With kindly counter under mimick shade, Is also deaded and in dolour drent. In stead thereof, scoffing scurrilitie, But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell." So speaks Thalia, grieving for the deterioration of comedy, in Spenser's Teares of the Muses, 1591;28 and the passage has caused much dispute." Mr. Dryden," says Rowe, "was always of opinion that these verses were meant of Shakespear:"29 but Dryden's opinion carries no weight, since it is notorious that he scarcely ever mentions the poets of Elizabeth and James's days without betraying his ignorance of all that concerns them; and Rowe, in a subsequent edition of the memoir, omitted the statement just quoted.-Todd30 conjectures, and not improbably, that The Teares of the Muses was 27 i.e. compose. 28 Forming a portion of Complaints. Containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie, &c. (In my copy of the Complaints, the titlepage to Muiopotmos has the date 1590.) composed about 1580;31 and he thinks that "Willy" means Sir Philip Sidney;-who was a writer of masques (one of which is still extant),-who is elsewhere styled by Spenser "gentle shepherd of gentlest race," and "the right gentle minde," and who is lamented, under the name of " Willy,' "32 in An Eclogue in Davison's Poetical Of none but Willy's pipe they made account," &c.— Malone once thought that Spenser pointed to Shakespeare; but he afterwards laboured to show that the person in question was Lyly.-Mr. Collier maintains that "Willy"34 can be no other than Shakespeare, who, although he had not composed any of his greatest works before 1591, may have done enough, besides 31 Because prefixed to the Complaints is an address from "The Printer to the Gentle Reader," which opens thus: "Since my late setting foorth of the Faerie Queene, finding that it hath found a fauourable passage amongst you; I haue sithence endeauoured by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights), to get into my handes such smale poemes of the same authors as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come by, by himselfe; some of them hauing bene diuerslie imbeziled and purloyned from him SINCE HIS DEPARTURE OUER SEA. Of the which I haue by good meanes gathered togeather these fewe parcels present, which I haue caused to bee imprinted altogeather," &c. 32 Willy, indeed, was used as a general name for any shepherd, i.e. poet. 33 Vol. i. 68, ed. Nicolas. 34 See in Appendix, No. II., to this Memoir some verses in which Shakespeare is spoken of as "Will," found by Mr. Collier at Dulwich College they are evidently a forgery. what has come down to us, amply to warrant Spenser in applauding him beyond all his theatrical contemporaries." But, as has been observed, The Teares "35 the Muses was, in all likelihood, written about ten years previous to the date of its publication. Mr. Collier proceeds: "With regard to the lines which state that Willy 'Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell, Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell,' we have already shown that in 1589 there must have been some compulsory cessation of theatrical performances, which affected not only offending, but unoffending companies: hence the certificate, or more properly remonstrance, of the sixteen sharers in the Blackfriars. [But see note 23, p. 47.] The choir-boys of St. Paul's were actually silenced for bringing matters of state and religion' on their stage, when they introduced Martin Mar-prelate into one of their dramas: and the players of the Lord Admiral and Lord Strange were prohibited from acting, as far as we can learn, on a similar ground. The interdiction of performances by the children of Paul's was persevered in for about ten years; and although the public companies (after the completion of some inquiries by commissioners specially appointed) were allowed again to follow their vocation, there can be no doubt that there was a temporary suspension of all theatrical exhibitions in London. This suspension commenced a short time before Spenser wrote his Tears of the Muses,' in which he notices the silence of Shakespeare." "36 Now 35 Life of Shakespeare, p. 93, sec. ed. 36 Id. p. 98, sec. ed. these lines afford not the slightest ground for such an interpretation, or rather, they are directly at variance with it; they tell us plainly enough, that Willy, scorning to imitate the rude and ribald style of the poets who had then caught the public ear, "DOTH RATHER CHOOSE to sit in idle cell," &c.,-his retirement from the scene being altogether voluntary:—and how ill does such a description agree with what we know of Shakespeare, with his unwearied diligence from first to last! But enough of this subject. I do not pretend to determine who it is that lurks under the name of Willy" though I would not deny that it may be Shakespeare,-whose endowments are well characterised in the opening lines of the passage,—yet I am not convinced that it cannot mean Sidney;-for of the boundless admiration which Sidney's poetry excited among his contemporaries, many proofs might be adduced besides the verses cited above from Davison's miscellany, and the following hexameters from the same collection : "See where Melpomene sits hid for shame in a corner: . Hear ye the careful sighs fetch'd from the depth of her entrails? There weeps Calliope, there sometimes lusty Thalia. Ah me! alas, now know I the cause, now seek I no further: Here lies their glory, their hope, their only rejoicing: Dead lies worthy Philip, the care and praise of Apollo: Dead lies his carcase, but fame shall live to the world's end.”37 On Sept. 3d, 1592, Robert Greene, having run his reckless course, expired in utter destitution and neglect at the house of a poor shoemaker near Dowgate. It 3 Davison's Poet. Rhaps. ii. 253, ed. Nicolas. appears that he had devoted his last days to the writing of a pamphlet entitled A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, which, soon after his decease, was given to the public by Henry Chettle.38 Towards the conclusion of the tract Greene exhorts his fellow-dramatists,39 Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, to amend their lives, and to abandon the vain occupation of catering for the stage: and in this interesting address40 the following memorable passage occurs: "Baseminded men all three of you, if by my misery yee bee not warned: for vnto none of you (like me) sought those burs to cleaue; those puppits, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our 38 The first edition (which I have not seen) was published at the close of 1592. 39 Greene does not mention them by name. That the first is Marlowe, and the third Peele, there can be no doubt. "Dr. Farmer is of opinion that the second person addressed by Greene is not Lodge, but Nash, who is often called Juvenal by the writers of that time: but that he was not meant, is decisively proved by the extract from Chettle's pamphlet [see p. 56]; for he never would have laboured to vindicate Nash from being the writer of the Groatsworth of Wit, if any part of it had been professedly addressed to him. Besides, Lodge had written a play in conjunction with Greene, called A Looking-Glass for London and England [printed in 1594], and was author of some satirical pieces [his satire in verse, A Fig for Momus, appeared in 1595]; but we do not know that Nash and Greene had ever written in conjunction." Malone's Life of Shakespeare, p. 307.-" Other newes I am aduertised of, that a scald triuiall lying pamphlet, cald Greens Groats-worth of Wit, is giuen out to be of my doing. God neuer haue care of my soule, but vtterly renounce me, if the least word or sillible in it proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way priuie to the writing or printing of it." A Priuate Epistle to the Printer, prefixed to the sec. ed. of Nash's Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Diuell, 1592 (I quote from ed. 1595). 40 It is headed, "To those gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making playes, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisedome to preuent his extremities." |