THE SCHOOL OF SHAKESPEARE.*
TILE expressive title of Mr. Simpson's volumes is not altogether free from ambiguity. To the uninitiated, it is fitted to convey very different notions as to what may be looked for under it ; and when they arc reminded what the author intended by it, they may be inclined to cavil at the appropriateness of the designation. The project, to which these posthumous volumes are unfortunately 11$ Simpson's last contribution, had been long present to his mild, when five or six years ago he began to give it practical shape by publishing a reprint of A Larum for London. This was the first instalment of " The School of Shakspere." Mr. Simpson's design was to issue reprints of certain plays not to be found in the collected works of the old dramatists, or in miscel- laneous collections, like those of Dodsley and Hawkins ; plays that were acted by the Lord Chamberlain's (afterwards the King's) Company during Shakespeare's connection with it, and other plays, acted by other companies, which have been assigned to him by tradition, or with which there are plausible grounds for connecting him. The purpose of this pious industry was to make wider and more exact our understanding of Shakespeare's influence as a writer and a thinker. Mr. Simpson was, in fact, to open up a new field of Shakespearean criticism. He contended, on the basis of the epistle annexed to Greene's. Groatsworth of Wit, that by 1592 Shakespeare had gained a practical monopoly of the editing, revising, and general patching of plays for all the companies of the London Stage ; and that consequently efforts should be made to recover, for a complete list of his works, dramas, and fragments of dramas not yet assigned to him by criticism, as well as dramas that had in any way the benefit of his professional oversight, or indeed that were in any way influenced by him. Here is a wide field certainly. Mr. Simpson pointed out that by 1594 the chief London actors were ranged in two great rival companies, the Lord Chamberlain's and the Lord Admiral's, with distinct general characteristics, which came out markedly in the dramas they acted. The first company, directed by Shakespeare, showed moderation, naturalness, and a great artistic liberty of form, matter, and criticism, at the same time advocating liberty in politics and toleration in religion, with a consistent leaning to the military policy of Essex. The Lord Admiral's, on the other hand, was managed by lienslowe, who set the principle of present popularity above all other principles, and who did not stickle about shaping his course according as the rival company indicated a probable road to a financial success. Hence the supreme im- portance of the Lord Chamberlain's plays for Mr. Simpson's purpose, and the minor, yet high, importance of such of the Lord Admiral's plays as may have been influenced by Shakespeare.
The present volumes contain all the plays that Mr. Simpson mentioned in his original prospectus as of first importance, with the single exception of Mucedorus, which has been reprinted by Professor Delius. The first volume is almost wholly occupied with the Famous History of Captain Thomas Siukeley, and a new biography of the hero of the play. "Lusty " Tom Stucley, a student of the Temple, has been for five years diligently neglect- ing the Law's grave study, and spending his father's money not on law-books, but on such warlike implements "as foxes, bilboes, and horn-buckles," and otherwise ; " hie learned mastership," as his page puts the case, has been studying "very extraordinarily." , Marrying Alderman Curtis's daughter, however, he pays his hungry creditors out of his father-in-law's money bags with dis- tressing lordliness, raises a troop of horse, and sets out to fightthe rebels in Ireland, leaving the law and his three days' wife behind.
• The School of Shakspere. Edited, with Introductions and Notaa, &c., by Richard, BimPson, B.A. In 2 vols. London: Chaise and Windup. 1818.
A slight from the Governor of Dundalk sends him in disgust to Spain, where Philip II. holds him in high honour, eventually despatching him on an embassy to Rome. The Pope creates him , Marquis of Ireland, for which country he sets sail again, with numerous followers. Landing, however, through stress of weather
• in Portugal at the moment when King Sebastian is setting out for Barbary, he joins the expedition, and in the great disaster of Alcazar, " where three kings in re and one in spe were slain that day," the Portuguese cause is lost, and Stucley, a wounded fugi- tive, falls a victim to the chagrin of his disappointed Italian fol- lowers. In a very long and elaborate biography prefixed to the play, the actual life of Stucley, if even more adventurous, is shown to be, in particulars, considerably different from the dramatic sketch. In following Stucley's movements Mr. Simpson is on familiar ground, and finds opportunity to enlarge upon the political bear- ings of the play. Stucley, he thinks, is held up to admiration as a representative of the war party of Essex, and much information is brought forward concerning the plots of the Irish Catholics. and the projects of Spain and the Popedom directed against Elizabeth and England. Mr. Simpson discerns four hands in the play, the last and most powerful being Shakespeare's. Nobody and Somebody, one of the plays acted by Shakespeare's company in Germany about 1600, and published in the German collection of 1620, completes the first volume. The main plot has a mythical basis, while the under-plot, where Nobody and Somebody figure, deals half-comically, half-satirically with prominent social troubles. Lord Sycophant, an obsequious courtier, is supposed to be a satirical gibbeting of Lord Cobham, against whom Shakespeare's patron Essex " had forsworn all patience." The second volume opens with Histrio-Mastix, which contains what is supposed to be an important allusion to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, as well as a hostile representation of a poet called " Post-haste," whom Mr. Simpson takes to be Shakespeare. This " Post-haste" is said to have written A Prodigal Child, and so Mr. Simpson next prints a translation of the comedy of The Prodigal Son, from the German collection of 1620, and searches indefatigably for further threads to connect it with Shakespeare. In Jack Drum's Enter- tainment, "Planet," one of the characters, " to whom the sceptre of criticism seems to be tacitly conceded, one hopes may have been meant for Shakespeare." A Warning for Faire Women, a dramatic version of a great murder-case, was acted by the Lord Chamberlain's men, and Mr. Simpson sees their usual didactic intention in the title. Last comes A Pleasant Comedie of Faire Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, with the Love of William the Conqueror, and of two others, in which two separate plots run parallel, till the characters of both mingle in the last scene. For the Shakespearean authorship of this play Mr. Simpson makes a supreme effort, which leads him to narrate and discuss the life
• and works of Robert Greene in a more thorough manner than has ever been done before. It is not unnatural that the charm of a fresh view should have
thrown Mr. Simpson's judgment off its guard. To persuade the coldly critical that here indeed is much of Shakespeare's early work is a different task from persuadiqg oneself. When the desired conclusion depends upon a probability which itself depends upon a possibility, even supposing this, again, may not -depend upon something equally frail, one can only regret the weakness of the chain of reasoning, and admire the fond industry of the reasoner. Even in one of Mr. Simpson's most elaborate contentions, where he argues that Shakespeare was abused by Greene some three years before he was finally all but named in the famous epistle of 1592, many readers will not follow him ; much might be urged in support of Mr. Furnivall's view that the earlier abuse was directed against Marlowe. The internal evidence in favour of Faire Em's being Shakespeare's is very thoroughly worked out, and after all, Mr. Simpson ingenuously confesses its weakness, a conclusion that an equally strict examination might have established in other cases as well. The most strange per- version of judgment that we have met with in these volumes is where Mr. Simpson adopts the exploded notion that Spenser, in the Tears of the Muses (1591), means " our pleasant Willy " for Shakespeare. Mr. Furnivall says the general opinion of the best critics now is that probably Lilly is meant ; we still think, however, that there is less difficulty in the way of accepting Sir Philip Sidney, whose claims were recently restated and strongly -enforced by Mr. Minto. In any case, it is very surprising that Mr. Simpson should have overlooked the fact that Spenser, in the very next stanza contrasts with " Willy " the very poets that Shakespeare must have been classed among :— " Each idle wit at will presumes to make, And duth the learned's task upon him take." Even the strong tests of general power of conception and of ex- pression may easily prove fallacious. Little reliance can be placed on the vague feeling of what is purely Shakespearean and Shakespeare's, and the difficulty of giving a tangible assurance of the master's presence is all but insuperable. Stucley, 94-5 :- " Here, dear Tom Stukeley, all the right I have In fair Nell Curtis I resign to thee ;" and Faire Em, 662-5 :- " For him I speak, for him do I intreat, And with thy favour, fully do resign
To him the claim and interest-of my love ;"
these may recall The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and " All that was mine in Silvia I give thee." So, " Thy brother will not live long, he talkes idlely alreadie," in Jack Drum, and " Hike neither thy dream nor my own, for I was troubled with green meadows," in A Warning for Faire Women, may remind us of the hostess's account of Falstaff's death, and how " a babbled of green fields ;" and the precepts of the Miller to his fair daughter Em may be paralleled copiously from Hamlet. But upon such similarities it certainly requires the utmost caution to ground an inference. Where the hand of Shakespeare is so very doubtfully discernible, even after all Mr. Simpson's indefatigable labour, we cannot profess to be -hopeful of great results in this direction. Still, the road may, after all, lead somewhere ; and gladly welcoming, as we do, every work that renders collateral literature more accessible to students of our early drama, we cor- dially agree with Mr. Furnivall that these volumes form " a most useful and valuable contribution to the knowledge of the Eliza- bethan stage and time."
For an excellent index the thanks of readers are due to Mr. J. W. M. Gibbs, who has seen the volumes through the press, under the general oversight of Mr. F. J. Furnivall.
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