# Shakespeare of Stratford/The Chief Contemporary Allusions to Shakespeare's Plays

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New Haven: Yale University Press, pages 101–115
THE CHIEF CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS TO SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS
I. 1 Henry VI, 1592.
From Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil, 1592.
How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had lien two hundred years in his tomb he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!
Note. This alludes to the sensational success of the play of Harry the Sixth at the Rose Theatre in the spring of 1592. It is improbable that Shakespeare had any part in this piece, which he later expanded into 1 Henry VI.
II. The Comedy of Errors, 1594.
From Henry Helmes[?], Gesta Grayorum, an account of the proceedings at Gray’s Inn, London, on the night of December 28, 1594
. . . And after such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players. So that night was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called The Night of Errors.
III. Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1598, 1604.
(A) From Robert Tofte, The Month’s Mind of a Melancholy Lover, 1598.
(B) Letter of Sir Walter Cope to Lord Cranborne (Sir Robert Cecil), 1604/5.
Sir, I have sent and been all this morning hunting for players, jugglers, and such kind of creatures, but find them hard to find; wherefore leaving notes for them to seek me, Burbage is come and says there is no new play that the Queen hath not seen, but they have revived an old one, called Love’s Labour Lost, which for wit and mirth he says will please her exceedingly. And this is appointed to be played to-morrow night at my Lord of Southampton’s, unless you send a writ to remove the corpus cum causa to your house in Strand. Burbage is my messenger, ready attending your pleasure.
Yours most humbly,
WALTER COPE.
​IV. Julius Cæsar, 1599, 1601.
(A) From the manuscript diary of Thomas Platter, a Swiss visitor to London in 1599.
On Sept. 21 after lunch, at about two o’clock, I went with my company across the water [River Thames, and there] saw in the straw-thatched house [the Globe] the tragedy of the first emperor, Julius Cesar, quite excellently acted by about fifteen persons. At the end of the comedy they danced according to their custom perfectly beautifully, two dressed in men’s and two in women’s clothes . . . And so every day at two o’clock in the afternoon in the city of London two, sometimes even three, comedies are performed at different places . . . then those who perform best, they have the most auditors. The places are built in such a way that they play on a raised platform, and every one can well see all.
(B) From John Weever, The Mirror of Martyrs, 1601.
V. Henry IV, 1599, 1600.
(A) Prologue to Sir John Oldcastle, 1599.
(B) Letter from Sir Charles Percy to a London friend, 1600?
Mr. Carlington, I am here so pestered with country business that I shall not be able as yet to come to London. If I stay here long in this fashion, at my return I think you will find me so dull that I shall be taken for Justice Silence or Justice Shallow; wherefore I am to entreat you that you will take pity of me, and as occurrences shall serve to send me such news from time to time as shall happen—the knowledge of which, though perhaps they will not exempt me from the opinion of a Justice Shallow at London, yet, I assure you, they will make ​me pass for a very sufficient gentleman in Gloucesterehire. . . .
Your assured friend,
CHARLES PERCY
Dumbleton in Gloucestershire this 27 of December.
(C) Postscript to Letter from Countess of Southampton to her husband, dated Chartley, 8th July.
All the news I can send you that I think will make you merry is that I read in a letter from London that Sir John Falstaff is by his mistress, Dame Pintpot, made father of a goodly miller’s thumb, a boy that’s all head and very little body; but this is a secret.
(D) From anonymous letter in a collection made by Sir Toby Matthews. Approximate date, 1600–1610. The writer is deploring the miscarriage of one of his earlier epistles.
For I must tell you I never dealt so freely with you in any; and (as that excellent author, Sir John Falstaff, says) what for your business, news, device, foolery, and liberty, I never dealt better since I was a man.
VI. Richard II, 1601.
(A) Testimony of Sir Gelly Merrick, one of the participants in the Earl of Essex’s insurrection.
The examination of Sir Gelly Merrick, Knight, taken the 17th of February, 1600 [i.e. 1601]. He saith that upon Saturday last was sennight he dined ​at Gunter’s in the company of the Lord Monteagle, Sir Christopher Blount, Sir Charles Percy, Ellis Jones, and Edward Bushell, and who else he remembereth not. And after dinner that day, and at the motion of Sir Charles Percy and the rest, they went all together to the Globe over the water where the Lord Chamberlain’s men use to play, and were there somewhat before the play began, Sir Charles telling them that the play would be of Harry the Fourth. Whether Sir John Davies were there or not this examinate cannot tell, but he said he would be there if he could. He cannot tell who procured that play to be played at that time except it were Sir Charles Percy, but as he thinketh it was Sir Charles Percy. Then he was at the same play, and came in somewhat after it was begun; and the play was of King Harry the Fourth and of the killing of King Richard the Second, played by the Lord Chamberlain’s players.
(B) Testimony of Shakespeare’s partner and friend, Augustine Phillips.
The examination of Augustine Phillips, servant unto the Lord Chamberlain and one of his players, taken the 18th of February, 1600, upon his oath. He saith that upon Friday last was sennight, or Thursday, Sir Charles Percy, Sir Joscelin Percy, and the Lord Monteagle, with some three more, spake to some of the players in the presence of this examinate to have the play of the deposing and killing of King Richard the Second to be played the Saturday next, promising to get them forty shillings more than their ordinary to ​play it—where this examinate and his fellows were determined to have played some other play, holding that play of King Richard to be so old and so long out of use as that they should have small or no company at it. But at their request this examinate and his fellows were content to play it the Saturday, and had their forty shillings more than their ordinary for it, and so played it accordingly.
(C) Conversation between Queen Elizabeth and William Lambard, the antiquary, at Greenwich Palace, August 4, 1601, as reported by Lambard.
Queen. . . . I am Richard II. Know ye not that?
W. L. Such a wicked imagination was determined and attempted by a most unkind Gent. [Essex], the most adorned creature that ever your Majesty made.
Her Majesty. He that will forget God will also forget his benefactors. This tragedy was played forty times in open streets and houses.
Note. Though doubt has often been expressed, it is morally certain that it was Shakespeare’s Richard II which was acted by way of preparing people’s minds for the Essex insurrection.
VII. Richard III, 1602.
Scene from second part of The Return from Parnassus, produced at Cambridge, ca. Christmas, 1602. Burbage the actor is examining the qualifications of the student Philomusus, who wishes to go on the stage.
Burbage. I like your face and the proportion of your body for Richard the Third. I pray, Mrn Philomusus, let me see you act a little of it.
​Philomusus. ‘Now is the winter of our discontent Philomusus.Made glorious summer by the sun of York.’
Burbage. Very well, I assure you!
VIII. Twelfth Night, 1602.
Extract from diary of John Manningham, February 2, 1602, alluding to performance in the Middle Temple.
At our feast we had a play called Twelve Night, or What you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practice in it to make the steward believe his lady widow was in love with him by counterfeiting a letter in general terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, &c., and then when he came to practice making him believe they took him to be mad.
IX. Hamlet and Richard II acted at sea, 1607, 1608.
Notes of Captain William Keeling of the East India Co. ship Dragon, off Sierra Leone, 1607, 1608.
September 5. I sent the interpreter, according to his desire, aboard the Hector, where he broke fast and after came aboard me, where we gave the tragedy of Hamlet.
September 30. Captain Hawkins dined with me, where my companions acted King Richard the Second.
March 31. I invited Captain Hawkins to a fish ​dinner, and had Hamlet acted aboard me; which I permit to keep my people from idleness and unlawful games or sleep.
X. Pericles, 1609–1629.
(A) Allusion in anonymous poem called Pimlyco, or Run Red-Cap, 1609.
(B) From Prologue to Robert Taylor’s play, The Hog hath Lost his Pearl, 1614.
(C) Ben Jonson, Ode to Himself, written after the failure of his play, The New Inn, in 1629.
​Note. The immense and undeserved popularity of Pericles was proverbial through all the long period represented by these quotations.
XI. Othello, 1610.
Extract from the diary of Prince Lewis Frederick of Würtemberg, kept by his secretary, H. J. Wurmsser, chronicling his visit to England in 1610.
Monday, April 30, 1610. His Excellency went to the Globe, the usual place where comedies are played. There was represented the history of the Moor of Venice.
XII. Macbeth, 1610.
Entry in Dr. Simon Forman’s Diary, April 20, 1610.
In Macbeth at the Globe, 1610, the 20. of April, Saturday, there was to be observed, first, how Macbeth and Banquo, two noblemen of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them three women, fairies or nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him: Hail, Macbeth, King of Codon [sic], for thou shalt be a king, but shalt beget no kings, ete. Then said Banquo: What, all to Macbeth and nothing to me? Yes, said the nymphs, Hail to thee, Banquo; thou shalt beget kings, yet be no king. And so they departed and came to the court of Scotland, to Duncan King of Scots, and it was in the days of Edward the Confessor. And Duncan bade them both kindly welcome, and made Macbeth forthwith Prince of Northumberland and sent him home to his own castle, and appointed Macbeth to provide for him, for he would ​sup with him the next day at night, and did so. And Macbeth contrived to kill Duncan, and through the persuasion of his wife did that night murder the king in his own castle, being his guest; and there were many prodigies seen that night and the day before. And when Macbeth had murdered the king, the blood on his hands could not be washed off by any means, nor from his wife’s hands, which handled the bloody daggers in hiding them, by which means they became both much amazed and affronted. The murder being known, Duncan’s two sons fled, the one to England, the [other to] Wales, to save themselves. They being fled, they were supposed guilty of the murder of their father, which was nothing so. Then was Macbeth crowned King; and then—for fear of Banquo, his old companion, that he should beget kings, but be no king himself—he contrived the death of Banquo and caused him to be murdered on the way as he rode. The next night, being at supper with his noblemen whom he had bid to a feast, to the which also Banquo should have come, he began to speak of noble Banquo and to wish that he were there. And as he thus did, standing up to drink a carouse to him, the ghost of Banquo came and sat down in his chair behind him. And he, turning about to sit down again, saw the ghost of Banquo, which fronted him so that he fell into a great passion of fear and fury, uttering many words about his murder, by which, when they heard that Banquo was murdered, they suspected Macbeth. Then Macduff fled to England to the king’s son, and so they raised an army and came into Scotland, and at Dunston [i.e. Dunsinane] Anyse [i.e. Malcolm] overthrew Macbeth. In the meantime, while Macduff was ​in England, Macbeth slew Macduff’s wife and children, and after in the battle Macduff slew Macbeth. Observe also how Macbeth’s queen did rise in the night in her sleep and walk, and talked and confessed all, and the doctor noted her words.
Note. Forman naturally commits many errors of detail, but his terse, biblical narrative gives an unrivaled impression of what a contemporary audience got from a play of Shakespeare.
XIII. Cymbeline, 1610–1611.
Undated entry in Forman’s Diary, probably belonging to the months between XII and XIV.
Of Cimbalin King of England. Remember also the story of Cymbeline, King of England in Lucius’ time: how Lucius came from Octavius Cæsar for tribute, and being denied [Cæsar] after sent Lucius with a great army of soldiers, who landed at Milford Haven, and after were vanquished by Cymbeline and Lucius taken prisoner. And all by means of three outlaws, of the which two of them were the sons of Cymbeline, stolen from him when they were but two years old by an old man whom Cymbeline banished; and he kept them as his own sons twenty years with him in a cave. And how one of them slew Cloten, that was the Queen’s son, going to Milford Haven to seek the love of Innogen, the King’s daughter, whom he had banished also for loving his daughter. And how the Italian that came from her love conveyed himself into a chest, and said it was a chest of plate sent from her love and other’s to be presented to the King; and in the deepest of the night, she being asleep, he opened the chest ​and came forth of it, and viewed her in her bed and the marks of her body, and took away her bracelet, and after accused her of adultery to her love, &c; and in the end how he came with the Romans into England, and was taken prisoner, and after revealed to Innogen, who had turned herself into man’s apparel and fled to meet her love at Milford Haven, and chanced to fall on the cave in the woods where her two brothers were. And how, by eating a sleeping dram, they thought she had been dead and laid her in the woods, and the body of Cloten by her in her love’s apparel that he left behind him; and how she was found by Lucius, &c.
XIV. The Winter’s Tale, 1611.
Entry in Forman’s Diary, May 15, 1611.
In the Winter’s Tale at the Globe, 1611, the 15 of May, Wednesday. Observe there how Leontes, the King of Sicilia, was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the King of Bohemia, his friend that came to see him, and how he contrived his death and would have had his cupbearer to have poisoned—who gave the King of Bohemia warning thereof and fled with him to Bohemia. Remember also how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and the answer of Apollo that she was guiltless and that the king was jealous, &c., and how, except the child was found again that was lost, the king should die without issue: for the child was carried into Bohemia and there laid in a forest, and brought up by a shepherd; and the King of Bohemia his son married that wench. And how they fled into Sicilia to Leontes, and the shepherd having showed the letter of the nobleman by whom Leontes sent that child and ​the jewels found about her, she was known to be Leontes’ daughter and was then sixteen years old. Remember also the rogue that came in all tottered like Coll Pipci, and how he feigned him sick and to have been robbed of all that he had, and how he cozened the poor man of all his money, and after came to the sheep-shear with a pedlar’s pack and there cozened them again of all their money; and how he changed apparel with the King of Bohemia his son, and then how he turned courtier, &c. Beware of trusting feigned beggars or fawning fellows.
XV. Henry VIII, 1613.
Letter of Thomas Lorkins to Sir Thomas Puckering, June 30, 1613.
London, this last of June, 1613.
No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage his company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so furiously as it consumed the whole house, and all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves.
XVI. The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, 1614.
From Induction to Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair.
If there be never a servant-monster i’ the Fair, who can help it, he says; nor a nest of antics? He is loath to make Nature afraid in his plays, like those that ​beget Tales, Tempests, and suchlike drolleries—to mix his head with other men’s heels.
Note. It is virtually certain that ‘servant-monster’ is an allusion to Caliban; and it is probable that by ‘a nest of antics’ and ‘suchlike drolleries’ Jonson means the tricks of Autolycus and the anti-masks introduced into both The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. Another gibe at the popularity of Caliban is probably found in a line of the Prologue (1616) to Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour:
‘You that have so graced monsters, may like men.’
* ↑ For Meres’ allusions and notes of court performances, see ante, pp. 25–26, 50–51.
* ↑ I.e. unless you prefer to invite us to use your house in the Strand for the performance.
* ↑ Translated from the original German as printed by G. Binz, Anglia, 1899, pp. 456 ff.: ‘Den 21 Septembris, nach dem Imbissessen, etwan vmb zwey vhren, bin ich mitt meiner geselschaft vber dz wasser gefahren, haben in dem streuwinen Dachhaus die Tragedy vom ersten Keyser Julio Caesare mitt ohngefahr 15 personen sehen gar artlich agieren; zu endt der Comedien dantzeten sie ihrem gebrauch nach gar vberausz zierlich, ye zwen in mannes vndt 2 in weiber kleideren angethan, wunderbahrlich mitt einanderen . . . vnndt werden also alle tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag in der stadt London zwo, biszweilen auch drey Comedien an vnderschiedenen örteren gehalten, damitt einer den anderen lustig mache, dann welche sich am besten verhalten, die haben auch zum meisten Zuhörer. Die örter sindt dergestalt erbauwen, dasz sie auf einer erhöchten brüge spilen, vnndt yederman alles woll sehen kan.’
* ↑ This alludes to the jig which customarily concluded an Elizabethan play.
* ↑ Acted in this year and published in 1600. The prologue gibes at Falstaff in his original name of Oldcastle. The text of the play contains two references to Falstaff: ‘King [Henry V] . . . Where the devil are all my old thieves that were wont to keep this walk? Falstaff, the villain, is so fat he cannot get on’s horse, but methinks Poins and Peto should be stirring hereabouts.’ ‘. . . Because he [the King] once robbed me before I fell to the trade myself; when that foul villainous guts that led him to all that roguery was in’s company there, that Falstaff.’
* ↑ Sir Charles Percy was probably a personal acquaintance of Shakespeare. He was one of the chief conspirators in Essex’s insurrection in 1601, and seems to have been the person who arranged for the performance of Richard II as a prelude to the rising. See documents quoted in VI, below.
* ↑ The year is not indicated. Lady Southampton was residing at Chartley in July 1599.
* ↑ Cf. 1 Henry IV, II. iv. 190: ‘I never dealt better since I was a man.’
* ↑ Probably an equivocation. Shakespeare’s Richard II does, of course, introduce Henry IV, but Percy’s hearers would assume that he was taking them to see one of the two parts of King Henry IV.
* ↑ Compare ante, p. 39.
* ↑ These notes were first printed in 1849 by Thomas Rundall from a manuscript not now available. Their authenticity is vindicated by F. S. Boas, Shakespeare and the Universities, 1923, pp. 84 ff.
* ↑ The date was printed by Rundall as ‘September 31’ (sic), but corrected in manuscript, probably by Rundall, as above.
* ↑ Alluding probably to Thomas Heywood’s popular play of Edward IV, in two parts, which dealt largely with the sentimental tale of Jane Shore, that king’s mistress.
* ↑ Translated. ‘Lundi, 30. S. E. alla au Globe, lieu ordinaire ou l’on joue les commedies, y fut representé l’histoire du More de Venise.’
* ↑ Spelled Mack Dove in the manuscript.
* ↑ I.e. lover (Posthumus).
* ↑ Tattered like Coltpixie (a roguish sprite).
* ↑ For a more detailed account of this fire, written two days later by Sir Henry Wotton, see the edition of Henry VIII in this series, pp. 150 f.
* ↑ The Revels Accounts for 1611 record that the King’s Players gave court performances of The Tempest, ‘at Whitehall before the King’s Majesty’ on November 1, and of ‘a play called The Winter’s Night’s Tale’ on November 5. Both were repeated at court in 1613.
Footnotes