CHAPTER IV. Education of William Shakespeare: probably at the freeschool of Stratford.-At what time, and under what circumstances, he left school.-Possibly an assistant in the school, and afterwards in an attorney's office.-His handwriting-His marriage with Anne Hathaway.-The preliminary bond given by Fulk Sandells and John Rich ardson.-Birth of Susanna, the first child of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne, in 1583.-Shakespeare's opinion on the marriage of persons of disproportionate age.-His domestic circumstances. Ar the period of the sale of their Snitterfield property by his father and mother, William Shakespeare was in his sixteenth year, and in what way he had been educated is mere matter of conjecture. That his father and mother could give him no instruction is quite certain from the fact that neither of them could write; but this very deficiency might render them more desirous that their eldest son, at least, if not their children in general, should receive the best education circumstances would allow. The free grammar-school of Stratford afforded an opportunity of which, it is not unlikely, the parents of William Shakespeare availed themselves. Excepting by mere tradition, we hear not a syllable regarding William Shakespeare from the time of his birth until he had considerably passed his eighteenth year, and then we suddenly come to one of the most important events of his life, established upon irrefragable testimony: we allude to his marriage with Anne Hathaway, which could not have taken place before the 28th of November, 1582, because on that day two persons, named Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, entered into a preliminary bond, in the penalty of £40 to be forfeited to the bishop of the diocese of Worcester, if it were thereafter found that there existed any lawful impediment to the solemnization of matrimony between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, of Stratford. It is not known at what church the ceremony was performed, but certainly not at Stratford-upon-Avon, to which both the parties belonged, where the bondsmen resided, and where it might be expected that it would have been registered. The object of the bond was to obtain such a dispensation from the bishop of Worcester as would authorize a clergyman to unite the bride and groom after only a single publication of the banns; and it is not to be concealed, or denied, that the whole proceeding seems to indi escape notice that the seal used when the bond was executed, although damaged, has upon it the initials R. H., as if it had belonged to R. Hathaway, the father of the bride, and had been used on the occasion with his consent. As we are ignorant of the time when he went to school, we are also in the dark as to the period when he left it. Rowe, indeed, has told us that the pov-cate haste and secresy. However, it ought not to erty of John Shakespeare, and the necessity of employing his son profitably at home, induced him, at an early age, to withdraw him from the place of instruction. Such may have been the case; but, in considering the question, we must not leave out of view the fact, that the education of the son of a member of the corporation would cost nothing; so that, if the boy were removed from school at the period of his father's embarrassments, the expense of continuing his studies there could not have entered into the calculation: he must have been taken away, as Rowe states, in order to aid his father in the maintenance of his family. Aubrey has asserted positively, in his MSS. in the Ashmolean Museum, that "in his younger years Shakespeare had been a schoolmaster in the country;" and the truth may be, though we are not aware that the speculation has ever been hazarded, that being a young man of abilities, and rapid in the acquisition of knowledge, he had been employed by Jenkins (the master of the free grammar-school from 1577 to 1580, if not for a longer period) to aid him in the instruction of the junior boys. We decidedly concur with Malone in thinking that after Shakespeare quitted the free-school, he was employed in the office of an attorney. Proofs of something like a legal education are to be found in many of his plays; and it may be safely asserted, that they do not occur anything like so frequently in the dramatic productions of his contemporaries. We may presume that, if so employed, he was paid something for his services; for, if he were to earn nothing, his father could have had no other motive for taking him from school. That he wrote a good hand we are perfectly sure, not only from the extant specimens of his signature, when we may suppose him to have been in health, but from the ridicule which, in "Hamlet," (act v. sc. 2) he throws upon such as affected to write illegibly: "I once did hold it, as our statists do, It is certain also that Shakespeare wrote with great facility, and that his compositions required little correction. This fact we have upon the indubitable assertion of Ben Jonson, who thus speaks in his "Discoveries," written in old age, when, as he tells us, his memory began to fail, and printed with the date of 1641: Considering all the circumstances, there might be good reasons why the father of Anne Hathaway should concur in the alliance, independently of any regard to the worldly prospects of the parties. The first child of William and Anne Shakespeare was christened Susanna on 26th of May, 1583. Anne was between seven and eight years older than her young husband, and several passages in Shakespeare's plays have been pointed out by Malone, and repeated by other biographers, which seem to point directly at the evils resulting from unions in which the parties were "misgraffed in respect of years." The most remarkable of these is certainly the well-known speech of the Duke to Viola, in "Twelfth-Night," (act ii. sc. 4) where he says, "Let still the woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him; Whether these lines did or did not originate in the author's reflections upon his own marriage, they are so applicable to his own case, that it seems impossible he should have written them without recalling the circumstances attending his hasty union, and the disparity of years between himself and his wife. The balance of such imperfect information as remains to us, leads us to the opinion that Shake "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chuse that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. Suflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the use of it had been so too l" that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter him self in London." We have said that Rowe is the oldest printed source of this anecdote, his "Life of Shakespeare” having been published in 1709; but Malone produced a manuscript of uncertain date, anterior, however, to the publication of Rowe's "Life," which gives the incident some confirmation. In reflecting upon the general probability or improbability of this important incident in Shakespeare's life, it is not to be forgotten, as Malone re speare was not a very happy married man. The disparity in age between himself and his wife from the first was such, that she could not sway level in her husband's heart;" and this difference, for a certain time at least, became more apparent as they advanced in years. To this may be added the fact (by whatever circumstances it may have been occasioned, which we shall consider presently) that Shakespeare quitted his home at Stratford a very few years after he had become a husband and a father, and that although he revisited his native town frequently, and ultimately settled there with his family, there is no proof that his wife ever re-marks, that deer-stealing, at the period referred to, turned with him to London, or resided with him during any of his lengthened sojourns in the metropolis that she may have done so is very possible and in 1609 he certainly paid a weekly poorrate to an amount that may indicate that he occupied a house in Southwark capable of receiving his family, but we are here, as upon many other points, compelled to deplore the absence of distinct testimony. We put out of view the doubtful and ambiguous indications to be gleaned from Shakespeare's Sonnets, observing merely, that they contain little to show that he was of a domestic turn, or that he found any great enjoyment in the society of his wife. That such may have been the fact we do not pretend to deny, and we willingly believe that much favorable evidence upon the point has been lost all we venture to advance on a question of so much difficulty and delicacy is, that what remains to us is not, as far as it goes, perfectly satisfactory. CHAPTER V. Shakespeare's twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585.His departure from Stratford. - -The question of deerstealing from Sir Thomas Lucy considered.-Authorities for the story.-Ballad by Shakespeare against Sir Thomas Lucy. Other inducements to Shakespeare to quit Stratford-Companies of players encouraged by the Corporation-Several of Shakespeare's fellow-actors from Strat ford.-The Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth. In the beginning of 1585 Shakespeare's wife produced him twins-a boy and a girl-and they were baptized at Stratford Church on the 2d of February, in that year, by the Christian names of Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare's wife brought him no more children, although in 1585 she was only thirty years old. That Shakespeare quitted his home and his family not long afterwards has not been disputed, but no ground for this step has ever been derived from domestic disagreements. It has been alleged that he was obliged to leave Stratford on account of a scrape in which he had involved himself by stealing, or assisting in stealing, deer from the grounds of Charlecot, the property of Sir Thomas Lucy, about five miles from the borough. As Rowe is the oldest authority in print for this story, we give it in his own words: "He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and among them some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing the park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge 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, was by no means an uncommon offence; that it is referred to by several authors, and punished by more than one statute. Neither was it considered to include any moral stain, but was often committed by young men, by way of frolic, for the purpose of furnishing a feast, and not with any view to sale or emolument. If Shakespeare ever ran into such an indiscretion, (and we own that we cannot entirely discredit the story) he did no more than many of his contemporaries; and one of the ablest, most learned, and bitterest enemies of theatrical performances, who wrote just before the close of the sixteenth century, expressly mentions deer-stealing as a venial crime of which unruly and misguided youth was sometimes guilty, and he couples it merely with carousing in taverns and robbing orchards. It is very possible, therefore, that the main offence against Sir Thomas Lucy was, not stealing his deer, but writing the ballad, and sticking it on his gate; and for this Shakespeare may have been so 66 severely prosecuted" by Sir Thomas Lucy, as to render it expedient for him to abandon Stratford "for some time." a Sir Thomas Lucy died in 1600, and the mention of deer-stealing, and of the "dozen white luces" by Slender, and of "the dozen white lowses" by Sir Hugh Evans, in the opening of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," seems too obvious to be mistaken, and leads us to the conviction that the comedy was written before the demise of Sir Thomas Lucy, whose indignation Shakespeare had incurred. The question whether he did or did not quit Stratford for the metropolis on this account, is one of much importance in the poet's history, but it is one also upon which we shall, in all probability, never arrive at certainty. Our opinion is that the traditions related by Rowe, and mentioned in Fulman's and in Oldys' MSS. (which do not seem to have originated in the same source) may be founded upon an actual occurrence; but, at the same time, it is very possible that that alone did not determine Shakespeare's line of conduct. His residence in Stratford may have been rendered inconvenient by the near neighborhood of such a hostile and powerful magistrate, but perhaps he would nevertheless not have quitted the town, had not other circumstances combined to produce such a decision. Oldys preserved a stanza of this satirical effusion, which he had received from a person of the name of Wilkes: it runs thus: "A parliament member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse; Yet an asse in his state he probably had not means to equip himself and his son for such an exhibition. That Shakespeare heard of the extensive preparations, and of the magnificent entertainment, there can be no doubt: it was an event calculated to create a strong sensation in the whole of that part of the country; and if the celebrated passage in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (act ii., scene 1), had any reference to it, it did not require that Shakespeare should have been present in order to have written it, especially when, if necessary, he had Gascoyne's "Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth," and Laneham's "Letter," to assist his memory. What those circumstances might be it is our busi- had been bailiff, and was still head-alderman of ness now to inquire. Stratford, was not a man of sufficient rank and imAubrey, who was a very curious and minute in-portance to be there in any official capacity; and vestigator, although undoubtedly too credulous, says nothing about deer-stealing, but he tells us that Shakespeare was "inclined naturally to poetry and acting," and to this inclination he attributes his journey to London at an early age. That this youthful propensity existed there can be no dispute, and it is easy to trace how it may have been promoted and strengthened. The corporation of Stratford seem to have given great encouragement to companies of players arriving there. We know from various authorities that when itinerant actors came to any considerable town, it was their custom to wait upon the mayor, bailiff, or other head of the corporation, in order to ask permission to perform, either in the town-hall, if that could be granted to them, or elsewhere. It so happens that the earliest record of the representation of any plays in Stratford-upon-Avon, is dated in the year when John Shakespeare was bailiff: the precise season is not stated, but it was in 1569, when "the Queen's Players" (meaning probably, at this date, one company of her "Interlude Players," retained under that name by her father and grandfather) received 9s. out of the corporate funds, while the Earl of Worcester's servants in the same year obtained only 12d. Various companies are also known to have exhibited at Stratford, under the encouragement of the corporation, at intervals from 1573 to 1587. It is to be remarked that several of the players, with whom Shakespeare was afterwards connected, appear to have come originally from Stratford or its neighborhood. It is very distinctly ascertained that James Burbage, the father of the celebrated Richard Burbage, (the representative of many of the heroes in the works of our great dramatist,) and one of the original builders of the Blackfriars theatre, migrated to London from that part of the kingdom, and the name of Thomas Greene, who was indisputably from Stratford, will be familiar to all who are acquainted with the detailed history of our stage at that period. Malone supposed that Thomas Greene might have introduced Shakespeare to the theatre, and at an early date he was certainly a member of the company called the Lord Chamberlain's servants. If any introduction to the Lord Chamberlain's servants had been necessary for Shakespeare, he could easily have procured it from several other quarters. The frequent performances of various associations of actors in Stratford and elsewhere, and the taste for theatricals thereby produced, may have had the effect of drawing not a few young men in Warwickshire from their homes, to follow the attractive and profitable profession; and such may have been the case with Shakespeare, without supposing that domestic differences, arising out of disparity of age or any other cause, influenced his determination, or that he was driven away by the terrors of Sir Thomas Lucy. It has been matter of speculation whether Shakespeare visited Kenilworth Castle, when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there by the Earl of Leicester in 1575, and whether the pomp and pageantry he then witnessed did not give a color to his mind, and a direction to his pursuits. Considering that he was then only in his eleventh year, we own, that we cannot believe he found his way into that gorgeous and august assembly. Kenilworth was fourteen miles distant: John Shakespeare, although he CHAPTER VI. John Shakespeare removed from his situation as alderman of Stratford, and its possible connection with William Shakespeare's departure for London in the latter end of 1586-William Shakespeare, a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre in 1589.-Complaints against actors: two companies silenced.-Certificate of the sharers in the Blackfriars-Shakespeare, in all probability, a good actor: our older dramatists often players.-Shakespeare's earliest compositions for the stage.-His "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece" probably written before he came to London. IN reference to the period when our great dramatist abandoned his native town for London, we think that sufficient attention has not been paid to an important incident in the life of his father. John Shakespeare was superseded as alderman of Stratford in the autumn of 1586. On the 6th September, 1586, the following memorandum was made in the register by the town clerk: "At this hall William Smythe and Richard Courte are chosen to be aldermen, in the place of John Wheler, and John Shaxspere; for that Mr. Wheler doth desyer to be put out of the companye, and Mr. Shaxspere doth not come to the halles, when they be warned, nor hath not done of a long tyme." According to this note, it was Wheler's wish to be removed from his situation of alderman, and had such also been the desire of John Shakespeare, we should, no doubt, have been told so therefore, we must presume that he was not a consenting, or at all events not a willing, party to this proceeding; but an inspection of the ancient books of the borough proves that he had ceased to attend the halls, when they were "warned" or summoned, from the year 1579 downward. This date of 1579 is the more important, because it was the same year in which John Shakespeare was so distressed for money, that he disposed of his wife's small property in Snitterfield for £4. We have thus additional reasons for thinking, that the unprosperous state of John Shakespeare's pecuniary circumstances had induced him to abstain from attending the ordinary meetings of the corporation, and finally led to his removal from the office of alderman. What connection this last event may have had with William Shakespeare's determination to quit Stratford cannot be known, but in point of date the events seem to have been coincident. 66 Malone supposed" that our great poet left Stratford "about the year 1586 or 1587," but it seems more likely that the event happened in the former, than in the latter year. His twins, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized, as we have shown, early in February, 1585, and his father did not cease to be an alderman until about a year and seven months that "he did act exceedingly well;" and we are convinced that the opinion, founded chiefly upon a statement by Rowe, that Shakespeare was a very moderate performer, is erroneous. It seems likely that for two or three years he employed himself chiefly in the more active duties of the profession he had chosen; and Peele, who was a very practised and popular play-wright, considerably older than Shakespeare, was a member of the company, without saying anything of Wadeson, regarding whom we know nothing but that at a subsequent date he was one of Henslowe's dramatists; or of Armyn, then only just coming forward as a comic performer. While Peele remained a member of the company of the Lord Chamberlain's players, Shakespeare's service as a dramatist may not materially have interfered with his exertions as an actor; but afterwards, when Peele, about 1590, had joined a rival estab lishment, he may have been more frequently called upon to employ his pen, and then his value in that department becoming clearly understood, he was less frequently a performer. afterward. The fact, that his son had become a player, may have had something to do with the lower rank his brethren of the bench thought he ought to hold in the corporation; or the resolution of the son to abandon his home may have arisen out of the degradation of the father in his native town; but we cannot help thinking that the two circumstances were in some way connected, and that the period of the departure of William Shakespeare, to seek his fortune in a company of players in the metropolis, may be fixed in the latter end of 1586. Nevertheless, we do not hear of him in London until three years afterward, when we find him a sharer in the Blackfriars theatre. It had been constructed upon part of the site of the dissolved monastery, because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the lord mayor and corporation of London, who had always evinced decided hostility to dramatic representations. The undertaking seems to have been prosperous from the commencement; and in 1589 no fewer than sixteen performers were sharers in it, including, besides Shakespeare and Burbage, Thomas Greene of Stratford-upon-Avon, and Nicholas Tooley, also a Warwickshire man: the association was probably thus numerous on account of the flourishing state of the concern, many being desirous to obtain an interest in its receipts. In 1589 some general complaints seem to have been made, that improper matters were introduced into plays; and two bodies of players, those of the Lord Admiral and Lord Strange, had been summoned before the lord mayor, and ordered to desist from all performances. The silencing of other associations would probably have been beneficial to that exhibiting at Blackfriars, and if no proceeding of any kind had been instituted against James Burbage and his partners, we may presume that they would have continued quietly to reap their augmented harvest. We are led to infer, however, that they also apprehended, and experienced, some measure of restraint, and feeling conscious that they had given no just ground of offence, they transmitted to the privy council a sort of certificate of their good conduct, asserting that they had never introduced into their representations matters of state and religion, and that no complaint of that kind had ever been pre-ed most of the heroes, and whose excellence was as ferred against them. This certificate passed into the hands of Lord Ellesmere, then attorney-general, and it has been preserved among his papers. In this document we see the important fact, as regards the biography of Shakespeare, that in 1589 he was, not only an actor, but a sharer in the undertaking at Blackfriars; and whatever inference may be drawn from it, we find that his name, following eleven others, precedes those of Kempe, Johnson, Goodale, and Armyn. The situation in the list which the name of Shakespeare occupies may seem to show that, even in 1589, he was a person of considerable importance in relation to the success of the sharers in Blackfriars theatre. In November, 1589, he was in the middle of his twenty-sixth year, and in the full strength, if not in the highest maturity, of his mental and bodily powers. We can have no hesitation in believing that he originally came to London, in order to obtain his livelihood by the stage, and with no other view. Aubrey tells us that he was "inclined naturally to poetry and acting;" and the poverty of his father, and the difficulty of obtaining profitable employment in the country for the maintenance of his family, without other motives, may have induced him readily to give way to that inclination. Aubrey, who had probably taken due means to inform himself, adds, Out of the sixteen sharers of which the company he belonged to consisted in 1589, (besides the usual proportion of "hired men," who only took inferior characters) there would be more than a sufficient number for the representation of most plays, without the assistance of Shakespeare. He was, doubtless, soon busily and profitably engaged as a dramatist; and this remark on the rareness of his appearance on the stage will of course apply more strongly in his after-life, when he produced one or more dramas every year. His instructions to the players in "Hamlet" have often been noticed, as establishing that he was ‘admirably acquainted with the theory of the art, and if, as Rowe asserts, he only took the short part of the Ghost in this tragedy, we are to recollect that even if he had considered himself competent to it, the study of such a character as Hamlet, (the longest on the stage as it is now acted, and still longer as it was originally written) must have consumed more time than he could well afford to bestow upon it, especially when we call to mind that there was a member of the company who had hitherto represent undoubted, as his popularity was extraordinary. To Richard Burbage was therefore assigned the arduous character of the Prince, while the author took the brief, but important part of the Ghost, which required person, deportment, judgment, and voice, with a delivery distinct, solemn, and impressive. All the elements of a great actor were needed for the due performance of "the buried majesty of Denmark." It may be observed, in passing, that at the period of our drama, such as it existed in the hands of Shakespeare's immediate predecessors, authors were most commonly actors also. Such was the case with Greene, Marlowe, Lodge, Peele, and others: the same practice prevailed with some of their successors, Ben Jonson, Heywood, Webster, Field, &c.; but at a somewhat later date dramatists do not usually appear to have trodden the stage. It is impossible to determine, almost impossible to guess, what Shakespeare had or had not written in 1589. That he had chiefly employed his pen in the revival, alteration, and improvement of existing dramas we are strongly disposed to believe, but that a From a MS. Epitaph upon Burbage, (who died in 1619,) we find that he was the original Hamlet, Romeo, Prince Henry, Henry V., Richard III., Macbeth, Brutus, Coriolanus, Shylock, Lear, Pericles, and Othello, in Shakespeare's Plays. after he joined the Blackfriars company, the author may possibly have added parts, (such, for instance, as the long and minute description of the siege of Troy in the tapestry) which indicate a closer acbut even here no knowledge is displayed that might not have been acquired in Warwickshire. As he had exhibited the wantonness of lawless passion in "Venus and Adonis," he followed it by the exaltation of matron-like chastity in "Lucrece;" and there is, we think, nothing in the latter poem which a young man of one or two and twenty, so endowed, might not have written. Neither is it at all impossible that he had done something in connexion with the stage while he was yet resident in his native town, and before he had made up his mind to quit it. If his "inclination for poetry and acting," to repeat Aubrey's words, were so strong, it may have led him to have both written and acted. He may have contributed temporary prologues or epilogues, and without supposing him yet to have possessed any extraordinary art as a dramatist-only to be acquired by practice, he may have inserted speeches and occasional passages in older plays: he may even have assisted some of the companies in getting up, and performing the dramas they represented in or near Stratford. We own that this conjecture appears to us at least plausible; and the Lord Chamberlain's servants may have experienced his utility in both departments, and may have held out strong inducements to so promising a novice to continue his assistance by accompanying them to he had not ventured upon original composition it would be much too bold to assert. "The Comedy of Errors," and the three parts of " Henry VI." we take to be pieces, which, having been first written by an inferior dramatist, were heightened and amend-quaintance with the modes and habits of society; ed by Shakespeare, perhaps about the date of which we are now speaking, and “Love's Labor's Lost," or "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," may have been original compositions brought upon the stage prior to 1590. We also consider it more than probable that "Titus Andronicus" belongs even to an earlier period; but we feel satisfied, that although Shakespeare had by this time given clear indications of powers superior to those of any of his rivals, he could not have written any of his greater works until some years afterwards. With regard to productions unconnected with the stage, there are several pieces among his scattered poems, and some of his sonnets, that indisputably belong to an earlier part of his life. A young man, so gifted, would not, and could not, wait until he was five or six and twenty before he made considerable and most successful attempts at poetical composition; and we feel mor ally certain that " Venus and Adonis" was in being anterior to Shakespeare's quitting Stratford. It bears all the marks of youthful vigor, of strong passion, of luxuriant imagination, together with a force and originality of expression which betoken the first efforts of a great mind, not always well regulated in its taste: it seems to have been written in the open air of a fine country like Warwickshire, with all the freshness of the recent impression of natural objects; and we will go so far as to say, that we do not think even Shakespeare himself could have produced it, in the form it bears, after he had reached the age of forty. It was quite new in its class, being founded upon no model either ancient or modern: nothing like it had been attempted before, and nothing comparable to it was produced afterwards. Thus in 1593 he might call it, in the dedication to Lord Southampton, "the first heir of his invention," not merely because it was the first printed, but because it was the first written of his productions. The information we now possess enables us at once to reject the story, against the truth of which Malone elaborately argued, that Shakespeare's earliest employment at a theatre was holding the horses of noblemen and gentlemen who visited it, and that he had under him a number of lads who were known as 66 Shakespeare's boys." Shiels, in his "Lives of the Poets," (published in 1753 in the name of Cibber,) was the first to give currency to this idle invention: it was repeated by Dr. John son, and has often been reiterated since; and we should hardly have thought it worth notice now, if it had not found a place in many modern accounts of our great dramatist. The company to which he attached himself had not unfrequently performed in Stratford, and at that date the Queen's Players and the Lord Chamberlain's servants seem sometimes to have been confounded in the provinces, although the difference was well understood in London; some of the chief members of it had come from his own part of the country, and even from the very town in which he was born; and he was not so low in station, nor so destitute of means and friends, as to have been reduced to such an extremity. Besides having written "Venus and Adonis" before he came to London, Shakespeare may also have composed its counterpart, "Lucrece," which first appeared in print in 1594. It is in a different stan za, and in some respects in a different style; and London. What we have here said seems a natural and easy way of accounting for Shakespeare's station as a sharer at the Blackfriars theatre in 1589, about three years after we suppose him to have finally adopted the profession of an actor, and to have come to London for the purpose of pursuing it. CHAPTER VII. - The earliest allusion to Shakespeare in Spenser's "Tears of the Muses," 1591.- Proofs of its applicability. What Shakespeare had probably by this date written.-Edmund Spenser of Kingsbary, Warwickshire.-No other dramatist of the time merited the character given by Spenser.Greene, Kyd, Lodge, Peele, Marlowe, and Lyly, and their several claims: that of Lyly supported by Malone.-Temporary cessation of dramatic performances in London.— Probability or improbability that Shakespeare went to Italy. WE come now to the earliest known allusion to Shakespeare as a dramatist; and although his sur name is not given, we apprehend that there can be "And he the man, whom Nature selfe had made |