on the subject of Catiline, which is mentioned in Lodge's Reply to Gosson.' Of his poetical capacity we may form some judgment from one of his plays, The Cobbler's Prophecy,' printed as early as 1594. It probably belongs to an earlier period; for allegorical characters are introduced in company with the Heathen gods, and with a cobbler, by name Ralph, upon whom rests the burthen of the merriment, the character being probably sustained by Wilson himself. He was one of the authors also of Sir John Oldcastle, Part I.' It appears from Henslowe's papers that Wilson was not only associated with three dramatic friends in writing this play, but that he, in the production of other pieces for Henslowe's theatre, repeatedly co-operated with Drayton, Chettle, Dekker, Anthony Munday, and others. We find entries of his name amongst Henslowe's authors from 1597 to 1600. His name is not amongst the petitioners of the Blackfriars company in 1596. We may therefore conclude that he had then quitted the company, and had become permanently associated with that of Henslowe, as a dramatic writer, and probably as a performer. The sixth on the list, John Taylor, was probably an old actor; and might be the father of the famous Joseph Taylor, of whom tradition says that Shakspere taught him to play Hamlet. Anthony Wadeson, the seventh on the list, was a dramatic writer as well as a player. He probably had left the Blackfriars company early, for his name does not appear to the petition of 1596; and in 1601 we find him a writer for Henslowe's theatre. The diary of that manager contains the following entry amongst his catalogue of plays and their authors: The Honourable Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloster, with his Conquest of Portugal, by Anthony Wadeson.' His name is not amongst the list of actors of Shakspere's plays. Thomas Pope, the eighth name of the certificate, as well as Augustine Phillipps, the tenth name, are mentioned by Heywood, in his Apology for Actors,' 1612, amongst famous performers: "Though they be dead, their deserts yet live in the remembrance of many." Pope, Phillipps, Towley, Kempe, Richard Burbage, and Shakspere himself, are the only names in the list of 1589 which appear to the petition of 1596; and it is also to be noticed, that, out of the same sixteen persons, these six, with the addition of Robert Armin, are the only ones amongst the original fellows of Shakspere who are mentioned in the list of the names of the principal actors in Shakspere's plays. William Kempe, the thirteenth name in the certificate, was the famous successor of Tarleton, the extemporising clown, who died in 1588. Of this pair Heywood says, "Here I must needs remember Tarleton, in his time gracious with the Queen, his sovereign, and in the people's general applause, whom succeeded Will. Kempe, as well in the favour of her Majesty, as in the opinion and good thoughts of the general audience." Kempe was a person of overflowing animal spirits, as we may judge from his own extraordinary account of his morris-dance from London to Norwich. But it was for Shakspere to give his vivacity a right direction; and to associate his powers with such enduring delineations of human nature as Dogberry and Bottom. William Johnson, the fourteenth name, has been already mentioned as one of the first patentees. Of Baptist P. 137. See Analysis of Doubtful Plays, p. 210. * See Goodall, the fifteenth in the list, we know nothing. Robert Armin, the last name in the document, was a comic actor, said to have been taught by Tarleton. He appears to have been a writer of ballads and other ephemeral publications, as well as an actor; for he is mentioned in this capacity by Thomas Nash, in a pamphlet of 1592.* Armin wrote several plays of no great merit or reputation; and he published a translation of a little Italian novel. His Nest of Ninnies' has been reprinted by the Shakespeare Society. This tract, which contains very little that can interest us as a picture of the times, and which displays a brisk sort of buffoonery, on the part of its author, rather than any real wit or humour, is a collection of queer anecdotes of domestic fools, most of which, the editor of the reprint very justly observes," will strike all readers as merely puerile and absurd." Armin's stories, however, are told with an absence of offensive ribaldry which was scarcely to be expected from his peculiar talent. He desires to make his readers laugh; but he does not seek to do so by obtruding the grossnesses by which his subject was necessarily surrounded. We have thus run through the list of Shakspere's fellows in 1589, to point to the characters of the men with whom he was thrown into daily companionship. Some were of the first eminence as actors, and their names have survived the transitory reputation which belongs to their profession. Several had pretensions to the literary character, and probably were more actively engaged in preparing novelties for the early stage than we find recorded in its perishable annals. But there is one name, the ninth on the list, which we have purposely reserved for a more extended mention: it is that of George Peele. In the Account of George Peele and his Writings,' prefixed to Mr. Dyce's valuable edition of his works (1829), the editor says, "I think it very probable that Peele occasionally tried his histrionic talents, particularly at the commencement of his career, but that he was ever engaged as a regular actor I altogether disbelieve." But the publication, in 1835, by Mr. Collier, of the certificate of the good conduct in 1589 of the Blackfriars company, which he discovered amongst the Bridgewater Papers, would appear to determine the question contrary to the belief of Mr. Dyce. Mr. Collier, in the tract in which he first published this important document,† says, with reference to the enumeration of Peele in the certificate, "George Peele was unquestionably the dramatic poet, who, I conjectured some years ago, was upon the stage early in life." The name of George Peele stands the ninth on this list; that of William Shakspere the twelfth. The name of William Kempe immediately follows that of Shakspere. Kempe must have become of importance to the company at least a year before the date of this certificate; for he was the successor of Tarleton in the most attractive line of characters, and Tarleton died in 1588. We hold that Shakspere had won his position in this company at the age of twenty-five by his success as a dramatic writer; and we consider that in the same manner George Peele had preceded him, and had acquired rank and property amongst the shareholders, chiefly by the exercise of his talents as a dra*Collier's Introduction to Armin's Nest of Ninnies,' p. xiii. + New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare. matic poet. Those of his dramatic works which have come down to us afford evidence that he possessed great flexibility and rhetorical power, without much invention, with very little discrimination of character, and with that tendency to extravagance in the management of his incidents which exhibits small acquaintance with the higher principles of the dramatic art. He no doubt became a writer for the stage earlier than Shakspere. He brought to the task a higher poetical feeling, and more scholarship, than had been previously employed in the rude dialogue which varied the primitive melodramatic exhibitions, which afforded a rare delight to audiences with whom the novel excitement of the entertainment compensated for many of its grossnesses and deficiencies. Thomas Nash, in his address To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,' prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon,' mentions Peele amongst the most celebrated poets of the day: "Should the challenge of deep conceit be intruded by any foreigner, to bring our English wits to the touchstone of art, I would prefer divine Master Spenser, the miracle of wit, to bandy line by line for my life, in the honour of England, against Spain, France, Italy, and all the world. Neither is he the only swallow of our summer (although Apollo, if his tripos were up again, would pronounce him his Socrates); but he being forborne, there are extant about London many most able men to revive poetry, though it were executed ten thousand times, as in Plato's, so in Puritans' commonwealth; as, namely, for example, Matthew Roydon, Thomas Achlow, and George Peele; the first of whom, as he hath showed himself singular in the immortal epitaph of his beloved Astrophell, besides many other most absolute comic inventions (made more public by every man's praise than they can be by my speech); so the second hath more than once or twice manifested his deepwitted scholarship in places of credit; and for the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him unto all that know him, as the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum artifex; whose first increase, the Arraignment of Paris,' might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold variety of invention, wherein (me judice) he goeth a step beyond all that write." The Arraignment of Paris,' which Nash describes as Peele's first increase, or first production, was performed before the Queen in 1584 by the children of her chapel. It is called in the title-page "a pastoral." It is not improbable that the favour with which this mythological story of the Judgment of Paris was received at the Court of Elizabeth might in some degree have given Peele his rank in the company of the Queen's players, who appear to have had some joint interest with the children of the chapel. The pastoral possesses little of the dramatic spirit; but we occasionally meet with passages of great descriptive elegance, rich in fancy, though somewhat overlaboured. The goddesses, however, talk with great freedom, we might say with a slight touch of mortal vulgarity. This would scarcely displease the courtly throng; but the approbation would be overpowering at the close, when Diana bestows the golden ball, and Venus, Pallas, and Juno cheerfully resign their pretensions in favour of the superior beauty, wisdom, and princely state, of the great Eliza. Such scenes were probably not for the multitude who thronged to the Blackfriars. Peele was the poet of the us. City as well as of the Court. He produced a Lord Mayor's Pageant in 1585, when Sir Wolstan Dixie was chief magistrate, in which London, Magnanimity, Loyalty, the Country, the Thames, the Soldier, the Sailor, Science, and a quaternion of nymphs, gratulate the City in melodious verse. Another of his pageants before "Mr. William Web, Lord Mayor," in 1591, has come down to He was ready with his verses when Sir Henry Lee resigned the office of Queen's Champion in 1590; and upon the occasion also of an Installation at Windsor in 1593. When Elizabeth visited Theobalds in 1591, Peele produced the speeches with which the Queen was received, in the absence of Lord Burleigh, by members of his household, in the characters of a hermit, a gardener, and a mole-catcher. In all these productions we find the facility which distinguished his dramatic writings, but nothing of that real power which was to breathe a new life into the entertainments for the people. The early play of 'Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes' is considered by Mr. Dyce to be the production of Peele. It is a most tedious drama, in the old twelve-syllable rhyming verse, in which the principle of alliteration is carried into the most ludicrous absurdity, and the pathos is scarcely more moving than the woes of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream. One example of a lady in distress may suffice: "The sword of this my loving knight, behold, I here do take, In a few years, perhaps by the aid of better examples, Peele worked himself out of many of the absurdities of the early stage; but he had not strength wholly to cast them off. We have noticed at some length his historical play of Edward I.' in the examination of the theory that he was the author of the three Parts of Henry VI. in their original state; and it is scarcely necessary for us here to enter more minutely into the question of his dramatic ability. It is pretty manifest that a new race of writers, with Shakspere at their head, was rising up to push Peele from the position which he held in the Blackfriars company in 1589. We think it is probable that he quitted that company soon after the period when Shakspere had become the master-spirit which won for the shareholders fame and fortune. His name is not found in the petition to the Privy Council in 1596. He is one of the three, moreover, to whom Robert Greene in 1592 addressed his dying warning. He was, according to the repentant profligate, driven like himself to extreme shifts. He was in danger, like Greene, of being forsaken by the puppets "that speak from our mouths." The reason that the players are not to be trusted is because their place is supplied by another: "Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shakescene in a country." The insult offered to Shakspere was atoned for by the editor of the unhappy Greene's posthumous effusion of malignity. We mention it here, as some indication of the difficulties with which the young poet had to struggle, in coming amongst the monarchs of the barbarian stage with a higher ambition than that of being "primus verborum artifex." It would not be an easy matter, without some knowledge of minute facts and a considerable effort of imagination, to form an accurate notion of that building in the Blackfriars-rooms converted into a common playhouse-in which we may conclude that the first plays of Shakspere were exhibited. The very expression used by the petitioners against Burbage's project would imply that the building was not very nicely adapted to the purposes of dramatic representation. They say, "which rooms the said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth very shortly to convert and turn the same into a common playhouse." And yet we are not to infer that the rooms were hastily adapted to their object by the aid of a few boards and drapery, like the barn of a strolling company. In 1596 the shareholders say, in a petition to the Privy Council, that the theatre, "by reason of its having been so long built, hath fallen into great decay, and that, besides the reparation thereof, it has been found necessary to make the same more convenient for the entertainment of auditories coming thereto." The structure, no doubt, was adapted to its object without any very great regard to durability; and the accommodations, both for actors and audience, were of a somewhat rude nature. The Blackfriars was a winter theatre; so that, differing from the Globe, which belonged to the same company, it was, there can be little doubt, roofed in. It appears surprising that, in a climate like that of England, even a summer theatre should be without a roof; but the surprise is lessened when we consider that, when the Globe was built, in 1594, not twenty years had elapsed since plays were commonly represented in the open yards of the inns of London. The Belle Savage* was amongst the most famous of these inn-yard theatres; and even the present area of that inn will show how readily it might be adapted for such performances. We turn aside from the crowds of Ludgate Hill, and pass down a gateway which opens into a considerable space. The present inn occupies the east and north sides of the area, the west side consists of private houses of business. But formerly the inn occupied the entire of the three sides, with open galleries running all round, and communicating with the chambers. Raise a platform with its back to the gateway for the actors, place benches in the galleries which run round three sides of the area, and let those who pay the least price be contented with standing-room in the yard, and a theatre, with its stage, pit, and boxes, is raised as quickly as the palace of Aladdin. The Blackfriars theatre was probably therefore little more than a large space, arranged pretty much like the Belle Savage yard, but with a roof over it. Indeed, so completely were the public theatres adapted after the model of the temporary ones, that the space for the "groundlings" long continued to be called the yard. One of the earliest theatres, built probably about the same time as the Blackfriars, was called the Curtain, from which we may infer that the refinement of separating the actors from the audience during the intervals of the representation was at first peculiar to that theatre. * The old writers spell the word less learnedly than we- -Bels-avage. |