The immediate source of the play was once more North’s translation of Plutarch, and indirectly we may see Shakespeare’s process of association. The story of Timon is related in Plutarch’s life of Antony, which Shakespeare studied for Antony and Cleopatra. In Plutarch’s work Alcibiades is the figure complementary to Coriolanus, the subject of Shakespeare’s previous drama. Alcibiades plays a large part in Timon of Athens. So there is a set of connections leading Shakespeare forward. He moved from one classical figure to another, all part of the immediate arena of his imaginative concerns. He was also influenced by an academic comedy, entitled Timon, which might have been performed at the Inns of Court. This drama may have played some part in the composition of King Lear as well, and so acted as a powerful spur to Shakespeare’s imagination.
It is also surmised that Timon of Athens was in part the result of a collaboration with the young dramatist Thomas Middleton, who by his mid-twenties was already well known for his verse and for his satirical city comedies. Shakespeare’s collaboration with Middleton resembled that with a co-author, perhaps George Wilkins, over Pericles. Shakespeare was happy to contribute scenes, or whole acts, while leaving intact the somewhat jejune work of his collaborators. It is as if he did not care very much about the finished article, as long as it was performable. In this respect he was acting as a professional man of the theatre rather than as an “artist” in the modern sense. It may well be that each dramatist wrote his selection of scenes independently, and that they were brought together only in the process of rehearsal. For this reason his colleagues did not originally intend to place Timon of Athens in the Folio edition of his collected plays. It was only included when a sudden gap (the result of problems over the publication of Troilus and Cressida) had to be filled. The King’s Men did not consider the play to be really “by” Shakespeare. As a result of its placing in the Folio, however, it has remained forever in the canon. The legacy and reputation of even the most eminent writers can sometimes be secured by accident.
CHAPTER 84. And Beautie Making Beautifull Old Rime
The plague raged through London for the entire year of 1609. Dekker lamented the condition of the period when “Pleasure itself finds now no pleasure but in sighing and bewayling the Miseries of the Time.” He recorded that “play-houses stand (like Tavernes that have cast out their Maisters) the dores locked up, the Flagges (like their Bushes) taken down; or rather like houses lately infected, from whence the affrighted dwellers are fled, in hope to live better in the Country.” And he added that “Playing vacations are diseases now as common and as hurtful to them as the Foul Evil to a Northern Man or the Pox to a Frenchman.”1 The King’s Men were once more on a provincial tour to escape the miasma of the capital. They visited, among other places, Ipswich, New Romney and Hythe. For much of this journey they sailed around the coast.
Shakespeare, probably relieved of his acting duties, was certainly now considering a permanent removal to Stratford. His tenant or house-guest, Thomas Greene, was urgently enquiring whether a new house would be ready for him by the spring of 1610. This suggests that a date for Shakespeare’s return had been agreed. But in this year, too, Shakespeare had business finished and unfinished in Stratford. In June 1609, for example, he settled his dispute over debt with John Addenbrooke. In the records of the Stratford court Shakespeare himself is described as “generosus, nuper in curia domini Jacobi, nunc Regis Anglie.” 2 He was, in translation, a gentleman recently at the court of James, now King of England. His status as the king’s servant was very well known in Stratford. He was something of a resident dignitary. In this year, too, he and Thomas Greene sent a suit of complaint to the Lord Chancellor over some matters concerning the Stratford tithes which Shakespeare had been granted. Later in the year his brother, Gilbert, had to appear in court for some unspecified offence; to judge from those cited with him, he had some violent companions in the neighbourhood.
Shakespeare had not finished accumulating land in the vicinity. In the following year he bought for £100 a further 20 acres from the Combe family, adding to his previous purchase of 127 acres eight years before. In this period his brother-in-law, Bartholomew Hathaway, paid £200 for the farm and farmhouse at Shottery where Anne Hathaway had been brought up. It was their real family home. It is likely that Shakespeare helped his relative to find that large sum. One astute scholar of Shakespeare’s imagery has noted that in Cymbeline, the play he was composing in this period, there is a continual vein of allusion to “buying and selling, value and exchange, every kind of payment,”3 as if Shakespeare’s mind was running upon such matters even without his realising it.
He may also have needed the seclusion of New Place to arrange in shape and order the sonnets he had written on various occasions in the past. Now that his mother was dead, he may have felt able to publish their somewhat scandalous content. It is not certain whether he considered the sensibilities of his wife — unless he believed, as many scholars have since maintained, that the contents would be understood to be manifest fiction. Deprived of income from the closed theatres, he may also have considered this an opportune moment to sell the manuscripts to a publisher.
They were duly published in 1609 under the title “SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS Neuer Before Imprinted.” They were printed by George Eld and were to be sold for 5d a copy, by John Wright whose shop was at Christ Church gate on Newgate Street. The dedication was signed by Thomas Thorpe, the publisher, rather than by Shakespeare himself. It must be the most famous dedication in all literary history, consisting of the mysterious and much debated lines.
TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF THESE INSVING SONNETS MR.
W H ALL HAPPINESSE AND THAT ETERNITIE PROMISED BY
OVR EVER LIVING POET WISHETH THE WELL-WISHING
ADVENTVRER IN SETTING FORTH. TT.
It is not at all clear what is meant by this. Who or what is the “begetter”? The inspirer of the sonnets, or the person who provided them to the publisher? And who is “Mr. W H”? Could it be Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton? But then why are the initials reversed? Is it William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who may have been the recipient of the early sonnets? It is unlikely that a nobleman would be addressed as “Mr.” Could it be William Hathaway? Or might it be Sir William Harvey, who had previously been married to the Countess of Southampton? It might even be a misprint for “Mr. W SH.” It is also possible that Thorpe misunderstood Shakespeare’s original dedication to “W H,” and added “Mr.” as an afterthought. Like all good historical problems, the interpretations are endless and endlessly intriguing. Who is the “adventurer” and to what obscure or dangerous corner of the world is he “setting forth”? Could this also be another reference to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who in the spring of this year became a member of the consortium known as the King’s Virginia Company?
It is sometimes suggested that Thomas Thorpe was a “pirate” printer who came across Shakespeare’s poems clandestinely and published them without authorisation. But there is no record of Shakespeare’s protest, and there is no sign that they were withdrawn from sale or subsequently “corrected” for an authorised edition. It is much more likely that Shakespeare himself was responsible for their collection and publication. The order of the poems is expertly arranged, and who else would have such a complete collection of the sonnets in manuscript? They were an enduring project, continued over several years. No one else would have owned all of the material available to the poet himself. In 1612, three years after publication, Thomas Heywood reported that Shakespeare had indeed published his sonnets “in his owne name.”4 Then, two years later, William Drummond recorded that Shakespeare had “lately published”5 his work on the subject of love.