Part 12
I have been able to find out nothing more about Bishop than what he himself relates. If really _born_ a subject of Elizabeth’s, as he states, he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old; he was evidently a bargeman, and Farmer had undone him by complaining of him to his “captain.” The lock-keeper at Benson is Jacob Bishop, and may have been a connection. About Fermor more may be known. The Archæological Institute of Oxford in 1850 published “The expenses of the Fermor family on the death of Thomas Fermor or Farmer of Somerton, County Oxford, who died Aug. 8, 1580.” If he was the “Pharaoh” above alluded to, there is some discrepancy in the dates assigned to the petitions. An official answer sent up to this petition is preserved in Lansdowne MS., xliv, f. 40, but it is in such an imperfect condition that I could only understand it by collating it with the paper of 1574, already referred to, “Reasons alleged for the maintenance of the Locks, Wears, etc., on the River Thames, 1584.” They are of as great antiquity as any town or village; that many of the inhabitants of the villages between Maidenhead and Oxford would not know where to grind their corn without them; that the water is preserved for the passage of barges; that, notwithstanding divers laws made for the advantage of ships and barges, “yet were the milles, lockes, and weares never impeached as things repugnant to lawe or offensive to the Commonwealth before one _Busshop_ begonne outragious attempt therein.” That, though they number in all about seventy, they are in part the Queen’s royal inheritance; that the residue are the inheritance of others of the subjects of the Queen, having only a way for the passage of herself and her people through the said Locks. Touching Marlow Lock, that it was as well maintained as it had been in any age past. This lock had been obtained from the Queen in the tenth year of her reign, and had been as carefully used as it ever had been, as may be proved by depositions taken before the Commissioners of Sewers, and preserved in the Star Chamber. The Causes that the passage of this Lock has become so much more perilous are, that the Barges are laden with greater burdens than formerly, sometimes nearly double. They used to carry eight or ten loads, now they carry twenty loads; they lade and unlade with little care; and are often up and down so late and so early that they cannot see where they are going. “They commonly observe neyther Sabbath dayes nor other dayes, besides many evil demeanours too long to narrate”; the number of barges has increased from ten or twelve to about forty.
The statements of Bishop about the men drowned are criticized, and opinions brought on the other side. The accidents were often caused by neglect of the watermen’s duties, and the lock-keepers often helped them in ways that could not otherwise be provided for.
Another perplexity not much alluded to in these papers arose from the fact that, though the bed of the _stream_ was a highway for the people, the _banks_ belonged to the owners of the adjoining lands; hence many struggles between the bargemen and landowners over the use of the towpaths. In 1605 (3 Jac. I, c. 20) it was decreed that the Lord Chancellor might appoint commissioners to clear the Thames so that it might carry barges to Oxford and beyond, cutting down the banks if necessary. In 21 Jac. I, c. 32, fuller powers were granted them. They were to make compensation to owners of land required, and to assess the University and city of Oxford for reasonable sums; and as the passage up against the stream made it necessary that the barges “should be haled up by the strength of men, horses, winches, engines, &c., that it should be lawful for them to use the banks” for this purpose, if they did no harm. The ancient right to tow on the Thames had been brought forward in a case heard before Lord Chief Justice Popham as to a similar right upon the river Lea, which was contested (State Papers, Domestic Series, 1594; see Calendar, pp. 499-501).
John Taylor, the self-styled “water poet,” a contemporary of Shakespeare, though writing a little after his date, published in 1632 “A description of the two famous Rivers of Thames and Isis ... with all the Flats, Shoales, Shelves, Sands, Weares, Stops, Rivers, Brooks, &c., as also a discovery of the Hindrances which doe impeach the passage of Boats and Barges between the famous University of Oxford and the City of London.” Taylor commences by regretting the death of Lord Dorchester, who had determined to make the river passable, and then enumerates the dangers and difficulties in verses and spirit somewhat resembling those of Bishop’s petition. He refers to “learned Camden, Speed and Holinshead, and Drayton’s painfull Poly Olbion,” and then describes his own journey down. At Sutton Lock they were nearly upset, the water fell with such violence; after Cullam they ran aground; at Clifden there were rocks and sands and flats; and everywhere were shoals and piles. More than once a sunken tree nearly cleft his barge. Near Goring the party was entertained by “Master Cotton,” and near Henley by “Judge Whitlocke.” The river did not want much repair below Staines Bridge, for that was under the power of the Mayor of London. To Taylor also Marlow Lock was the worst, though he anathematizes many others:
Shall Thames be barr’d its course with stops and locks, With Mils and Hils, with gravell beds and rocks, With weares and weedes, and forced Ilands made To spoile a publike for a private Trade? Shame fall the doers, and Almighty’s blessing Be heaped upon their heads that seek redressing.
Thus John Taylor ends, like John Bishop.[30]
These old discussions are interesting, not only to the historian and antiquarian, but to engineers and boating men of to-day, as they have never been collected, and the Thames Conservancy have no papers of so old a date.
The old system of “flashing” was probably the method used in those days at the locks mentioned as dangerous. The chamber-lock is said to have been invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1497, but there is no clear notice of the date of its introduction into English rivers. The beautiful mechanical invention of working the sluices lately placed at Richmond Lock opens a new era in the river navigation, and under the Thames Conservators the dangers of the water are reduced to a minimum. But we must not forget that, but for the outlet of the railway and the high-road, and the relief of the heavy traffic carried thereon, this waterway would present a very different aspect to-day from that which so often soothes the worried, rests the weary, and calms the troubled soul.
_“The Field,” 9th February 1895._
FOOTNOTES:
[30] I reproduced the whole of Bishop’s poem at the end of the fourth volume of Harrison’s “England,” edited by Dr. Furnivall.
XV
THE FRIENDS IN SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS
I take it, until proof yields a better date, that Shakespeare came to London in 1587. We know nothing definitely about him, until 1592, when Greene’s address to his fellow actors makes it clear that some time before that date he must have turned to the stage as a profession, and must have achieved some degree of success, for Greene bitterly describes him as “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with _his tiger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide_, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a countrie.”[31]
When Shakespeare had come to London he had found theatres built, players performing, and dramatists writing for them, Lyly, Peele, Lodge, Greene, and Marlowe, who, had Shakespeare never come, would have been the greatest of all. But Shakespeare did come, and developed the perfect flower and fruit of the English Romantic Drama.
This remark would have been irrelevant to the subject in hand, but that I hold that the poet bore the same relation to the sonnet that he did to the Drama.
The Sonnet was not, as the Drama was, of native growth; it had been imported from Italy early in the century by the Earl of Surrey and his friend, Sir Thomas Wyat. They did not closely adhere to their Italian models, but varied them somewhat to suit the English language and taste. They had a group of courtly imitators, and various miscellanies appeared of verses, often but loosely called “sonnets,” poems written to be said or sung, which we now would rather call lyrics.
There were “The Court of Venus,”[32] much reprobated by serious writers, no copy of which has come down to us, “The Newe Court of Venus,”[32] which seems to have been an attempt to improve the old songs in tone, while adhering to their form, some of the verses having been written by Sir Thomas Wyat himself; “The Book of Songs and Sonnets,” 1557, or “Tottell’s Miscellany,” a collection chiefly of poems written by Wyat and Surrey, but also including some of the works of their imitators. We know that Shakespeare had read this volume, because he gave a copy to Slender (“Merry Wives,” i, 1).
It is interesting to know that Van der Noodt published a series, avowedly translated from the sonnets of Petrarch and Du Bellay, a translation of which, into English, in blank verse, was produced by Spenser in 1569, which were included in his works in 1591. Spenser’s “Shepherd’s Kalendar” came out in 1572.
The most important later miscellany was “The Paradise of Dainty Devises,” 1576, which we also may be sure that Shakespeare had read.
The harbinger of the new harvest of Elizabethan Sonnet Literature was Thomas Watson, who, in 1582, published his “Hecatompathia, or the Passionate Century of Love.” Two points may be noted concerning this: (1) That he named each sonnet a “Passion,” which explains Shakespeare’s use of the word in the phrase, “The Master-mistress of my passion;”[33] (2) that W. C., in his “Polimanteia,” 1595, in a marginal reference, not very clear in its bearing, said, “All praiseworthy Lucrecia, sweet Shakespeare, wanton Adonis, Watson’s heir.”
Puttenham’s “Art of English Poetry” was printed by Field, 1589. The first three books of Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” appeared in 1590, and Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia” in the same year, which, quite as much as any sonnets, affected the thought of Shakespeare’s early works.
In 1591 was published Sidney’s “Astrophel and Stella,” with some of Daniel’s Sonnets, and in 1592 Daniel published a collection of “Sonnets to Delia,” after French models, dedicated to Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke. At the same time Henry Constable brought out “Diana: the Praises of his Mistress in certain Sonnets,” and “Four Letters and certain Sonnets” were published by Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser.
Here I must pause, having reached the time of Shakespeare’s proved association with the Stage, in order to trace his career up to that date in his private life, and make clear my reasons for my main proposition concerning the necessarily early date of the Sonnets. Starting with Shakespeare’s arrival in London we must remember that the traditions concerning his being driven from Stratford by Thomas Lucy or by anybody else, can be disproved by fact and legitimate inference.
The only two facts we are sure of are, that he had married a wife and had a family before he was able to support them; and that neither his father nor he was in financial prosperity. His mother’s inheritance of Asbies, which, it is clear, his father meant as the sphere of his son’s career, had been lost through a mortgage and some juggling on the part of Edmund Lambert. In 1587 the Shakespeares, in despair of regaining it, had offered to sell it outright to John Lambert for another £20, and to this the poet, then of age and the heir apparent, had agreed, but that the money had never been paid is clear from later litigation.
We cannot _prove_ to the sceptical anything concerning the poet for the next five years. But as Tennyson’s lover says of Maud,
I know the way she went Home with her maiden posy, For her feet have touched the meadows And have left the daisies rosy:
a student may, with the fine sense acquired by patient loving study, read signs into known facts as clearly as that of Tennyson, that the morning daisies and buds when trodden on, lay their crimson under petals to the side, and the path is _really made rosy_. Our poet’s path may be traced in printer’s ink.
I believe that Shakespeare went to London in 1587 hoping to earn his fortune there, but that his plans were somewhat guided by business concerning this desired arrangement with John Lambert. There is little doubt he would first go to take counsel with Richard Field, the apprentice, who was about to become the son-in-law and successor of Thomas Vautrollier the great French printer. But the following morning, when he started on his mission, I venture to put forward a suggestion that his footsteps took a very different direction from what has usually been accepted; indeed, that Shakespeare began by seeking his fortune not at the play-house, but at the Court!
I find that a John Lambert, possibly the poet’s cousin, was a Yeoman of the Chamber at the time, and young Shakespeare might have hoped to persuade him to agree to the payment of that extra £20, or make up for it in Court influence. Why not? John Arden of Park Hall had been Esquire of the Body to Henry VII, his younger brother Robert, Yeoman of the Chamber to Henry VII and Henry VIII, his nephew or relative William held the same office to Queen Elizabeth down to 1584, and his son Robert was associated with him; John Scarlet, so friendly with the Ardens of Wilmcote, had been also Yeoman of the Chamber; Roger Shakespeare had held the same office in the reign of Mary, and Thomas Shakespeare was the Royal Messenger, at least down to 1575, possibly later. William Shakespeare was a man of good appearance and of manly courage, the two essentials for the post; he may have had many introductions, and evidently had high hopes. But he failed. We may realize his feelings during his first months in London by his works. It was not Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, who had learned by personal experience:
Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, ... the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns, That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
The country was then stirred to its heart by the threatened Spanish invasion; gentlemen all over the country served in the ranks; it is possible that Shakespeare either served on board a ship or in the army at Tilbury, which the Queen herself went to address. If he did, he would be among the disbanded men in 1588, still seeking a post. There were men of lower rank he was almost sure to know; Sadler and Quiney, the grocers in Bucklersbury; John Shakespeare, the bit-maker of St. Martin in the Fields (not the later John of St. Clement Danes); Mathew Shakespeare, the goldsmith, who had married the sister of George Peele, the dramatist. With none of these did he seem to associate himself. But we have testimony that he did associate himself very freely with Richard Field. We see the suggestions of the books printed by him on many a page of Shakespeare’s works, and reading through the signs of his familiarity with the printer’s art we may well believe that he tried to give some return for hospitality by helping Field as much as he _dared_ do. There was a limit, for the Stationers’ Company was very jealous of unapprenticed workmen, and fined Richard Field for keeping one. But there was nothing to prevent Shakespeare from helping in reading and correcting proof, and in 1589 Field brought out Puttenham’s “Art of English Poetry,” a liberal education to a would-be writer. Other special works were on Field’s shelves. A new edition of “Ovid,” Sir Thomas North’s translation of “Plutarch’s Lives,” “Salust du Bartas,” books on Music, Medicine, History, and Philosophy, which we can also see reflected in Shakespeare’s works. I could never satisfy myself with a natural reason for the inter-weaving of Giordano Bruno’s thought into the sonnets until I found that Vautrollier had printed his works, which were condemned, and he himself had to fly the country on account of them, flying, however, no further than Scotland, where the King welcomed him, and let him print his own new book “The essayes of a prentis, in the divine Art of Poesy.”
From the beginning of Shakespeare’s career he must have earned the epithet applied to him later by a fellow dramatist, Webster, who, in the introduction to Vittoria Corambona, spoke of “The right happy and copious _industry_ of Master Shakespeare.”
He was preparing for a patron by the time he found one, but he had been forced, through the stress of circumstances, to take advantage of the only opportunity which had been opened to him, that is, on the stage, where his handsome figure would recommend him, and he probably had some influence through Warwickshire acquaintances. But it would take three years at least for any one to acquire the position outlined by Greene, so we may suppose that he entered the theatre as a “servitor” or apprentice in or about 1589. His work must have, at first, been hard, as he had to be trained, and from the Sonnets it was evidently distasteful.
The consideration of all the various opinions on, and interpretations of, the Sonnets would necessitate more space than can at present be given. Writers have differed widely concerning their autobiographical value, and those who do believe them to be autobiographical, disagree concerning the identity of the persons addressed, of the rival poets, and of Mr. W. H.
I believe that the Sonnets are a source of some authority, both biographical and autobiographical, but that they cannot be interpreted in crude realism. Shakespeare was not a prose diarist of the twentieth century, but a poet on the rising high tide of the most creative period of English literature, in the first fervours of poetic inspiration and romantic personal affection. After a period of trial, during which he had been agonizing in order to live and to support the lives of those that were dear to him, he had met some one who had the supreme inspiration to encourage and to help him in the way he needed.
Many of the allusions to conversations, common experiences, and common studies, are lost to the readers of later days, but some of the links of association may be restored by careful comparison. Sometimes the poet was only treating a common theme in hackneyed phrases, sometimes he was only transmuting current philosophy into verse, But sometimes he was trying to express feelings that lay too deep for words; his love and gratitude occasionally led him to impulsive exaggerations, his susceptibility to hasty misunderstandings. He knew how “to tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,” when his thoughts hurtled against each other from their very abundance and exuberance. But the twined threads of biography and autobiography are there, on which to string the pearls of Shakespeare’s thought. These threads can only be wound round the neck of Henry, the third Earl of Southampton.
No wrong has ever been done to Shakespeare’s memory so great as the publication of what has been called “the Herbert-Fitton theory.” The only cure for this, as for any other heresy, is _more study_, patient, unprejudiced, wide-reaching, long-enduring study, not only in the direct biography of the two men, but in contemporary life, thought, and literature. The theory was only possible to a real worker like Mr. Tylor, because he neglected the Baconian scientific advice, “to search after negatives.” He only attended to facts that seemed to support his hypothesis, and turned from those that opposed it, even when laid before him. Yet he has found followers numerous enough and important enough to be combated because they blind the multitude to other truths.
The Herbert-Fitton theory assumes that the Sonnets must have been written after the arrival of Lord Herbert at Court. This was in the spring of 1598, he being then eighteen years old. We are asked to imagine therefore that Shakespeare instantly was introduced to him, immediately began to write quatorzains, or disingenuously pretended to do so for the _first time_ at this late date in the sonnet-harvest, ascribing to the newly-arrived Lord Herbert, not only inspiration, but _education out of rude ignorance_, and the guidance of his _pupil-pen_, _after_ he had written, not only both of his poems, but his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Merchant of Venice,” many other plays, and some of the Sonnets themselves in other plays.
It presumes that he must have warmed up, for this inexperienced young lord, not only the same feelings that he had formerly expressed for another, but the same _phrases_ that he had already _published_. The whole beauty of “_the passion_” dies out before the supposition. We cannot read the Sonnets as hackneyed imitations of past fashions. They have all the _verve_ of a fresh impulse, all the ideal transport of newly discovered power, all the original treatment of newly acquired music. Little in the data fits the supposition. Lord Herbert was _not_ the sole hope of his great house, having both a father and a brother; he was _not_ a _fair_ youth, but exceptionally dark; he wore no long locks, curling “like buds of marjoram”; his breath could hardly have exhaled the odours of flowers (S. 99), seeing that a diarist states that his chief comfort was in the use of _tobacco_.
The lady with whom he was associated has been proved, on the other hand, to have been, _not_ dark, but fair, _not_ married and old in the world’s ways, but a bright young foolish girl of twenty-two, a favourite of the Queen and the Court, over-impulsive and credulous certainly, and probably vain and ambitious. But it was one thing, in the lax customs of the times, to became entangled with the handsomest and richest young bachelor of the Court, under the evident expectation of matrimony, and another to have risked her good name in going forth to tempt, with experienced wiles, in her even earlier years, the somewhat well-balanced heart of a middle-aged play-actor and moralist. What the propounders of this theory make of Shakespeare’s manliness or morality it is hard to say. An unwarrantable stain has been thrown on the girl’s character because Will Kemp, one of Shakespeare’s company in 1600, dedicated to her his “Nine Days Dance to Norwich.” But his lack of the supposed intimacy is shown on the title-page by the error even in her Christian name. The dedication was quite a natural one from the best dancer on the stage to the best dancer at Court. In the famous “Masque of the Nine Muses,” performed at Court at the marriage of “_the other Lord Herbert_,” “Mistress Fitton led, and went to the Queen, and wooed her to daunce. Her Majestie asked her what she was? ‘Affection!’ she said. ‘Affection?’ said the Queen, ‘Affection is false.’ Yet her Majestie rose and dawnced” (“Sydney Papers,” 23rd June 1600). Now I believe she should have said “Terpsichore,” which would account for both the Queen’s remark and Kemp’s dedication.
We are asked to believe that all the three-years story of the Sonnets had happened, and that Meres had had time to complete his notices of Shakespeare based on them, and get his book passed by the censor, and registered, _within six months_!