Chapter 1

own soule is at variance within her selfe;' he is 'more discontent than Lucifer.' In short, he confers upon him all the qualities of a 'Hamlet' character.

Whenever religious questions are addressed to Malevole, we have to look upon him as the very type of Shakspere himself, whom Marston takes to task for his spirit of 'innovation' and his 'contempt of holy policie and establisht unity.' Shakspere, it ought to be remembered, had scourged Ben Jonson under the figure of Malvolio. Marston, who dedicates 'The Malcontent' to Jonson, no doubt wished to please Jonson by calling the chief character, which represents Shakspere, Malevole.

The play opens with an abominable charivari. ('The vilest out-of-time musicke being heard.') This is partly a hit against the Globe Theatre where--as we see from Shakspere's dramas--music was often introduced in a play; partly it is to indicate the disharmony of Malevole's mind.

Only a few travesties may be mentioned here, before we quote the treatment of religious questions.

In act i. sc. 7 (here the scene is ridiculed in which Hamlet, with drawn sword, stands behind the King), Pietro enters, 'his sword drawne.'

_Pietro_. A mischiefe fill thy throate, thou fowle-jaw'd slave! Say thy praiers!

_Mendozo_. I ha forgot um.

_Pietro_. Thou shall die.

_Mendozo_. So shall Ihou. I am heart-mad.

_Pietro_. I am horne-mad.

_Mendozo_. Extreme mad.

_Pietro. Monstrously mad.

_Mendozo_. Why?

_Pietro_. Why? thou, thou hast dishonoured my bed.

Hamlet's words: [53]--'O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!' are so often ridiculed because Shakspere, instead of the word 'bed,' uses the more unusual 'sheets.'

Aurelia [54] speaks of 'chaste sheets,' Malevole [55] prophesies that 'the Dutches (Duke, Doge) sheets will smoke for't ere it be long.' Mendozo [56] 'hates all women, waxe-lightes, antique bed-postes,' &c.; 'also sweete sheetes.' Aurelia, parodying the words Hamlet addresses to his mother, asks herself: 'O, judgement, where have been my eyes? What bewitched election made me dote on thee? what sorcery made me love thee?'

The counsel which Hamlet gives to his mother 'to throw away the worser part of her cleft heart,' Pietro ridicules in act i. sc. 7:--

My bosome and my heart, When nothing helps, cut off the rotten part.

The splendid speech of Hamlet: 'What a piece of work is man!' sounds from Mendozo's [57] lips thus:--'In body how delicate; in soule how wittie; in discourse how pregnant; in life how warie; in favours how juditious; in day how sociable; in night how!--O pleasure unutterable!'

Hamlet's little monologue: [58] 'Tis now the very witching time of night,' runs thus with Mendozo:--[59]

'Tis now about the immodest waste of night; The mother of moist dew with pallide light Spreads gloomie shades about the mummed earth. Sleepe, sleepe, whilst we contrive our mischiefes birth.

Then, parodying Hamlet as he draws forth the dead Polonius from behind the arras, Mendozo says:--

This man Ile (I'll) get inhumde.

Thus, all kinds of Shaksperian incidents and locutions are brought forward, wherever they are apt to produce the most comic effect. Several times, from the beginning, the 'weasel' is mentioned with which Hamlet rallies Polonius. We also hear of the 'sponge which sucks'--a simile used by Hamlet (act iv. sc. 3) in regard to Rosencrantz. Nor is the 'true-penny' forgotten--a word used by Hamlet [60] to designate his father's ghost as a true and genuine one; nor the 'Hillo, ho, ho.'

In all these allusions, of which an attentive reader might easily find scores, there is no systematic order of thoughts. Only in the religious questions we meet with a clear system: they are all addressed to Malevole, who is represented as a kind of freethinker, similar to the one whom Marston, in his preface, wishes to be outlawed, and of whom he says that he fully merits the 'tartness' and freedom of his satire. In the very beginning of 'The Malcontent,' Pietro asks Malevole:

I wonder what religion thou art of?

_Malevole_. Of a souldiers religion. [61]

_Pietro_. And what doost thinke makes most infidells now?

_Malevole_. Sects. Sects! I have seene seeming Pietie change her roabe so oft, that sure none but some arch-divell can shape her pitticoate.

_Pietro_. O! a religious pllicie.

_Malevole_. But damnation on a politique religion!

In act ii. sc. 5 we find the following:--

_Malevole_. I meane turne pure Rochelchurchman. [62] I--

_Mendozo_. Thou Churchman! Why? Why?

_Malevole_. Because He live lazily, raile upon authoritie, deny Kings supremacy in things indifferent, and be a pope in mine owne parish.

_Mendozo_. Wherefore doost thou thinke churches were made?

_Malevole_. To scowre plow-shares. I have seene oxen plow uppe altares: _Et nunc seges ubi Sion fuit_.

Then there is again what appears to be an allusion to Hamlet, act i. sc. 4, resembling that in 'Volpone':--

I have seen the stoned coffins of long-flead Christians burst up and made hogs troughs.

In act iv. sc. 4, Mendozo says to Malevole, whom he wishes to use for the murder of a hermit:--

Yea, provident. Beware an hypocrite! A Church-man once corrupted, Oh avoide! A fellow that makes religion his stawking horse. He breeds a plague. Thou shalt poison him.

From the many hints in 'Volpone' and in 'The Malcontent,' it clearly follows that Shakspere was to be represented, in those dramas, before the public at large, as an Atheist. [63] According to Jonson, he counted 'ALL OLD DOCTRINE HERESIE.' According to Marston, he had an aversion for all sects, and 'CONTEMPT OF HOLY POLICIE, REVERENT COMELY SUPERIORITIE, AND ESTABLISHT UNITIE.' We hope we have convinced our readers that Shakspere spoke in matters of religion as clearly as his 'tongue-tied muse' [64] permitted him to do. Above all, we think of having successfully proved that the controversy of 'Hamlet' is directed against doctrines which assert that there is nothing but evil in human nature.

Shakspere's prophetic glance saw the pernicious character of Montaigne's inconsistent thoughts, which, unable to place us in sound relation to the Universe, only succeed in making men pass their lives in subtle reflection and unmanly, sentimental inaction. Shakspere, intending to avert the blighting influence of such a philosophy from the best and foremost of his country, wrote his 'Hamlet.' As a truly heaven-born poet he bound for ever, by Thought's enduring chain,

All that flows unfixed and undefined In glimmering phantasy before the mind.

In spite of the powerful impression his master-work, 'Hamlet,' has made upon all thinking minds, the deepest and most serious meaning of Shakspere's warning words could not have been fathomed by the many. The parables through which a Prophet spoke were cast into the form of a theatrical play, not easy to understand for the mass of men; for 'tongue-tied' was his Muse by earthly powers. And Shakspere deeply felt the disgrace of being compelled to give forth his utterances in so dubious a manner.

His Sonnets [65] express the feeling that weighed upon him on this account. Had he not 'gor'd his own thoughts,' revealed his innermost soul? Yet, now, his narrow-minded fellow-dramatists--but no! not fellow-dramatists: mere contemporary playwrights, immeasurably far behind him in rank--eaten up, as they were, with envy and jealous malice, meanly derided everything sacred to him; holding up his ideals to ridicule before a jeering crowd. It has long ago been surmised that Sonnet lxvi. belongs to the 'Hamlet' period. But now it will be better understood why that sonnet speaks of 'a maiden virtue rudely strumpeted; [66] of 'right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, and strength by limping sway disabled;' of 'simple truth miscall'd simplicity.'

These are the full words of this mighty sigh of despair:--

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry-- As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-ty'd by authority, And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, And captive Good attending captain ill: Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

'Purest faith unhappily forsworn' was Shakspere's faith in God--without any 'holy policie' and without 'old doctrines'--trusting above all in the majesty of ennobled human nature. He was a veritable Humanist, the truest and greatest, who ever strove to raise the most essential part of human nature, man's soul and mind, yet by no mean supernatural, but by 'mean that Nature makes.'

Shakspere's 'Hamlet' appears to us like a solemn admonition to his distinguished friends. He showed them, under the guise of that Prince, a nobleman without fixed ideal--'virtues which do not go forth' to assert themselves, and to do good for the sake of others--noble life wasted, letting the world remain 'out of joint' without determined will to set it right: this was the poet's prophetic warning.

One aspiration of Shakspere clearly shines through his career, in whatever darkness it may otherwise be enveloped--namely, his longing to acquire land near the town he was born in. When he had realised this ambition, he cheerfully seems to have left the splendour of town life, and to have readily renounced all literary fame; for he did not even care to collect his own works.

He was contented to cultivate his native soil: a giant Antaeus who, as the myth tells us, ever had to touch Mother Earth to regain his strength.

1: _Volpone_ is stated to have been first acted in the Globe Theatre in 1605. It is simply impossible that this drama, in its present shape, should have been given in that theatre as long as Shakspere was actively connected with it. We therefore must assume that Shakspere--as Delius holds it to be probable--had at that time already withdrawn to Stratford, or that the biting allusions which are contained in _Volpone_ against the great Master, had been added between 1605 (the year of its first performance) and 1607 (the year of its appearance in print). We consider the latter opinion the likelier one, as we suspect, from allusions in _Epicoene_, that Shakspere, when this play was published, still resided in London. However, it is also probable that in 1605 he may for a while have withdrawn from the stage.

2: In this enumeration, Jonson seems to have the various Qualities of the Essays in view which Florio calls 'Morall, Politike, and Millitarie.'

3: Against Montaigne, '_the teacher of things divine no less than human_,' Shakspere's whole argumentation in 'Hamlet' is directed.

4: Here we have the noble Knight of the Order of St. Michael, as well as the courtier and Mayor of Bordeaux.

5: Montaigne was Knight of the Order of St. Michael, and Chamberlain of Henry III. He was on terms of friendship with Henry IV. Both Kings he had as guests in his own house. In his _Essai de Vanitie_, Montaigne also relates with great pride and satisfaction, that during his sojourn at Rome he was made a burgess of that city, 'the most noble that ever was, or ever shall be.'

6: In spite of Gifford's protest we do not hesitate to maintain that Jonson's Epigram LVI. (_On Poet-Ape_) is directed against Shakspere, and that the poet whom Jonson--in the Epistle XII. (_Forest_) to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland--abuses, is also none else than Shakspere.

7: Montaigne died in 1592.

8: We can only quote the most striking points, and must leave it to the reader who takes a deeper interest in the subject, to give his own closer attention to the dramas concerning the controversy.

9: _Gentlemen of Verona_; _Comedy of Errors_; _Love's Labour Lost_; _Love's Labour Won_ (probably _All's Well that Ends Well_); _Midsummer Night's Dream_; _Merchant of Venice_. Of Tragedies: _Richard the Second_; _Richard the Third_; _Henry the Fourth_; _King John_; _Titus Andronicus_; _Romeo and Juliet_.

10: As the words that follow seem to contain an allusion to Shakspere's _Hamlet_, it is to be supposed that by the 'melting heir' Jonson points to some protector of the great poet. Whether this be William Herbert, or the Earl of Southampton, we must leave undecided.

11: Act i. sc. 4.

12: Jonson probably calls Shakspere an hermaphrodite because, having a wife, he cultivated an intimate friendship at the same time with William Herbert, the later Earl of Pembroke. Jonson's _Epicoene, or The Silent Woman_ (1609) satirises this connection. We are not the first in making this assertion. (See _Sonnets of Shakspere Solved_, by Henry Brown: London, 1876, p. 16.)

In Epicoene a College is described, which is stated to be composed of women. Instead of women, we may boldly assume men to be meant. Truewitt thus describes the new Society:--

'A new foundation, Sir, here in the town, of ladies, that call themselves the Collegiates: an order between courtiers and country madams that live from their husbands, and give entertainment to all the wits and braveries of the time, as they call them: cry down, or up, what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine or rather hermaphroditical authority; and every day gain to their College some new probationer.

_Clerimont_. Who is the president? _Truewitt_. The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.'

Shakspere at that time was in the 'matronly' age of forty-five. We have seen how a 'dislike in a brain' has been expressed in _Hamlet_.

13: The name of Ovid, likewise used in that eulogy, Jonson assigned, in his _Poetaster_, to Marston. (See _note_ 22 at end of Section V.)

14: It would have been most strange, indeed, if the two greatest geniuses of their time had not exercised some influence on each other; if the greatest thinker of that age had not given some suggestive thoughts to the poet; and if the poet had not animated the thinker to the cultivation of art, inducing him to offer his philosophical thoughts in beautiful garment. Hence Mrs. Henry Pott may have found vestiges of a more perfected and nobler style in Bacon's _Diaries_, on which she founded her wild theory. Had not Kant and Fichte great influence on their contemporary, Schiller? Does not Goethe praise the influence exercised by Spinoza upon him? Let us assume that the latter two had been contemporaries; that they had lived in the same town. Would it not have been extraordinary if they had remained intellectual strangers to each other, instead of drawing mutual advantage from their intercourse? Why should Bacon not have been one of the noblemen who, after the performance of a play, were initiated, in the Mermaid Tavern, into the more hidden meaning of a drama? Is it not rather likely that Bacon drew Shakspere's attention to the inconsistencies of Montaigne?

15: The advocates, in festive processions, made use of mules. Maybe that Jonson calls Shakspere a 'good dull mule' because in _Hamlet_ he champions the views of 'Sir Lawyer' Bacon.

16: This notion, that Shakspere has mainly distinguished himself in the comic line--in the representation of Foolery--harmonises with Jonson's opinion, as privately expressed in _Timber; or, Discoveries made upon Men and Matter_ (1630-37), in a noteworthy degree. There he says of Shakspere:--'His wit was in his own power. Would the rule of it had been so, too.'

17: An allusion to Shakspere's unclassical metrics, and his great success among the public, although in Jonson's opinion he brings neither regular 'play nor university show.'

18: In Androgyno, whom he brings in.

19: This is Jonson's answer to the question raised in _Twelfth Night_ (act iv. sc. 2), when Malvolio is in prison, in regard to Pythagoras.

20: We can nowhere find any clue to such a personage of antiquity, and we take it to be a reference to Pyrrhon of Elis, the founder of the sceptic school.

21: Bacon was a friend of this sport. Mrs. Pott points out some technical expressions which we find both in Bacon's works and in Shakspere. Perhaps we might stretch our fancy so far as to assume that Bacon is Pyrrhus of Delos, and that gentle Shakspere sometimes went a-fishing with him on the banks of the Thames.

22: 'As itself doth relate it.' Yet the soul does not relate anything, except that it is said to have spoken, in all the characters it assumed, 'as in the cobbler's cock.' We must, therefore, probably look in plays--in Shakspere's dramas--for that which the soul has spoken in its various stages as a king, as a beggar, and so forth.

23: 'Brock' (badger)--a word which Shakspere only uses once; viz. in _Twelfth Night_ (act ii. sc. 5). Sir Toby's whole indignation against Malvolio culminates in the words:--'Marry, hang thee, brock!' We know of Jonson's unseemly bodily figure, his 'ambling' gait, which rendered him unfit for the stage. The pace of a badger would be a very graphic description of his manner of walking. Now, Jonson sneers at the word 'brock' in a way not unfrequent with Shakspere himself, in regard to various words used by Jonson against him. In _The Poetaster_, Tucca falls out against the 'wormwood' comedies, which drag everything on to the stage. We are reminded here of Hamlet's exclamation:--'Wormwood, wormwood!' when the Queen of the Interlude speaks the two lines he had probably intercalated:--

In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who kill'd the first.

24: 'Cobbler's cock' refers most likely to a drama by Robert Wilson, entitled: _Cobbler's Prophecy_. In Collier's _History of the English Drama_ (iii. pp. 247-8) it is thus described:--

'It is a mass of absurdity without any leading purpose, but here and there exhibiting glimpses of something better. The scene of the play is laid in Boeotia which is represented to be ruled by a duke, but in a state of confusion and disorganisation.... One of the principal characters is a whimsical Cobbler who, by intermediation of the heathen god Mercury, obtains prophetic power, the chief object of which is to warn the Duke of the impending ruin of his state unless he consents to introduce various reforms, and especially to unite the discordant classes of his subjects.' Jonson may have looked upon _Hamlet_ in this manner from his point of view. It is for us to admire the prophetical spirit of Shakspere who in Montaigne perceived the germ of the helplessly divided nature of modern man.

25: 'Or his great oath, by _Quarter_.' No doubt, this is an allusion of Jonson to Shakspere's 'quarter share,' the fourth part of the receipts of his company. The Blackfriars Theatre had sixteen shareholders. It is proved that Shakspere at that time, when a valuation of the theatre was made, had a claim to four parts, each of £233 6s. 8d. (Chr. Armitage Brown, _Shak. Autobiographical Poems_, London, 1838, p. 101). In _The Poetaster_ (act iii. sc. i), Tucca says to Crispinus the Poetaster:--'Thou shall have a quarter share.' In Epistle xii. (_Forest_), which Jonson addresses to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, and which, in our opinion, also contains an allusion to Shakspere, as well as to his protector, William Herbert, Ben speaks of poets with 'their quarter face.'

26: Shakspere often introduced music in his dramas. Jonson ridicules this; so did Marston, as we shall see. (_Twelfth Night_, for instance, opens with music.)

27: 'His golden thigh.' The shape of the legs, the 'yellow cross-gartered stockings' of poor Malvolio in _Twelfth Night_ are here ridiculed.

28: Malvolio says to his friends:--'I am not of your element.' In the same play, great sport is made of this word, until the Fool himself at last gets weary of it, when he says (act iii. sc. i):--'You are out of my welkin--I might say _element_, but the word is overworn.'

29: Blackfriars, where Shakspere first acted, was a former cloister. 'On fish, when first a Carthusian I entered,' no doubt means that from the beginning he had preferred keeping mute as a fish, in regard to forbidden matters of the Church.

30: I.e., _Christmas_-pie. In the Prologue of _The Return from Parnassus_, this comedy is called a _Christmas Toy_. Shakspere is therein lavishly praised by his brother actors, whereas Jonson is spoken of as 'a bold whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick.' A veritable libel!

31: _Hamlet_ (act v. sc. 2):--

Methought, I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes

32: Through Jonson's satire we always see the sanctimonious Jesuit peering out.

33: These are the parables in which Hamlet speaks. Many a reader will understand why Shakspere could not use more explicit language.

34: So the envious Jonson calls Shakspere's public who are satisfied with 'salad;' that is, with patchy compositions, pieced together from all kinds of material.

35: Jonson had Scottish ancestry.

36: In a moment of fanaticism, Hamlet wishes Ophelia to go to a nunnery. Jonson, in most cynical manner, means to say that Hamlet had been impotent as regards his _innamorata_. Though 'for the nones' may be taken as 'for the nonce,' it yet comes close enough to a _double-entendre_--namely, 'for the _nuns_.'

37: _Dramatic versus Wit Combats_. London, 1864. Ed. John Russell Smith.

38: To mount a bank = mountebank.

39: From one of them poor Ben received a _vile medicine_: a _purge_.

40: 'Lewd'=unlearned.

41: Shakspere's _Autobiographical Poems_.

42: Karl Elze (_Essays on Shakespeare_; London 1874) thinks this passage is intended against Shakespeare's alleged theft committed in the _Tempest_, the composition of which he, therefore, places in the year 1604-5, while most critics assign it to a much later period. It must also be mentioned that Karl Elze draws attention to the more friendly words with which Jonson, in his own handwriting, dedicates his _Volpone_ to Florio.

In the opinion of the German critic, it is not difficult to gather from this Dedication the desire of the meanly quarrelsome scholar Jonson to give his friend Florio to understand that, among other things, he would read with considerable satisfaction how he (Jonson) had made short work with this 'Shake-scene' and this 'upstart Crow.'

43: Dekker tells Horace that his--Johnson's--plays are misliked at Court. According to the above-quoted words of Jonson, _Hamlet_ seems to have pleased at Court on its first appearance.

44: The following passage in Jonson's _Epicoene_ is also interesting, though in the play itself it is not made to refer to Montaigne but apparently to Plutarch and Seneca: 'Grave asses! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that's all. A man could talk so his whole age. I do utter as good things every hour if they were collected and observed, as either of them.' May not such words have fallen from Shakspere's lips, in regard to Montaigne, before an intimate circle in the Mermaid Tavern?

45: This may point either to Montaigne or to Dr. Guinne, the fellow-worker of Florio in the translation of the Essays, whom the latter calls 'a monster-quelling Theseus or Hercules.'

46: The reasons which induce us to this opinion are the following: The three authors of _Eastward Hoe_ were arrested on account of a satire contained in this play against the Scots; James I., himself a Scot, having become King of England a year before. The audacious stage-poets were threatened with having their noses and ears cut off. They were presently freed, however; probably through the intervention of some noblemen. Soon afterwards, Jonson was again in prison; and we suspect that this second imprisonment took place in consequence of _Volpone_. We base this view on several incidents. In a letter Jonson addressed in 1605, from his place of confinement, to Lord Salisbury (_Ben Jonson_, edited by Cunningham, vol. i. xlix.), he says that he regrets having once more to apply to his kindness on account of a play, after having scarcely repented 'his first error' (most probably _Eastward Hoe_).' Before I can shew myself grateful in the least for former benefits, I am enforced to provoke your bounties for more.' In this letter, Jonson uses a tone similar to the one which pervades his Dedication of _Volpone_. We therefore believe that both letter and Dedication have reference to one and the same matter. In the letter, Jonson addresses Lord Salisbury in this way:--'My noble lord, they deal not charitably who are witty in another man's work, and utter sometimes their own malicious meanings under our words.' He then continues, protesting that since his first error, which was punished more with his shame than with his bondage, he has only touched at general vice, sparing particular persons. He goes on:--'I beseech your most honourable Lordship, suffer not other men's errors or faults past to be made my crimes; but let me be examined by all my works past and this present; and trust not to Rumour, but my books (for she is an unjust deliverer, both of great and of small actions), whether I have ever (many things I have written private and public) given offence to a nation, to a public order or state, or any person of honour or authority; but have equally laboured to keep their dignity, as my own person, safe.'

Now, let us compare the following verses from the second Prologue of _Epicoene_ (the plural here becomes the singular):--

If any yet will, with particular sleight Of application, (Occasioned by some person's impertinent Exceptions.) wrest what he doth write; And that he meant, or him, or her, will say: They make a libel, which he made a play.

Nor will it be easy to find out who was the cause of _Volpone_ having been persecuted at one time--that is to say, forbidden to be acted on the stage. (Perchance by the 'obstreperous Sir Lawyer' who is mentioned in it?)

We direct the reader's attention to the eulogistic poems composed by Jonson's friends on _Volpone_. (_Ben Jonson_, by Cunningham, vol. i. pp. civ.-cv.) First there are the extraordinary praises written by those who sign their names in full:--J. DONNE, E. BOLTON, FRANCIS BEAUMONT. Then follow verses, probably composed somewhat later, which are cautiously signed by initials only--D. D., J. C., G. C., E. S., J. F., T. R. This is not the case with any other eulogistic poems referring to Jonson's dramas. The verses before mentioned, which are only signed by initials, all speak of a 'persecuted fox, or of a fox killed by hounds.'

47: 'Come, my coach!' means: 'I value my honour less than my coach.' The expression, 'O, how the wheel becomes it!' is of such a character that we must refer the reader to Montaigne's Essay III. 11.

48: _Eastward Hoe_< was acted in the Blackfriars Theatre by 'The Children of Her Majestie's Revels.'

49: Until now it has been assumed that The Malcontent was acted by Shakspere's Company in the Globe Theatre. This conclusion was based on the title-page of the drama, which runs thus:--

THE MALCONTENT _Augmented by Marston_ _With the Additions played by the Kings_ MAIESTIES SERVANTS _Written by_ JOHN WEBSTER.

It is, however, to be noted that in regard to all other plays of Marston, whenever it is mentioned by whom they were acted (so, for instance, in regard to _The Parasitaster_, the _Dutch Courtesane_, and _Eastward Hoe_), the title is always indicated in this way (designating both the Theatre and the Company):--'As it was plaid in the Black Friars by the Children of her Maiesties Revels.' Again, the mere perusal of the 'Induction' of _The Malcontent_ (not to speak of the drama itself) shows that this play could not have been acted 'by the Kings Maiesties servants' during Shakspere's membership. For, in this Induction there appear four actors of Shakspere's company: Sly, Burbadge, Condell, and Lowin. They are brought in to justify themselves why they act a certain play, 'another Company having interest in it.' One of the actors excuses their doing so by saying that, as they themselves have been similarly robbed, they have a clear right to Malevole, the chief character in _The Malcontent_. 'Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo _in decimo sexto_ with them? They taught us a name for our play: we call it: "_One for Another_."' (That is to say, we give them 'Tit for Tat.')

_Sly_. What are your additions? _Burbadge_. Sooth, not greatly needefull, only as your sallet (salad) to your greate feast--to entertaine a little more time, and to abridge the not received custome of musicke in our theater. I must leave you, Sir. [_Exit_ Burbadge. _Sinklow_. Doth he play _The Malcontent_? _Condell_. Yes, Sir.

Our explanation of the Induction is this: Marston has committed satirical trespass upon _Hamlet_. Shakspere, on his part, made use of the chief action and the chief characters of _The Malcontent_ in his _Measure for Measure_ ('One for Another'); but he did so in his own nobler manner. From the wildly confused material before him he composed a magnificent drama. Once more, in the very beginning of act i. sc. I, Shakspere makes the Duke utter words, each of which is directed against the inactive nature of Montaigne:--

Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee. ...For if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike As if we had them not.

Shakspere's contemporaries were not over careful as regards style. 'With the additions played by the Kings Maiesties Servants, written by John Webster,' means that the additions, in which the servants of His Majesty, in the 'Induction,' are brought on the stage, were written by John Webster.

Read the 'Extempore Prologue' which Sly speaks at the conclusion of the Induction--a shameless travesty of the Epilogue in _As You Like It_. Read the beginning of act iii. sc. 2 of _The Malcontent_, where Malevole ('in some freeze gown') burlesques the splendid monologue in King Henry the Fourth (Part 11. act iv. sc. I). Read