If we refer to Greene's Never Too Late, the burlesque is still more palpable; here is Mullidor's Madrigal : "Dildido, dildido, O love, O love, I feel thy rage rumble below and above. Trop belle pour moi, hélas, hélas ! Like to a stoned horse was her pace, I Trop belle pour moi; voilà mon trépas. Was ever young man so dismay'd? Her eyes like wax torches did make me afraid. That I with the primrose of my fresh wit Hé donc, je serai un jeune roi.” This is enough, I think, to show the animus of the writer. From the unpleasing contemplation of such a captious and perverse illfeeling, let us turn to the more genial task of examining what Marlowe and Peele were doing during these years. Marlowe, we know, wrote the following works, and almost certainly in the order that has been universally assigned to them, which agrees exactly with that determined by metrical tests. In addition to these it is highly probable that he wrote 1589. 6. Taming of a Shrew (with Shakespeare). 1591. 8. Henry VI. (with Peele) about 1590. before 1592. 1 i.e. yeoman. If we suppose that he wrote one play a year the chronology of his works will exactly correspond with that we have assigned to Greene's; beginning with Tamberlane in 1585, and ending with Dido in the order of the prefixed figures. The wretched condition of the text of The Massacre of Paris will also be now explicable. For as I have stated above, the company for which Marlowe wrote his first plays was the Admiral's; for it he wrote all the first five in the above list (with the possible, not probable, exception of The Few of Malta); but The Massacre of Paris, which was certainly the last play he wrote before joining the companies of Sussex and Pembroke, must have been produced after the death of Henri III. (August 1589), since this incident forms part of the plot, and it is most probable from the nature of the play that it was produced almost directly after this event; but the Admiral's company was under prohibition in 1589.1 This play if interrupted by the prohibition would remain incomplete (it has but three acts), and after Marlowe had broken with that company he would not care to complete it. As, however, we have here not to discuss Marlowe's works, but only to show that the chronology we assign to his plays is consistent with that we have given to Greene's we pass on to Peele. Peele in 1584 produced his Arraignment of Paris for the children of the Queen's chapel. In subsequent years he wrote various plays for some company not mentioned, which I suspect to have been Lord Strange's, as no other poet is mentioned in connexion with those players, and each of the other companies then playing in London had its own poet attached to it. In 1586 he perhaps aided C. Tylney in Locrine, but more likely in 1587 he edited and finished that play which ridiculed Greene's early works. In 1588-9 or thereabouts he probably wrote Alcazar for the Admiral's company; in 1590, after Greene's retirement, as we have seen reason to believe above, he was engaged by the Queen's company, and wrote for them The Old Wives' Tale, and probably The Troublesome Reign of King John in the following year. After this his share in plays assigned to Shakespeare (Richard III., Romeo and Juliet, Henry VI.) has been discussed by me elsewhere. He may also have written part of Edward III.; certainly not Sir Clyamon and Sir Clamydes, nor the older Leir, both of which have been inconsiderately assigned 1 Note that 1589 ends at Easter 1590. to him. We have no difficulty then in adjusting the chronology of his works as well as Marlowe's to our general scheme. The Old Wives' Tale is the play that has for us in the present subject the greatest interest. In Greene's James IV., the King of the Fairies, who acts as presenter along with Bohan, a Scot, has called up for his amusement two boys of Bohan's, who dance jigs for him, &c. In the play itself, which is supposed to be enacted for Oberon's delectation, these boys are actual Dramatis Persona, and one of them has to be rescued from hanging by the intervention in the play of Oberon, for whom the play is being performed. This gross confusion is ridiculed by Peele in his fairy tale, where he shows Greene how a folkstory ought to be told, and how such a confusion can be legitimately introduced. His old woman begins to tell the tale, and while she is telling it, the personages of the narration come in and continue the story-exactly as we often experience in. dreams-when we cannot distinguish between the book we are reading and the vision we are seeing. Peele's drama is a real Midsummer Night's Dream. His intention in this exquisite production to ridicule Greene is unmistakable. All things then cohere and agree with our main theory as to Shakespeare's life during this period (1585-1594). I have diligently examined every source of information within my reach and have concealed nothing. As, however, in so large a mass of detail it has been impossible for me to avoid some confusion in exposition from having to mingle arguments and facts, I will here sum up in a concise narrative the theatrical history of these ten years; in this narrative it must be understood that hypothesis and proven fact are mingled; the grounds of the hypothetical part being given above. 'In all other portions of the chapter theoretical statements are carefully distinguished from authorized history, however strong the evidence may be in their favour. We come then to THE STORY OF THE STAGE (1585-1594). In the year 1585 William Shakespeare, pressed by the needs of fortune and an increasing family, attained his majority. Under the patronage of some great man, probably, who was passionately attached to the stage, as were at that time many noblemen, some of whom even acted as amateurs gratuitously in theatrical pieces, he came to London in 1585-6 and joined the company of Ferdinando Lord Strange. At this time John Lyly was well known as a writer of comedies, courtly in style, patronized by the Queen, but introducing in his dramas many political and personal allusions, which had at least once got him into trouble. George Peele was also well known by his Pastoral of The Arraignment of Paris, which was in like manner distinguished by palpable personalities. Both these writers had been employed by boys' companies; the latter by the Children of the Chapel, the former by the Children of Paul's as well. But in this year appeared a drama which was the first of a series which were to replace the old comedies in prose or doggrel, and the old pastorals in rhyme. Marlowe then produced his Tamberlane, the first English tragedy worthy of the name. In it he modulated blank-verse, not in the stiff formal manner of Surrey's Virgil, or Sackville and Norton's Ferrex and Perrex, but in a comparatively free and flowing rhythm such as the necessities of stage-dialogue require. In the Prologue to this play he says:— "From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay This new vein was successfully struck, miner after miner tried it, there was a rush to the gold diggings. The first arrival was Robert Greene, who wrote his Alphonsus of Aragon in direct rivalry with Tamberlane, for Lord Strange's (?) company; it was a dead failure. Not so the second part of Tamberlane, written in 1586, like the first by Marlowe for the Admiral's company. In this year W. Kempe, one of "the jigging vein," left England for Denmark, leaving the Queen's company under the management of Dutton and Lanham. They naturally sought for a play-writer who would supply them with tragedies of the new kind. Greene and Peele both offered for the office, and Greene was chosen, and wrote his Orlando Furioso. Peele, who was known for the older kind of drama, the Pastoral, and who had also written a Scriptural play, David and Bathsheba, perhaps even an historical one, Edward I., was rejected, and joined Lord Strange's (?) company. In 1587 Marlowe wrote his masterpiece, Doctor Faustus; Greene ridiculed the conjuror in his best play, Friar Bacon; Peele, on the other hand, in conjunction with Charles Tilney, had elaborated in 1586, his mock-heroic travesty of Locrine in ridicule of Greene's tragedies of the two preceding seasons. In this play Shakespeare, or some other actors of the same company with him, acted; and excited Greene's wrath by the way in which his mottos, or Latin posies, his "presenters," &c. were held up to public derision. Kyd meanwhile was emulating Marlowe in his Jeronimo, and Lyly was going on his old road unmoved as yet by the new theatrical heresies. But in 1588, while Marlowe was initiating a new kind of comedy in his Few of Malta, the precursor of the Merchant of Venice of eight years after, Greene's indignation burst out. He saw that he could neither rival nor ridicule successfully Marlowe's tragic or comic power; he determined to employ prose satire as his vehicle. In his Perimedes he attacked the actors in and writers of Locrine, and introduced the personal characters of Peele and Marlowe into his attack, accusing one of debauchery, the other of blasphemy. At the same time finding his failure as Marlowe's competitor to be complete, he attempted competition with Peele in a historical piece, James IV. Peele was not so easily to be outdone; he firstly took his revenge on Greene's old tragedies by another mock heroic (entirely his own this time), The Battle of Alcazar, which he wrote anonymously for the Admiral's men; and in the following year, 1589, ridiculed James IV., as we have seen already. In 15896 Marlowe began his Massacre of Paris for the Admiral's company, but did not finish it; that company as well as Lord Strange's being closed by authority for the licenses they had used in taxing public characters. That they had taken great liberties is manifest from what we have seen as to the plays Locrine and Alcazar. The latter play had ridiculed Kyd as well as Greene. In consequence of this Shakespeare and Marlowe, thrown for a while out of employment, wrote in conjunction Hamlet and The Taming of a Shrew for the Earl of Pembroke's company. Greene, who had called Thomas Lodge to his aid, wrote in 1588-9 The Looking-Glass for London, and still finding his dramatic success unsatisfactory, determined to leave the stage altogether and betake himself to Prose Romance, in which he was supreme. Lyly followed suit, and along with Nash, who had just come to London, formed a band of satirical pamphleteers, who were from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century |