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EDWARD DE VERE — MIDDLE PERIOD: DRAMATIC FOREGROUND
III
It would be of inestimable value if some of Oxford's manuscripts or even the titles of his plays could be discovered. We should not, of course, expect to find an exact correspondence between these titles and those of the Shakespeare plays: but rather something furnishing connecting clues. Up to the present we have been able to discover only one such title, and the result has been by no means disappointing. In Mrs. Stopes's work on "Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage" we find the following from a contemporary record (1584).
"The History of Agamemnon and Ulisses presented and enacted before her maiestie by the Earle of Oxenford his boyes on St. John's daie at night Greenwich."
There is, of course, no Shakespeare play entitled "Agamemnon and Ulysses"; but a careful examination of Shakespeare's play, "Troilus and Cressida," from this point of view will, we think, yield very interesting results. Without actually counting words, we would be inclined to say, on a general inspection, that the speeches of Agamemnon and Ulysses account for as large, or maybe a larger, part of the drama, than do the words actually spoken by Troilus and [262] Cressida themselves. This, however, is not the most interesting part of the case. Take the first act, for example, and compare carefully the three scenes of which it is composed. The first two scenes will be found to contain a large proportion of short sentences representing free and rapid dialogue, and also a fair admixture of prose. In this we have the work of the skilled playwriter. Scene three is totally different. Here each speaker steps forward in turn and utters a lengthy oration all in blank verse; prose being entirely absent. There is in it profound thought and skilful expression; but it is for the most part poetry pure and simple rather than drama: intellect and poetic skill, but not the proper technique of dialogue.
This marked difference in point of technique between the third scene and the first two scenes is just the difference between the work of a poet making his early essays in drama and the work of the practiced dramatist. And this apparently early Shakespeare drama is what might fittingly be called part of a play of "Agamemnon and Ulysses." Agamemnon, as the king, holds precedence and leads off with his thirty lines of blank verse, and Ulysses has by far the lion share of orating throughout the scene. A careful study of the two kinds of work in "Troilus and Cressida" will perhaps bring home to the reader more clearly than anything else could a sense of what took place in the development of drama in Queen Elizabeth's reign. What we take to be the Earl of Oxford's play of "Agamemnon and Ulysses," forming the original ground-work for the "Shakespeare" play of "Troilus and Cressida," represents the Elizabethan drama in an early simple stage of its evolution, with few speakers and long speeches, and the finished play of "Troilus and Cressida" the work of the same pen when practice had matured his command over the resources of true dramatic dialogue and a multitude of dramatis personae. In the Agamemnon and Ulysses scene, Æneas is introduced to establish a link with the Troilus and Cressida romance; and then for the [263] first time the succession of long speeches is interrupted: and a little rapid dialogue takes place.
An examination of the play as a whole affords a very strong presumption that Shakespeare's play of "Troilus and Cressida" had for its foundation an earlier play of simple structure to which the name of "Agamemnon and Ulysses" might very fittingly be applied.
We would now ask for a careful reading of the whole of those speeches of Ulysses in Act 1, scene 3, of which we shall give but one short excerpt:
"O! when degree is staked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
* * *
Great Agamemnon,
This chaos when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking."The scene as a whole is a discussion of state policy, from the standpoint of one strongly imbued with aristocratic conceptions, and conscious of the decline of the feudal order upon which social life had hitherto rested. Make, then, the Earl of Oxford the writer, and Elizabeth's court the audience for "Shakespeare's" representation of "Agamemnon and Ulysses," and the whole situation becomes much more intelligible than if we try to make the Stratford man the writer.
As illustrating the correspondence of the mind of Oxford, under other aspects, with the mind at work in "Troilus and Cressida," we shall first of all recall two stanzas in the poem entitled, "What cunning can express?"
[264] Each throws a dart
That kindleth soft sweet fire:
Within my sighing heart
Possessed by Desire.No sweeter life I try
Than in her love to die."
* * *
"This pleasant lily white,
This, taint of roseate red;
This Cynthia's silver light,
This sweet fair Dea spread;
These sunbeams in mine eye,
These beauties make me die."The very extravagance of the terms arrests attention and almost provokes criticism. We would therefore draw attention to the following expression of sentiment on the part of Troilus whilst awaiting the entry of Cressida:
"I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
The imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense: what will it be
When that the watery palate tastes indeed
Love's thrice repured nectar? death, I fear me
Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers." (III. 2.)The previous speech of Troilus's in which occurs the line:
"Where I may wallow in the lily-beds,"
reveals the working of the same imagery as in Oxford's poem; and the song in the immediately preceding scene, containing the couplet:
"These lovers cry,
Oh! oh! they die,"shows the insistence of the central thought in a lighter vein.
A few lines further on appears that dominant note of high birth, followed immediately by the expression: "Few words to fair faith," which almost reproduces an expression [265] in a letter of Oxford's written at a later date and only' published in modern times: "Words in faithful minds are tedious."
We have by no means exhausted the connection of "Troilus and Cressida" with the plays, poems and life of Edward de Vere, the starting point for which is furnished by the "Agamemnon and Ulysses" play. Enough has been said, however, to establish a harmony and to add to the sum of these accordances, which in their mass and convergence constitute the proof of our theory.