supervision, by Edward White, a liveryman of the Stationers' Company with a shop abutting on St. Paul's Churchyard. The printer of the volume, James Roberts, who was in a large way of business in the Barbican, had ready means of access to theatrical manuscripts, whether or no the playwright assented to their publication, for he was printer and publisher of 'the players' bills' or programmes of the theatre. This office Roberts had purchased in 1594 of its previous holder, John Charlewood. He held it till 1613, when he sold it to William Jaggard. For part of the plot of 'The Merchant of Venice,' in 'Merchant which two romantic love stories are skilfully blended with of Venice.' a theme of tragic import, Shakespeare had recourse to 'Il Pecorone,' a fourteenth-century collection of Italian novels by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, which was not published till 1558. There a Jewish creditor demands a pound of flesh of a defaulting Christian debtor, and the latter is rescued through the advocacy of 'the lady of Belmont,' who is wife of the debtor's friend. The management of the plot in the Italian novel is closely followed by Shakespeare. A similar story is slenderly outlined in the popular medieval collection of anecdotes called 'Gesta Romanorum,' while the tale of the caskets, which Shakespeare combined with it in the 'Merchant,' is told independently in another portion of the 'Gesta.' But Shakespeare's 'Merchant' owes much to other sources, including more than one old play. Stephen Gosson describes in his 'Schoole of Abuse' (1579) a lost play called 'the Jew... showne at the Bull [inn]. representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers and bloody mindes of usurers.' This description suggests that the two stories of the pound of flesh and the caskets had been combined before for purposes of dramatic representation. The scenes in Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates with Shylock are roughly anticipated, too, by dialogues between a Jewish creditor Gerontus and a Christian debtor in the extant play of 'The Three Ladies of London,' by R[obert] Wilson], 1584. There the Jew opens the attack on his Christian debtor with the lines: ... Signor Mercatore, why do you not pay me? Think you I will be mocked in this sort? This three times you have flouted me— – it seems you make thereat a sport. Truly pay me my money, and that even now presently, Or by mighty Mahomet, I swear I will forthwith arrest thee. Shylock Subsequently, when the judge is passing judgment in favour of the debtor, the Jew interrupts: Stay, there, most puissant judge. Signor Mercatore, consider what you do. Pay me the principal, as for the interest I forgive it you. Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare in 'The Merchant of Venice' betrays the last definable traces of his discipleship to Marlowe. Although the delicate comedy which lightens the serious interest of Shakespeare's play sets it in a wholly different category from that of Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta,' the humanised portrait of the Jew Shylock embodies distinct reminiscences of Marlowe's caricature of the Jew Barabbas. But Shakespeare soon outpaced his master, and the inspiration that he drew from Marlowe in the 'Merchant' touches only the general conception of the central figure. Doubtless the popular interest aroused by the trial in February 1594 and the execution in June of the Queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez, incited Shakespeare to a new and subtler study of Jewish character. Lopez was the Earl of Leicester's physician before 1586, and the Queen's chief physician from that date. An accomplished linguist, with friends in all parts of Europe, he acted in 1590, at the request of the Earl of Essex, as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of Philip II's persecution, popularly called Don Antonio, whom Essex and his associates had brought to England in order to stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain. Spanish agents in London offered Lopez a bribe to poison Antonio and the Queen. The evidence that he assented to the murderous proposal is incomplete, but he was convicted of treason, and was hanged at Tyburn on June 7, 1594. His trial and execution evoked a marked display of anti-Semitism on the part of the London populace at a time when very few Jews were domiciled in England. That a Christian named Antonio should be the cause of the ruin alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England and of the greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama is a curious confirmation of the theory that Lopez was the begetter of Shylock. It is to be borne in mind that Shylock (not the merchant Antonio) is the hero of Shakespeare's play, and the main interest culminates in the Jew's trial and discomfiture. The bold transition from that solemn scene which trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently poetic and humorous incidents of the concluding act attests a mastery of stagecraft; but the interest, although it is sustained to the end, is, after Shylock's final exit, pitched in a lower key. The 'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the manager, produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was probably the earliest version of "The Merchant of Venice,' and it was revised later. On July 17, 1598, the notorious James Roberts, who printed 'Titus Andronicus' and others of Shakespeare's plays, secured a license from the Stationers' Company for the publication of 'The Merchaunt of Venyce, or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce,' on condition that the Lord Chamberlain gave his assent to the publication. It was not published till 1600, when two editions appeared, each printed from a different stage copy. Both editions came from Roberts's press, and Roberts published as well as printed the first quarto, which is more carefully printed than the second. Thomas Heyes (or Hayes) was the publisher of the second edition. Heyes's quarto was the text selected by the editors of the First Folio. To 1594 must also be assigned 'King John,' which, 'King like the Comedy of Errors' and 'Richard II,' alto- John.' gether eschews prose. The piece, which was not printed till 1623, was directly adapted from a worthless play called "The Troublesome Raigne of King John' (1591), which was fraudulently reissued in 1611 as 'written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as by W. Shakespeare.' There is very small_ground for associating Marlowe's name with the old play. Into the adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy, and the theme grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. The three chief characters-the mean and cruel king, the grief-stricken and desperately wronged Constance, and the soldierly humourist Faulconbridge—are in all essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed with the same sureness of touch that marked in Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The scene, in which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert that the king has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as affecting as any passage in tragic literature. of Errors in Gray's Inn Hall. At the close of 1594 a performance of Shakespeare's 'Comedy early farce, "The Comedy of Errors,' gave him a passing notoriety that he could well have spared. The piece was played on the evening of Innocents' Day (December 28), 1594, in the hall of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience of benchers, students, and their friends. There was some Early plays doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare. disturbance during the evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, who, dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded them, retired in dudgeon. 'So that night,' the contemporary chronicler states, 'was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was ever afterwards called the "Night of Errors."' Shakespeare was acting on the same day before the Queen at Greenwich, and it is doubtful if he were present. On the morrow a commission of oyer and terminer inquired into the causes of the tumult, which was casuistically attributed to a sorcerer having 'foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions.' Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public attention during the period under review (1591-4) - 'Arden of Feversham' (licensed for publication April 3, 1592, and published in 1592) and Edward III' (licensed for publication December 1, 1595, and published in 1596). Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the ground that their dramatic energy is of a quality not to be discerned in the work of any contemporary whose writings are extant. There is no external evidence in favour of Shakespeare's authorship in either case. 'Arden of Feversham' dramatises with intensity and insight a sordid murder of a husband by a wife which took place at Faversham in 1551, and was fully reported by Holinshed. The subject is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is known to have treated, and although the play may be, as Mr. Swinburne insists, 'a young man's work,' it bears no relation either in topic or style to the work on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a period so early as 1591 or 1592. 'Edward III' is a play in Marlowe's vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare on even more shadowy grounds. Capell reprinted it in his 'Prolusions' in 1760, and described it as 'thought to be writ by Shakespeare. Many speeches scattered through the drama, and one whole scene that in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses the advances of Edward III-show the hand of a master (II. ii.). But there is even in the style of these contributions much to dissociate them from Shakespeare's acknowledged productions, and to justify their ascription to some less gifted disciple of Marlowe. A line in act II. sc. i. (‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds') reappears in Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' (xciv. 1. 14). It was contrary to his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line in the play was doubtless borrowed from a manuscript copy of the 'Sonnets.' Muce Two other popular plays of the period, 'Mucedorus' and ‘Faire Em,' have also been assigned to Shakespeare dorus.' on slighter provocation. In Charles II's library they were bound together in a volume labelled 'Shakespeare, Vol. I.,' and bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify the misnomer. 'Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic comedy, dates from the early years of Elizabeth's reign; it was first published, doubtless after undergoing revision, in 1595, and was reissued, 'amplified with new additions,' in 1610. Mr. Payne Collier, who included it in his privately printed edition of Shakespeare in 1878, was confident that a scene interpolated in the 1610 version (in which the King of Valentia laments the supposed loss of his son) displayed genius which Shakespeare alone could compass. However readily critics may admit the superiority in literary value of the interpolated scene to anything else in the piece, few will accept Mr. Collier's extravagant estimate. The scene was probably from the pen of an admiring but faltering imitator of Shakespeare. Em.' 'Faire Em,' although not published till 1631, was acted 'Faire by Shakespeare's company while Lord Strange was its patron, and some lines from it are quoted for purposes of ridicule by Robert Greene in his 'Farewell to Folly' at so early a date as 1592. It is another rudimentary endeavour in romantic comedy, and has not even the pretension of 'Mucedorus' to one short scene of conspicuous literary merit. |