History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to SwinburneLang, Andrew
History
History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne
Lang, Andrew
English literature -- History and criticism
By 1594 (perhaps by 1592) Shakespeare was a member of the Company of
Actors known successively as "Leicester's," "Derby's" (died 1592)
"Hunsdon's" (Carey) and, at the accession of James VI and I (1603)
"The King's". With him were the great Richard Burbage, John Heminge,
Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips. By this Company all his plays
were first acted. By 1592 they used the Rose Theatre, and others, and
in 1599 the Globe. There is no proof that Shakespeare ever played in
Scotland (he could not pronounce Dunsinane, and accentuated the final
syllable) or abroad.
From the moment of his departure from Stratford nothing is certainly
known of Shakespeare, till the dying Greene apparently alludes to
him in "A groat's worth of wit, bought with a million of Repentance"
(1592). Adjuring his comrades (Nash, Peele, and Marlowe?), to forswear
sack and the stage, Greene seems to remind them of a hardship in their
professional position: the rewriting of plays, once sold, by other
hands. A new hand might alter it for the owners, the hand might be that
of an actor, one of the "puppets," says Greene, "that speak from our
mouths.... There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that
with his 'Tyger's heart wrapt 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'" (jack-of-all-work) "is, in his own
conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie.... It is a pity men of
such rare wit should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes."
If, as has been suggested (there is no certainty), a piece called
"Henry VI" (part I), played by Shakespeare's company in March, 1592,
was an older drama "bombasted" by Shakespeare, and if his conduct
was one cause of Greene's wrath, we can only regret that Shakespeare
set his hand to a work that rejoiced English patriots. The author or
authors represent Jeanne d'Arc in two totally different characters,
now as a patriot, equally brave, self-sacrificing, and eloquent; now
as a loose woman who denies her father, and asserts her pregnancy by
one or other of several lovers. History is strangely treated, and the
materials must have been taken from Anglo-Burgundian scandals, and from
a curious French prose chronicle romance, obviously done into prose out
of verse, the "Chronique de Lorraine". This appears to have been the
source of the scenes in which Jeanne fights at Rouen, many years after
her martyrdom in 1431.
Shakespeare may have "written in" the scenes where Jeanne acts and
speaks like herself; the others (let us hope so!) may be by a baser
hand. The second and third parts of "Henry VI," were later much
altered, probably by Shakespeare; the scenes with Jack Cade are
entirely in his manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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