Further light on Shakespeare

A. L. Rowse

It is noteworthy that in every generation there are people who think they have discovered some new poem or play of Shakespeare's. The wish is father to the thought. It is extremely improbable that there is any work of his to be discovered, fairly certain that we have got all there is of him.

Indeed the boot is on the other foot. He was already so celebrated in his own day that publishers were not going to miss anything of his. They not only printed his plays, but one publisher brought out an anthology under his name, making use of it, when only a few poems were his, and all the rest by other people. We are told that `Master Shakespeare was much offended thereat.'

So there is not the least likelihood that the play Edmund Ironside was his: nobody thought so then, and there is not a line of poetry in it. Nor is the run-of-the-mill madrigal song 'Shall I fly?' in the least likely: there are a dozen just like it in The Oxford Book of Madrigal Verse. I fear that the two Americans, Taylor and Schoen- baum, have burnt their fingers on the computer over this. Computers are no judges of poetry.

Meanwhile, these Eng. Lit. scholars are resolved to turn their backs on the direc- tion in which we really can find new and important information about Shakespeare and his work. Glynne Wickham has been able to throw completely new light on Henry VIII, as I have been able to do on other plays, by following the historical method I have advocated all along.

I was able to throw new light on The Two Gentlemen of Verona in a Spectator article, and to prove that it was autobiog- raphical. So, I had previously shown, was Love's Labour's Lost, a play of the South- ampton circle. Similar light can be thrown on All's Well, as one, and only one, American scholar has realised.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that a knowledge of a writer's experience of his time will throw light on what has gone into his work. Hitherto, English literature scholars have been reluctant to admit this. They dismiss it as background. They haven't the imagination to see what John Holloway stated so well at Cambridge: `What begins for the student of literature

as background was for the author intense with the very quality of life.'

We all know how important this was for Macbeth, a Scottish play with its tribute to the Scottish succession and James I's line going to stretch out to the crack of doom. (It is still with us today.) And there are well-recognised tributes to James I in Measure for Measure.

James I took over the patronage of Shakespeare's company. The Lord Cham- berlain's Men became the King's Men. He greatly increased their performances at court in number and doubled their rate of remuneration. He promoted the leading members of the company Grooms of the Chamber, with an allowance of scarlet liveries to wear in procession Shakespeare, of course, one of them.

Now we come to something new, which no one had realised before, that throws light on the nature and denouement of Cymbeline.

Why does so much of the action revolve around Milford Haven? Why are the Ro- mans made to land there, which they never did historically?

The answer is, because this is where James I's great-great-grandfather, Henry VII, through whose descent James I came to the English throne, landed there in 1485 to win the crown.

In the play, Cymbeline, the King, has two sons and only one daughter — just like James I and his two sons, Prince Henry and Prince Charles, and only one daughter, Princess Elizabeth. At the end of the play there is a tribute to James and his family in

the form of a prophecy, which has to be interpreted: The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, Personates thee. .

The piece of tender air, they virtuous daughter.

The lopped branches of the prophecy point Thy two sons forth.

These branches are now

To the majestic cedar joined, whose issue Promises Britain peace and plenty.

Note, not England only, but the whole isle of Britain, which James had united; he was keen on the concept of Great Britain, not yet popular usage then. Now for Henry VIII. Why is it such a curious play, quite different from what we might expect? By following proper inves- tigation into the circumstances, such as I have advocated all along, Glynne Wick" ham has explained the nature of the play for the first time, in his Shakespeare lecture in the Proceedings of the British Academy for last year. He is completely right, as I can corroborate and fill it out from the history of the time. James I's foreign policy proved a diffi- cult balancing-act. Priding himself as Rex Pacificus, he wanted to ensure peace by marrying his son and heir to the daughter of -catholic Spain; and to marry his dog!'" ter to a protestant prince. The subject of Henry VIII and the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, the marriage to Anne Boleyn and the birth of the future Elizabeth I, provided a promis- ing subject, but one very ticklish to deal with. Obviously Spanish susceptibilities must not be offended; indeed they must be i made up to. This is why Katherine °'• Aragon is given the finest part in the PY — one of the noblest women's characters in all Shakespeare. The character of Henry VIII offered a problem, so did that of Anne Boleyn. Nothing could be said against them on the stage — after all, they were Elizabeth I's father and mother. So, in the play they are given passive parts — which was far from the case in historic fact. All the blame Or the divorce is placed on Cardinal WolseY, popular with nobody. At the end of the play these issues are skilfully brought together in Craruner , speech at the baptism of the Princess Elizabeth. It enables the prudent drama': ist, who could be trusted never to put 7 foot wrong, to pay tribute to the reign 43'. Elizabeth I and to her successor:

She shall be A pattern to all princes living with her, And all that shall succeed. . all She shall be loved and feared; her own shall bless her,

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn. In her days every man shall eat in safety. Under his own vine what heplants, and sing The merry songs of peace to all his nee-

bours . . .

Then after her shall come an heir As great in admiration as herself.. • Who, from the sacred ashes of her honour Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was.

And so stand fixed. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, Shall then be his.. .

His honour and the greatness of his name Shall be, and make new nations; he shall flourish And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches To all the plains about him

Here is the lofty cedar of Cymbeline. Shakespeare had read about those cedars from the reports of Virginia, which the `new nations' refers to. Jamestown had been founded a few years before, in 1607. We all know that The Tempest was sparked off by the voyage to Virginia of 1609 and the foundering of the flagship on Bermuda in a hurricane.

Ben Jonson tells us that Shakespeare was favoured by both 'Eliza and our James'. He and his fellows were treated more generously by James; but the king in turn had good reason to be grateful to the conforming, socially conservative dramat- ist, a pillar of society. An old tradition goes right back to Sir William Davenant in the next generation, to the effect that he had seen a letter of thanks from the king to the favourite dramatist, both with court and people. Even the unimaginative E. K. Chambers saw no reason to doubt it.

But how maddening that, when Sir John Barnard — widower of Shakespeare's granddaughter Elizabeth — came to make his will, he left instructions for the 'lumber' in the old house at Stratford-upon-Avon to be destroyed. Think what it must have contained!