A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare

Frederick Fleay

Frederick Gard Fleay

A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare Player, Poet, and Playmaker

To him, whose craft, so subtly terse,

(While lesser minds, for music's sake,

From single thoughts whole cantos make),

Includes a poem in a verse; —

To him, whose penetrative art,

With spheric knowledge only his,

Dissects by keen analysis

The wiliest secrets of the heart; —

To him, who rounds us perfect wholes,

Where wisdom, wit, and love combine;

Chief praise be this: – he wrote no line

That could cause pain in childlike souls.

INTRODUCTION

It is due to the reader of a new work on a subject already so often handled as the Life of Shakespeare to tell him at the outset what he may expect to find therein, and to state the reasons for which I have thought it worth while to devote nearly ten years to its production. Previous investigators have with industrious minuteness already ascertained for us every detail that can reasonably be expected of Shakespeare's private life. With laborious research they have raked together the records of petty debts, of parish assessments, of scandalous traditions, of idle gossip; and they have shown beyond doubt that Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, was married, had three children, left his home, made money as an actor and play-maker in London, returned to his native town, invested his savings there, and died. I do not think that when stript of verbiage, and what the slang of the day calls padding, much more than this can be claimed as the result of the voluminous writings on this side of his career. For one I am thankful that things are so; I have little sympathy with the modern inquisitiveness that peeps over the garden wall to see in what array the great man smokes his pipe, and chronicles the shape and colour of his head-covering. But on the public side of Shakespeare's career little has been adequately ascertained; and with this we are deeply concerned. Not for a mere personal interest, but in its bearings on the history of English literature, we ought to ascertain so far as is possible what companies of actors Shakespeare belonged to, at what theatres they acted, in what plays besides his own he was a performer, what authors this brought him into personal contact with, what influence he exerted on or received from them, what relations, friendly or unfriendly, they had with rival companies, and finally, in what order his own works were produced, and what if any share other hands had in their production. All these matters have been treated carelessly and inaccurately by biographers of the peeping school; and in the last of these we are gravely referred for the chronology of Shakespeare's plays to a schoolboy compilation the author of which is so ignorant as to speak of Lust's Dominion as a play of Jonson's, the News from Hell as a play of Dekker's, and Achilles as Laertes' son. This marvel of inefficiency we are told is the best work on the subject; and this while Malone and Drake are accessible to any student. In the present treatise this hitherto neglected side of Shakespeare's career has been chiefly dwelt on. The facts of his private life are also given; but not the documents on which they are founded, these having been excellently well collected and arranged in the recent Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, F.R.S., F.S.A., Hon. M.R.S.L., Hon. M.R.I.A. This book is a treasure-house of documents, and it is greatly to be regretted that they are not published by themselves, apart from hypotheses founded on idle rumour or fallacious mis-reasoning. I do not know any work so full of fanciful theories and "ignes fatui" likely to entice "a deluded traveller out of the beaten path into strange quagmires."[1 - "These phrases to their owner I resign,For God's sake, reader, take them not for mine."] There is much else besides documents not given in the present treatise; discussions as to who might have been Shakespeare's schoolm