In November, 1589, the company acting at the Blackfriars Theatre thought it would be advantageous to their interests to send in to the Privy Council a memorial, certifying that they had never given cause of displeasure by introducing upon the stage ‘matters of State or Religion’. The actors who signed this memorial styled themselves ‘Her Majesty’s Poor Players’, and among them appears the name of William Shakspere. We here meet the Poet’s name for the first time after he had left his home at Stratford-on-Avon, about four years previously. What his employment had been in the intervening period is a question which few of his biographers have cared to ask, and which not one has answered.

It is usually supposed that immediately upon his arrival in London he became in some way associated with the Stage,—but there is no evidence of this. On the contrary, we shall give reasons for believing that coming to London poor, needy, and in search of employment, he was immediately taken into the service of Vautrollier the Printer.

Thomas Vautrollier, entitled in his patents ‘typographus Londinensis, in claustro vulgo Blackfriers commorans’, was a Frenchman who came to England at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. He was admitted a brother of the Stationers’ Company in 1564, and commenced business as Printer and Publisher in Blackfriars, working in the same premises up to the time of his death, which occurred in 1588. His character as a scholar stands high, and his workmanship is excellent. He had a privilege, or monopoly, for the printing and sale of certain books, as all the chief Printers then had. Shortly before his death he married his daughter to Richard Field, who for this reason, and because he succeeded to the premises and business of the widow, is erroneously supposed by Ames to have served his apprenticeship to Vautrollier. But why bring in the name of Richard Field? The reply is important. Field was Shakspere’s own townsman, and being of about the same age and social rank, the boys probably grew up together as playfellows. Field’s father, Henry Field, was a Tanner at Stratford-on-Avon, and Halliwell says ‘a friend of Shakspere’s family’. Early in 1578 young Field came up to London, and at Michaelmas was apprenticed for seven years to George Bishop, Printer and Publisher. Being in the same trade as Vautrollier, Field would naturally become acquainted with him; and in 1588, a year after he was out of his time, he married Vautrollier’s daughter. Here, then, we seem to have a missing link supplied in the chain of Shakspere’s history. In 1585 Shakspere came up to London in a ‘needy’ state. To whom would he be more likely to apply than to his old playmate Richard Field. Field, a young man nearly out of his apprenticeship, on terms of intimacy with Vautrollier, could do nothing better than recommend him to the father of his future wife. Once introduced we may be sure that Shakspere, with his fund of wit and good humour, would always be a welcome guest; and that this friendly feeling was maintained between him and the Vautrollier-Field families receives confirmation from the fact that Richard Field, who succeeded to the shop and business soon after the death of his father-in-law, actually put to press the two first printed works of the great Poet, the ‘Venus and Adonis’, 1593, and the ‘Lucrece’, 1594.

Here then, in Vautrollier’s employ, perhaps as a Press-reader, perhaps as an Assistant in the shop, perchance as both, we imagine Shakspere to have spent about three years upon his first arrival in the metropolis. Placed thus in Blackfriars, close to the Theatre, close to the Taverns, close to the Inns of Court, and in what was then a fashionable neighbourhood, Shakspere enjoyed excellent opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of men and manners.

Field did not succeed Vautrollier immediately upon his death. His widow endeavoured for some time to carry on the business alone; but for some unknown reason the Stationers’ Company withheld their license; and after a fruitless effort to obtain it, she was succeeded by her son-in-law. These business changes would probably be the occasion of which Shakspere eagerly availed himself to join the Players at the neighbouring theatre.

The Sonnets, although not printed until 1609, are generally acknowledged to be among Shakspere’s earliest efforts, and we cannot help imagining that Sonnet XXIV was written while in the employment of Vautrollier; or at any rate, while the shop, hung round with prints, was fresh in the Poet’s memory. May be some of their warmth was inspired by the charms of the buxom widow herself who was apostrophised by the Poet when wishing her

To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Sonnet xxiv.

At any rate, we have here in three lines as many metaphors, and all derived from just such employment as we suppose Shakspere at that time to have been engaged in.

Then, again, to a Printer’s widow, not over young, what more telling than the following reference?

Or what strong hand can hold Time’s swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Sonnet lxvi.

Note here, that the jet black ink which everybody admires in old manuscripts was much too thick for a running hand, and had long been superseded by a writing fluid which, in the 16th century, was far from equalling the bright gloss of Printing Ink.

Before turning to the internal evidence supplied by Shakspere’s writings in support of our theory, let us glance at the list of works printed and published by Vautrollier, and see if Shakspere reflected any trace of their influence upon his mind.

From Herbert’s ‘Typographical Antiquities’ we find that in the ‘Shop’ would be the two following works:

Delamote’s Introduction, as well as the Sacred Songs by Tallis and Bird, were Vautrollier’s copyright, and we have already seen how intimate an acquaintance Shakspere had with music. Might not the above works have been the mine from which he obtained his knowledge?

Of religious works, Vautrollier printed and published several, all in accordance with the principles of the great Reformation, and the writer who argued that from his intimate knowledge of the tenets of Calvin, Shakspere must have been himself a Calvinist, would have found sufficient explanation of his special knowledge in the following books from Vautrollier’s press:

This last contains an Epistle to the Reader by John Calvin, as well as an address headed Typographus Lectori. Of each of the above works several editions were published.

In one of his pedantic speeches Holofernes exclaims:

Venetia! Venetia!
Chi non te vede non ti pretia.
Old Mantuan! Old Mantuan! who understandeth thee not, loveth thee not.
Love’s Labour Lost, iv, 2.

Where did Shakspere learn his Italian, which, although then a court language, he quotes but rarely, and in an awkward manner? Surely at second-hand, and probably quoting the phrases current at the period, or still more probably from conning in his spare moments:

This was put to press again in 1587. In Vautrollier’s ‘shop’ he would also have often in his hands:

Here, again, we have a very extensive Italian vocabulary upon all common subjects quite sufficient for an occasional quotation; as to the plots taken from Italian sources, such as ‘Romeo and Juliet’, it seems to be now generally admitted that Shakspere in every instance followed the English translations.

But Shakspere knew also a little French, and uses a few colloquial sentences here and there. In one play indeed, Henry V, iii. 4, there is a short scene between the Princess and her attendant, in alternate French and English, which reads almost like a page of a Vocabulary. Shakspere’s knowledge of Latin was apparently about the same in extent; and for the uses to which he has applied both tongues, the Flourie Field of Four Languages, already quoted as the source of his Italian, would be quite sufficient. If not, he had the opportunity of consulting under his master’s roof

the last compiled from the writings of that great Printer, Aldus Manutius.

Some of Shakspere’s biographers have maintained that he must have been acquainted with Plutarch and other classical writers, because he quotes from their works. Dr. Farmer in his masterly essay on the learning of Shakspere, has shown that the Poet took all his quotations, even to the blunders, from the edition of Plutarch, in English, printed and published by Vautrollier, a year or two before we suppose that Shakspere entered into his service:

Moreover, Vautrollier, who was a good scholar, appears to have had a great liking for Ovid. He printed Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Ovid’s Epistles, and Ovid’s Art of Love. Now it is a notable fact that although Shakspere, unlike contemporary writers who abound in classical allusions, scarcely ever mentions a Latin poet, and still more seldom a Greek poet, yet he quotes Ovid several times:

As Ovid, be an outcast quite abjured.
Taming of the Shrew, i, 1.
Tit. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?
Luc. Grandsire, ’tis Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Titus, iv, 1.
I am here with thee and thy goats as the most
capricious poet, honest Ovid was among the Goths.
As You Like It, iii, 3.
Ovidius Naso was the man.
Love’s Labour Lost, iv, 2.

Of Cicero’s Oration Vautrollier issued several editions, and had the privilege ‘ad imprimendum solum’ granted him; and to this work also, on at least two occasions, Shakspere refers:

Hath read to thee
Sweet poetry and Tully’s Orator.
Titus, iv, 1.
Sweet Tully.
2 Henry VI, iv, 1.

The fact to be noted with reference to these classical quotations is this: Shakspere quotes those Latin authors, and those only, of which Vautrollier had a ‘license’; and makes no reference to other and popular writers, such as Virgil, Pliny, Aurelius, and Terence, editions of whose works Vautrollier was not allowed to issue, but all of which, and especially the last, were great favorites in the sixteenth century, as is shown by the numerous editions which issued from the presses of Vautrollier’s fellow-craftsmen.

Among other publications of Vautrollier was an English translation of Ludovico Guicciardini’s Description of the Low Countries, originally printed in 1567. In this work is one of the earliest accounts of the invention of printing at Haarlem, which is thus described in the Batavia of Adrianus Junius, 1575. ‘This person [Coster] during his afternoon walk, in the vicinity of Haarlem, amused himself with cutting letters out of the bark of the beech tree, and with these, the characters being inverted as in seals, he printed small sentences.’ The idea is cleverly adapted by Orlando:

these trees shall be my books,
And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character.
As You Like It, iii, 2.

Lastly, it would be an interesting task to compare the Mad Folk of Shakspere, most of whom have the melancholy fit, with

This was printed by Vautrollier, and probably read carefully for press by the youthful Poet.

The disinclination of Shakspere to see his plays in print has often been noticed by his biographers, and is generally accounted for by the theory that reading the plays in print would diminish the desire to hear them at the theatre. This is a very unsatisfactory reason, and not so plausible as the supposition that, sickened with reading other people’s proofs for a livelihood, he shrunk from the same task on his own behalf. His contemporaries do not appear to have shared in the same typographical aversion. The plays of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher were all printed in the life-time of their authors. Francis Quarles had the satisfaction and pride of seeing all his works in printed form, and showed his appreciation and knowledge of Typography by the following quaint lines, which we quote from the first edition, literatim:

On a Printing-house.
The world’s a Printing-house: our words, our thoughts,
Our deeds, are Characters of sev’rall sizes:
Each Soule is a Compos’ter; of whose faults
The Levits are Correctors: Heav’n revises;
Death is the common Press; fr^o whence, being driven,
W’ are gathered Sheet by Sheet, & bound for Heaven.
From Divine Fancies, 1632, lib. iv, p. 164.