The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3500]
Though Shakespeare won to fame and fortune over the temptations and vicissitudes of the same life and environments to which so many of his fellows succumbed, we have proof that this was not due to any inherent asceticism or native coldness of blood.
No man in Shakespeare's circumstances could have attained and accomplished what he did during those early years living at haphazard or without a controlling purpose in life. Whatever may have been the immediate accident of fate that turned his face Londonwards, we may rest assured that he went there with the purpose of retrieving his good name in his own community and rehabilitating the fortunes of his family.
Shakespeare's literary history does not show in him any evidence of remarkable precocity. Keats was famous and already gathered to the immortals at an age at which Shakespeare was still in the chrysalid stage of the actual buskin and sock. It may reasonably be doubted that Shakespeare produced any of his known poems or plays previous to the years 1590-91. Though his genius blossomed late his common sense and business capacity developed early, forced into being, no doubt, by a realisation of his responsibilities, as well as by the deplorable condition into which his father's affairs had fallen. So, between the years 1583, when he was married, and 1591-92, when we first begin to get some hints of his literary activities, his Pegasus was in harness earning bread and butter and, incidentally, gleaning worldly wisdom. "Love's young dream" is over; the ecstatic quest of the "not impossible she," almost at its inception, has ended in the cold anticlimax of an enforced marriage.
We may dismiss the deer-stealing rumour as referring to this period. The patient industry, sound judgment, and unusual business capacity exhibited by Shakespeare from the time we begin to get actual glimpses of his doings until the end of his career, belie the stupid and belated rumour of his having been forced to leave Stratford as a fugitive from justice on account of his participation in a poaching adventure upon Sir Thomas Lucy's preserves. While it is apparent that this bucolic Justice of the Peace is caricatured as Justice Shallow in Henry IV., Part II., it is still more clear that this play was not written until the end of the year 1598. When Shakespeare's methods of work are better understood it will become evident that he did not in 1598 revenge an injury from ten to twelve years old. Whatever may have been his animus against Sir Thomas Lucy it undoubtedly pertained to conditions existent in the year 1598. In 1596 John Shakespeare's application for arms was made, but was not finally granted until late in 1598, or early in 1599. It was still under consideration by the College of Heralds, or had very recently been granted when Shakespeare wrote Henry IV., Part II., late in 1598. It is not likely that such a grant of arms would be made even by the most friendly disposed authorities without consultation with, or reference to, the local magistracy or gentry regarding the character and social standing of the applicant. It is quite likely then that the rustic squire resented—what such a character would undoubtedly have regarded as a tradesman's presumption, and that Shakespeare, becoming cognizant of his objections, answered them in kind by caricaturing the Lucy arms. The critical student of Shakespeare's works will find that wherever a reflection of a topical nature is palpable in his plays, that the thing, or incident, referred to is almost invariably a matter of comparatively recent experience. If it is a reflection of, or a reference to, another writer we may be assured that Shakespeare