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Shakespeare's Richard II, Hayward's History of Henry IV, and the Essex Conspiracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Evelyn May Albright
Evelyn May Albright*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

Mr. Ray Heffner's article, “Shakespeare, Hayward, and Essex,” is confused and at times self-contradictory; but the main points which he attempts to maintain against my paper, “Shakespeare's Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy,” seem to be these:

1. That the play, founded on Hayward's history of Henry IV, which Essex is said, in Item 5 of the “Analytical abstract of the evidence in support of the charge of treason against the Earl of Essex,” to have witnessed, could not have been the play on the deposition of Richard II which the Essex conspirators are known to have attended in a group on February 7, 1601, the day before the rebellion; and that the performances referred to in this Abstract were not of a play by Shakespeare, nor acted by his company, but of an unknown play, performed perhaps by Essex's own actors at his house on some unknown occasion, which Mr. Heffner dates first as necessarily “after February, 1599,” later, as “in February, 1599,” and, in conclusion, as “in January, 1599.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1931 , pp. 694 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

1 PMLA, xlv (1930), 754–80.

2 Ibid., xlii (1927), 686–720.

3 Summarized below, p. 696, from 5. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxv, art. 33, (Calendar, pp. 453–55).

4 I shall not consider whether any of Mr. Heffner's six statements concerning my position is justly applicable to that of Miss Winstanley in her book on Hamlet, but I submit that it is a little reckless to try to summarize a book on one subject and an article on another in six identical propositions. I am not responsible for her arguments on Essex, nor for those of Mr. Kuhl on Essex, in “The Wanton Wife of Bath” (St. in Philol., xxvi (1929), 177–84); nor for Mr. Kuhl's reactions upon my article on Richard II as shown in his “Shakespeare and Hayward” (St. in Philol., xxv (1928), 312 ff.); nor for those of Margaret Dowling, in her “ Sir John Hayward's Troubles over His Life of Henry IV,” (Tr. of the Bibliographical Soc'y, n.s. xi, 2 (1930), 212 ff.), to the effect (following Mr. Kuhl) that the historian compiled from the dramatist, rather than the reverse.

5 S. P. Dom., 1598–1601, vol. cclxxv, art. 33, (Calendar, pp. 453–55).

6 5. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 64 and 65 (Calendar, pp. 568–69).

7 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxv, art. 32 (Calendar, p. 453).

8 Ibid., vol. cclxxv, art. 35 (Calendar, p. 455).

9 Ibid., vol. ccixxiv, art. 22.

10 Ibid., vol. cclxxviii, art. 66 (Calendar, p. 569).

11 Ibid., art. 67 (Calendar, pp. 570–71).

12 Ibid., art. 62 (Calendar, p. 563).

13 Cf. Howell, ed., State Trials, (1809), i, 1433.

14 Apologie … concerning the Laie Earl of Essex, p. 15.

15 Ibid., pp. 12 and 13.

16 Ibid. …, pp. 13–14.

17 These are published by Spedding (Letters and Life … of … Bacon, 1862, ii, 197–202), who thinks they helped secure the final release of Essex, August, 26, 1600, from all remaining restraints except that forbidding him to attend at court without permission. According to the report of Fynes Moryson, Essex was practically at liberty within a month of the hearing at York House (History of Ireland …, 1735, i, 166 ff.) Cf. Spedding, op. cit., ii, 189.

18 Spedding, op. cit., ii, 172–73.

19 Fynes Moryson, op. cit., i, 166 ff.

20 Hatfield MSS. 80, 20; Printed in Abbott, Bacon and Essex, pp. 174–75.

21 Harleian MSS. 6854. 177; published by Spedding, Letters and Life … of Bacon, 1862, ii, 175 ff.

22 See his History of Ireland … 1599–1603, 1735, i, 157 ff.

23 Op. cit., i, 163–64.

24 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxv, art. 25 and 25.1 (Calendar, p. 404). Some of the “February,” 1600 entries in the Calendar seem to be misdated. At whatever time the interrogatories were prepared, the confession was certainly made in July.

25 Discussed below, p. 709. Cf. Howell, ed., State Trials, 1809, i, 1444.

26 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 54 (Calendar, p. 555). (Query, as to whether these notes should be dated February 18, rather than February 13?). Articles 54 and 55 give two reports of “rough notes of speeches in the Star Chamber” made by the Lord Keeper, the Lord Admiral, Sir W. Knollys, and Sir Robert Cecil reviewing the Essex situation. A letter from Vincent Hussey, Feb. 18, 1601, reports the same speeches with slight variations (Ibid., vol. cclxxviii, between articles 94 and 95, Calendar, pp. 582–84).

27 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 55 (Calendar, p. 557).

28 For example, he wrote to Coke“February 19?” 1601: “If possible, do not let Blount's words be read where he says that if he were committed any further than to the Lord Canterbury's house, the Keeper's, or Comptroller's, he would do, &c.” (S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 96). Cf. use of Blount's deposition February 19, 1601, Howell, State Trials, (1809), i, 1346–47.) It was but natural that Cecil should bring together much of the material to be used in the trials for treason. As early as November, 1599, he indicated, in his survey of the Irish situation, his possession of much of the most recent news through his office as secretary (S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. ccxxxiii, art. 37 and 35). Cecil was responsible for the proclamation of Essex as a traitor, which formally groups evidence. Next to Coke and Popham, Cecil was the person most frequently present at examinations of the chief conspirators. He was one of two who spent a good part of two days with Essex in the Tower, February 20 and February 21, 1601; he was one of five who examined Merrick, Cuffe, Danvers, Rutland, Sandys, Monteagle, on March 2, and was one of three who examined Alabaster and the Earls of Southampton and Rutland, March 9. (Contemporary notes, “seemingly by an officer of the Tower,” S. P. Dom., 1601–03, vol. cclxxxi, art. 68, Calendar, p. 90).

29 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 55 (Calendar, p. 556).

30 Howell, ed., State Trials, (1809), i, 1338. 30,000 is probably an error for 300,000, the sum appearing in two records of Cecil's speeches and in the Directions for Preachers sent out concerning Essex.

31 S. P. Dom. 1601–03, vol. ccxxxrx, art. 19 (Calendar, p. 12).

32 Howell, ed., State Trials, (1809), i, 1431–32. Another type of preparation for these trials by Coke is shown in his digests of the examinations, as in three documents (ten written pages) by him, called, “Notes of the evidences on the Earl of Essex's conspiracy taken from the various examinations of parties implicated (S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, articles 98–100 (Cal., p. 587).

33 Howell, ed., State Trials, (1809), i, 1432–33.

34 Ibid., i, 1444.

35 The depositions of Phillips and of Merrick with reference to this performance are slightly condensed in the calendars of S. P. Dom. (where they appear at pages 578 and 575 of the Calendar for 1598–1601), but appear at length in Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, by C. M. Ingleby, 2d ed. by Lucy Toulmin Smith, pp. 36 and 35, and in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, re-edited by John Munro, 1909, pp. 82 and 81.

36 MS. in Public Record Office. Cf. S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 78 (Calendar, p. 575).

37 See below, page 714.

38 5. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxv, art. 146. Cf. a fuller form in Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, p. 38.

39 Howell, ed., State Trials (1809), i, 1445.

40 Declaration of the Practices and Treasons. … See the Proceedings after the arraignments, Spedding, Letters and Life of … Bacon, 1862, ii, 289. Camden, in his Annals, follows Bacon in pointing this moral.

41 Add'l MSS. 12497, pp. 287 and 289. Cf. Spedding, Letters and Life … of … Bacon 1862, ii, 214.

42 Howell, ed., State Trials (1809), i, 1350 and 1355. His chief charges are by historical analogies, as in likening Essex to Pisistratus, and to the Duke of Guise, and Sir John Davies to Catiline's Manlius.

43 S. P. Dom. 1601–03, vol. cclxxix, art. 28 (Calendar, p. 15).

44 Errors in quotations occur especially on pp. 755, 756, 762, 765, 766, 767, 769, 770, 771, 773, 776, 777. On pages 770 and 771 four notes in succession are completely mistaken in references, notes 42 and 43 showing great complication of errors; and on pages 754, 762, 778, 779 are lesser errors of reference. Author's comments are run into a quotation on pages 770–771.

45 For the letter from Raleigh to Cecil, July 6, 1597, quoted on p. 698 of my article as summarized in the State Papers Domestic, a better text is the full version since published in Samuel Tannenbaum, Problems in Shakespeare's Penmanship, 1927, pp. 231–32. The part in question reads:

“I acquaynted my L: generali [Essex] with your letter to mee & your kynd acceptance of your entertaynmente, hee was also wonderfull merry att ye consait of Richard the 2. I hope it shall never alter, & whereof I shalbe most gladd of, as the trewe way to all our good, quiett & advancemet, & most of all for her sake whose affaires shall therby fynd better progression.”

When I first read Raleigh's letter, I though “conceit” probably referred to an idea for an entertainment, a “device”; but I am not sure but that it may refer to a trait or attitude of Richard II intended to suggest a trait of Elizabeth. On page 48 of his history of Henry IV, Hayward writes that, when the decree banishing Hereford was heard,

“a confused noyse was raysed among the people, some lamenting eyther the desert, or the inurie of the Duke of Hereford, whom they exceedingly fauored, others laughing at the conceit of the King” [Richard II].

46 For the quotation, and for comment on it, see Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, ed. C. M. Ingleby, pp. 449–50.

47 See Thomas Wright, Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, ii, 75; and, for Lord Hunsdon's allusion, Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, iii, 540.

48 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 55. See also Vincent Hussey's letter, (Calendar, p. 584, and Directions for Preachers, p. 567).

49 S. P. Dom. 1598–1601, vol. cclxxviii, art. 127 (“Feb. 19?” 1601).

50 From the Peter Le Neve MS. account, pr. in Howell, State Trials (1809), i, 1422.

51 Cassell and Co., 1909, p. 69. Similarly, Sir John Harington (Apologie of Poetrie, 1591) says: “To omit other famous tragedies that that was played at S. Iohns in Cambridge, of Richard the 3, would move, (I think) Phalaris the tyraunt, and terrifie all tyrannous minded men from following their foolish ambitious humours.”

52 PMLA, xliii (1928), 722 ff.

53 See, for example of a striking inconsistency, page 4 of the June, 1930, paper, where Shakespeare is shown to agree with Hayward in having the oath given by Hereford at Ravenspur (1 H. IV, iv, iii) and with Holinshed in naming Doncaster as the place (ibid., v, i).