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Shakespeare, early in his theatrical life, must have written much, in the way of revivals, alterations, or joint produc tions with other poets, which has been forever lost. We here, as before, conclude that none of his greatest original dramatic productions had come from his pen; but if in 1591 he had only brought out " The Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Love's Labour's Lost," they are so infinitely superior to the best works of his predecessors, that the justice of the tribute paid by Spenser to his genius would at once be admitted. At all events, if before 1591 he had not accomplished, by any means, all that he was capable of, he had given the clearest indications of high genius, abundantly sufficient to justify the anticipation of Spenser, that he was

a man

"whom Nature's selfe had made

To mock her selfe, and Truth to imitate:"

a passage which in itself admirably comprises, and compresses nearly all the excellences of which dramatic poetry is susceptible the mockery of nature, and the imitation of truth.

Another point not hitherto noticed, because not hitherto known, is, that there is some little ground for thinking, that Spenser, if not a Warwickshire man, was at one time resident in Warwickshire, and later in life he may have become acquainted with Shakespeare. His birth had been conjeeturally placed in 1553', and on the authority of some lines in his "Prothalamion" it has been supposed that he was born in London: East Smithfield, near the Tower, has also been fixed upon as the part of the town where he first drew breath; but the parish registers in that neighbourhood have been searched in vain for a record of the event. An Edmund Spenser unquestionably dwelt at Kingsbury, in Warwickshire, in 1569, which was the year when the author of "The Faerie Queene" went to Cambridge, and was admitted a sizer at Pembroke College. The fact that Edmund Spenser (a rather unusual combination of names3)

This date has always appeared to us too late, recollecting that Spenser wrote some blank-verse sonnets, prefixed to Vandernoodt's "Theatre for Worldlings," printed in 1569. If he were born in 1553, in 1569 he was only in his sixteenth year, and the sonnets to which we refer do not read like the productions of a very young man. 2 Chalmers was a very dilligent inquirer into such matters, and he could discover no entry of the kind. See his "Supplemental Apology," p. 22. Subsequent investigations, instituted with reference to this question, have led to the same result. Oldys is responsible for the statement.

3 And belonging to no other family at that time, as far as our researches have extended. It has been too hastily concluded that the Spenser whom Turberville addressed from Russia, in some epistles

VOL. I.-I

was an inhabitant of Kingsbury in 1569 is established by the muster-book of Warwickshire, preserved in the statepaper office, to which we have before had occasion to refer, but it does not give the ages of the parties. This Edmund Spenser may possibly have been the father of the poet, (whose Christian name is no where recorded) and if it were the one or the other, it seems to afford a link of connexion, however slight, between Spenser and Shakespeare, of which we have had no previous knowledge. Spenser was at least eleven years older than Shakespeare, but their early residence in the same part of the kingdom may have given rise to an intimacy afterwards': Spenser must have appreciated and admired the genius of Shakespeare, and the author of "The Tears of the Muses," at the age of thirtyseven, may have paid a merited tribute to his young friend of twenty-six.

The Edmund Spenser of Kingsbury may have been entirely a different person, of a distinct family, and perhaps we are disposed to lay too much stress upon a mere coincidence of names; but we may be forgiven for clinging to the conjecture that he may have been the author of "The Faerie Queene," and that the greatest romantic poet of this country was upon terms of friendship and cordiality with the greatest dramatist of the world. This circumstance, with which we were unacquainted when we wrote the Introduction to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," may appear to give new point, and a more certain application, to the well-remembered lines of that drama (Act v. sc. i.) in which Shakespeare has been supposed to refer to the death of Spenser, and which may have been a subsequent insertion,

printed at the end of his "Tragical Tales," 1557, was not the poet. Taking Wood's representation, that these letters were written as early as 1569, it is still very possible that the author of "The Faerie Queene" was the person to whom they were sent he was a very young man, it is true, but perhaps not quite so young as has been imagined.

1 Nobody has been able even to speculate where Spenser was at school;-possibly at Kingsbury. Drayton was also a Warwickshire

man.

2 Differences of opinion, founded upon discordances of contemporaneous, or nearly contemporaneous, representations, have prevailed respecting the extreme poverty of Spenser at the time of his death. There is no doubt that he had a pension of 50l. a year (at least 250. of our present money) from the royal bounty, which probably he received to the last. At the same time we think there is much plausibility in the story that Lord Burghley stood in the way of some special pecuniary gift from Elizabeth. The Rev. H. J. Todd disbe lieves it, and in his "Life of Spenser " calls it "a calumny," on the foundation of the pension, without considering, perhaps, that the epigram, attributed to Spenser, may have been occasioned by the obstruction by the Lord Treasurer of some additional proof of the Queen's admiration for the author of "The Faerie Queene." Fuller

for the sake of repaying by one poet a debt of gratitude to the other.

Without taking into consideration what may have been lost, if we are asked what we think it likely that Shakespeare had written in and before 1591, we should answer, that he had altered and added to three parts of "Henry VI.," that he had written, or aided in writing, "Titus Andronicus," that he had revived and amended "The Comedy of Errors," and that he had composed "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and "Love's Labour's Lost." Thus, looking only at his extant works, we see that the eulogy of Spenser was well warranted by the plays Shakespeare, at that early date, had produced.

If the evidence upon this point were even more scanty, we should be convinced that by "our pleasant Willy," Spenser meant William Shakespeare, by the fact that such a character as he gives could belong to no other dramatist of the time. Greene can have no pretensions to it, nor Lodge, nor Kyd, nor Peele; Marlowe had never touched comedy: but if these have no title to the praise that they had mocked nature and imitated truth, the claim put in by Malone for Lyly is little short of absurd. Lyly was, beyond dispute, the most artificial and affected writer of his day: his dramas have nothing like nature or truth in them; and if it could be established that Spenser and Lyly were on the most intimate footing, even the exaggerated admiration of the fondest friendship could hardly have carried Spenser to the extreme to which he has gone in his "Tears of the Muses." If Malone had wished to point out a dramatist of that day to whom the words of Spenser could by no possibility fitly apply, he could not have made a better choice than when he fixed upon Lyly. However, he labours the

first published the anecdote in his "Worthies," 1662; but sixty years earlier, and within a very short time after the death of Spenser, the story was current, for we find the lines in Manningham's Diary, (Harl. MS. 5353) under the date of May 4, 1602: they are thus introduced:

"When her Majesty had given order that Spenser should have a reward for his poems, but Spenser could have nothing, he presented her with these verses:

"It pleased your Grace upon a time
To grant me reason for my rhyme;
But from that time until this season.
I heard of neither rhyme nor reason."

The wording differs slightly from Fuller's copy. We add the following epigram upon the death of Spenser, also on the authority of Manningham:

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contrary position with great pertinacity and considerable ingenuity, and it is extraordinary how a man of much reading, and of sound judgment upon many points of literary discussion, could impose upon himself, and be led so far from the truth, by the desire to establish a novelty. At all events, he might have contented himself with an endeavour prove the negative as regards Shakespeare, without going the strange length of attempting to make out the affirmative as regards Lyly.

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We do not for an instant admit the right of any of Shake speare's predecessors or contemporaries to the tribute of Spenser ; but Malone might have made out a case for any of them with more plausibility than for Lyly. Greene was a writer of fertile fancy, but choked and smothered by the overlaying of scholastic learning : Kyd was a man of strong natural parts, and a composer of vigorous lines: Lodge was a poet of genius, though not in the department of the drama: Peele had an elegant mind, and was a smooth and agreeable versifier; while Marlowe was gifted with a soaring and a daring spirit, though unchecked by a well-regulated taste: but all had more nature in their dramas than Lyly, who generally chose classical or mythological subjects, and dealt with those subjects with a wearisome monotony of style, with thoughts quaint, conceited, and violent, and with an utter absence of force and distinctness in his characterization.

It is not necessary to enter farther into this part of the question, because, we think, it is now established that Spenser's lines might apply to Shakespeare as regards the date of their publication, and indisputably applied with most felicitous exactness to the works he has left behind him. With regard to the lines which state, that Willy

"Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell,
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell,"

we have already shown that in 1589 there must have been some compulsory cessation of theatrical performances, which affected not only offending, but unoffending companies hence the certificate, or more properly remonstrance, of the sixteen sharers in the Blackfriars. The choir-boys of St. Paul's were silenced for bringing "matters of state and religion" on their stage, when they introduced Martin Mar-prelate into one of their dramas: and the players of the Lord Admiral and Lord Strange were prohibited from acting, as far as we can learn, on a similar ground. The interdiction of performances by the children of Paul's was persevered in for about ten years; and although the public companies (after the completion of some inquiries by com

missioners specially appointed) were allowed again to follow their vocation, there can be no doubt that there was a temporary suspension of all theatrical exhibitions in London. This suspension commenced a short time before Spenser wrote his Tears of the Muses," in which he notices the silence of Shakespeare.

We have no means of ascertaining how long the order, inhibiting theatrical performances generally, was persevered in; but the plague broke out in London in 1592, and in the autumn of the year, when the number of deaths was greatest, "the Queen's players'," in their progress round the country, whither they wandered when thus prevented from acting in the metropolis, performed at Chesterton, near Cambridge, to the great annoyance of the heads of the university.

It was at this juncture, probably, if indeed he ever were in that country, that Shakespeare visited Italy. Mr. C. Armitage Brown, in his very clever, and in many respects original work, "Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems," has maintained the affirmative with great confidence, and has brought into one view all the internal evidence afforded by the productions of our great dramatist. External evidence there is none, since not even a tradition of such a journey has descended to us. We own that the internal evidence, in our estimation, is by no means as strong as it appeared to Mr. Brown, who has evinced great ingenuity and ability in the conduct of his case, and has made as much as possible of his proofs. He dwells, among other things, upon the fact, that there were no contemporaneous translations of the tales on which "The Merchant of Venice" and "Othello" are founded; but Shakespeare may have understood as much Italian as answered his purpose without having gone to Venice. For the same reason we lay no stress upon the recently-discovered fact, (not known when Mr. Brown wrote) that Shakespeare constructed his "Twelfth Night" with the aid of one or two Italian comedies; they may have found their way into England, and he may have read them in the original language. That Shakespeare was capable of translating Italian sufficiently for his own purposes, we are morally certain; but we think that if he had travelled to Venice, Verona, or Florence, we should have had more distinct and positive testimony of the fact in his works than can be adduced from them.

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Other authors of the time have left such evidence behind

They consisted of the company under the leadership of Lawrence Dutton, one of the two associations acting at this period under the Queen's name. Both were unconnected with the Lord Chamberlain's servants.

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