Shakespeare

Further suggestions of Shakespeare’s amorousness emerge in a curious doggerel poem, with a prose prologue, entitled Willobie His Avisa. It purports to be written by Henry Willobie, who was related by marriage to a friend of William Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Russell, although the connection may be fortuitous. The poem concerns an innkeeper’s wife, Avisa, who is pursued by several extra-marital suitors. One of them, “H.W,” is helped by a friend named “W.S” or, in a punning reference, “Will.” The relevant portion of the text suggests that “W.S” was possessed by a similar passion. H.W

bewrayeth the secresy of his disease vnto his familiar frend W.S who not long before had tryed the curtesy of the like passion, and was now newly recouered of the like infection; yet finding his frend let bloud in the same vaine, he took pleasure for a tyme to see him bleed … for that he would now secretly laugh at his frends folly, that had giuen occasion not long before vnto others to laugh at his owne.

The writer continues: “in vewing a far off the course of this louing Comedy, he determined to see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor, then it did for the old player.”¹²

It is one of those Elizabethan prose riddles that may admit to several meanings. One theory suggests that the innkeeper’s daughter is in fact an emblem for Elizabeth herself. But the essential situation, of “H.W.” and “W.S” in pursuit of the same young woman, is close enough to the plot of the “Dark Lady” sonnets to suggest parallels. “H.W.” may be Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and “W.S” or “Will” or “the old player” may be Shakespeare. The suggestion of lustfulness, and of resulting venereal disease, is also part of the speculation. If there were a “true story” behind the sonnets, this passage would seem to confirm that “W.S” was not immune to the favours of young women. All must remain speculation, however, with the words of the poem’s preface that “there is some thing under these false names and showes that hath bene done truely”.

There were in this period the usual assaults upon Shakespeare’s propensity for plagiarism as well as amorousness. But the charge of plagiarism was formulaic, a ritualised insult in the world of the theatre. Imitation and borrowing were part of the craft of composition. It is the normal story of influence and gradual change. The great eighteenth-century phrenologist, Franz Joseph Gall, believed that the mental organ for robbery was the same as the organ for the formation of dramatic plots; this may be one explanation. It should also be remembered that as an actor Shakespeare was obliged to learn the lines of other dramatists, including those of Marlowe himself, and he may have reproduced them inadvertently. But he had no interest in inventing plots or incidents; for these he went to his multifarious sources, the narratives of which he borrowed wholesale. He would sometimes copy a source line by line, and even word for word, when he knew that he could not surpass it. His interest lay in reimagining events and characters.

But Shakespeare seems primarily to have borrowed from himself. He was a self-plagiarist who reused phrases, scenes and situations. The phrase “go to thy cold bed and warm thee” occurs in both The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear, it is a small example, but it is indicative of how a particular set of words was retained in his memory over many years. In his late plays he can sometimes revert to an earlier style, as if all stages of his growth were still within him. He will use the same scenario – that, for example, of a father reading the purloined letter of a son – again and again. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona there are anticipations of scenes and events in Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and As You Like It. There are also many scenic and structural parallels between the plays; there are strong resemblances between As You Like It and King Lear, for example, as well as between A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. That was how his imagination worked. It took on archetypal forms. In the process of imitating himself, however, he also revises himself; he knew by instinct what was worthy to be preserved, so that there is a continuing process of self-distillation.

CHAPTER 41 Doth Rauish Like Inchaunting Harmonie