Part One - Jonson and Shakespeare

[11] THE sheet anchor of the traditional belief with regard to the authorship of the plays and poems of Shakespeare is undoubtedly Ben Jonson. It is to the Jonsonian utterances that the apostles of the Stratfordian faith always make their appeal. That faith we are told is based on the "irrefragable rock" of Ben Jonson's testimony. *

Well, it was not so very long ago that we used to be told that the truth of a universal deluge and the preservation of mankind and animals of every kind and species, in Noah's Ark, was established on the "impregnable rock" of Holy Scripture, and yet today we find even high Church dignitaries—with whom Mr. J. M. Robertson would certainly be in entire agreement here—disavowing any belief in this interesting mythological tradition. Is it not, then, possible that the Jonsonian testimony may prove no more "irrefragable" or "impregnable" than that of those old chronicles, which age-long tradition has ascribed to the authorship of "Moses"?

As a distinguished writer, well-known both in the political and the literary world, has written to me, the difficulties in the way of the orthodox "Shakespearian" belief seem to be insuperable. Are the Jonsonian utterances of such weight as to outweigh them all? I reply, put Jonson in one scale and all the difficulties and improbabilities [12] —if not impossibilities—of the "Stratfordian" hypothesis in the other, and old Ben will kick the beam.

Now let us briefly consider this Jonsonian testimony. There are two utterances to which the orthodox appeal as conclusive evidence, viz.: the lines bearing Jonson's signature prefixed to the Folio of 1623, and the much-quoted passage De Shakespeare nostrati in his Timber or Discoveries. Let us first consider the evidence of the Folio.

Seven years after the death of William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon, it entered into the mind of somebody to publish a collected edition of "Mr. William Shakespeare's" plays. Who that somebody was we do not know, but we do know that Ben Jonson was very closely associated with the undertaking. It cannot reasonably be doubted that Jonson was the "literary man" who, as the Cambridge Editors long ago suggested, was called in to write the Preface "To the Great Variety of Readers " signed by the players Heminge and Condell." ** That he did, indeed, write this Preface was, in my opinion, proved by that very able critic, George Steevens, in a masterly critical analysis. "After the publication of my first edition of Shakespeare's works," writes Steevens, " a notion struck me that the preface prefixed by the players in 1623 to their edition of his plays had much of the manner of Ben Jonson, and an attentive comparison of that preface with various passages in Jonson's writings having abundantly supported and confirmed my conjecture, I do not hesitate *** now to assert that the greatest part of it [13] was written by him. Heminge and Condell being themselves wholly unused to composition, and having been furnished by Jonson, whose reputation was then at its height, with a copy of verses in praise of Shakespeare, and with others on the engraved portrait prefixed to his plays, would naturally apply to him for assistance in that part of the work in which they were, for the first time, to address the publick in their own names. . . . I think I can show the whole of the first member of this address, comprising eighteen lines out of forty, to be entirely his; . . . a minute comparison of the first half of this preface with various passages in Jonson's works will, I conceive, establish my hypothesis beyond a doubt." ****

It will be noticed that Steevens here speaks without doubt as to part of this Preface only as having been written by Jonson, but we need have no hesitation in saying that if Jonson is proved to have written part he undoubtedly wrote the whole of the Preface. It seems to me absurd to suppose that, having been called in to write in the names of the players, he would have contented himself with composing a fragment of a preface, and have left the rest to others. Least of all would he have left what he had written to be completed by those "deserving men," Heminge and Condell, who were, as Steevens justly remarks, "wholly unused to composition." That was not the way in which old Ben, of all men, was in the habit of doing things. I entertain no doubt, therefore, that the Preface [14] "To the Great Variety of Readers" was wholly written by Ben Jonson.

But, further, there can be, in my judgment, no reasonable doubt that Jonson wrote the " Epistle Dedicatory " also. He was, doubtless (I use that often misused adverb with confidence here), employed as the " literary man " to write the prefaces to the Folio, as, also, the poetical eulogium of the author prefixed to it. The " Epistle Dedicatory " contains many classical allusions, quite in the Jonsonian style. Some of it is taken direct from the dedication of Pliny's Natural History, and there is an obvious allusion to a well-known ode of Horace. † Mr. James Boaden, amongst others, had no doubts about the matter. "Ben," he says, "it is now ascertained, wrote for the Player-Editors the Dedication and Preface to his [Shakespeare's] works." ††

The Cambridge Editors—and the names of Messrs. W. G. Clark, John Glover, and Aldis Wright must always command respect—are at least so far in agreement that they tell us "the Preface (to the Great Variety of Readers) may have been written by some literary man in the employment of the publishers, and merely signed by the two [15] players." Nor would this be at all an unusual thing to do. For example, when the folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's Plays was brought out in 1647, by the publisher Moseley, there was a dedicatory epistle, similar to that of the Shake speare Folio, prefixed to it, and addressed to the survivor of the "Incomparable Paire," viz.: Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who was then Lord Chamberlain. This was signed by ten of the players of the King's Company, but nobody, I imagine, supposes that they wrote it, or any one of them. "The actors who aided the scheme," says Sir Sidney Lee, in his Introduction to the Facsimile Edition of the Shakespeare Folio, "played a very subordinate part in its execution. They did nothing beyond seconding Moseley's efforts in securing the 'copy' and signing their names—to the number of ten—to the dedicatory epistle." From this I conclude that, in Sir Sidney Lee's opinion, the actors in this case, at any rate, did not write the epistle to which they so signed their names.

Now in the case of the Shakespeare Folio we know that Jonson wrote the lines facing the Droeshout engraving, subscribed with his initials, and the eulogistic verses signed with his name in full. Is it not reasonable, then, to conclude that he was the "literary man in the employment of the publishers," as suggested by the Cambridge Editors, and that he wrote the prefaces, which are entirely in his style? May we not go further and say that it is certain that he was the author of these prefaces? Let us see what the Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania has to say on the subject. Dr. Felix Schelling, who holds this position, is recognized [16] as a high Shakespearean authority. He is, moreover, a man to whom any doubt as to the "Stratfordian" authorship of the plays is anathema. And this is what he tells us with regard to the preparation for publication of the Folio of 1623: "Neither Heminge nor Condell was a writer, and such a book ought to be properly introduced. In such a juncture there could be no choice. The best book of the hour demanded sponsorship by the greatest contemporary man of letters. Ben Jonson was the King's poet, the Laureate, the literary dictator of the age; and Jonson rose nobly to the task, penning not only the epigram 'To the Reader,' and his noble personal eulogium, but both the prose addresses of dedication. Of this matter there can be no question whatever, and if anyone is troubled by the signatures of Heminge and Condell appended to two addresses which neither of them actually wrote, let him examine into his own conduct in the matter of circulars, resolutions, and other papers which he has had written by skilled competence for the appendage of his signature." [17] †††

But, as every student of Shakespeare knows, the players, in the Preface "to the Great Variety of Readers," which bore their signatures, say, or rather, are made to say, that the readers of the plays who were "before . . . . abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious imposters," are now presented with correct versions, "cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he [Shakespeare] conceived them." Whereupon the Cambridge Editors justly remark, "The natural inference to be drawn from this statement is that all the separate editions of Shakespeare's plays were stolen, 'surreptitious,' and 'imperfect,' and that all those published in the Folio were printed from the author's own manuscripts. But it can be proved to demonstration that several of the plays in the Folio were printed from earlier quarto editions, and that in other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or from a better manu­ script, than the Folio text, and therefore of higher authority. . . . As the 'setters forth' are thus con­ victed of a 'suggestio falsi' in one point it is not improbable that they may have been guilty of the like in another." †††† [18]

Jonson then, as writer of the prefaces, and closely associated with the preparation and publication of the Folio, was guilty of the suggestio falsi concerning the "stolne and surreptitious copies," with which the Cambridge Editors justly charge the "setters forth," or the "literary man" who, as they suggest, wrote the prefaces for them. And even if it may be contended, as Mr. A. W. Pollard contends, that, speaking strictly by the card, the statement was true, inasmuch as not all but only some of the quartos ought to be treated as "stolne and surreptitious," that cannot acquit the author of the preface, seeing that, as this learned writer admits, "with the sale of the First Folio in view it was doubtless intended to be interpreted" as it has, in fact, been interpreted ever since, viz.: that the plays were all now for the first time published from perfect author's manuscripts, which certainly is very far from the truth. ‡

Jonson must have known also that a large quantity of work was included in the Folio which was not "Shakespearean" at all, i.e., which was not the work of the real "Shakespeare," whoever he was, the one supremely great man who has given us such plays as Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, to take but three examples. Many plays had been published in the convenient name of "Shakes­peare," or as by "W.S.," such as the Tragedy of Locrine (1595), Sir John Oldcastle (1600), Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602), The London Prodigal (1605), The Puritan (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608) ‡‡ [19]Pericles (1609). All these were rejected by the editor, or editors, of the First Folio, although they were included by the editors of the Third Folio (1664) and retained by the editors of the Fourth Folio (1685).

On the other hand, there were included in the First Folio such plays as Henry VI., Part I., which all are agreed is not Shakespearean, although it is possible that it contains some few items of Shakespeare's work; Henry VI., Parts II. and III., a very large part of which is certainly not Shakespearean; Titus Andronicus, which, according to the overwhelming balance of authority, is not Shakespearean; The Taming of the Shrew, as to which it is unanimously agreed that Act I is not Shakespeare's, and which is considered by many, and I think with reason, not to be Shake­spearean at all; Timon of Athens generally believed to be very largely non-Shakespearean; and other plays, such as Troilus and Cressida, in which the work of one or two other pens is, probably, to be found. Nevertheless, all these plays were pub­ lished as by "Shakespeare."

Again, take the case of Henry VIII. James Spedding long ago proved that the greater part of this play, including Wolsey's famous soliloquy, and Buckingham's beautiful and pathetic speech on his way to execution, is the work of Fletcher; and now Mr. H. Dugdale Sykes, in an excellent little book published at the Shakespeare Head Press at Stratford-on-Avon, with the blessing of that strictly orthodox Shakespearean, the late Mr. A. H. Bullen, entitled Sidelights on Shakespeare, has contended—and I think there can be no doubt he is right—that all of this magnificent drama that was not written by Fletcher is the work [20] of Massinger. In fact, as Mr. Sykes writes, "the editor of the folio foisted upon the public as a Shakespearean drama an early work of Massinger and Fletcher's."

What, then, becomes of the supposed guarantee of "those deserving men" Heminge and Condell? What becomes of the dismal farce of the "unblotted manuscripts?"

Let us listen to what Mr. Dugdale Sykes, himself, I believe, a quite orthodox "Stratfordian," has to say on these points. In reply to the question how it was that Heminge and Condell came to include Henry VIII. in the First Folio Shakespeare, and how it was that Waterson came to put Shakespeare's name with Fletcher's on the title-page of The Two Noble Kinsmen, he writes, "I suggest as a possible answer to this question that neither Heminge and Condell nor Waterson possessed a higher standard of honesty than seems to have been prevalent among the publishers of their day: that in this respect there may have been little to choose between them and Humphrey Moseley, who in 1647 printed as Beaumont and Fletcher's (from 'the author's original copies') thirty-five plays of which a large number were written by Massinger and Fletcher, while three (The Laws of Candy, The Fair Maid of the Inn, and Love's Cure) contain no recognizable trace either of Beaumont or Fletcher. When we find that two publishers issued spurious plays as Shakespeare's during his lifetime, and that a third put Shakespeare's name on the title-page of the early play of King John in 1623, there appears to me to be no reason why we should accept Heminge and Condell's attribution of Henry VIII. to Shakespeare as decisive. And I submit that we [21] have a solid reason for doubting their honesty, inasmuch as their assertion that all the plays in the Folio were printed from the author's manu­ scripts is known to be untrue." ‡‡‡

So much then for the "deserving men," and the "True Originalls" and the "unblotted manuscripts." And what becomes of Jonson's testimony? Jonson was "in the swim." He was concerned "up to the hilt" in the publication of the Folio, and all these facts must have been within his knowledge.

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* "The testimony of Jonson is monumental and irrefragable.--"The Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson in The Observer, of March 2nd, 1919. back

** See Preface to the Cambridge Shakespeare (1863), p. 24. back

*** Original italics. Steevens's first edition of Shakespeare was published in 1773. back

**** See Boswell's Malone (The "Third Variorum,” 1821), Vol. 2, p. 663, where Steevens's masterly proof will be found. See also my Shakespeare Problem Restated at p. 264 et seq.: where, how­ ever, by an unfortunate slip, the demonstration is ascribed to Malone instead of to Steevens. See further Is there a Shakespeare Problem? p. 382 et seq. back

† Odes, Bk. III., 23. The reader will note the expression, "absolute in their numbers," in the Preface "To the Great Variety of Readers"—a classical expression to be found in Pliny and Val. Maximus—and other similar expressions taken from the classics quite in the Jonsonian manner. back

†† On the Portraits of Shakespeare, 1824, p. 13. Mr. Furness, also, commenting upon a rem ark of Pope's, writes that he " could hardly have been so unfamiliar with the Folios as not to have known that Jonson was the author of both the Address to the Reader and some commendatory lines in the First Folio." (Julius C a esar, by Furness, Act III., Sc. 1, p. 137 note). Mr. Andrew Lang writes, " Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben was the penman." (Shakespeare, Bacon and The Great Unknown, p. 207 note). back

††† See report of an address delivered at Houston Hall, Penn­ sylvania , by Dr. Felix Schelling, in The Pennsylvania Gazette, Jan. 16, 1920. My italics. The Jonsonian authorship has been again forcibly advocated by Professor W. Dinsmore Briggs. See The Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 12, 1914, April 22, and Nov. 18, 1915. See further, Appleton Morgan's Intro­ duction to Hamlet and the Ur-Hamlet (Bankside Shakespeare, 1908, p. xxvii). Sir Sidney Lee appears to suppose that Heminge and Condell were imitating Jonson in these prefaces. Certain phrases therein he says "crudely echo passages" in Jonson's works (Life [1915], p. 558). This appears to me a ridiculous suggestion. The prefaces are Jonsonian to the core, and if the two "deserving men," or either of them, had been able to write in this style it is pretty certain that we should have heard of other writings from their pen. But, as the Cambridge Editors remark, they had no "practice in composition," these editors being thus in agreement with George Steevens who, as already mentioned, says of the two players that they were "wholly unused to com­ position." [Dr. Schelling has now re-published the above mentioned address under title "The Seedpod of Shakespeare Criticism."]. back

†††† I have dealt at some length with this matter in Is there a Shakespeare Problem? ch. XI. As Mr. J. Dover Wilson writes, "The title-page (of the Folio) is inscribed 'Published according to the True Originall Copies,' while the sub-title on a later page is still more explicit: 'The Workes of William Shakespeare, containing all his Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies: Trudy set forth, according to their first ORIGINALL.' The phrase 'first original' can mean only one thing—author's manuscript. Mr. Dugdale Sykes is, therefore, perfectly correct in his statement that those responsible for the Folio claimed to be printing all the plays in the volume from Shakespeare's autograph." (Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 22, 1920.) And this claim we know to be false. back

‡ See Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, by A. W. Pollard (1909), pp. 1, 2. back

‡‡ Both A Yorkshire Tragedy and The Two Noble Kinsmen were licensed as by Shakespeare. back

‡‡‡ The Two Noble Kinsmen was attributed on the title-page of the first Edition (1634) to "the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare." It is now, as I apprehend, established by Mr. Dugdale Sykes, following "Mr. Robert Boyle's extremely able advocacy of Massinger's claims to the authorship of the scenes attributed to Shakespeare " (Transactions of the New Shakespeare Society for 1882), that the play is the joint work of Massinger and Fletcher. See Mr. A. H. Bullen's Prefatory note to Sidelights on Shakespeare, p. viii. With regard to Waterson's ascription of the play to Shakespeare and Fletcher in 1634, Mr. Sykes writes, "The omission of the play from the later Shakespeare Folios and its inclusion in the second Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, after it had been issued with Shakespeare's name on the title-page, deprives this of any value." (See Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 1, 1920). Mr. Sykes, by the way, warns us that "the inclusion of the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folios is of no more value as evidence for Beaumont than for Massinger, as it has been established beyond doubt that Massinger and not Beaumont was Fletcher's partner in a large number of the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher plays." Work cited, p. 1 note. back