adds to the realism of the description by pointing out that Juliet "bleeds."

So Shakespeare, ever on the alert, collected his facts regardless of their source; bound by no rule, upholding one theory one day and another the next, if need be rewriting them into his plays, getting them there strangely sometimes, no doubt, but always burnished with the master-touch that only he could give, and endued with the life that "age cannot wither"! B. RUSH FIELD, M.D.

THE TITUS ANDRONICUS: " WAS IT SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST PLAY? HOW WAS IT MOUNTED ON THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE? DID IT MEET WITH FAVOR FROM THEATRE-GOERS?

N investigating the external career of the Titus Andronicus, the student finds at hand an amount of recorded data exceptionally large in the case of a Shakespearian play. Langbaine says that a work of the name " was first printed, in quarto, in London, in 1594, and acted by the Earls of Derby, Essex, and Pembroke, their servants." In Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (produced Oct. 31, 1614) a character says:

"Hee that will sweare Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best playes yet shall pass unexcepted at heere as a man whose judgement shewes it is constant and hath stood still these five and twentie or thirty yeeres," which would point to a play of a name similar to the present in existence as of 1584-1590. Again a play "titus and andronicus" is mentioned in Henslow's Diary as having been acted for the first time, by "the Earle of Sussex his men," on the 23d January, 1593. "A booke intituled, A Noble Roman-Historye of Tytus Andronicus," was again entered in the Stationers' Registers, to John Danter, on the 6th of February, 1593. An earlier entry in the Henslow Diary, mentioned the play of "tittus and Vespasia," "ne," (or new), April 11, 1591. Again the Stationers' Register of April 19, 1602, is:

"Tho. Pavier.-Entred for his copies by assignm1 from Thomas Millington these bookes folowing: salvo jure cuiuscumque-viz., A booke called Thomas of Reading. vja. The first and second pts of Henry the VI. ij bookes. xijd. A booke called Titus and Andronic'. vjd.”

The title-page to the second quarto, which two years later followed the one here copyrighted, reads:

"The most lamen- table Tragedie | of Titus Andronicus. | As it hath sundry | times beene plaide by the Kings | Maiesties Seruants. | LONDON, | Printed for Eedward White, and are to be solde | at his shoppe, nere the little North dore of | Pauls, at the signe of the | Gun. 1611.”

being a reprint with fewer variations than printers usually made in these replications. Again, in 1630, we find on the Stationers' Register an entry assigning to Ric. Cotes from Mr. Bird "all his estate right title and interest in the copies hereafter menconed." among which "copies" is "Titus and Andronicus." On 4th Aug., 1626, Thomas Pavier had assigned his right in Titus Andronicus to Edw. Brewster and Rob. Birde, so that apparently the same book is spoken of here as in the entry under the date 19th April, 1602.

Simultaneously with the play, Danter also entered "By warrant from Mr. Woodcock the ballad thereof,"publishing under this entry a sort of rhymed syllabus or abstract of this same story of Titus Andronicus. (A monotonous performance which can be found under title of "Titus Andronicus's Complaint,' in Percy's Reliques.) Dr. Rolfe also finds mention of the story -if not of Play or "Ballad "-in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure and in "A Knack to Know a Knave," a comedy printed in 1597. The Henslow entry above mentioned records the acceptance of the play, marked ne. There is another entry of its performance at Newington Butts, in June, 1594: and in a work, "Father Hubburd's Tales" (1604), the action of an old man with one arm is compared to that of "Old Titus Andronicus.' But in spite of all this data, there is no play as to which more doubts are expressed or more controversies waged. The theories principally urged in respect to it are: (1) that the play was written by Marlowe and "touched up" by Shakespeare; (2) that it was written by Greene, Marlowe, and

Shakespeare; (3) that Shakespeare had nothing to do with it; and (4) that it was Shakespeare's first work. For myself, I accept the latter theory entirely, because, in the first place, I think the signs of a first effort are everywhere prominent; in the second place, because the first effort of a writer usually follows models most prominent and positive in their character at the date; and in the third place, because the Elizabethan theatres at that date possessed the resources and stage traditions for producing just such a play, with just such a "business" as the text calls for, and were frequented by audiences who just then demanded exactly such dramatic work. To illustrate these propositions may possibly call for somewhat extended examination of the stage procedure of the date.

I. THE TITUS ANDRONICUS WAS SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST AC

CEPTED WORK.

William Shakespeare was in Warwickshire on the 28th day of November, 1582, having been married in that county on or about that date. In 1598 Francis Meres mentions this very man as an eminent dramatist and poet, of as high repute in England as Seneca and Plautus in Rome. The scope of our present inquiry lies between these two dates, between Shakespeare's eighteenth and thirty-fourth years. The "verse tests " (so called) are about as valuable in chronolizing Shakespeare as is a prayer for divine guidance in selecting a bishop: the divine guidance always concurs with the Throne's nomination; so the verse tests invariably corroborate the records in the case. Where there are no records, there are, however, no verse tests. Neither are the mere printers' dates of much importance. The publication of a successful work inevitably leads to the printing of its author's prior efforts, however immature or unworthy-an amenity of literary success, familiar enough in our day, in the case of a recent novelist known as "Hugh Conway," whose untimely death did not in the least interrupt the flow of novels from his pen, until at last the public became suspicious, and the supply ceased.

Certainly, the possibility of such a state of affairs in Shake

speare's case is to be suspected when we find such plays from his pen as the Titus Andronicus and the Midsummer Night's Dream appearing in one year, and the Troilus and Cressida and the Pericles in another!

As to internal evidence, pure and simple: while entitled, no doubt, to far more respect than the mere indication of dates, it is still apt to be more or less unsafe, unless corroborated by reason of another consideration, viz.: the actors of the Shakespeare era were in the habit of interpolating the parts given them with allusions to contemporary matters in the way of "guys," localisms, tags, and so on.

Allusions to the wreck of Sir George Somers in the Tempest, to Raleigh's return from Guinea in the Merry Wives of Windsor, to the coronation of Henry V., of France, in the Merchant of Venice, or to Essex in Ireland in the Henry V., therefore, even if identified beyond peradventure, might still be fortuitous, since the Elizabethan actors were not only apt, but encouraged, to "speak and rayle what they list,"-ed, in their performances on the stage crowded with gallants who paid extra to bring their stools there, or elbowing a pair of stocks wherein an occasional pickpocket was secured. The actor who personated Dromio of Syracuse, therefore, may have perpetrated a pun on France's heir or hair, without throwing the composition of the Comedy of Errors five years behind Mr. Meres's citation of the play, or without founding a school of modern Shakespearian criticism.

But the Elizabethan actors did more than guy each other; they guyed their audiences. I believe that a considerable proportion of the speeches found in the First Folio, which do not appear in the Quarto, are these actors' interpolations and localisms. I believe such to be the Porter's speech in Henry VIII.: "These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse and fight for bitter apples; that no audience but the Tribulation of Tower Hill, or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure. I have some of 'em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days, besides the running banquet of two beadles that is to come." Perhaps the groundlings had

been guying the actor who played this very Porter past endurance when he spoke this to them from the front. Those familiar with New York theatres during the last few years have seen such things done, and when we come to look at the Shakespearian audiences we shall see a certain probability in the surmise.* The modern spectator who delights in "topical" songs, local allusions, and "gags" is actually enjoying one of the very earliest, instead of one of the very latest, of stage customs. In Nash's" Pierce Pennilesse" (1592) we read, "Tarlton at the Theatre made jests of him" (some local magistrate), and in Harington's "Metamorphoses of Ajax" (1596), "Which words were afterward admitted with great applause by the mouth of Mayster Tarlton, the excellent Comedian." And again, "If thy vaine bee so pleasant and thy witt so nimble, that all consists in glicks and girds, pen some play for the Theatre.” (“Pappe with a Hachet," 1589.) In Machyn's Diary (Camden Society, p. 22,) there is an entry, "One nycht at the Queens Court ther was a play afor Her Grace the wyche the plaers, plad suche matter that they whar commanded to leyff off." In 1601 complaint was made to the authorities that the actors at the Curtain Theatre directed their speeches at persons in the audience, or of the City, and the Lords of the Privy Council issued their mandate to certain Justices of the Peace of Middlesex, May 10 of that year, reciting that "wee do understand that certain players," etc., " do represent upon the stage in their Interludes, the person of some gent of good desert and quality," etc., requiring that the Justices "take Bonds. of the Chiefest of these actors to answere their rashe and indiscreete dealing before us." And, referring to this wellknown custom, we have Hamlet suggesting that Polonius, if he knew what he was about, would "see the players well bestowed," otherwise those abstracts and brief chroniclers of

*See the Bankside Shakespeare, Introduction to Vol. I., for further examples. That these plays were being constantly amended and curtailed for stage purposes, see also the omissions in Hamlet when it came to the First Folio-omissions which are exactly the ones which the stage makes now in the acting from the reading text.