court; and on the 29th of September, in the seventh of Elizabeth, we have nineteen names subscribed, aldermen and burgesses. There is something in this document which suggests a motive higher than mere curiosity for calling up these dignitaries from their happy oblivion, saying to each, "Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself like an honest, plain-dealing man?" Out of the nineteen, six only can answer, "I thank God I have been so well brought up that I can write my name." We were reluctant to yield our assent to Malone's assertion that Shakspere's father had a mark to himself. The marks are not distinctly affixed to each name in this document; but subsequent discoveries establish the fact that he used two marks-one, something like an open pair of compasses; the other, the common cross. Even half a century later, to write was not held indispensable by persons of some pretension. One of the aldermen of Stratford in 1565, John Wheler, is described in the town-records as a yeoman. He must have been dwelling in Stratford, for we have seen that he was ordered to take the office of high bailiff, an office demanding a near and constant residence. We can imagine a moderate landed proprietor cultivating his own soil, renting perhaps other land, seated in a house in the town of Stratford, such as it was in the middle of the 16th century, as conveniently as in a solitary grange several miles away from it. Such a proprietor, cultivator, yeoman, we consider John Shakspere to have been. In 1556 John Shakspere was admitted at the Court-leet to two copyhold estates in Stratford. Here then is John Shakspere, before his marriage, the purchaser of two cops holds in Stratford, both with gardens, and one with a croft, or small inclosed field. In 1570 John Shakspere is holding, as tenant under William Clopton, a meadow of fourteen acres, with its appurtenances, called Ingon, at the annual rent of eight pounds. When he married, the estate of Asbies, within a short ride of Stratford, came also into his possession; and so did some landed property at Snitterfield. With these facts before us, scanty as they are, can we reasonably doubt that John Shakspere was living upon his own land, renting the land of others, actively engaged in the business of cultivation, in an age when men of substance very often thought it better to take the profits direct than to share them with the tenant? The belief that the father of Shakspere was a small landed proprietor and cultivator, employing his labour and capital in various modes which grew out of the occupation of land, offers a better, because a more natural, explanation of the circumstances connected with the early life of the great poet, than those stories which Would make him of obscure birth and servile employments. Take old Aubrey's story, the shrewd learned gos-ip and antiquary, who survived Shakspere some eighty years :-" Mr. William Shakespear was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade; but when he killed a calf he would do it in high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this town that was held not at all inferior to him for a natural wit, his acquaintance and coetarean, but died young." The story, however, has a variation. There was at Stratford, in the year 1693, a clerk of the parish church, eighty years old, that is, he was three years old when William Shakspere died, and he, pointing to the monument of the poet with the pithy remark that he was the "best of his family," proclaimed to a member of one of the Inns of Court that "this Shakespeare was formerly in this town bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he ran from his master to London." His father was a butcher, says Aubrey; he was apprenticed to a butcher, says the parish clerk. Akin to the butcher's trade is that of the dealer in wool. It is upon the authority of Betterton, the actor, who, in the beginning of the last century, made a journey into Warwickshire to collect anecdotes relating to Shakspere, that Rowe tells us that John Shakspere was a dealer in wool:-"His family, as appears by the register and the public writings relating to that town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen. His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment." Malone was a believer in Rowe's account; and he was confirmed in his belief by possessing a piece of stained glass, bearing the arms of the merchants of the staple, which had been removed from a window of John Shakspere's house in Henley Street. But, unfortunately for the credibility of Rowe, as then held, Malone made a discovery, as it is usual to term such glimpses of the past: "I began to despair of ever being able to obtain any certain intelligence concerning his trade; when, at length, I met with the following entry, in a very ancient manuscript, containing an account of the proceed ings in the bailiff's court, which furnished me with the long-sought-for information, and ascertains that the trade of our great poet's father was that of a glover;' "Thomas Siche de Arscotte in com. Wigorn. querit versus Johm Shakyspere de Stretford, in com. Warwic. Glover, in plac. quod reddat ei oct. libras, &c." This Malone held to be decisive. Mr. Collier and Mr. Halliwell affirm that the word Glo, with the second syllable contracted, is glover: and we accept their interpretation. But we still hold to the belief that he was, in 1556, a landed proprietor and an occupier of land; one who, although sued as a glover on the 17th June of that year, was a suitor in the same court on the 19th November, in a plea against a neighbour for unjustly detaining eighteen quarters of barley. We think, that

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butcher, dealer in wool, glover, may all be reconciled with our position, that he was a landed proprietor, occupying land. Harrison, who mingles laments at the increasing luxury of the farmer, with somewhat contradictory denouncements of the oppression of the tenant by the landlord, holds that the landlord is monopolising the tenant's profits." Most sorrowful of all to understand, that men of great port and countenance are so far from suffering their farmers to have any gain at all, that they themselves become GRAZIERS, BUTCHERS, TANNERS, SHEEP-MASTERS, WOODMEN, and denique quid non, thereby to enrich themselves, and bring all the wealth of the country into their own hands, leaving the commonality weak, or as an idol with broken or feeble arms, which may in time of peace have a plausible show, but, when necessity shall enforce, have an heavy and bitter sequel." Has not Harrison solved the mystery of the butcher;' explained the tradition of the wool-merchant;' shown how John Shakspere, the woodman,' naturally sold a piece of timber to the corporation, which we find recorded; and, what is most difficult of credence, indicated how the 'glover' is reconcileable with all these employments? We open an authentic record of this very period, and the solution of the difficulty is palpable: In John Strype's Memorials Ecclesiastical under Queen Mary I.,' under the date of 1558, we find this passage: "It is certain that one Edward Horne suffered at Newent, where this Deighton had been, and spake with one or two of the same parish that did see him there burn, and did testify that they knew the two persons that made the fire to burn him; they were two glovers or FELLMONGERS." A fellmonger and a glover appear from this passage to have been one and the same. The fellmonger is he who prepares skins for the use of the leather-dresser, by separating the wool from the hide-the natural coadjutor of the sheep-master and the woolman.

We have now to inquire who was the mother of William Shakspere? His father died in 1601. On the 9th of September 1608, we have an entry in the Stratford register of burial, "Mary Shakspere, widow." It is stated in a bill of chancery, of the date of November 24th, 1597, that John Shakspere and Mary his wife were "lawfully seised in their demesne as of fee as in the right of the said Mary of and in one messuage and one yard land, with the appurtenances, lying and being in Wylnecote." In the will of Robert Arden, dated November 24th 1556, we find, "I give and bequeath to my youngest daughter Mary all my land in Willmecote, called Asbyes, and the crop upon the ground," &c. We shall presently have occasion more particularly to refer to a grant of arms made to John Shakspere in 1569, and confirmed in 1599. In the latter document it is recited that he "had married the daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden, of Wellingcote." The grandfather of Mary Arden was groom of the chamber to Henry VII., and he was the nephew of Sir John Arden, squire of the body to the same king. Sir John Arden was a son of Walter Arden, and of Eleanor, the daughter of John Hampden of Buckinghamshire. There were thus the ties of common blood between William Shakspere and one of the most distinguished men of the next generation-John Hampden, who was a student in the Inner Temple when the poet died. Mary Arden's property has been computed to be worth some hundred and ten pounds of the money of her time. It is probable that Mary Arden became the wife of John Shakspere soon after her father's death, which was in 1556.

Of these parents, then, was William Shakspere born, in 1564, in the town of Stratford. But in what part of Stratford dwelt his parents in the year 1564? It was ten years after this that his father became the purchaser of two freehold houses in Henley-street-houses that still exist-houses which the people of England have agreed to preserve as a precious relic of their greatest brother. William Shakspere, then, might have been born at either of his father's copyhold houses, in Greenhill-street, or in Henley-street; he might have been born at Ingon; or his father might have occupied one of the two freehold houses in Henley-street at the time of the birth of his eldest son. Tradition says, that William Shakspere was born in one of these houses; tradition points out the very room in which he was born. Whether Shakspere were born here, or not, there can be no doubt that this property was the home of his boyhood.

At the time when Shakspere's father bought this house, it was, no doubt, a mansion as compared with the majority of houses in Stratford. There is an order from the Privy Council to the bailiff of Stratford, after a great fire which happened there in 1614, pointing out that fires had been very frequently occasioned there "by means of thatched cottages, stacks of straw, furges, and such-like combustible stuff, which are suffered to be erected and made confusedly in most of the principal parts of the town without restraint." Stratford, like nearly every other town of England in that day, closely built, imperfectly drained, was subject to periodical visitations of the plague. From the average annual number of births and burials we may infer that the usual number of the inhabitants was about 1200. When William Shakspere was about two months old, the plague broke out in this town, and, in the short space of six months, 238 persons, a fifth of the population, fell victims. The average annual mortality was about forty. No one of the family of Shakspere appears to have died during the visitation. In 1566 another son, Gilbert, was born. The head of this growing family was actively engaged, no doubt, in private and public duties. In 1568 John Shakspere became the

(1545). The Hathaway of Shakspere's time was named Richard; and the intimacy between him and John Shakspere is shown by a precept in an action against Richard Hathaway, dated 1566, in which John Shakspere is his bondman. The description in the marriage-bond of Anne Hathaway, as of Stratford, is no proof that she was not of Shottery; for such a document would necessarily have regard only to the parish of the persons described. Tradition, always valuable when it is not opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage of the Hathaways of Shottery with the wife of Shakspere. Garrick purchased relics out of it at the time of the Stratford Jubilee; Samuel İreland afterwards carried off what was called Shakspere's courting. chair; and there is still in the house a very ancient carved bedstead, which has been handed down from descendant to descendant as an heirloom. The house was no doubt once adequate to form a comfortable residence for a substantial and even wealthy yeoman. It is still a pretty cottage, embosomed by trees, and surrounded by pleasant pastures; and here the young poet might have surrendered his prudence to his affections. The very early marriage of the young man, with one more than seven years his elder, has been supposed to have been a rash and passionate proceeding. William Shakspere was married to Anne Hathaway before the close of the year 1582. He was then eighteen years and a half old. His wife was considerably older than himself. Her tombstone states that she died "on the 6th day of August 1623, being at the age of sixty-seven years." In 1623 Shakspere would have been fifty-nine years old. The marriage-bond and licence were published, by Mr. Wheler of Stratford, in the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' The bondsmen are, Fulk Sandels, of Stratford, farmer, and John Richardson, of the same place, farmer, and they are held and bound in the sum of 401., &c. This bond is dated the 28th of November, in the 25th year of Elizabeth-that is, in 1582. The bondsmen subscribe their marks. The licence is affixed to the bond, and the remarkable part of this document is, that they were to be married "with once asking of the bans;" they were not to be married "without the consent " of Anne's friends. There is no record where they were married. In 1583 an entry of the baptism of "Susanna, daughter to William Shakspere" is found in the Stratford register. The entry is the fourth of the month, the word 'May' being attached to the first entry of the month. A comparison of the dates of the marriage licence and the baptism of Shakspere's first child pointed to the conclusion that the same fault into which the courtly Raleigh and the high-born Elizabeth Throgmorton had fallen had disturbed the peace of the humble family of the Hathaways, and had no doubt made the mother of the imprudent boy-poet weep bitter tears. We hold a different opinion. We consider that the licence for matrimony, obtained from the Consistorial Court at Worcester, was a permission sought for under no extraordinary circumstances;-still less that the young man who was about to marry was compelled to urge on the marriage as a consequence of previous imprudence. We believe, on the contrary, that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with the customs of the time, and of the class to which Shakspere belonged. The espousals before witnesses, we have no doubt, were then considered as constituting a valid marriage, if followed up within a limited time by the marriage of the Church. However the Reformed Church might have endeavoured to abrogate this practice, it was unquestionably the ancient habit of the people. It was derived from the Roman law, the foundation of many of our institutions. It prevailed for a long period without offence. It still prevails in the Lutheran Church. We are not to judge of the customs of those days by our own, especially if our inferences have the effect of imputing criminality where the most perfect innocence existed. Because Shakspere's marriage-bond is dated in November 1582, and his daughter is born in May 1583, we are not to believe that here was "haste and secresy." Mr. Halliwell has brought sound documentary evidence to bear upon this question; he has shown that the two bondsmen, Sandels and Richardson, were respectable neighbours of the Hathaways of Shottery, although, like Anne herself, they are described as of Stratford. This disposes of the " secresy." In the same year that Shakspere was married, Mr. Halliwell has shown that there were two entries in the Stratford Register, recording the church rite of marriage to have preceded the baptism of a child, by shorter periods than indicated by Shakspere's marriage-bond; and that in cases where the sacredness of the marriage has been kept out of view, illegitimacy is invariably noted in these registers. The "haste" was evidently not required in fear of the scandal at Stratford. We believe that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with the custom of the time, and of the class to which the Shaksperes and Hathaways belonged.

The cause which drove Shakspere from Stratford is thus stated by Rowe:-"He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and, amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, some what too severely; and in order to avenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter bimself in London." All this, amongst a great deal of

falsehood, probably contained some tissue of the truth-such as the truth appeared to the good old folks of Stratford in Betterton's time, who had heard stories from their grandfathers of what a wild young fellow the rich man was who bought the largest house in Stratford. Malone gravely undertakes to get rid of the deer-stealing tradition, by telling us that there was no park, properly so called, at Charlecote. It is more material that the statute of the 5th of Elizabeth, which Malone also recites, shows clearly enough that the hunting, killing, or driving out deer from any park, was a trespass punished at the most with three mouths' imprisonment and treble damages. Sir Thomas Lucy, who was on terms of intimaey with the respectable inhabitants of Stratford, acting as arbitrator in their disputes, was not very likely to have punished the son of an alderman of that town with any extraordinary severity, even if his deer had been taken away. To kill a buck was then an offence not quite so formidable as the shooting of a partridge in our own times. But we may judge of the value of the tradition from some papers, originally the manuscripts of Mr. Fulman, an antiquary of the 17th century, which, with additions of his own, were given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on the decease of the Rev. Richard Davies, rector of Sandford, Oxfordshire, in 1707. The gossip of Stratford had no doubt travelled to the worthy rector's locality, and rare gossip it is :-" He (Shakspere) was much given to all unluckiness, in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him OFT whipt, and SOMETIMES imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate; and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three lowses rampant for his arms. Is it necessary to do more than recite such legends to furnish the best answer to them?

Although John Shakspere, at the time of his son's early marriage, was not, as we think, "in distressed circumstances," his means were not such probably, at any time, as to have allowed him to have borne the charge of his son's family. That William Shakspere maintained them by some honourable course of industry we cannot doubt. Scrivener or schoolmaster, he was employed. It is on every account to be believed that the altered circumstances in which he had placed himself, in connection with the natural ambition which a young man, a husband and a father, would entertain, led him to London not very long after his marriage. There, it is said, the author of 'Venus and Adonis' obtained a subsistence after the following ingenious fashion: "Many came on horseback to the play, and when Shakspere fled to London from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the playhouse, and hold the horses of those who had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will Shakspeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will Shakspeare could be had." Steevens objects to this surpassing anecdote of the horse-holding, that the practice of 'riding' to the playhouse never began, and was never continued, and that Shakspere could not have held horses at the playhouse-door because people went thither by water. We believe there is a stronger objection still: until Will Shakspere' converted the English drama from a rude, tasteless, semi-barbarous entertainment, into a high intellectual feast for men of education and refinement, those who kept horses did not go to the public theatres at all. There were representations in the private houses of the great, which men of some wit and scholarship wrote, with a most tiresome profusion of unmeaning words, pointless incidents, and vague characterisation,-and these were called plays; and there were 'storial shows' in the public theatres, to which the coarsest melo-drama that was exhibited at Bartholomew Fair would be as superior as Shakspere is superior to the highest among his contemporaries. But from 1580 to 1585, when Shakspere and Shakspere's boys are described as holding horses at the playhousedoor, it may be affirmed that the English drama,' such as we now understand by the term, had to be created. We believe that Shakspere was in the most eminent degree its creator. He had, as we think, written his Venus and Adonis, perhaps in a fragmentary shape, before he left Stratford. It was first printed in 1593, and is dedicated to Lord Southampton. The dedication is one of the few examples of Shakspere mentioning a word of himself or his works:— "I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden; only if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the firet heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content, which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation." The dedication is simple and manly. In 1593 then Shakspere had an employment-a recognised one-for he speaks of "idle hours" to be devoted to poetry. He calls this poem too "the first heir of my invention." If it "prove deformed," he will never after ear (plough) so barren a land." Will he give up writing for the stage then? It is a remarkable proof of the low reputation of the drama that even the dramatic works which Shakspele had unquestionably

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produced in 1593 were not here alluded to. The drama scarcely then aspired to the character of poetry. The some graver labour' which he contemplated was another poem; and he did produce another next year, which he also dedicated to the same friend. This was the 'Rape of Lucrece.' Perhaps these poems were published to vindicate his reputation as a writer against the jealousies of some of the contemporary dramatists. But we still think that he used the term 'first heir of my invention' in its literal sense; and that 'Venus and Adonis' or at least a sketch of it-was the first production of his imagination, his invention. It bears every mark of a youthful composition; it would have been more easily produced by the Shakspere of eighteen or twenty than any of his earliest dramas. He had models of such writing as the 'Venus and Adonis' before him. Chaucer he must have diligently studied; Spenser had published his 'Shepherd's Calendar,' his Hymns to Love and Beauty, and other poems, when Shakspere's genius was budding amidst his native fields. But when he wrote Henry VI.' or the first 'Hamlet,' where could he seek for models of dramatic blank verse, of natural dialogue, of strong and consistent character? He had to work without models; and this was the real graver labour' of his early manhood. It has been discovered by Mr. Collier that in 1589, when Shakspere was only twenty-five, he was a joint proprietor in the Blackfriars theatre, with a fourth of the other proprietors below him in the list. He had, at twenty-five, a standing in society; he had the means, without doubt, of maintaining his family; as he advanced in the proprietorship of the same theatre, he realised a fortune. How had he been principally occupied from the time he left Stratford, to have become somewhat rapidly a person of importance among his 'friends and fellows?' We think, by making himself useful to them, beyond all comparison with others, by his writings. It appears to us not improbable that even before Shakspere left Stratford, he had attempted some play or plays which had become known to the London players. Thomas Greene, who in 1586 was the fourth on the list of the Blackfriars shareholders, was said to be Shakspere's fellow townsman. But the young poet might have found another and more important friend in the Blackfriars company :-Richard Burbage, the great actor, who in his own day was called 'the English Roscius,' was also of Shakspere's county. In a Letter of Lord Southampton to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (written about 1608), introducing Burbage and Shakspere to the chancellor, it is said: "They are both of one county, and indeed almost of one town." It is perfectly clear, therefore, that Shakspere, from the easy access that he might have procured to these men, would have received inviting offers to join them in London, provided he had manifeste d any ability which would be useful to them. That ability, we have no doubt, was manifested by the production of original plays (as well as by acting) some time before he had attained the rank and profit of a shareholder in the Blackfriars company.

The theory that Shakspere had not produced any of his dramas till several years after he was a shareholder in the Blackfriars theatre, is generally upheld by the assertion that he is not noticed by any contemporary writer till after the period usually assigned to the commencement of his career as a dramatic author; that is, about 1592. There is an allusion to 'Hamlet' by Nashe, in 1589; and the most reasonable belief is, that this was Shakspere's 'Hamlet an earlier sketch than the early one which exists. We believe with Dryden and Rowe, that a remarkable passage in Spenser's Thalia' applies to Shakspere, and that poem was published in 1591. The application of these passages to Shakspere is strongly disputed by those who assign the first of his plays to 1593. In an age when there were no newspapers and no reviews, it must be extremely difficult to trace the course of any man, however eminent, by the notices of the writers of his times. An author's fame then was not borne through every quarter of the land in the very hour in which it was won. More than all, the reputation of a dramatic writer could scarcely be known, except to a resident in London, until his works were committed to the press. The first play of Shakspere's, which was printed was "The First Part of the Contention' ('Henry VI.,' Part II.), and that did not appear till 1594. Now Malone says, "In Webbe's' Discourse of English Poetry,' published in 1586, we meet with the name of most of the celebrated poets of that time; particularly those of George Whetstone and Anthony Munday, who were dramatic writers; but we find no trace of our author, or any of his works." But Malone does not tell us that in Webbe's Discourse of Poetry' we meet with the following passage:-"I am humbly to desire pardon of the learned company of gentlemen scholars, and students of the universities and inns of court, if I omit their several commendations in this place, which I know a great number of them have worthily deserved, in many rare devices and singular inventions of poetry; for neither hath it been my good hap to have seen all which I have heard of, neither is my abiding in such place where I can with facility get knowledge of their works." "Three years afterwards," continues Malone, "Puttenham printed his Art of English Poesy;' and in that work also we look in vain for the name of Shakspere." The book speaks of the one-and-thirty years' space of Elizabeth's reign; and thus puts the date of the writing a year earlier than the printing. But we here look in vain for some other illustrious names besides those of Shakspere. Malone has not told us that not one of Shakspere's early dramatic contemporaries is mentioned neither Marlowe, nor Greene, nor Peele, nor Kyd,

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nor Lyly. The author evidently derives his knowledge of poets and poesy' from a much earlier period than that in which he publishes. He does not mention Spenser by name, but he does "that other gentleman who wrote the late 'Shepherd's Calendar.'" The 'Shepherd's Calendar' of Spenser was published in the year 1579. Malone goes on to argue that the omission of Shakspere's name, or any other notice of his works, in Sir John Harrington's 'Apology of Poetry,' printed in 1591, in which he takes occasion to speak of the theatre, and mentions some of the celebrated dramas of that time, is a proof that none of Shakspere's dramatic compositions had then appeared. Does he mention Tamburlaine,' or 'Faustus,' or 'The Massacre of Paris,' or 'The Jew of Malta'? As he does not, it may be assumed with equal justice that none of Marlowe's compositions had appeared in 1591, and yet we know that he died in 1593. So of Lyly's Galathea,' Alexander and Campaspe,' 'Endymion,' &c. So of Greene's 'Orlando Furioso,' 'Friar Bacon,' and 'James IV.' So of the 'Spanish Tragedy' of Kyd. The truth is, that Harrington, in his notice of celebrated dramas was even more antiquated than Puttenham; and his evidence therefore in this matter is utterly worthless. But Malone has given his crowning proof that Shakspere had not written before 1591, in the following words:-"Sir Philip Sidney, in his 'Defence of Poesie,' speaks at some length of the low state of dramatic literature at the time he composed his treatise, but has not the slightest allusion to Shakspere, whose plays, had they then appeared, would doubtless have rescued the English stage from the contempt which is thrown upon it by the accomplished writer, and to which it was justly exposed by the wretched compositions of those who preceded our poet. The Defence of Poesie' was not published till 1595, but must have been written some years before." There is one slight objection to this argument: Sir Philip Sidney was killed at the battle of Zutphen, in the year 1586; and it would really have been somewhat surprising if the illustrious author of the Defence of Poesy' could have included Shakspere in his account "of the low state of dramatic literature at the time he composed this treatise."

If the instances of the mention of Shakspere by his contemporaries during his lifetime be not numerous, we are compensated by the fulness and explicitness of one notice-that of Francis Meres, in 1598. Short as his notice is, it is by far the most valuable contribution which we possess towards the 'Life' of Shakspere. Meres was a master of arts of Cambridge, and subsequently entered the church. In 1558 he published a book called Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury.' It is a collection of moral sentences from ancient writers, and it is described by Anthony Wood as 'a noted school-book.' Prefixed to it is 'A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets.' Nothing can be more decisive than this Comparative Discourse' as to the rank which, in 1598, Shakspere had taken amongst the most eminent of his contemporaries.

"As the Greek tongue is made famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindarus, Phocylides, and Aristophanes; and the Latin tongue by Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Silius Italicus, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ausonius, and Claudianus; so the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments, by Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakspeare, Marlow and Chapman.

"As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece, his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c.

"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his 'Gentlemen of Verona,' his 'Errors,' his 'Love Labours Lost,' his 'Love Labours Won,' his Midsummer's Night Dream,' and his 'Merchant of Venice;' for tragedy, his 'Richard II.,' 'Richard III.,'' Henry IV.,' 'King John,' 'Titus Andronicus,' and his 'Romeo and Juliet.' "As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they would speak English.' The list of Shakspere's plays which Meres gives in 1598 can scarcely be supposed to be a complete one. Previous to 1598 there had been only printed the two Parts of the Contention' (now known as the 'Second and Third Parts of Henry VI.'), 'Richard III.,' 'Richard II.,' and 'Romeo and Juliet. Of the six comedies mentioned by Meres, not one had been published; neither had 'Henry IV.,' 'King John,' nor 'Titus Andronicus;' but, in 1597, 'Love's Labour's Lost,' and the 'First Part of Henry IV.,' had been entered in Stationers' Hall. Without the list of Meres therefore we could not have absolutely shown that the Two Gentlemen of Verona,' the 'Comedy of Errors,' the All's Well that Ends Well' (which we have every reason to think was designated as 'Love Labours Won') the Midsummer Night's Dream, the 'Merchant of Venice,' the King John,' and the Titus Andronicus,' were written and produced before 1598. The list of Meres omits the original 'Hamlet' and the Taming of the Shrew,' which we may believe were produced before 1598; but, looking at Meres' list alone, how gloriously had Shakspere earned that reputation which he had thus acquired in 1598! He was then thirty.four years of age, but he had produced all his great historical plays, with the exception of 'Henry V.' and 'Henry VIII.' He had given us 'Romeo

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and Juliet,' and had even 'corrected and augmented' it; the stage was in possession, and the fame acknowledged, of six of his most delicious comedies. Before the close of that century we have little doubt that he had also produced Henry V.,' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' and 'Much Ado about Nothing." Of the plays thus produced before the close of the 16th century, we would assign several (not fewer than nine, including the doubtful plays) to the period from Shakspere's early manhood to 1591. Some of those dramas may possibly then have been created in an imperfect state, very different from that in which we have received them. If the Titus Andronicus' and 'Pericles' are Shakspere's, they belong to this epoch in their first state, whatever it might have been. We have no doubt that the three plays, in their original form, which we now call the three Parts of Henry VI.,' were his; and they also belong to this epoch. That Hamlet,' in a very imperfect state, probably more imperfect even than the sketch in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, is the play alluded to by Nashe in 1589, we have little doubt. In the Duke of Devonshire's copy, dated 1602, there are passages, afterwards omitted, which decidedly refer to an early state of the stage. Amongst the comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'The Comedy of Errors,' and 'The Taming of the Shrew,' contain very strong external evidence, especially in the structure of their versification, that they belong to the poet's earliest period. When the time arrived that he had fully dedicated himself to the great work of his life, he rarely ventured upon cultivating the offshoots of his early versification. The doggerel was entirely rejected-the alternate rhymes no longer tempted him by their music to introduce a measure which is scarcely akin with the dramatic spirit-the couplet was adopted more and more sparingly-and he finally adheres to the blank verse which he may almost be said to have created-in his hands certainly the grandest as well as the sweetest form in which the highest thoughts were ever unfolded to listening humanity. We have only one drama to add to this cycle, and that, we believe, was 'Romeo and Juliet' in its original form.

·

The Midsummer Night's Dream' may be taken, we apprehend, as a connecting link between the dramas which belong to the first cycle and those which may be assigned to the remaining years of the 16th century. We have little difficulty in determining the plays which belong to Shakspere's middle period. The list of Meres, and the dates of the original editions of those plays, are our best guides. The exact years in which they first appeared can only be determined in one or two cases; and it is of little consequence if they could be determined. The earliest of the historical plays of this cycle were those which completed the great story of the wars of the Roses. Richard III.' naturally terminated the eventful history of the house of York; Richard II.' commenced the more magnificent exhibition of the fortunes of the house of Lancaster. Both these plays were printed in 1597. The two great historical plays of Henry IV. which succeeded them were, no doubt, produced before 1599. Henry V.' undoubtedly belongs to that year; and this great song of national triumph grew out of the earlier history of the "madcap Prince of Wales." The three latter histories are most remarkable for the exhibition of the greatest comic power that the world has ever seen. When the genius of Shakspere produced Falstaff, its most distinguishing characteristics, bis wit and humour, had attained their extremest perfection. There is much of the same high comedy in King John.' This was the period which also produced those comic dramas which are most distinguished for their brilliancy of dialogue-the "fine filed phrase" which Meres describes-The Merry Wives of Windsor,'' Much Ado about Nothing,' and 'Twelfth Night.' The 'Merchant of Venice,' and 'All's Well that Ends Well,' belong to the more romantic class. The "Twelfth Night' was originally thought to have been one of Shakspere's latest plays; but it is now proved, beyond a doubt, that it was acted in the Middle Temple Hall in the Christmas of 1601.

The close of the 16th century brings us to Shakspere's thirty-fifth year. He had then been about fifteen years in London. We are not willing to believe that his whole time was passed in the capital. It is not necessary to believe it; for the evidence, such as it is, partly gossip and partly documentary, makes for the contrary opinion. Aubrey tells us "the humour of the constable in A Midsummer Night's Dream' he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks, which is the road from London to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon." The honest antiquary makes a slight mistake here. There is no constable in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream;' but he probably refers to the ever-famous Dogberry or Verges. In the same paper Aubrey says, "he was wont to go to his native country once a year."

But we have more trustworthy evidence than that of John Aubrey for believing that Shakspere, however indispensable a protracted resi dence in London might be to his interests and those of his family, never cast aside the link which bound him to his native town. In 1596 bis only son died, and in Stratford he was buried. The parochial register gives us the melancholy record of this loss. This event, afflicting as it must have been, did not render the great poet's native town less dear to him. There his father and mother, there his wife and daughters, there his sister still lived. In 1597 he purchased the principal house in Stratford. It was built by Sir Hugh Clopton, in

SHAKSPERE, WILLIAM.

the reign of Henry VII., and was devised by him under the name of the great house. Dugdale describes it as "a fair house built of brick and timber." It appears to have been sold out of the Clopton family before it was purchased by Shakspere. In the poet's will it is described as "all that capital messuage or tenement, with the appurtenances, in Stratford aforesaid, called the New Place." The London residence of Shakspere at this period is stated to have been in Southwark, near the Bear Garden. It is now incontestably proved that in the year previous to 1596 Shakspere held a much more important rank as a sharer in the Blackfriars theatre than in 1589; and that the Globe theatre also belonged to the body of proprietors of which he was one A petition to the privy council, presented in 1596, was found in the State Paper Office a few years ago, in which the names of the petitioners stand as follows:

"The humble petition of Thomas Pope, Richard Burbage, John Hemmings, Augustine Phillips, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Sly, Nicholas Tooley, and others, servants to the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain to her Majesty."

There is a tradition that the valuable estate of New Place was pur chased by Shakspere through the munificent assistance of Lord Southampton. It is pleasant to believe such a tradition; but it is not necessary to account for Shakspere's property in the theatres, or even for his purchase of New Place at Stratford, that we should imagine that some extraordinary prodigality of bounty had been lavished on him. He obtained his property in the theatre by his honest labours, steadily exerted, though with unequalled facility, from his earliest manhood. The profits which he received not only enabled him to maintain his family, but to create an estate; and his was not a solitary case. Edward Alleyn, who was a contemporary of Shakspere, a player and a theatrical proprietor, realised a fortune; and he founded Dulwich College.

It has been held, especially by the German critics, that the ‘Sonnets' of Shakspere have not been sufficiently regarded as a store of materials for his biography; and it has been very ingeniously attempted by a recent writer, Mr. Brown, to show that the whole of these, with a few slight exceptions, are to be taken as a continuous poem or poems. He calls them Shakspere's 'Autobiographical Poems." But we would ask, can these 154 Sonnets be received as a continuous poem upon any other principle than that the author had written them continuously? If there are some parts which are acknowledged interpolations, may there not be other parts that are open to the same belief? If there are parts entirely different in their tone from the bulk of these Sonnets, may we not consider that one portion was meant to be artificial and another real-that the poet sometimes spoke in an assumed character, sometimes in a natural one? This theory we know could not hold if the poet had himself arranged the sequence of these verses; but as it is manifest that two stanzas have been introduced from a poem printed ten years earlier that others are acknowledged to be out of orderand others positively dragged in without the slightest connectionmay we not carry the separation still further, and believing that the 'begetter' (by which name some W. H. is honoured by the bookseller in a dedication)—the getter-up-of these sonnets had levied contributions upon all Shakspere's "private friends"-assume that he was indifferent to any arrangement which might make each portion of the poem tell its own history? We do not therefore take up these poems to "seize a clue which innumerable passages give us, and suppose that they allude to a youth of high rank as well as personal beauty and accomplishment, in whose favour and intimacy, according to the base prejudices of the world, a player and a poet, though he were the author of Macbeth,' might be thought honoured;" and we do not feel "the strangeness of Shakspeare's humiliation in addressing him as a being before whose feet he crouched-whose frown he feared-whose injuries, and those of the most insulting kind, he felt and bewailed without resentment." (Hallam's 'Hist. of Europe.')

The view which we take of the probable admixture of the artificial and the real in the Sonnets, arising from their supposed original fragmentary state, necessarily leads to the belief that some are accurate illustrations of the poet's situation and feelings. It is collected from these Sonnets, for example, that his profession as a player was disagree. able to him; and this complaint, be it observed, might be addressed to any one of his family, or some honoured friend, such as Lord Southampton, as well as to the principal object of so many of those lyrics which contain a "leading idea, with variations:"

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."

But if from his professional occupation his nature was felt by him to be subdued to what it worked in—if thence his name received a brand if vulgar scandal sometimes assailed him-he had high thoughts to console him, such as were never before imparted to mortal. This was probably written in some period of dejection, when his heart was ill at ease, and he looked upon the world with a slight tinge of indifference, if not of dislike. Every man of high genius has felt something