The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3539]
In his Hymns to the Shadow of Night (1594) and its dedication, Chapman complains of his lack of patronage and refers to what he designates as Shakespeare's "idol atrous platts for riches." In the body of the poem he writes:
"Wealth fawns on fools; virtues are meat for vices,
Wisdom conforms herself to all earth's guises,
Good gifts are often given to men past good
And noblesse stoops sometimes beneath his blood."
In view of the general knowledge of Southampton's bounty to Shakespeare at this time, and of the anti-Shakespearean intention which I have demonstrated in Chapman's poem, it is apparent that these lines refer to the nobleman's gift as well as to the intimacy between the peer and the player at this period.
In this same year (1594) the scholars devised a plan to disrupt the intimacy between Shakespeare and Southampton by producing and publishing a scandalous poem satirising their relations, entitled Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest maid and a chaste and constant wife. In this poem Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is represented as "Henry Willobie a young man and a scholar of very good hope," while Shakespeare is indicated as "W.S.," an "old actor." "W.S." is depicted as aiding and abetting Henry Willobie in a love affair with Avisa, the wife of an Oxford tavern keeper who conducts a tavern described as follows:
"See yonder house where hangs the badge
Of England's saint when captains cry
Victorious land to conquering rage."
In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long before had tryed the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered of the like infection." Willobie his Avisa in some measure reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authorship as well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem.
In 1595 George Chapman published his Ovid's Banquet of Sense and his A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy, in both of which poems, as well as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare. Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as definitely establishing the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to Shakespeare as well as his identity as the rival poet of the Sonnets.
Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in 1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and literary prestige.
The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friendship and patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.
Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two years before that date.
CHAPTER VI
THE POLITICAL PURPOSE OF KING JOHN
1591-1592
The three parts of Henry VI. and their originals are of interest to Shakespearean students as marking the beginning of a phase of English historical drama, afterwards developed by Shakespeare, Kyd, Marlowe, and others. They owed their origin to the demand of the theatres for material with which to cater