to the general esteem in which he stood on account of his honest and honourable character, and as the pamphlet expressly praises the 'facetious grace' of his composition, it intimates that it must more especially have been Shakspeare's comedies, which made him the favourite of the public.

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CHAPTER III.

SHAKSPEARE AS AN ACTOR. SOME REMARKS ON HIS SONNETS.

WHEN Chettle calls Shakspeare excellent in the qualitie he professes,' these words, to judge from the context, refer in the first place and pre-eminently to Shakspeare the 'play-maker. And yet they do not exclude Shakspeare the player, as the art of an actor was no doubt also his profession. The Lord Chamberlain's company, to which he belonged, played during summer in the Globe theatre, and during winter in the small, so-called private theatre of Blackfriars, which has already been mentioned on pp. 106-110. This company was evidently considered the principal and most famous one in London, as may even be inferred from King James, soon after his accession, taking them into his service, and the company accordingly receiving the title of The King's servants.' (Perhaps the next famous company was that of the Lord Admiral, which was afterwards in the service of the Prince of Wales, and then that of the Earl of Worcester, the members of which were appointed court players to Queen Anne.) The most distinguished artist of the company was unquestionably Shakspeare's friend Richard Burbage, who, according to an extant elegy on his death, played the grandest and most famous characters in Shakspeare's dramas -Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Prince Henry, Henry V., Richard III., Brutus, Coriolanus, Shylock, Pericles and was eulogised by contemporary poets as 'England's great Roscius.' That Shakspeare could not compete with him as an actor, I infer from the simple fact that he entrusted Burbage with the most important and most difficult parts in his own dramas; what parts he reserved for himself, our theatrical reports do not say. In the announcements of the pieces to be performed, the actors are indeed mentioned, but the parts they undertook are not specified, thus we only accidentally know (and this

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not even with certainty), that Shakspeare had played the part of the Ghost in Hamlet,' and that of Adam in As you like it;' he is said to have especially distinguished himself as the Ghost in Hamlet.' It must, however, not be concluded, from Shakspeare's having played these two subordinate parts, that he was in general but an indifferent actor. A poetaster of the day (J. Davies, who flourished about 1603) is rather inclined to praise his talent as an actor, and mentions him several times along with Burbage, and observes with emphasis that if he had not played the parts of some kings (i. e., had he not been an actor) he would have been a worthy associate for a king. Aubrey also reports from tradition that he played uncommonly well. According to Rowe and Wright, on the other hand, the traditional opinion was generally more to the effect that he was a better poet than actor.f And if we bear in mind how little Sophocles accomplished as an actor, and how badly Schiller recited his own poems, the tradition seems to gain in probability, i. e., that Shakspeare probably was not an actor of the first rank, even though he may have distinguished himself in subordinate parts.

*

Apart from the psychological interest excited by the question of Shakspeare's talent as an actor, it is in so far of some importance here, as it turns upon the question as to whether Shakspeare owed his increasing fame and prosperity more to his profession as an actor or to his activity as a poet. No doubt to the latter; for wherever his name is mentioned, it is almost exclusively Shakspeare, the poet, who is extolled. The appearance of his two poetical narratives, Venus and Adonis,' in 1593, and The Rape of Lucrece,' in 1594, were the means of spreading his reputation even in those circles where theatrical pieces were not regarded as works worthy the name of a poet.‡ Both poems, which met with extraordinary success (of • Venus and Adonis' five editions appeared before 1602),

* Historia Histrionica, 1699.

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The letter of Lord Southampton, said to have been discovered by Collier, and in which Shakspeare is called 'an actor of good account in the company,' is likewise a forgery. Ingleby, l.c., p. 256 f.

In what sense Shakspeare, in the dedication, calls Venus and Adonis the 'first heir of his invention' cannot be ascertained with any certainty. At all events, he cannot have meant it to signify his first poetic production, for it is completely beyond a doubt that, before

were dedicated to Lord Southampton, who, it is true, is far better known from his relation to Shakspeare than from any other reason. It has therefore been concluded that Shakspeare, as early as 1593 and 1594, gained an influential friend in this nobleman, who, in James' reign, was appointed to high state offices. Whether and how far he was his friend,' is however again by no means certain. In the dedication to Venus and Adonis,' and more eloquently in that to 'The Rape of Lucrece,' Shakspeare indeed speaks of his 'love without end,' and his esteem for Southampton, but in reference to the latter he merely says: 'The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance.' Rowe, indeed, informs us that Southampton, at one time, gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to,' and observes that he would not have mentioned the extraordinary munificence of this patron, had he not been assured that the story originated with Sir W. Davenant, who was probably acquainted with Shakspeare's affairs. However, even though the story deserves full credit-and we have no definite reason for doubting it—still it nevertheless does not follow that an intimate friendship existed between Lord Southampton and the poet. Hemminge and Condell, the editors of the first folio and quarto editions of Shakspeare's works, praise the Earl of Pembroke and his brother the Earl of Montgomery for having always received not only Shakspeare's poems, but the living poet' himself with great favour; and that this was their special reason for venturing to dedicate to them the collection of his works.

And yet it is still pretty generally supposed that the young nobleman, the 'sweet boy,' to whom the majority

1593, he had already composed a number of dramas for the stage. It is possible that Venus and Adonis was written before he left Stratford, and that it was merely remodelled for the press; but it is not probable that Shakspeare would have expressly mentioned the circumstance in the dedication. The expression may be explained from the abovementioned prejudice against theatrical pieces, which were not considered works of poetical invention, and which it was likewise not customary to have printed, at least not by the poets themselves, inasmuch as they were the property of the theatres in which they were played.

of Shakspeare's 154 Sonnets are addressed, and whom the poet treats in the most confidential manner as his true, intimate, and best beloved friend,' was Lord Southampton. The supposition, however, is very weakly supported, for, in the first place, the old dispute is by no means decided as to whether the Sonnets are to be referred to Shakspeare's own life and personal relations, or whether they have not rather to be regarded as free ebullitions of lyric emotion upon poetically invented situations and characters. But even if anyone feels convinced (and I am one of these) † that most of the Sonnets, and probably all, are poems written upon certain occasionsin the higher sense-and refer to definite persons of the poet's acquaintance, and to definite circumstances and events from his life of course always in a poetical form and conception, so to speak, poetically idealised-still

*The Sonnets, it is true, did appear together with a larger poem, A Lover's Complaint, and were not printed till 1609, but no doubt partly extend back to about the middle of the ninth decade, for two of them are already met with in Jaggard's edition of The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599 (a collection of lyric poems, among which are some of Shakspeare's); Meres also, in his Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury, of the year 1598, mentions some of Shakspeare's sugred' sonnets to his private friends.

On this point I differ from the opinion of my worthy friend Delius: Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakspeare-Gesellschaft, 1865, p. 18 ff. He with his usual acuteness and comprehensive learning, defends the opinion of Dyce and other English critics, that the Sonnets are mere free, poetical effusions, and the persons and situations purely fictitious. However, he could only show, and has only shown that they can be regarded as such; it does not follow that they must be considered such effusions; it also does not follow that they are not founded upon personal relations. It likewise does not at all follow that the attempts made to point out to which persons and to what personal relations they refer have hitherto entirely failed, or have at least been very unsatisfactory; for we know so extremely little of the circumstances of Shakspeare's life, that this cannot be surprising. In spite of this failure, I believe that every unprejudiced person, reading the Sonnets, must be impressed with the fact that the poet's own heart is there speaking from personal experience, and that, on the whole, they are written in that peculiar state of mind which gradually comes over a poet when, as it were, he allows different kinds of emotions, events, situations, &c., to pass by his soul in the mirror of remembrance and reflection; in this process they naturally take the form of poetical effusions, which as naturally address themselves to those persons by whom they have been called forth. Further remarks in regard to the Sonnets will be found in Book ii. chap. vi.