The Late Mr Shakespeare

by Robert Nye

  Spectator, this life’s shadow is. To see

  The truer image and a livelier he

  Turn reader. But observe his comic vein,

  Laugh, and proceed next to a tragic strain,

  Then weep. So when thou find’st two contraries,

  Two different passions from thy rapt soul rise,

  Say (who alone effect such wonders could)

  Rare Shakespeare to the life thou dost behold.

  * King Lear, Act III, Scene 4, lines 74–5.

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  In which Mr Shakespeare plays a game at tennis

  William Shakespeare and John Florio enjoyed a game at tennis. They played in a walled and roofed court belonging to the Earl of Southampton. This court was 110 feet long by 38 feet and 8 inches wide, though the floor measured but 96 feet long by 31 feet and 8 inches wide, the difference being the width of a roofed corridor, the ‘penthouse’ which runs along the two end walls and one of the side walls of all such arenas.

  Across the middle of the court a tasselled rope is stretched, and I will tell you that the first object of the game is to strike the ball over this with a bat called a racquet. The rope is five feet high at the ends, and three feet six inches high in the middle, and divides the floor into two equal parts, the ‘service’ side and the ‘hazard’ side.

  Sometimes I stood in the ‘dedans’ to watch them play. The dedans is an opening in the end wall on the service side, under the penthouse, where provision is made for spectators, who are protected by a net.

  The game is very fierce. It goes like this.

  The players decide who shall serve by spinning a racquet on its head. Mr Shakespeare would spin and Mr Florio would call ‘rough’ or ‘smooth’, the ‘rough’ side of the head of the racquet showing the knots of some of the lower strings. The winner takes the service side, service being an advantage.

  The server may serve from any part of the court, and in any way that he thinks best to serve. (Mr Shakespeare would spin the ball high with his fingers and then hit it hard with his racquet as it came down.) The ball must then fly over the rope, and strike the side penthouse, and fall into the service-court. The opponent (or ‘striker-out’) tries to return the ball over the rope before it has touched the ground a second time. He may volley it if he can, or he may half-volley it. For a stroke to be ‘good’ it must be made before the second bound of the ball, and the ball must go over the rope (even if it brushes it), and the ball must not strike the wall above the play-line, nor touch the roof or rafters. The first point to be attained is thus to be sure of getting the ball over the rope, and the next to do so in such a way as to defeat your opponent’s attempt to make a ‘good’ stroke in return.

  It often happens that a player, either intentionally or from inability, does not take or touch a ball returned to him over the rope. In this event, a ‘chase’ is made, the goodness or the badness of which depends upon the spot on the floor which the ball touches next after its first bound. The nearer this spot is to the end wall the better the chase. Strokes into the galleries and doors count as chases. The making (or as they call it, the ‘laying down’) of a chase does not immediately affect the score: it has to be won first, i.e. the other player tries to make a better chase; if he fails, the original maker wins. The winner of the chase scores a point. A point is scored by that player whose opponent fails to make a good return stroke, or who strikes the ball into a winning opening, or wins a chase, or to whom two faults are served in succession. A player loses a stroke who strikes the ball twice, or allows it to touch himself or his clothes.

  The game is marked, 15, 30, 40 (or advantage), equality of numbers, and then victory. The players wear felt shoes for play on the smooth, tiled pavement, with caps held on by a band which goes under the chin. The balls are small and hard, being made of whitleather and stuffed with dog’s hair and other such stubble.* The racquets are woven from strings such as might otherwise be found on a six-stringed lyre.

  Mr Florio was an excellent player at tennis, with a subtle understanding of all the game’s finer points. Even if you had never seen him in action on Rizley’s court, you might deduce as much from his Second Fruits (1591), where the value of chases is discussed at length.

  Mr Shakespeare was an altogether wilder sort of performer. He struck the ball well and he was agile in his volleying and his bandying, but when it came to the chases you could tell his mind was somewhere else. This did not bother me as his spectator. In fact, what I liked best was the stream of invective which would flow from his lips when he was losing. I never heard anything to match it, not even among the tinkers and mountebanks busy at Bartholomew Fair.

  One morning when the game went all Florio’s way, I took paper and jotted down some of the choice names which my master called his opponent as each point was lost. Here is that riot of insults:

  You drone! You slug! You patch! You punk!

  You clog! You bubble! You sprat! You sot!

  Dog-ape! Odd worm! Garbage! Fishmonger!

  Unpaved eunuch! Jack-sauce! Miscreant! Mouse!

  Spongey officer! Fire-drake! Mongrel! Chewet!

  Libbard’s head! Rash wanton! Detested kite! Lack-love!

  You mere gypsy! You gibbet! You foul blot! You thing!

  Notable lubber! Coistrel! Gross lout! Camel!

  Such a snipe! Botchy core! Sir knave! Cuckold!

  Minion! You drone! Malt-horse! Shrike!

  Coxcomb! Boggler! Carbonado! Toad!

  Mechanic slave! Serpent’s egg! Dullard! Popinjay!

  Capering fool! Foolish cur! Silly dwarf! Hulk!

  Whoreson zed! Rebel’s whore! Sly divel! You chaos!

  You ronyon! You polecat! You baggage! You bead!

  You saucy friar! You prodigal! You Lucifer! Thou cat!

  There were other choice phrases of abuse also, more in the nature of complete sentences, which Mr Shakespeare uttered when he had his breath back. Amongst these I noted:

  ‘You very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow!’

  ‘You wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy!’

  ‘You logger-headed and unpolish’d groom!’

  ‘Red-tailed bumble-bee! Foul indigested lump!’

  ‘You are the son and heir of a mongrel bitch!’

  ‘You dainty dominie! You stretch-mouthed rascal!’

  ‘You minimus, of hind’ring knotgrass made!’

  ‘Mad mustachio purple-hued maltworm!’

  ‘Thou little better thing than earth!’

  ‘Foolish compounded clay-man!’

  ‘A dog-fox not proved worth a blackberry!’

  ‘King-Urinal! Monsieur Mock-water! Thou finch egg!’

  ‘Thou idle immaterial skein of sleeve silk!’

  ‘Thou green sarsanet flap for a sore eye!’

  ‘Thou bright defiler of Hymen’s purest bed!’

  ‘You bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!’

  ‘Thou disease of a friend!’

  ‘Thou thing of no bowels!’

  And so on, and so forth. Mr Shakespeare was a master of this craft or sullen art. He could go on for minutes on end, insulting Mr Florio without ever repeating himself once.

  I remember one game where Mr Shakespeare kept on serving what they call double faults. Of course, he blamed his opponent for this small deficiency. John Florio, he said, was a KNAVE. Then, standing at the tasselled rope, racquet in hand, which he waved above his head to punctuate each verbal thrust, he gave it as his opinion that John Florio was not just a KNAVE, but a foul-mouthed and caluminous KNAVE, and not just a foul-mouthed and caluminous KNAVE, but a wrangling KNAVE, a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally KNAVE, a KNAVE that smelt of sweat, a shrewd KNAVE and unhappy, a sly and constant KNAVE, a lousy KNAVE, a bacon-fed KNAVE, a counterfeit cowardly KNAVE, a crafty KNAVE, a subtle KNAVE, the lying’st KNAVE in Christendom, a beastly KNAVE, a stubborn ancient KNAVE, a muddy KNAVE, a whoreson beetle-headed, flap-ear’d KNAVE, a base notorious KNAVE, a KNAVE very voluble, a pesti
lent complete KNAVE, a KNAVE fit only to be beat into a twiggen-bottle, an arrant, malmsy-nose KNAVE, a KNAVE most untoward, a muddy KNAVE, a ruddy KNAVE, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking KNAVE. In short, a villain.

  And not just a villain, of course, but a bloody, bawdy villain, a remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, landless villain. A honeysuckle villain. A villain fit to lie unburied. Even a chaffy lord not worth the name of villain.

  Mr Shakespeare had a very good line in expletives, also. Here are just a few which I recall from the tennis court – William Shakespeare’s tennis court oaths:

  Cupid have mercy! O woeful day!

  What rubbish and what offal! Pluto and hell!

  O, vengeance, vengeance! Chops!

  Pish for thee! By Chrish, la!

  Figo for thy friendship! Bedlam, have done!

  Plague of your policy! Good worts!

  Froth and scum! By cock and pie!

  Divinity of hell! O blood, blood, blood!

  Pow-waw! Fut!

  My breath and blood! O curse of marriage!

  Fire and brimstone! Hell gnaw his bones!

  Goats and monkeys! Puttock! Puppies!

  A pox of wrinkles! Chaff and bran!

  Tilly-vally! God’s lid!

  Disgrace and blows! O piteous spectacle!

  Let all the dukes and all the devils roar!

  A bugbear take you! O plague and madness!

  Foh! Fie! Leprosy o’ertake!

  For the love of Juno! O viper vile!

  And so on. But his favourites, in the expletive art, were ‘A pox on this gout! or a gout on this pox!’ (which line he gave to Falstaff), and (if he noticed me, note-taking in the dedans) A plague o’ these pickle-herring!’

  As this will indicate, some of these terms of abuse were borrowed from his own plays, but there were as many or more which he had not used in his work at the time when he uttered them extempore.

  All of which makes me think that William Shakespeare employed his games at tennis to put some critical part of his mind to sleep in action, and to see what words and phrases would bubble up from the depths if he lost his temper as a result. Not that he ever did lose his temper; not exactly. He would let himself go just far enough to have access to his great store of original invective. Then he would turn his fury into words. Then he would stop playing tennis. Often I thought he was playing some other game all the time.

  * Cf. ‘The barber’s man hath been seen with him; and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis-balls.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene 2, lines 45–7.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  What Shakespeare got from Florio + a word about George Peele

  I am apt to believe that Mr Shakespeare’s skill in the French and Italian tongues exceeded his knowledge in the Roman. For we find him not only beholding to Cinthio, Giraldi, and Bandello for his plots, but also able to write such a scene as that in Henry V where the princess Katharine and her governante converse in their native language quite believably. More cogent, though, to my memories of the playwright’s performance on the tennis court is the very great number of Italian proverbs scattered up and down in his writings. Where did these come from if not from John Florio?

  Southampton’s tutor had been born in London, the son of an Italian refugee of Jewish ancestry. He was educated under the direction of the scholar Vergerio at Tubingen. He travelled through Italy and returned to England in the middle 1570s. Here he made a living from private lessons, taught at Oxford, and was authorised to wear the gown of Magdalen College. Patronised by Walsingham, he was recommended to Lord Burghley, who appointed him as tutor to his ward. This would have been at the start of the Nineties, about the time when Shakespeare was beginning that monumental work more durable than bronze or stone, the immortal sonnets, which as we have seen began as advice to the pupil Rizley.

  So we have this interesting little triangle if not trinity – rich patron, learnéd teacher, eager poet. I think it was Rizley’s wish to see some of the furnishings of Italian romance transported to England, and Shakespeare’s wish both to please him and to have a certain edge over his rival playwrights by substituting for their classical scenes the much more colourful Italy of the Renaissance. As for the pedagogue, he was happy enough no doubt to have found both a powerful nobleman and a poet of genius to act as propagandists for the culture he personified.

  Florio’s library was magnificent. It contained more than three hundred volumes. It was this precious collection, to which Shakespeare soon had access, which provided the plot source of nearly every one of the early plays. Here he found the Novelle of Cinthio, and Luigi da Porto, and Boccaccio, and Bandello. Here he found the works of Machiavelli, and Ariosto, and Ser Giovanni, and Florio Fiorentino, and Petrarch, and Aretino, and Dante. Many of these texts were not yet translated into English, but with Florio to guide him to the treasures in the magic cavern the man from Stratford was soon rubbing lamps and releasing genii for himself. Everything he found got thoroughly turned into English in the process of his imagination, but Florio should be acknowledged as the one who gave him access to the cave.

  All Mr Shakespeare ever needed to set his mind a-racing was a few words, the merest outline of a plot. Often, hearing of some such, I saw him stop his ears, covering them suddenly with his hands, rather than listen to the actual conclusion of the story. He always preferred to hear half a promising tale, and then let his own wild fancy do the rest. In this way several of his plays had their beginnings.

  John Florio was a curious gentleman. The feature of him which I remember best was his little wax-like hands. When he had completed a game at tennis the smell that his body exhaled was of sweet earth-flesh, the odour of mushrooms. He had long, bristling moustaches which he would twist between his fingers and thumbs as he talked to you. As his several books show, he was a man of incontestable erudition and culture, even if he did like torturing rats.

  To give you some idea of Mr Shakespeare’s debt to Mr Florio, I think I will quote first from the latter’s First Fruits:

  ‘We need not speak so much of love; all books are full of love, with so many authors, that it were labour lost to speak of love.’

  That saying, of course, gave Mr Shakespeare the title of one of his first plays, Love’s Labour’s Lost.

  Among the three hundred proverbs which Florio boasted of having introduced into England from Italy, Shakespeare uses (to my count) more than thirty, and there are a few of them which the poet quotes more than ten times. It is interesting and revealing, your author suggests, to see the manner in which Shakespeare incorporates Florio’s ‘golden sentences’ in his dialogue or fits them into his verse:

  ‘All that glistereth is not gold …’ All that glisters is not gold Golden tombs do dust enfold …

  (Florio, First Fruits, page 32) (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 5)

  ‘More water flows by the mill than the miller knows …’ More water glideth by the mill than wots the miller of

  (First Fruits, page 34) (Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene 1)

  ‘When the cat is abroad the mice play …’ Playing the mouse in absence of the cat …’

  (First Fruits, page 33) (Henry V, Act I, Scene 2)

  ‘He that maketh not, marreth not …’ What make you? Nothing? What mar you then?

  (First Fruits, page 26) (As You Like It, Act I, Scene 1)

  ‘An ill weed groweth apace …’ Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace

  (First Fruits, page 31) (Richard III, Act II, Scene 4)

  ‘Fast bind, fast find …’ Fast bind, fast find,

  (Second Fruits, page 15) A proverb never stale in thrifty mind (The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 5)

  ‘Give losers leave to speak …’ But I can give the loser leave to chide,

  (Second Fruits, page 69) And well such losers may have leave to speak

  (Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene 1)

  ‘The end m
aketh all men equal …’ One touch of nature makes the whole world kin …’

  (First Fruits, page 31) (Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3)

  ‘Necessity hath no law …’ Nature must obey necessity …

  (First Fruits, page 32) (Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3)

  ‘That is quickly done, that is done well …’ If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly …

  (First Fruits, page 27) (Macbeth, Act I, Scene 7)

  In each and every case, of course, Shakespeare has improved on Florio. For instance, how much more fleeting his water-by-the-mill because it glideth, a word which has both the movement of the river and the sunlight on it, and so is more ephemeral than the Italian lexicographer’s flows. For instance, how much more immediate the poet’s one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, where TOUCH and KIN bring home the mere abstraction of the original.

  You may say, madam, that proverbs are much the same in any language, but surely you will concede that there are so many striking verbal similarities between Florio and Shakespeare as to make it likely that here we are not just up against coincidence. Besides, in Love’s Labour’s Lost (whose very title is borrowed, as I have shown, from the Italian-English manual), Shakespeare goes so far as to quote Florio in the Italian original, when he makes Holofernes say:

  ‘Ah! good old Mantuan. I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: Venetia, Venetia, Chi non te vede, non te pretia.’

  Florio had written: ‘Venetia qui non ti vedi non ti pretia; ma chi ti vede ben gli costa!’ You will find this also in his First Fruits, published in London in the summer of ’78.

  These two volumes of English and Italian dialogues, Florio’s First Fruits and his Second Fruits published some thirteen years later, seem to me to have provided Mr Shakespeare with a most unusual source of material. That the influence extended both ways might be surmised from the fact that while the subject of Love was omitted from the First Fruits, in the Second Fruits Mr Florio devotes no less than sixty pages to the tender passion, quoting Ovid constantly. I smell my master’s hand in this, not least in Florio’s conclusion that Love is as indispensable to mankind as eating or telling lies.