Did Shakespeare Make Fun of Other Writers?

A friend recently asked me whether Shakespeare ever made fun of the work of other writers. The first thing I thought of was Falstaff taking on the style of Thomas Preston's Cambyses¹:

Falstaff.... I must speake in passion, and I will doe it in king Cambises vaine.

Prince. Well, here is my leg.

Falstaff. And here is my speech; stand aside Nobilitie.

Hostess. O Jesu, this is excellent sport i'faith.

Falst. Weepe not sweet Queene, for trickling teares are vain.

Host. O the father, how he holds his countenance?

Falst. For Gods sake Lords, convay my trustfull Queene,

For teares do stop the floudgates of her eyes.

Host. O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotrie² plaiers as ever I see.

Falst. Peace good pint-pot, peace good tickle-braine.

Harrie, I doe not onelie marvaile where thou spendest

thy time, but also how thou art accompanied.³

Shakespeare next has Falstaff launch into John Lyly's Euphuistic style. Early on, Shakespeare was actually heavily influenced by Lyly's works but he chose not to allow serial “proverbs” to take over his plays.

For though the cammomill, the more it is troden on, the faster it growes, so youth the more it is wasted, the sooner it weares:

The point here is that the hoi poloi — “the pit,” in the jargon of the time — find such melodramatic bellowing to be the epitome of good play and such proverbs to be the epitome of wisdom. Falstaff has enough education to manipulate his fellows and the Hostess has none at all.

The educated audience, in the boxes, consider such passages to be unintentionally comical. It is them for whom Shakespeare has written the scene.

While Cambyses is often and always the butt of Shakespeare parodies, others were often on the receiving end of both mockery and praise. Again, many lines from the plays of Lyly are too close to those of Shakespeare's early comedies Two Gentleman of Verona and Comedy of Errors to be coincidence. It is difficult, though, if not impossible, to determine which playwright took what from the other. That they were cross-pollinating is among the highest means of praise.

George Peele's The Battell of Alcazar was parodied in a line of the character Pistol, on much the same basis as Cambyses, in the same 2 Henry IV, But a look at Peele's play yields us the lines:

Moore. Villaine, a horse.

Boy. Oh my Lord, if you returne you die.

Moore. Villaine I saie, give me a horse to flie,

To swimme the river villaine, and to flie.⁴

Which are almost certainly the inspiration for:

Richard III. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

Catesby. Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse.

Richard III. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die:⁵

He has even substituted “slave” for Peele's favorite expletive “villaine” just as he did throughout when he removed nearly every one of the many instances of the word in the process of rewriting Peele's King John⁶ into the play we now attribute entirely Shakespeare.

Peele's play The Arraignment of Paris (1584) was a favorite of Edward de Vere and John Lyly who managed the Blackfriars theater during an historically important run from 1581 to 1584. It was acted, as most plays at Blackfriars, by the combined company of the Children of St. Paul's and the Children of the Royal Chappel.

The scholarly consensus has long been that his original King John shows signs that Shakespeare edited a modest portion of the play — like a theater manager might. Alcazar and King John may have been written for the Blackfriars just as it closed. After the theater was closed, Lyly became the dramaturge for the Children of St. Paul's and the plays may have first appeared there. Alcazar was purchased as a remainder by Philip Henslowe, perhaps because it was a play without a playhouse, and became the favorite play for many years, by any playwright except Christopher Marlowe, in the repertoire of the Admiral's Men company.

There are numerous ways, then, that Shakespeare honored Peele's work. Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, Christopher Marlowe's Dido and Tamburlaine: Shakespeare parodied their melodramatic style at its most exaggerated. Yet the player's speech in Hamlet may have honored Marlowe's Dido by competing with it and he declared the death of Marlowe a great loss in the line “a great reckoning in a little room”.⁷

1Preston, Thomas. A Lamentable Tragedie of Cambises, King of Percia (1569)

2Malapropism for “harlequin”.

31 Henry IV, II.iv.

4Peele, George. The Batell of Alcazar (1594). Scholarly consensus is that this play was written circa 1589. It was extremely popular on stage and publication held off until 1594.

5The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (1597), V.iv. The play was written years earlier but was so popular on the stage that publication was held off.

6Peele, George. The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591). Shakespeare, William. The Life and Death of King John (first published in 1623 in the First Folio)

7As You Like It, III.iii.