Charles Knight: Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century

Richard and Macbeth as represented by him, agree in nothing but their fortunes.”

I may probably date from this period that I did not wholly surrender my judgment to the decisions of Dr. Johnson upon the merits of each play, as I had read them in some one of the earlier variorum editions. When he said of “Macbeth: “It has no nice discriminations of character,” I thought him somewhat hazy. When he wrote of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream:” “Wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written,” I deemed this faint praise more offensive than the dictum of Mr. Samuel Pepys, who pronounced it the most insipid, ridiculous play that he had ever seen in his life. Surely the great moralist had no conception of the deep meaning of almost every word which Hamlet utters, when he says that his “pretended madness causes much mirth.” If our current school of criticism afforded very little stimulus to my love of Shakspere, I certainly was not encouraged by the opinion of the only English historian with whom I was familiar. “Born,” says David Hume, “in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot, for any time, uphold.” I had met with a little volume of the Sonnets. How well do I remember portions of those mysterious, and therefore more bewitching productions, in association with solitary walks in my native forest. That little volume was a treasure to me, for I could not find the sonnets in the editions of the plays that were amongst my father’s collection of books. Steevens had said: “We have not reprinted the Sonnets, &c., of Shak-

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speare, because the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service.” Bewildered as I thus was up to the time when I had reached man’s estate, by the depreciating criticism of the poet whom I had approached with an uncritical feeling of love and reverence, it was a consolation to me at length to find that there was a higher school than that of the pedants, who maintained that Shakspere was without art and without learning. In 1815 was published Mr. Black’s translation of Schlegel’s “Lectures on Dramatic Literature.” The study of these very quickly led me away from the blind guides that I might otherwise have followed. The causes which had more or less influenced the previous race of English critics, were sagaciously pointed out by this sensible foreigner. “It was, generally speaking, the prevailing tendency of the time which preceded our own, a tendency displayed also in physical sciences, to consider what is possessed of life as a mere accumulation of dead parts; to separate what exists only in connection and cannot otherwise be conceived, instead of penetrating to the central point, and viewing all the parts as so many irradiations from it. Hence, nothing is so rare as a critic who can elevate himself to the contemplation of an extensive work of art. Shakspere’s compositions, from the very depth of purpose displayed in them, have been exposed to the misfortune of being misunderstood.”

In 1837 I began to look about me for artistic materials adapted to a Pictorial Edition of Shakspere. At first view, the existing stores of illustrations seemed almost boundless. There were embellish-

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ments to various editions from the time of Rowe, chiefly of a theatrical character, and, for the most part, thoroughly unnatural. The grand historical pictures of the Shakspere Gallery were not in a very much higher taste, furnishing a remarkable example how painters of the highest rank in their day had contrived to make the characters of Shakspere little more than vehicles for the display of false costume. There were a few valuable antiquarian illustrations, such as those given by Mr. Douce. Altogether, it became necessary for me to look carefully at the plays, to see whether the aid of art might not be called in to add both to the information and enjoyment of the reader of Shakspere, by representing the Realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have rested. There were the localities of the various scenes, whether English or foreign; the portraits of the real personages of the historical plays; the objects of natural history, so constantly occurring; accurate costume in all its rich variety. Whilst engaged in my search after such pictorial illustrations, a gentleman, who has since distinguished himself by his antiquarian knowledge, lent me his note-book, in which he had jotted down a somewhat large list of archæological subjects. This kindness of Mr. William Fairholt was of essential use to me. I very early put myself in communication with Mr. Poynter, who made for me a series of the most beautiful architectural drawings, which imparted a character of truthfulness to many scenes, which upon the stage had in general been merely fanciful creations of the painter. Mr. Harvey undertook to produce a series of frontispieces, which, embodying the realities of costume and other accessaries, would

have enough of an imaginative character to render them pleasing.

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The foundations of my edition as an illustrated work of art being thus laid, I diligently applied myself to a critical examination of the text to be adopted. I procured a copy of the first folio, which was read aloud to me whilst I marked upon a copy of the common trade edition, all the variations that presented themselves. I found that no book could be more incorrectly printed than this booksellers’ stereotyped volume. I subsequently expressed my belief that the text of Shakspere had not been compared with the originals carefully and systematically for half a century. Not only had words been changed by printers, but whole lines had been omitted. The punctuation of the received text was in the most confused state. Thus far, my way was clear to produce a pictorial edition with a more correct text, even if I absolutely relied upon the authority of the first folio compared with the quartos. Of these scarce morsels I could avail myself in Steevens’ very accurate reprint. This accuracy I had tested by having the several plays which he thus reproduced, collated with originals in the British Museum. But then, a new difficulty arose. The conjectural emendations of the variorum editors were so numerous, that it was necessary that I should make up my mind as to their adoption or rejection. I had to decide upon many disputed readings; and for this it was essential to consult the great mass of separate commentary that had been published by the learned, the dull, and the conceited, during the century in which the critical study of Shakspere’s text had been pursued by many competent and incompetent

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writers. There was one man of my acquaintance, for whom I had a high regard—Mr. Thomas Rodd, the well-known bookseller of Great Newport Street—whose knowledge of the works which he sold went far beyond their title-pages. He enabled me to form a considerable collection of commentaries on Shakspere, ranging from Rymer and Dennis to Hazlitt and Coleridge. As I advanced in my Shaksperian studies, I found that my labours would not cease with the acquirement of a more intimate knowledge of all that had been written about the text, but that I must carefully examine the various opinions as to the order in which the plays of Shakspere were produced, unless I were implicitly to adopt the theories advocated in Malone’s “Essay” on that very difficult subject. I was satisfied that much depended in coming to something like accurate conclusions as to the plays which belonged respectively to the poet’s earlier period, his middle period, and his later period. The historical plays would necessarily follow in the order of the events of which they were the subject. But for the comedies and tragedies, I determined to print them in the order which I believed to be at least an approximation to the period of their composition.

It was natural for many who had been bred in a reverence for the old school of criticism to consider me presumptuous in declaring my scepticism as to the authority of Steevens and of Malone. Probably, my new-born enthusiasm carried me somewhat too far. I accepted as a seasonable admonition a friendly letter from Mr. Rodd: “Notwithstanding all their squabbles among themselves and abuse of each other, the dulness of some and wildness of others, I consider them as a whole as a body of men who have rendered singular service to English literature. In their readings for illustration of his text, they have thrown great light upon our national history, antiquities and language, and been the means of calling into notice several good authors who had fallen into unmerited obscurity. Let me beg of you to tread more lightly over their ashes in future.” But I was not likely, although I might modify my future ex-

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pressions, to be diverted from my convictions that I had chosen the right path, however perplexed it might be. I had abundant encouragement in my course. Henry Nelson Coleridge wrote to me upon the appearance of my opening number: “It is at once a beautiful and instructive edition; indeed, the first in the country conceived in a right spirit.” Mrs. Jameson, in a most welcome letter, expressed her entire sympathy with my opinions: “I thought I had well studied Shakspere myself, but your edition has opened fresh sources of reflection and information.” My old friend, Sir Henry Ellis, proffered his assistance, and sent me a genuine slice of the mulberry-tree which he received from the Rev. Mr. Becket, and saw it cut from the block upon which Garrick had himself placed his seal. From Leigh Hunt I received a letter, from which I give an extract, very characteristic of the writer: “It rejoices me to see you in a task like this, because it enables you to live in a world which belongs to you besides the world of business, and which will do you as much good as I believe it will give pleasure and profit to the reader. To live with Shakspere, is to breathe at once the sweetest and most universal air of humanity.” I could multiply these testimonies of kindness, were it not distasteful to me to appear like my own eulogist.

My continuous work had sometimes relief when questions arose which were of a more novel and exciting character than textual commentary or even æsthetical criticism. The Merry Wives of Windsor took me back into the old scenes of my childhood, which I retraced in companionship with one whose mind was as natural and genial as his landscapes are pure and truthful. Thomas Creswick and his wife spent a few weeks with us in a cottage at Salt Hill. A short walk took the painter with his sketch book, and the editor, with his unwritten knowledge of old familiar haunts, into Windsor, and there we might trace the misfortunes of Falstaff, as he was carried “in the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane,” and thence “slighted into the river where the shore was shelvy and narrow.” “About the fields through Frogmore” suggested a stroll in another direction, to find a fit locality for the farm-house where Ann Page was “a feasting.” The Windsor town of mediæval architecture was to be imagined, but the position of its streets with reference to the Castle could be well defined. Mr. Creswick’s charming designs made the Merry Wives of Windsor the gem of the comedies in my edition. But as if Shakspere, the “gentle Shakspere,” was to be always provocative of controversy, I became involved in the discussion of the very doubtful question whether Herne’s Oak existed or had been cut down. The subject is stated so fully in my original edition, and, with some additional matter, in the revised issue of the Pictorial Shakspere now publishing, that it is scarcely necessary to add anything to my details of the evidence regarding the controverted points between Mr. Jesse and the “Quarterly Review,” beyond printing here an extract

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of a letter to me from Mr. Croker, of the 13th of January, 1842:—

“Your dissertation on Herne’s Oak is conclusive against Mr. Jesse’s fable, but there is one point of that fable, of the error of which you cannot be apprised. Mr. Jesse admits that George IV. frequently stated that ‘George III. had cut down the tree supposed to be Herne’s oak;’ but that ‘he always added that it was not so.’ Now I was the person to whom George IV. told the whole story, and I told it, many years ago, to Mr. Jesse, to whom it was then new, and I can assert that George IV. never added anything like what Mr. Jesse has stated, but quite the reverse. I know not from whom else Mr. Jesse might afterwards have heard the story, nor with what additions; but his statement that George IV. always told the story with the addition in question, is assuredly not the fact, for he did not so tell it me, and Mr. Jesse first heard the story from me without any such addition. Mr. Jesse asked me to allow him to print my version of the story—not at that time stating that he had heard any other version—but this I refused, out of delicacy to George IV., who, I think, was still alive, and to the rest of the Royal family, for the fact is, that George IV. told me the story as a proof that his father’s mental disorder had shown itself earlier than was generally known; and all the circumstances of the anecdote—and they are very curious—tended to show that this cutting down of the tree was an act of temporary derangement. So much for my share in Mr. Jesse’s story. In 1838 George IV. and even William IV. were dead, and I thought I might, without impropriety, set the substance of the matter right in the ‘Quarterly

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Review,’ which I did in the passage you have quoted.”

During my editorial employment upon Twelfth Night, I was led into considerations with regard to Shakspere’s domestic character by the perusal of Mr. De Quincey’s Life of Shakspere in a Part of the “Encyclopædia Britannica” which had just then appeared. My logical friend had taken up the notion that a passage in Twelfth Night was a pathetic counsel of the poet in his maturest years “against the errors into which his own inexperience had been ensnared.” He maintains that when the duke says to the pretended Cesario—

“Then let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent,”

Shakspere intends to notice the disparity of years between himself and his wife. Mr. De Quincey’s theory that Shakspere’s married life was one of unhappiness, was supported by the dictum of Malone in 1780, who first dragged a passage of Shakspere’s Will into light, to prove that in this, his last solemn act, the wife of the rich player of Stratford had not wholly escaped his memory; but, as more strongly to mark how little he esteemed her, he had “cut her off, not indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed.” Steevens considered the bequest of the second best bed as “a mark of peculiar tenderness,” and assumed that she was provided for by a settlement. It certainly occurred to me that such conjectures and inferences were a mere waste of words. I had made what the critical solvers of historical puzzles call a discovery. Well do I remember the glee with which, having written the following paragraph, I showed

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it to my dear friend, Mr. Thomas Clarke, a sound lawyer, who confirmed my opinion, as fully as did Mr. Long and Mr. Hill, with whom I subsequently discussed the matter. “Shakspere knew the law of England better than his legal commentators. His estates, with the exception of a copyhold tenement, expressly mentioned in his will, were freehold. His wife was entitled to Dower. She was provided for amply, by the clear and undeniable operation of the English law. Of the houses and gardens which Shakspere inherited from his father, she was assured of the life-interest of a third, should she survive her husband, the instant that old John Shakspere died. Of the capital messuage, called New Place, the best house in Stratford, which Shakspere purchased in 1597, she was assured of the same lifeinterest, from the moment of the conveyance, provided it was a direct conveyance to her husband. That it was so conveyed, we may infer from the terms of the conveyance of the lands in Old Stratford, and other places, which were purchased by Shakspere in 1602, and were then conveyed ‘to the onlye proper use and behoofe of the saide William Shakespere, his heires and assignes for ever.’ Of a life-interest in a third of those lands also was she assured. The tenement in Blackfriars, purchased in 1614, was conveyed to Shakspere and three other persons, and after his death was re-conveyed by those persons to the uses of his will, ‘for and in performance of the confidence and trust in them reposed by William Shakespeare deceased.’ In this estate, certainly, the widow of our poet had not dower.”

In the postscript to Twelfth Night, I had said, adverting to a letter printed by Mr. Collier in his

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“New Facts,” “There was one who knew Shakspere well—who, illustrious as he was by birth and station, does not hesitate to call him, one of the poor players of Blackfriars, ‘my especial friend’—who testifies decidedly enough to the public estimation of his domestic conduct.” That letter purported to have been written in 1608 by Lord Southampton to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. I must give another extract from Mr. Croker’s correspondence with me on the subject of Shakspere, to show how carefully this friend watched my progress, and with what critical acumen he anticipated the objections of the present day to discoveries of this apocryphal character. “I observe you quote and rely upon the letter signed ‘H. S.’ discovered among Lord Ellesmere’s papers by Mr. Collier. If that letter be genuine I must plead guilty to a great want of critical sagacity, for somehow it smacks to me of modern invention, and all my reconsideration of the subject, and some other circumstances which have since struck me, corroborate my doubts. Mr. Collier is, of course, above all suspicion of having any hand in a fabrication, but it appears that one person at least, and perhaps, more, had access to the papers before him, though it would seem that the particular bundle appeared not to have been opened since it was first tied up. In short, I see such strong external evidence of authenticity, and, on the other hand, such internal evidence (in my judgment) of the contrary, that I am puzzled.”

In the spring of 1841 I commenced the publication of “Knight’s Store of Knowledge for all Readers”—a series of original treatises by various authors. It was issued in weekly numbers at two-

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pence. The first and second numbers were devoted to Shakspere and his writings, and they bore my name as their author. At this period I had finished six volumes of the Pictorial Shakspere, and the seventh, consisting of the doubtful plays and poems, was being printed. I had not yet commenced writing the biography, but I had collected various materials for that object; had visited Stratford, and had inspected several documents preserved there. I was thus prepared to write the papers in the “Store of Knowledge,” with many new materials, and a tolerably complete acquaintance with whatever had been published of this very obscure life. That this unpretending production of mine had supplied a want, I was assured in a letter which I have before me from John Sterling, written in February, 1842, when he was staying at Falmouth. He thanks me for the pleasure and instruction furnished by the first volume of my new edition of Shakspere—“The Library Edition,” published on the 1st of January, 1842,—and he then adds, “I had previously read with great delight your convincing and comprehensive Life of the Poet in the ‘Store of Knowledge.’ I was charmed to find so much external evidence for a view which the study of his style—so richly composite—must have more or less obscurely suggested to all intelligent readers.” The praise of such a man furnished ample encouragement to me to devote my best exertions to the completion of the “Biography” which I had announced. The outline in the “Store of Knowledge” embodied, with slight variations, the general view which I subsequently elaborated. As those papers have probably passed into oblivion, I shall here attempt a very brief analysis of the

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portions in which I expressed my strong objections, or grave doubts, as to much that had been previously given to the world as the authentic facts of Shakspere’s life. My discovery as to his wife’s dower, had perhaps made me a little too sceptical—perhaps a little too rash, in regard to many of the stories embodied in the elaborate “Life of William Shakspeare,” by Edmund Malone, which occupies nearly three hundred pages of the edition of 1821. I had carried that volume with me to Stratford in my first visit just noticed; and during my few days’ sojourn there, had made many marginal notes, for the most part recording my first doubts of the received biographies. At the head of the section in which it is attempted to prove that Shakspere’s father was an impoverished and dishonoured man, I find written, “It appears to me that all this may be pounded into nothing.”

The deer-stealing story was surrounded with so many absurd traditions that, however willing I might have been to accept it for the sake of that charming volume by Mr. Landor, “The Examination of William Shakspere,” I could not but treat with absolute contempt the authority of a manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi, Oxford: “He (Shakspere) was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement.” Having at length got Shakspere out of his native town—in which, amidst all these pretended degradations, I was inclined to believe that he had

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composed his Venus and Adonis—I find him a writer of plays in London. During the publication of the Pictorial Edition, I had repeatedly expressed my conviction that he became a dramatic author at a much earlier period than had been usually determined. All his critics and commentators had agreed that he whose mental powers were bestowed upon him in the extremest prodigality of nature, was of wonderfully slow growth towards a capacity for intellectual production. In some lucky hour, they maintained, when his genius was growing vigorous—that is at the age of twenty-seven—he produced a play. There was nothing extraordinary in Ben Jonson writing for the stage when he was only nineteen; but then Shakspere, you know, was an untutored genius, &c., &c. It is unnecessary here to enter upon any details connected with this question, which had furnished much of the most interesting matter in my Introductory Notices to many of the Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. I believed that the first part of Henry VI. was written by Shakspere, and that it was his earliest dramatic production.

At the time of the publication of “The Pictorial Shakspere,” the belief had gained ground that his Sonnets had not been sufficiently regarded as a store of materials for the biography of the poet. In 1838 Mr. Charles Armitage Brown had published a volume entitled “Shakespeare’s Autobiographical Poems.” He regards them “as pure uninterrupted biography.” In the “Store of Knowledge,” I had held that although in the Sonnets there are repeated expressions of thoughts and feelings strictly personal, it was impossible to receive them as a continuous expression of such thoughts and feelings. I then honestly con-

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fessed the extreme difficulty of forming any decided opinion. About six months afterwards, I published in my Pictorial Edition, an “Illustration of the Sonnets.” In this elaborate analysis I worked out my theory that the poems of Shakspere, which Meres had, in 1598, termed his “sugared sonnets” amongst his private friends, when published as “never before imprinted,” in 1609, “were a collection of ‘Sibylline leaves’ rescued from the perishableness of their written state, by some person who had access to the high and brilliant circle in which Shakspere was esteemed; and that this person’s scrap-book, necessarily imperfect and pretending to no order, found its way to the hands of a bookseller, who was too happy to give to that age what its most distinguished man had written at various periods, for his own amusement, and for the gratification of his ‘private friends.’” My general belief was, that there are many circumstances connected with the mode in which the Sonnets were published, as well as in their internal evidence, to warrant us in receiving some as essentially dramatic,—that is, written in an assumed character; and some as strictly personal,—expressing the thoughts and feelings of the man William Shakspere. Though the Sonnets are personal in their form, it is not therefore to be assumed that they are all personal in their relation to the author.

The month which I spent with my family at Stratford was one of real enjoyment. My friend William Harvey came down to complete some sketches which he had made in the previous summer, and we went together over all the ground which Shakspere may be supposed to have trodden in childhood, in youth, and in middle age. We examined all the memorials of the Elizabethan period in Stratford, the house in Henley Street, the Grammar School, the Chapel of the Guild, the neighbouring villages, and especially Shottery. We went to Kenilworth and Coventry, to Guy’s Cliff and Warwick. We followed the descent of the Avon to Bidford and to Evesham. We traced its upward course to Charlecote and Hampton Lucy. I wrote a very little, but my mind was completely filled with the matter upon which I had to write.

In May, 1843, I was on my way to Edinburgh, for the purpose of investigating this curious problem, “Did Shakspere visit Scotland?” On Monday, the 22nd, I was about all the morning seeing the noble city. My guide was William Spalding, a man of distinguished ability, extensive knowledge, and of a most amiable nature. He and his friend Mr. Hill Burton devoted themselves to my aid with a most unremitting kindness and assiduity, assisting me in the inspection of various documents in the Library of the Advocates. They had each been contributors to the “Penny Cyclopædia.” Mr. Spalding had corresponded with me upon Shakspere subjects. In the Part of the Pictorial Edition in which I had given an analysis of the “Two Noble Kinsmen,” I had, in April, 1842, noticed with genuine approbation, as it deserved, Mr. Spalding’s work on the authorship of that play. His production had earned the commendation of Hallam and of Jeffrey. Yet he wrote to me, with singular modesty, “I feel particularly obliged by the kind forbearance which you have evinced in alluding to that which is one of the worst faults in my little book—namely, the undue predominance given to matters of style, and the imperfect appreciation of broader views of dramatic composition. The pamphlet was written when I was but beginning to struggle for emancipation from that verbal school of criticism in which my first training had been received; and I have long been so fully and painfully sensible of this and other heavy defects in the treatise, that I have taken up and destroyed the unsold copies of the small edition.” Whilst at Edinburgh I saw Hawthornden, as well as I could under constant rain and mist. I had some

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