Shakespeare

It is even possible that Shakespeare wrote a scene for Satiromastix in which Horace, aka Jonson, comically labours over the composition of an ode. The author of the Parnassus trilogy refers to that “pestilent fellow,” Ben Jonson, and to the fact that “our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen him a purge that made him beray his credit.” ³ In a prologue later written for Poetaster, Jonson ruefully berated “some better natures” who had been persuaded to “run in that vile line.” At the time, however, Jonson was not so sanguine. In Poetaster itself he had attacked the Globe for ribaldry and its actors for hypocrisy and stupidity. But one of them in particular is addressed as “proud”: “You grow rich, do you, and purchase?” ⁴ The same actor is also mocked for his coat of arms, when it is made clear that his real pedigree is listed in the Statute of Rogues and Vagabonds that controlled the activities of players. It was in the autumn of 1599 that the Shakespeares had sought to impale their arms with those of the noble family of the Ardens.

Shakespeare did not reply directly. That was not his way. Instead he refers to the whole controversy in Hamlet, the play most notably established upon the devices of the theatre. Rosencrantz remarks to Hamlet that “there is Sir an ayrie of Children, little Yases [an eyas was a young hawk], that crye out on the top of question; and are most tyrannically clap’t for’t; these are now the fashion, and so be-ratle the common Stages (so they call them)” that as a consequence there was “for a while no mony bid for argument, vnlesse the Poet and the Player went to Cuffes in the Question” (1269-85). Hamlet’s uncharacteristically reasonable response is that the boys should not disparage the “common players” when, at a later stage, they were likely to become them.

The whole controversy faded away, and soon enough the major antagonists were working together once more. It had elements of “ado” about “nothing,” too, in the sense that Richard Burbage himself had leased the Blackfriars Playhouse to the Children of the Chapel Royal; the owner of the Globe was making money from his apparent rivals, and it is possible that the “war” was in part an advertising opportunity for the sake of attracting more custom. The nature of Elizabethan society in any case encouraged sudden “flares” followed by equally sudden reconciliations. The rumblings of the controversy, however, can still faintly be heard in Twelfth Night and Troilus and Cressida.

At the end of the century there was a positive rush of Shakespeare’s plays to the printers, which is some indication of his prevailing popularity. In the autumn of 1599 there were new editions of Romeo and Juliet and of the first part of Henry IV; there was also another edition of Venus and Adonis, suggesting that his standing as a poet was still as high as that of playwright. At the beginning of 1600, in fact, a “staying entry” was placed in the Stationers’ Register for “A booke called Amours by J.D. with certain other sonnetes by W.S.” In the previous year, as we have seen, some of Shakespeare’s sonnets had been pirated for a volume entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. It may have been that Shakespeare wanted his real work to be duly registered and noted.