literalist simulacrum presented to embody the Orphean spirit and grace of Shakespeare satisfies no one, not even its exponents; who, at times, admit and regret its inadequacy. The conception evolved by Dr. Brandes through spiritual analysis, while much more human and interesting, is satisfactory only to those who see with the eyes of the spirit. This conception is regarded by the majority, however, as an exercise of the imagination, for literal-minded people are always and everywhere in a majority.

When Sir Sidney Lee's Life and Dr. Brandes' Critical Study were published in 1898, I had then been an interested student of Shakespeare, especially of the Sonnets and sonnet theories, for over ten years; having been led thereto at first by the lyric beauty of the Sonnets and knowing little at that time about the theories concerning them. I soon became aware, however, that there was a distinctly personal note in them different from any other sonnets I had read. I then made an exhaustive study of existing sonnet-literature, seeking for more light. Malone's suggestions for the division of the sonnets into two series, and that the first series was addressed to a man and the latter to a woman, appeared self-evident, as did Dr. Drake's suggestion of Southampton as the patron; but no one of the many books on the sonnets published up to that time (1898) proved convincing to me, though Gerald Massey's The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets was by far the most interesting; not for his views on the sonnets, but for his fine enthusiasm and the interesting historical background he presents. He, however, was the first to make it apparent to me that Southampton and Shakespeare were intimate for a prolonged period; but the manner in which he links Southampton and his friends with the sonnets has no foundation of truth and is palpably forced.

Mr. Thomas Tyler's Shakespeare's Sonnets was published in 1889. I immediately secured a copy, and for about a year afterwards was almost a convert to his theory, but a part of his theory which revealed Shakespeare as an ingrate and a time-server I found it impossible to believe. In attempting to correct this feature of his story I discovered that his whole theory was wrong, and that while he was the only Shakespearean who, at that date, had publicly accepted Professor Minto's suggestion of George Chapman as the Rival Poet, that he had not attempted to develop this suggestion further than the point at which Minto had left it; had he done so he would have had to abandon his theory regarding Pembroke and Mary Fitton, as he would probably have found, as I did later, that the heat of rivalry between Shakespeare and Chapman revealed in the sonnets, and, as I have shown, reflected also in Chapman's dedication of The Shadow of Night in 1594; again in his dedications of his poems published in 1595, and also in Love's Labour's Lost, all antedated the Earl of Pembroke's coming to Court in 1598. This discovery for a time set me adrift again, but in the new dates concerning the rivalry that I now had to guide me, and with the alternative of Southampton as the patron to fall back upon, I soon found evidence that fully convinced me of his identity. At this time I had no idea of publishing, and sought to elucidate the matter merely for my own satisfaction, but as time went by and one clue led to another, new channels opened and new light appeared, so that when in 1903 I published Shakespeare and the Rival Poet, before this book was through the press I already had the sonnets restored to their sequences as they are now presented in this volume, and had accumulated also much new data illustrating the personal and political phases of the plays of the sonnet period.

In the previous year or two I had read Dr. Brandes' recently published Critical Study and Sir Sidney Lee's Life. It is needless to say, in view of the nature of my previous years of research, which of these new books proved the more inspiring. As an Englishman I was dispirited at the gulf fixed between the spiritual outlook of English and Continental Shakespearean scholarship. Here, it seemed to me, was proclaimed on one hand "the Everlasting Yea," and on the other "the Everlasting Nay" of research, or, in the latter case, possibly now "the Centre of Indifference." To reconcile or at least accommodate these divergences in view-point appeared to me not impossible, for though Halliwell-Phillipps and Sir Sidney Lee deny an autobiographical interpretation for the sonnets, Sir Sidney tacitly edges on the question in admitting a personality for the patron and for the rival poet; in fact, going to the length of admitting that there may possibly have been an original for the dark lady, though he believes the chances are so remote that there was just as likely to have been an original for the Queen of Egypt; while Halliwell-Phillipps uses biographically the only personal phase in the plays (of which he was aware) that match facts, or rather traditions, in the life of the poet.

In the preface to my first publication I outlined a programme of further research, which, I believed, if successfully carried out, would establish a more extended and definite basis of personal fact regarding Shakespeare, that when co-ordinated with his works and the social, literary and political life of the period, might enable a future Brandes to produce a new biography still worthier of its great subject. Following is the outline of research announced at that time:

"The research of text-students of the works of Shakespeare, undertaken with the object of unveiling the mystery which envelops the poet's life and personality, has added little or nothing of actual proof to the bare outlines which hearsay, tradition, and the spare records of his time have given us. It has, however, resulted in evolving several plausible conjectures, which, if followed and carried to the point of proof, would lend some form and semblance of his personality to the outlines, and materially assist in visualising for us the actual man. In this class of conjectural knowledge I would place the following questions:

"Lastly in this class, and attendant upon the sonnet theories, I would mention the question of the intention of the poem called Willobie his Avisa, regarding Shakespeare and his connections. If any one or two of these things were actually proved, a new keynote to research would be struck, but at present these are all still matters of opinion and dispute."

At this date I had, as I thought, exhausted all clues leading from the identification of Chapman as the "rival poet" to the identification of the still hidden figures of the sonnets, and now forgetting Chapman, began research, seeking to find the author of Willobie his Avisa, believing that his identification would settle the question of its satirical intention regarding Shakespeare. In this endeavour I made a careful study of Elizabethan verse, published and unpublished, looking for similarities of style, verbiage, idiom, metre, grammatical construction and ideas. As my leisure time was limited, this naturally took several years, during which I found a number of poems that, in my judgment, were by the same author, but as these were either anonymous or signed by what are palpably pen names, such as Peter Pick, I. Tomson, Ignoto, Anonymo, my quest did not seem much forwarded, and I had grown tired and almost abandoned my search, when, most unexpectedly, I found what I sought. The only copy of Spenser I had then at hand had neither notes nor glossaries, and my previous interest in Spenser was not at a critical nature. I was interested in his verse for its quaintness and beauty, and had acquired a fair idea of his style. Reading Spenser casually one evening I came across a poem that I had undoubtedly seen before, but had never read in its entirety. I had not read for long before I recognised the hand and the mind of my elusive anonymity, who, I was convinced, was not Spenser. An examination of John Henry Todd's edition of Spenser showed me that he had determined Matthew Roydon's authorship for this poem--Elegie, or Friend's Passion for his Astrophel--in 1809.

Here again my clues linked up with Chapman, as it was the parallel between Shakespeare's "affable familiar ghost," and a phrase in Chapman's dedication of The Shadow of Night to Roydon in 1594 that led Minto to suggest Chapman as the "rival poet." I had never doubted the satirical nature of Willobie his Avisa, nor been deceived by the alleged "Hadrian Dorrell" as to his editorship. A more minute examination of this poem, its prefaces and appendages, showed me that Avisa was the hostess of a tavern, and indicated Oxford as the scene of the story's action. I then naturally linked up these findings with the gossip of John Aubrey and Anthony Wood, concerning John Davenant and his wife, but in my Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's Sonnets, published in 1913, said, "While I am inclined to repudiate the truth of Wood's and Aubrey's gossip as referring to conditions existent in 1605-6 and later, and believe this gossip to be merely a belated echo of the scandal of the earlier years, I have no doubt but that Avisa, the dark lady and Mistress Davenant were one."

During a recent visit to England, as will appear, I have been enabled to verify this deduction by documentary evidence, showing that Davenant was married twice and that the gossip of Aubrey and Wood actually did reflect the scandal of Willobie his Avisa concerning Shakespeare's relations with Davenant's first wife. The definite identification of the "dark lady," leading as it has from the finding of Roydon as the author of Willobie his Avisa, has put the identity of the other figures of the sonnet story for ever beyond conjecture.

Now a word regarding the books and chronological order to which I have restored the Sonnets, which restoration in turn is due entirely to literary analysis, but of a more palpable nature to general readers than that by which I dentified Roydon and Chapman.

In the introductory chapter to the Sonnets I have explained in detail how I came to reform them into sequences. Some years ago, having explained my method to an interested Shakespearean student, and outlined to him their consecutive history--as I had found it connected with Shakespeare's and Southampton's affairs--without, howerver, showing him the order I had given them, he was curious to see what results he could attain by the same method. Working upon the first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets, and without furher help from me, in a few weeks he had divided the sonnets into practically the same sequences that I had found, but, not having as intimate a knowledge of the sonnet story, failed to give the sequences the same consecutive order, and having considered the subject for a very much shorter time, his order within the sequences differed somewhat from mine, but not so materially as to interfere with a recognition of the theme of each sequence.

Other students may be interested in testing these sequences, both as to the chronological order of the books and the contextual order of the sonnets within the books. By following the lines I suggest, which are, to take two copies of the Sonnets in Thorpe's order,--say the clothbound Temple edition with one sonnet to a page,--cut out the leaves and spread the sonnets out from one to one hundred and twenty-six, and for the present forgetting my chronological order or Thorpe's sequential order, move the sonnets here and there, grouping them according to subject or theme, they will be found to divide naturally into seven groups: one urging a young man to marriage; one indicating an absence during which the which the writer is travelling; another showing that the person addressed is involved in relations with a woman known to the writer; another describing a reunion after a period of separation three year after the poet's acquaintance with the patron begins; another indicating that a rival poet seeks to supplant the writer in the patron's favour; and two others, one distressed, plaintive and remorseful from beginning to end, and the other indicating a late reunion after a period of scandal affecting the poet's reputation and repelling accusations of insincerity and time-service.

Any intelligent student may find these divisions for himself, and having found them by time and patience arrange them consecutively in their books. He will then recognise what Shakespeare meant when he wrote:

I invite scholars or critics to suggest or explain any other possible meaning for Shakespeare's us of the words "book" and "books" in his sonnets.

Having formed the divisions into books and rearranged the sonnets within the books, a working knowledge of the chronological order of the plays and of the progressive development of Shakespeare's style will enable any one to differentiate the early from the late books, and by correlating them with the plays of the sonnet period, to fit all of the books into chronological place.

The chronological order and sequence of the sonnets written to the "dark lady"--which are fragmentary--may be only approximated. This can be done by comparing and matching their subject-matter and style with the other series.

When I first conceived my plan of research I had no idea that so complete a restoration of the chronology and sequence of the sonnets as is here presented was possible, nor did I think it possible to throw any new light upon the first six or eight years of Shakespeare's London life. The new light shed by Shakespeare's Lost Years in London on Shakespeare's connection with Burbage and the Lord Chamberlain's company from 1586-7 until 1591, was made possible by the collection and compilation of the London and provincial records of contemporary dramatic companies by Mr. John Tucker Murray in 1910.² The light thrown upon Shakespeare's connection with the Earl of Pembroke's company, however, was again due to a revelation of Chapman's hostility to Shakespeare in the composition of the old Histriomastix at this period, reflecting the misfortunes of this company upon its unprofitable tour in 1593.

When I outlined my original programme of research I had no conception of Florio's long connection with the Earl of Southampton, nor of the manner in which this connection and his unique personality influenced Shakespeare's work. The inception of this connection and a forward sketch, showing the manner in which his character reacted upon Shakespeare's work, have been displayed in my recent publication and is further developed in the present book.

While I adumbrated the solution of the Troilus and Cressida crux in Shakespeare and the Rival Poet, its fuller solution I owe to the inclusion by Mr. W. W. Greg in his edition of Henslowe's Papers, 1908, of a copy of Alleyns's plot of a play owned by the Lord Nottingham's men dealing with this subject. I had not previously had an opportunity to examine this paper.

The chapter with which I close my argument, carrying the sonnet interest down to 1609, the year of the publication of Thorpe's edition, is merely a summary of Shakespeare's relations with the scholars in the years between 1598 and 1609, and reflecting the aftermath of the sonnet story. It will take a book as large as the present volume fully to develop the personal and political phases of the plays produced during these years. In the meantime I there sketch an outline of future research and make a number of suggestions and affirmations, the full evidence for which I do not now advance. If scholars who are habituated to points of view to which these run counter will, for the present, regard them as suggestions only and should care to follow them further, they will themselves, I believe, supply their confirmation.

As my first book, Shakespeare and the Rival Poet, the argument of which is closely linked with that of the present volume, has now several years been out of print, I am including here three chapters taken from it, which deal with Chapman's and Roydon's connection with the sonnet story. I am also reprinting from my recent publication, Shakespeare's Lost Years in London--of which only a limited edition has been printed and which will not be reissued separately--as introductory to the present volume, the chapter dealing with the inception of Shakespeare's acquaintance with the Earl of Southampton, in order to give full coherence to the sonnet story.

My Shakespearean research of the past thirty years, leading to the restoration of the sonnets into their books and chronology, to the present demonstration of their autobiographical nature, to similar personal phases in the plays, and to the definite identification of the several figures of the sonnet story, has all been subsidiary to the larger purpose of proving a more positive and extended foundation of historical fact regarding Shakespeare and his methods of work as a basis for future biography. In all of the thirty-seven plays usually included in edition of his works, with the exception of the following--Titus Andronicus, The Three Parts of Henry VI., The Taming of the Shrew, Pericles, and Henry VIII., I recognise, in a greater or less degree, reflections of his interest in contemporary life. The reason for the lack of such reflections in those mentioned will be apparent to any scholar. Of the remaining thirty plays this autobiographical or topical interest has been examined tentatively in the present or past publications in thirteen plays, leaving seventeen plays, and those including his most important dramas, still to be considered. In the plays produced between the end of 1598 and 1601 Shakespeare's relations to Southampton and his friends of the Essex faction are strongly reflected. After the latter date the reflections become less personal, pertaining more to the factional interests of his friends, and very incidently to the dramatic rivalries of the time.

At a future time I hope to examine this phase of his later plays, as well as to develop Shakespeare's relations with his contemporaries during these later years, and particularly the manner in which his life and work were affected by his friendship for the Earl of Southampton, and his consequent political sympathy with the fortunes of the Essex faction, as well as his tacit hostility to the Cecilians, after the death of Essex on into the time of James.

Nearly all of the matter in this book has been in manuscript since the end of 1913, at which time I decided to defer publication until I had leisure to visit England and search the parish registers and other records in Bristol and Oxford concerning the Bird and Davenant families. This I hoped to do in the autumn of 1914, but the outbreak of the war compelled me to defer further work on the subject and to put off my visit to England until the spring of 1920.

My recent investigations at Oxford and Bristol furnished me clues which necessitated an examination of the parish register of a number of old City of London churches, as well as a search for and examination of a large number of sixteenth-century wills at Somerset House. The results of this research will be found in the latter part of the fifth chapter of this volume and in the Appendix.

While in Oxford I had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance of the the Rev. H. E. Salter, who six years before, by correspondence, had so ably assisted me in following up my theory regarding the persons and places indicated by Matthew Roydon in Willobie his Avisa. Mr. Salter kindly introduced me to Mr. E. Thurlow Leeds of the Ashmolean Museum, whose research concerning the Oxfod vintners Mr. Salter had mentioned to me in his correspondence in 1913. Mr. Leeds generously put his MSS. and notes at my service and also made a number of valuable suggestions regarding further lines of research which, among other things, have enabled me to demonstrate the parentage and indicate the early life of John Davenant of Oxford, as well as, inferentially, to show his connection with Oxford several years earlier than the first mention of him in the municipal records or in the parish registers of St. Martin's. Mr. Leeds at my request has further kindly consented to allow me to include, in the Appendix to the present volume, the portions of his able and interesting history of the Oxford vintners which relate to the Crosse Inn and The Tavern.

At Bristol my investigations were materially aided by the courteous co-operation of Mr. John Tremayne Lane, the City Treasurer, who placed the original City records preserved at the Council House at my service, and also kindly furnished me with transcripts of certain sixteenth-century wills relating to my search.

I am also much indebted to Mr. J. J. Simpson of St. Peter's Hospital, Bristol, whose advice and suggestions saved me much time in my work.

To Mr. Edward Nash, Clerk of the Merchant Taylors Company, my thanks are due for his kindly co-operation in having a search of the Company's records made and supplying me with data regarding John Davenant and his family.

ARTHUR ACHESON.

ARDSLEY-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK.

In a recent publication I have shown that at this period Shakespeare was a member of and writer for the Earl of Pembroke's company, a Burbage organisation with which he had been connected since some time in 1591, when this new company was formed, and consonant with the conclusions of the best text critics that in the time between 1591 and 1593 he had produced his first drafts of Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won (All's Well that Ends Well) in its early form. Let us then inquire how these plays pertain to Shakespeare's observations of and experience with life at this period, and whether or not they also reflect the influence of his acquaintance with the Earl of Southampton and the theme of the earliest book of sonnets in the same manner as this connection is reflected in the later books of sonnets, and in concurrent days.

A brief outline and examination of the recorded incidents of Southampton's life in these early years may throw some new light upon the earliest stages of this acquaintance, especially when those incidents and conditions are considered correlatively with the spirit and intention of the poems which Shakespeare wrote for him, and dedicated to him a little later.

Henry Wriothesley, second Earl of Southampton, and father of Shakespeare's patron, died on 4th October 1581. Henry, his only surviving son, thus became Earl of Southampton before he had attained his eighth birthday, and consequently became, and remained until his majority, a ward of the Crown. The Court of Chancery was at that period a much simpler institution than it is to-day, and Lord Burghley seems personally to have exercised the chief functions of that Court in its relation to wards in Chancery, and also to have monopolised its privileges. We may infer that this was a position by no means distasteful to that prudent minister's provident and nepotic spirit. Burghley was essentially of that type of statesman who are better contented with actual power, and its accruing profits, than the appearance of power and the glory of its trappings. Leicester, Raleigh, and Essex might, in turn, pose their day as they willed upon the political stage so long as they confined themselves to subordinate or ornamental capacities; but whenever they attempted seriously to encroach upon the reins of power, he set himself to circumvent them with a patience and finesse that invariably wrought their undoing.

In this system of politics he had an apt pupil in his son, Sir Robert Cecil, who viewed through the ages, while presenting a less solid figure than his father, displays a much more refined and Machiavellian craft.

The attention and care which Burghley bestowed from the beginning upon his young ward's affairs bespeak an interest within an interest when his prudent and calculating nature is borne in mind and the later incidents of his guardianship are considered.

Towards the end of 1585, at the age of twelve, Southampton became a student of St. John's College, Cambridge, from whence he graduated as M.A. about four years later, i.e. in June 1589. After leaving Cambridge in 1589, he lived for over a year with his mother in Sussex. Early in this year, or possibly while Southampton was still at Cambridge, Burghley had opened negotiations with the Countess of Southampton with the object of uniting the interests and fortunes of her son with his own house, by consummating a marriage between this wealthy and promising young peer and his own granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. Burghley's extreme interest in the match is fully attested by a few letters that are still extant. In the Calendar State Papers we have an apologetic letter from Sir Thomas Stanhope (whose wife and daughter had recently visited Lady Southampton at Cowdray House) to Lord Burghley, dated 15th July 1590, assuring him that he had never sought to procure the young Earl of Southampton in marriage for his daughter, as he knew Burghley intended marriage between him and the Lady Vere. That an actual engagement of marriage had already been entered into, we have proof in another letter dated 19th September 1590, from Anthony Brown, Viscount Montague (Southampton's maternal grandfather), to Lord Burghley. Regarding this engagement he writes, that Southampton "is not averse from it," and repeats further that his daughter, Lady Southampton, is not aware of any alteration in her son's mind. The tone of this latter epistle does not seem to evince any great enthusiasm for the match upon the part of either Southampton or his mother; its rather diffident spirit was not lost upon Burghley, who, within a few days of its receipt, commanded the attendance of his young ward at Court. Upon 14th October 1590--that is, less than a month after Viscount Montague's letter to Burghley--we have a letter from Lady Southampton announcing her son's departure for London, and commending him to Burghley, but making no mention of the proposed marriage. From the fact that she thanks Burghley for the "long time" he "had intrusted" her son with her, we may infer that his present departure for London was occasioned by Burghley's order, and also that the "long time," indicated by Lady Southampton's letter, was the interval between Southampton's leaving Cambridge in June 1589 and his present departure for London in October 1590. We are also assured by this data that Southampton had not travelled upon the Continent previous to his coming to Court. Between the time of his coming to Court in October 1590 and August 1591 I find no dates in contemporary records referring to Southampton; but it appears evident that these nine months were spent at Court.

Some misgivings regarding the young Earl's desire for the match with his granddaughter seem to have arisen in Burghley's mind in March 1592, at which time Southampton was with the English forces in France. From this we may judge that Southampton's departure for the wars was undertaken at his own initiative and not at Burghley's suggestion. It appears likely that a lack of marital ardour inspired his martial ardour at this time, and that Burghley was conscious of his disinclination to the proposed marriage. In a letter dated 6th March 1592 (new style), Roger Manners writing to Burghley tells him he has been at North Hall with the Countess of Warwick, whom he reports as "very well inclined to the match between the Earl of Bedford and the Lady Vere." "She is desirous to know," he adds, "if your Lordship approves of it ." While this letter shows that Burghley at this date had doubts regarding Southampton's fulfilment of his engagement, other inferences lead me to judge that it was not finally disrupted until the spring of 1594.

We have record that Southampton's name was entered as a student of Gray's Inn in July 1590--that is, three months before his arrival in London--and may therefore assume that some of his subsequent time in London was occupied in more or less perfunctory legal studies.

As continental travel and an acquaintance with foreign tongues--at least Italian and French--had then come to be regarded as a part of a nobleman's education, Burghley, soon after Southampton's coming to Court, provided him with a tutor of languages in the person of John Florio, who thereafter continued in his pay and patronage as late as, if not later than, 1598. Even after this date Southampton continued to befriend Florio for many years.

As Florio continued in Southampton's service during the entire sonnet period and played an important r�le in the story of the sonnets a brief consideration of his heredity and personal characteristics may help us to realise the manner in which Shakespeare held "the mirror up to nature " in his dramatic characterisations.

John Florio was born in 1545 and was the son of Michael Angelo Florio, a Florentine Protestant, who left Italy in the reign of Henry VIII. to escape the persecution in the Valteline. Florio's father was pastor to a congregation of his religious compatriots in London for several years. He was befriended by Archbishop Cranmer, and was patronised by Sir William Cecil during the reign of Edward VI., but lost his church and the patronage of Cecil on account of charges of gross immorality that were made against him. We are informed by Anthony Wood that the elder Florio left England upon the accession of Mary, and moved to the Continent--probably to France, where John Florio received his early education. The earliest knowledge we have of John Florio in England is that he lived at Oxford for several years in his youth, and that, in or about 1576, he became tutor in Italian to a Mr. Barnes, son of the Bishop of Durham.

In the same year that Florio became tutor to the son of the Bishop of Durham, Edmund Spenser graduated at Cambridge and went to live at some unknown place in the north of England. Nothing definite is known of Spenser for the next two years except that for a portion of this time, and probably the whole of it, he lived in the "north parts" of England, and while there that he fell in love with a lady whom he celebrates in The Shepheard's Calendar under the name of Rosalinde, "which," his friend E. K. writes, "is a feigned name which being well ordered will bewray the very name of his love and mistress." Nothing more definite than this is known of her identity, though many attempts have been made at its solution. The "north parts" of England in which he lived are also still unknown, though it has been assumed that Lancashire is intended owing to the fact that a family of Spencers is found there. In 1579 Spenser published The Shepheard's Calendar, telling, metaphorically, the story of his love for Rosalinde and of her seduction by Menalcas; all of which took place some time in the interval between 1576 and 1578, and while he lived in the "north parts" of England.

As Florio was evidently the Menalcas alluded to by Spenser and, as I shall indicate, was recognised in this light by Shakespeare, and as Spenser, Menalcas and Rosalinde lived at this time in the same locality, it becomes likely that the "north parts" of England was Durham, where Florio probably lived at this period--in the vacations --with the Bishop of Durham as tutor to his son. It was in the year that Spenser is reported to have been taken up and befriended by the Earl of Leicester (1578) that Florio dedicated his First Fruites to that nobleman. The Shepheard's Calendar was published in the following year.

In 1581, according to Wood, Florio matriculated at Magdalen and was teacher and instructor to certain scholars at the University. In 1578 he was still living at Oxford when he dedicated his First Fruites to the Earl of Leicester; his dedication being dated "from my lodgings in Worcester Place." In I580 he dedicated a translation from the Italian of Ramusio to Edward Bray, Sheriff of Oxford, and two years later dedicated to Sir Edmund Dyer a MS. collection of Italian proverbs, which is also dated from Oxford on the 12th of November 1582. I have recently found in an Oxford parish record that Florio was still in Oxford as late as September 1585, and that he was married at that time. The register of St. Peter's in the Baylie records the baptism of Joane Florio, daughter of John Florio, upon 24th September in that year.

Nothing more is known concerning Florio between 1582 and 1591; in the latter year he published his Second Fruites, dedicating it to a recent patron, Mr. Nicholas Saunder of Ewell. Between about 1590 and 1591 and the end of 1598, and possibly later, he continued in the pay and patronage of the Earl of Southampton, dedicating his Worlde of Wordes in the latter year "To the Right Honourable Patrons of Virtue, Patterns of Honour, Roger, Earl of Rutland; Henry, Earl of Southampton; and Lucy, Countess of Bedford." A new and enlarged edition of this book, containing his portrait, was published in 1611. In the medallion surrounding this picture he gives his age as fifty-eight, which would date his birth in 1553, the year of Queen Mary's accession. It is evident that Florio understated his age, as he is said to have received his early education in France and to have returned to England with his father upon the accession of Elizabeth in 1558. Anthony Wood gives the date of his birth as 1545; his authority for this I have recently found in Registrum Universitatus, Oxon., vol. ii., by Andrew Clark: "1st May 1581. Magd. Col. John Florio aet 36 serviens Mri Barnes." Florio was vain enough to prevaricate on a matter of this nature. In 1603 he published his chief work, a translation of The Essaies of Montaigne. He was attached to the Court of James I. as French and Italian tutor to Prince Henry and the Queen, and also held the appointment of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.

Florio was married on 9th September 1617 to a Rose Spicer, of whom nothing earlier than the marriage record is known. From the facts that his daughter Aurelia was already married at the time of his death in 1625, and that in his will he leaves her "the wedding ring wherewith I married her mother," it is evident that Rose Spicer was his second wife.

Following a suggestion made by the Rev. N. J. Halpin, it is supposed that his first wife was a Rose Daniel, a sister of Samuel Daniel, the poet, who was Florio's classfellow at Oxford. In the address to dedicatory verses by Daniel, prefixed to the 1611 edition of Florio's Worlde of Wordes, he calls Florio "My dear friend and brother, Mr. John Florio, one of the gentlemen of her Majesties Royal Privy Chamber." From this it has been supposed that Florio's first wife was Daniel's sister, and Mr. Halpin inferred that she was named Rose from his assumption that Spenser refers to her as Rosalinde, and to Florio as Menalcas in The Shepheard's Calendar in 1579. Mr. Grosart, who carefully investigated the matter, states that Daniel--who in 1611 was also a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber--had only two sisters, neither of them being named Rose. It is likely, then, that Daniel referred to his official connection with Florio by the term "brother," as in 1603, in a similar address to dedicatory verses prefixed to Montaigne's Essaies he refers to him only as "My Friend." There is no known record of Florio's first marriage.

It is very unlikely, however, that two women named Rose should have come so intimately into Florio's life, and probable, when all the evidence is considered, that Rose Spicer, the "dear wife Rose" mentioned in his will, was the "Rosalinde" of his youth, whom, it appears, he had seduced, and with whom he had evidently lived in concubinage in the intervening years; making tardy amends by marriage in 1617, only eight years before his death. His marriage to Rose Spicer was probably brought about by the admonitions of his friend Theophilus Field, Bishop of Llandaff, under whose influence Florio became religious in his declining years.

In Florio's will, in which he bequeaths nearly all of his small property to "his beloved wife Rose," he regrets that he "cannot give or leave her more in requital of her tender love, loving care, painful diligence, and continual labour to me in all my fortunes and many sicknesses, than whom never had husband a more loving wife, painful nurse, and comfortable consort." The words I have italicised indicate conjugal relations covering a much longer period than the eight years between his formal marriage in 1617 and his death in 1625. The term "all my fortunes" certainly implies a connection between them antedating Florio's seventy-second year.

We may infer that the Bishop of Llandaff and Florio's pastor, Dr. Cluet, whom he appointed overseers and executors of his will, held Florio in light esteem, as "for certain reasons" they renounced its execution. The Earl of Pembroke, to whom he bequeathed his books, apparently neglected to avail himself of the legacy, and probably for the same reasons. An examination of Florio's characteristic will ³ may suggest the nature of these reasons.

Mr. Halpin's inference that Florio, as Menalcas, had already married "Rosalinde" in 1596, when the last books of The Faerie Queen were published, is deduced from the idea that the originals for "Mirabella" and the "Carle and fool" of The Faerie Queen are identical with those for "Rosalinde" and "Menalcas" of The Shepheard's Calendar. While it is probable that Spenser had the same originals in mind in both cases, an analysis of his verses in The Faerie Queen shows that the "Carle and fool," who accompany Mirabella, represent two persons, i.e. "Disdaine" and "Scorne." In the following verses Mirabella speaks:

In prime of youthly yeares, when first the flowre

Of beauty gan to bud, and bloosme delight,

And nature me endu'd with plenteous dowre

Of all her gifts, that pleased each living sight,

I was belov'd of many a gentle Knight,

And sude and sought with all the service dew:

Full many a one for me deepe groand and sight,

And to the dore of death for sorrow drew,

Complayning out of me that would not on them rew.

But let love that list, or live or die,

Me list not die for any lovers doole;

Ne list me leave my loved libertie

To pitty him that list to play the foole;

To love myselfe I learned had in schoole.

Thus I triumphed long in lovers paine.

And sitting carelesse on the scorners stoole,

Did laugh at those that did lament and plaine;

But all is now repayd with interest againe.

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1 Arnold wrote "spiritual," but the change of epithet is needed to render the dictum thoroughly pertinent to the topic under consideration.

2 English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1642. By John Tucker Murray, 1910.

3 Shakespeare's Lost Years in London. Bernard Quaritch. 1920.

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Shakespeare's Sonnet Story 1592-1598
By Arthur Acheson
London
Bernard Quaritch
1922

First Internet Edition 1996
Rutgers University Libraries
PR2848.A88

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Omnipædia Polyglotta
Francisco López Rodríguez
[email protected]
[email protected]

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