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of Cholmley about the year 1584; but it seems to have early required considerable reparations, and they might be again necessary prior to 1599, when Henslowe and Alleyn resolved to abandon Southwark. However, it may be doubted whether they would not have continued where they were, recollecting the convenient proximity of Paris Garden, (where bears, bulls, &c., were baited, and in which they were also jointly interested) but for the success of the Lord Chamberlain's players at the Globe, which had been in use four or five years. Henslowe and Alleyn seem to have found, that neither their plays nor their players could stand the competition of their rivals, and they accordingly removed to a vicinity where no play-house had previously existed.

The Fortune theatre was commenced in Golding Lane, Cripplegate, in the year 1599, and finished in 1600, and thither without delay Henslowe and Alleyn transported their whole dramatic establishment, strengthened in the spring of 1602 by the addition of that great and popular comic performer, William Kempe. The association at the Globe was then left in almost undisputed possession of the Bankside. There were, indeed, occasional, and perhaps not unfrequent, performances at the Rose, as well as at the Hope and the Swan, but not by the regular associations which had previously occupied them; and after the Fortune was opened, the speculation there was so profitable, that the Lord Admiral's players had no motive for returning to their old quarters.

The members of the two companies belonging to the Lord Chamberlain and to the Lord Admiral appear to have possessed so much influence in the summer of 1600, that (backed perhaps by the puritanical zeal of those who were unfriendly to all theatrical performances they obtained an order from the privy council, dated 22d June, that no other public play-houses should be permitted but the Globe in Surrey, and the Fortune in Middlesex. Nevertheless, the privy council registers, where this order is inserted, also contain distinct evidence that it was not obeyed, even in May, 1601; for on the 10th of that month the Lords wrote to certain magistrates of Middlesex requiring them to put a stop to the performance of a play at the Curtain, in which were introduced "some gentlemen of good desert and quality, that are yet alive," but saying nothing about the closing of the house, although it was open in debance of the imperative command of the preceding year. It seems exactly as if restrictive measures had been adopted in order to garis the importunity of particular individuals, but that there was no disposition on the part of persons authority to carry them into execution.

Besides the second edition of " Romeo and Juliet" in 1599, (which was most likely printed from a playhouse manuscript, being very different from the mutilated and manufactured copy of 1597,) five plays by our great dramatist found their way to the press in 1600, viz.: "Titus Andronicus," (which had probably been originally published in 1594,) "The Merchant of Venice," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Henry IV." part ii., and "Much Ado about Nothing." The last only was not mentioned by Meres in 1598; and as to the periods when we may suppose the others to have been written, we must refer the reader tour several Introductions, where we have given t' existing information upon the subject. "The Chronicle History of Henry V." also came out in the same year, but without the name of Shakespeare upon the title-page, and it is,

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if possible, a more imperfect and garbled represen tation of the play, as it proceeded from the author's pen, than the "Romeo and Juliet" of 1597. Whether any of the managers of theatres at this date might not sometimes be concerned in selling impressions of dramas, we have no sufficient means of deciding; but we do not believe it, and we are satisfied that dramatic authors in general were content with disposing of their plays to the several companies, and looked for no emolument to be derived from publication. We are not without something like proof that actors now and then sold their parts in plays to booksellers, and thus, by the combination of them and other assistance, editions of popular plays were surreptitiously printed.

We ought not to pass over without notice a circumstance which happened in 1600, and is connected with the question of the authorized or unauthorized publication of Shakespeare's plays. In that year a quarto impression of a play, called "The first part of the true and honorable History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham,' came out, on the title-page of which the name of William Shakespeare appeared at length. This drama was in fact the authorship of four poets, Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson and Richard Hathway; and to attribute it to Shakespeare was evidently a mere trick by the bookseller, Thomas] P[avier], in the hope that it would be brought as his work. Malone remarked upon this fraud, but he was not aware, when he wrote, that it had been detected and corrected at the time, for since his day more than one copy of the "First Part, &c. of Sir John Oldcastle" has come to light, upon the titlepage of which no name is to be found, the bookseller apparently having been compelled to cancel the leaf containing it. From the indifference Shakespeare seems uniformly to have displayed on matters of the kind, we may, possibly, conclude that the cancel was made at the instance of one of the four poets who were the real authors of the play; or, the step may have been in some way connected with the objection taken by living members of the Oldcastle family to the name, which had been assigned by Shakespeare in the first instance to Falstaff.

CHAPTER XIV.

Death of John Shakespeare in 1601.-Performance of "Twelfth Night" in February, 1602-Anecdote of Shakespeare and Burbage: Manningham's Diary in the British Museum the authority for it. Othello," acted by Burbage and others at the Lord Keeper's in August, 1602. -Death of Elizabeth, and Arrival of James I. at Theobalds-English actors in Scotland in 1589, and again in 1600, and 1601 large rewards to them.-The freedom of Aberdeen conferred in 1601 upon Laurence Fletcher, the leader of the English company in Scotland.-Probability that Shakespeare never was in Scotland,

Of

THE father of our great poet died in the autumn of 1601, and he was buried at Stratford-upon-Avon. He seems to have left no will, and if he possessed any property, in land or houses, not made over to his family, we know not how it was divided. the eight children which his wife, Mary Arden, had brought him, the five following were then alive, and might be present at the funeral:-William, Gilbert, Joan, Richard, and Edmund. The latter years of John Shakespeare (who, if born in 1530 as Malone supposed, was in his seventy-first year) were doubtless easy and comfortable, and the prosperity of his eldest son must have placed him beyond the reach of pecuniary difficulties.

Early in the spring of 1602, we meet with one of designation arising out of the fact, that he was those rare facts which distinctly show how uncertain looked upon as the leader of the association: he all conjecture must be respecting the date when was certainly its most celebrated actor, and we find Shakespeare's dramas were originally written and from other sources that he was the representative of produced. Malone and Tyrwhitt, in 1790, conjec-"the Moor of Venice." Whether Shakespeare had tured that "Twelfth Night" had been written in any and what part in the tragedy, either then or up1614: in his second edition Malone altered it to on other occasions, is not known; but there can be 1607, and Chalmers, weighing the evidence in favor little doubt that as an actor, and moreover as one of one date and of the other, thought neither cor- "excellent in his quality," he must have been often rect, and fixed upon 1613, an opinion in which Dr. seen and applauded by Elizabeth. Chettle informs Drake fully concurred. The truth is, that we have us after her death, that she had "opened her royal irrefragable evidence, from an eye-witness, of its ear to his lays;" but this was obviously in his caexistence on 2d February, 1602, when it was played pacity of dramatist, and we have no direct evidence at the Reader's Feast in the Middle Temple. This to establish that Shakespeare had ever performed at eye-witness was a barrister of the name of Manning- Court. James I. reached Theobalds, in his journey from ham, who left a Diary behind him, which has been preserved in the British Museum; but as we have Edinburgh to London, on the 7th May, 1603. Beinserted his account of the plot in our introduction fore he quitted his own capital he had had various to the comedy, no more is required here, than a opportunities of witnessing the performances of However, in English actors; and it is an interesting, but at the mere mention of the circumstance. same time a difficult question, whether Shakespeare another part of the same manuscript, he gives an anecdote of Shakespeare and Burbage, which we had ever appeared before him, or, in other words, quote, without farther remark than that it has been whether our great dramatist had ever visited Scotsupposed to depend upon the authority of Nicholas land? We have certainly no affirmative testimony Tooley, but on looking at the original record again, upon the point, beyond what may be derived from It some passages in "Macbeth," descriptive of parwe doubt whether it came from any such source. was, very possibly, a mere invention of the "roguish ticular localities: there is, however, ample room for players," originating, as was often the case, in some conjecture; and although, on the whole, we are older joke, and applied to Shakespeare and Bur- inclined to think that he was never north of the bage, because their Christian names happened to be Tweed, it is indisputable that the company to which he belonged, or a part of it, had performed in EdinWilliam and Richard.a burgh and Aberdeen, and doubtless in some intermediate places. We will briefly state the existing proofs of this fuct.

Elizabeth, from the commencement of her reign, seems to have extended her personal patronage, as well as her public countenance, to the drama; and scarcely a Christmas or a Shrovetide can be pointed out during the forty-five years she occupied the throne, when there were not dramatic entertainments, either at Whitehall, Greenwich, Nonesuch, Richmond, or Windsor. The latest visit she paid to any of her nobility in the country was to the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, at Harefield, only nine or ten months before her death, and it was upon this occasion, in the very beginning of August, 1602, that "Othello" (having been got up for her amusement, and the Lord Chamberlain's players brought down to the Lord Keeper's seat in Hertfordshire for the purpose) was represented before her In this case, as in the preceding one respecting "Twelfth Night," all that we positively learn is that such a drama was performed, and we are left to infer that it was a new play from other circumstances, as well as from the fact that it was customary on such festivities to exhibit some drama that, as a novelty, was then attracting public attention. Hence we are led to believe, that "Twelfth Night" (not printed until it formed part of the folio of 1623) was written at the end of 1600, or in the beginning of 1601; and that "Othello" (first published in 4to, 1622) came from the author's pen about a year afterwards.

In the memorandum ascertaining the performance of "Othello" at Harefield, the company by which it was represented is called "Burbages Players," that

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received no less than £333, 6s. 8d. ; in April, 1600, | object was appended to a proclamation directed £10; and in December, 1601, the royal bounty against monopolies and legal extortions. amounted to £400.

The King, having issued this command, arrived Thus we see, that English players were in Scot- at the Charter-house on the same day, and all the land from October, 1599, to December, 1601, a theatrical companies, which had temporarily susperiod of more than two years; but still we are pended their performances, began to act again on without a particle of proof that Shakespeare was the 9th May. Permission to this effect was given one of the association. We cannot, however, en- by James I. and communicated through the ordinary tertain a doubt that Laurence Fletcher (whose channel to the players, who soon found reason to name, we shall see presently, stands first in the rejoice in the accession of the new sovereign; for patent granted by King James on his arrival in ten days after he reached London he took the Lord London) was the leader of the association which Chamberlain's players into his pay and patronage, performed in Edinburgh and elsewhere, because it calling them "the King's servants," a title they alappears from the registers of the town council of ways afterwards enjoyed. For this purpose he Aberdeen, that on the 9th October, 1601, the Eng-issued a warrant, under the privy seal, for making lish players received 32 marks as a gratuity, and out a patent under the great seal, authorizing the that on the 22d October the freedom of the city nine following actors, and others, to perform in his was conferred upon Laurence Fletcher, who is name, not only at the Globe on the Bankside, but in especially styled "comedian to his Majesty." any part of the kingdom; viz., Laurence Fletcher, Our chief reason for thinking it unlikely that William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Shakespeare would have accompanied his fellows Phillippes, John Heininge, Henry Condell, William to Scotland, at all events between October, 1599, Sly, Robert Armyn, and Richard Cowley. and December, 1601, is that, as the principal writer for the company to which he was attached, he could not well have been spared, and because we have good ground for believing that about that period he must have been unusually busy in the composition of plays. No fewer than five dramas seèm, as far as evidence, positive or conjectural, can be obtained, to belong to the interval between 1598 and 1602; and the proof appears to us tolerably conclusive, that Henry V.," "Twelfth-Night," and "Hamlet," were written respectively in 1599, 1600, and 1601. Besides, as far as we are able to decide such a point, the company to which our great dramatist belonged continued to perform in London; for although a detachment under Laurence Fletcher may have been sent to Scotland, the main body of the association called the Lord Chamberlain's players exhibited at court at the usual seasons in 1599, 1600, and 1601. Therefore, if Shakespeare visited Scotland at all, we think it must have been at an earlier period, and there was undoubtedly ample time between the years 1589 and 1599 for him to have done so. Nevertheless, we have no tidings that any English actors were in any part of Scotland during these ten years.

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CHAPTER XV.

Proclamation by James I. against plays on Sunday.-Renewal of theatrical performances in London.-Patent of May 17th, 1603, to Laurence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, and others.-Royal patronage of three companies of act ors. Shakespeare's additional purchases in Stratford upon-Avon.-Shakespeare in London in the autumn of 1603 and a candidate for the office of Master of the Queen's Revels.-Characters Shakespeare is known to have performed. His retirement from the stage, as an actor, after April 9th, 1604.

BEFORE he even set foot in London, James I. thought it necessary to put a stop to dramatic performances on Sunday. There had been a long pending struggle between the Puritans and the players upon this point, and each party seemed by turns to gain the victory; for various orders were, from time to time, issued from authority, forbidding exhibitions of the kind on the Sabbath, and those orders had been uniformly more or less contravened. We may suppose, that strong remonstrances having been made to the King by some of those who attended him from Scotland, a clause with this special

We miss from this list the names of Thomas Pope, William Kempe, and Nicholas Tooley, who had belonged to the company in 1596; and instead of them we have Laurence Fletcher, Henry Condell, and Robert Armyn, with the addition of Richard Cowley. Kempe and Tooley, however, subsequently rejoined the association with which they had been so long connected.

We may assume, perhaps, in the absence of any direct testimony, that Laurence Fletcher did not acquire his prominence in the company by any remarkable excellence as an actor, but rather by the favor of the King, or perhaps from the fact that he was a considerable sharer in the association. The name of Shakespeare comes next, and as author, actor, and sharer, we cannot be surprised at the situation he occupies. His progress upward, in connexion with the profession, had been gradual and uniform: in 1589 he was twelfth in a company of sixteen members: in 1596 he was fifth in a company of eight members; and in 1603 he was second in a company of nine members.

The degree of encouragement and favor extended to actors by James I. in the very commencement of his reign is remarkable. Not only did he take the Lord Chamberlain's players into his own service, but the Queen adopted the company which had acted under the name of the Earl of Worcester, and the Prince of Wales that of the Lord Admiral, at the head of which was Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College. These three royal associations, as they may be termed, were independent of others under the patronage of individual noblemen.

The policy of this course at such a time is evident, and James I. seems to have been impressed with the truth of the passage in "Hamlet," (brought out, as we apprehend, very shortly before he came to the throne) where it is said of these "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time," that it is "better to have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live." James made himself sure of their good report; and an epigram, attributed to Shakespeare, has descended to us, which doubtless was intended in some sort as a grateful return for the royal countenance bestowed upon the stage, and upon those The lines are entitled, who were connected with it.

"SHAKESPEARE ON THE KING.
"Crowns have their compass, length of days their date,
Triumphs their tomb, felicity her fate:

Of nought but earth can earth make us partaker,
But knowledge makes a king most like his Maker."

Having established his family in "the great house" called "New Place" in his native town in 1597, by the purchase of it from Hercules Underhill, Shakespeare seems to have contemplated considerable additions to his property there. In May, 1602, he laid out £320 upon 107 acres of land, which he bought of William and John Combe, and attached it to his dwelling. In the autumn of the same year he became the owner of a copyhold tenement (called a cotagium in the instrument) in Walker's Street, alias dead Lane, Stratford, surrendered to him by Walter Getley. In November of the next year he gave Hercules Underhill £60 for a messuage, barn, granary, garden, and orchard, close to or in Stratford; but in the original fine, preserved in the Chapter House, Westminster, the precise situation is not mentioned. In 1603, therefore, Shakespeare's property, in or near Stratford-uponAvon, besides what he might have bought of, or inherited from, his father, consisted of New Place, with 107 acres of land attached to it, a tenement in Walker's Street, and the additional messuage, which he had recently purchased from Underhill.

Whether our great dramatist was in London at the period when the king ascended the throne, we have no means of knowing, but that he was so in the following autumn we have positive proof; for in a letter written by Mrs. Alleyn (the wife of Edward Alleyn, the actor) to her husband, then in the country, dated 20th October, 1603, she tells him that she had seen "Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe" in Southwark. At this date, according to the same authority, most of the companies of players who had left London for the provinces, on account of the prevalence of the plague, and the consequent cessation of dramatic performances, had returned to the metropolis.

Under Elizabeth, the Children of the Chapel (originally the choir-boys of the royal establishment) had become an acknowledged company of players, and these, besides her association of adult performers, Queen Anne took under her immediate patronage, with the style of the Children of her Majesty's Revels, requiring that the pieces they proposed to represent should first be submitted to, and have the approval of, the celebrated poet Samuel Daniel. The instrument of their appointment bears date 30th January, 1603-'4; and from a letter from Daniel to his patron, Sir Thomas Egerton, preserved among his papers, we may perhaps conclude that Shakespeare, as well as Michael Drayton, had been candidates for the post of master of the Queen's revels: he says in it, "I cannot but know, that I am lesse deserving than some that sued by other of the nobility unto her Majestie for this roome;" and, after introducing the name of "his good friend," Drayton, he adds the following, which, we apprehend, refers with sufficient distinctness to Shakespeare: "It seemeth to myne humble judgement that one who is the authour of playes, now daylie presented on the public stages of London, and the possessor of no sniall gaines, and moreover him selfe an actor in the Kinges companie of comedians, could not with reason pretend to be

■ Much has been said in all the Lives of our poet, from the time of Aubrey (who first gives the story) to our own, respecting a satirical epitaph upon a person of the name of John a Combe, supposed to have been made extempore by Shakespeare: Aubrey words it thus:

"Ten in the hundred the devil allows,

But Combe will have twelve, he swears and he vows.
If any one ask, Who lies in this tomb ?
Ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe."

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Master of the Queene's Majesties Revells, for as much as he wold sometimes be asked to approve and allow of his own writings." This objection would have applied with equal force to Drayton, had we not every reason to believe that before this date he had ceased to be a dramatic author.

It is highly probable that Shakespeare was a suitor for this office, in contemplation of a speedy retirement as an actor. We have already spoken of the presumed excellence of his personations on the stage, and to the tradition that he was the original player of the part of the Ghost in "Hamlet." Another character he is said to have sustained is Adam, in "As you like it ;" and his brother Gilbert, (who in 1602 had received, on behalf of William Shakespeare, the 107 acres of land purchased from William and John Combe) who probably survived the Restoration, is supposed to have been the author of this tradition. He had acted also in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humor," in 1598, after (as we believe) introducing it to the company; and he is supposed to have written part of, as well as known to have performed in, the same author's "Sejanus," in 1603. This is the last we hear of him upon the stage, but that he continued a member of the company until April 9, 1604, we have the evidence of a document preserved at Dulwich College, where the names of the King's players are enumerated in the following order: Burbage, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Phillips, Condell, Heminge, Armyn, Sly, Cowley, Ostler, and Day. If Shakespeare had not then actually ceased to perform, we need not hesitate in deciding that he quitted that department of the profession very shortly afterwards.

CHAPTER XVI.

Immediate consequences of Shakespeare's retirement.Offences given by the company to the court. and to private individuals." Gowry's Conspiracy:" "Biron's Conspiracy" and "Tragedy." Suspension of theatrical performances. -Purchase of a lease of the tithes of Stratford, &c., by Shakespeare. - -"Hamlet" printed in 1603 and 1604.-"Henry VIII," "Macbeth."-Supposed autograph letter of King James to Shakespeare.-Susanna Shakespeare and John Hall married in 1607.-Death of Edmund Shakespeare in the same year.-Death of Mary Shakespeare in 1608-Shakespeare's great popularity: rated to the poor of Southwark.

No sooner had our great dramatist ceased to take part in the public performances of the King's players, than the company appears to have thrown off the restraint by which it had been usually controlled ever since its formation, and to have produced plays which were objectionable to the court, as well as offensive to private persons. Shakespeare, from his abilities, station, and experience, must have possessed great influence with the body at large, and due deference, we may readily believe, was shown to his knowledge and judgment in the selection and acceptance of plays sent in for approbation by authors of the time. The contrast between the conduct of the association immediately before, and immediately after his retirement, would lead us to conclude, not only that he was a man of prudence and discretion, but that the exercise of these qualities had in many instances kept his fellows from incurring the displeasure of persons in power, and from exciting the animosity of particular individuals. We suppose Shakespeare to have censed to act in the summer of 1604, and in the winter of that very year we find the King's players giving offence to some great counsellors" by performing a play upon the subject

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of Gowry's conspirany. This fact we have upon the evidence of one of Sir R. Winwood's correspondents, John Chamberlain, who, in a letter dated 18th December, 1604, uses these expressions: "The tragedy of Gowry, with all action and actors, hath been twice represented by the King's players, with exceeding concourse of all sorts of people; but whether the matter or manner be not well handled, or that it be thought unfit that princes should be played on the stage in their lifetime, I hear that some great counsellors are much displeased with it, and so, it is thought, it shall be forbidden." Whether it was so forbidden we do not hear upon the same or any other authority, but no such drama has come down to us.

In the next year Sir Leonard Haliday, then Lord Mayor of London, backed no doubt by his brethren of the corporation, made a complaint against the same company, "that Kempe, (who at this date had rejoined the association) Armyn, and others, players at the Blackfriars, have again not forborne to bring upon their stage one or more of the worshipful aldermen of the city of London, to their great scandal and the lessening of their authority;" and the interposition of the privy council to prevent the abuse was therefore solicited. What was done in consequence does not appear in any extant docu

ment.

In the spring of the next year a still graver charge was brought against the body of actors of whom Shakespeare, until very recently, had been one; and it originated in no less a person than the French ambassador. George Chapman had written two plays upon the history and execution of the Duke of Biron, containing, in the shape in which they were originally produced on the stage, such matter that M. Beaumont, the representative of the King of France in London, thought it necessary to remonstrate against the repetition, and the performance of it was prohibited: as soon, however, as the court had quitted London, the King's players persisted in acting it; in consequence of which three of the players were arrested, (their names are not given) but the author made his escape. These two dramas were printed in 1608, and again in 1625; and looking through them, we are at a loss to discover anything, beyond the historical incidents, which could have given offence; but the truth certainly is, that all the objectionable portions were omitted in the press: there can be no doubt, on the authority of the despatch from the French ambassador to his court, that one of the dramas originally contained a scene in which the Queen of France and Mademoiselle Verneuil were introduced, the former, after having abused her, giving the latter a box on the ear.

This information was conveyed to Paris under the date of the 5th April, 1606; and the French ambassador, apparently in order to make his court acquainted with the lawless character of dramatic performances at that date in England, adds a very singular paragraph, proving that the King's players, only a few days before they had brought the Queen of France upon the stage, had not hesitated to introduce upon the same boards their own reigning sovereign, "und all his favorites, in a very strange fashion: they made him curse and swear because he had been robbed of a bird, and beat a gentleman, because he had called off the hounds from the scent. They represent him as drunk at least once a day," &c. This course indicates a most extraordinary degree of boldness on the part of the players; but, nevertheless, they were not prohibited from acting, until

M. Beaumont had directed the attention of the public authorities to the insult offered to the Queen of France: then, an order was issued putting a stop to the acting of all plays in London; bat, according to the same authority, the companies had clubbed their money, and, attacking James I. on his weak side, had offered the large sum of 100,000 livres to be allowed to continue their performances. The French ambassador himself apprehended that the appeal to the King's pecuniary wants would be effectual, and that permission, under certain restrictions, would not long be withheld.

Whatever emoluments Shakespeare had derived from the Blackfriars or the Globe theatre, as an actor merely, we may be tolerably certain he relinquished when he ceased to perform. He would thus be able to devote more of his time to dramatic composition, and, as he continued a sharer in the two undertakings, perhaps his income on the whole was not much lessened. Certain it is, that in 1605 he was in possession of a considerable sum, which he was anxious to invest advantageously in property in or near the place of his birth. Whatever may have been the circumstances under which he quitted Stratford, he always seems to have contemplated a permanent return thither, and kept his eyes constantly turned in the direction of his birth-place. As long before as January, 1598, he had been advised "to deal in the matter of tithes" of Stratford. Nothing, however, was done on the subject for more than six years; but on the 24th July, 1605, we find William Shakespeare, who is described as "of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman," executing an indenture for the purchase of the unexpired term of a long lease of the great tithes of" corn, grain, blade, and hay," and of the small tithes of "wool, lamb, and other small and privy tithes, herbage, oblations," &c., in Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, in the county of Warwick. The vendor was Raphe Huband, of Ippesley, Esquire; and from the draft of the deed, now before us, we learn that the original lease, dated as far back as 1539, was "for four score and twelve years;" so that in 1605 it had still twenty-six years to run, and for this our great dramatist paid the sum of £440.

A spurious edition of "Hamlet" having been published in 1603, a more authentic copy came out in the next year, containing much that had been omitted, and more that had been grossly disfigured and misrepresented. We do not believe that Shakespeare, individually, had anything to do with this second and more correct impression, and we doubt much whether it was authorized by the company, which seems at all times to have done its utmost to prevent the appearance of plays in print, lest to a certain extent the public curiosity should thereby be satisfied.

The point is, of course, liable to dispute, but we have little doubt that " Henry VIII." was represented very soon after the accession of James I., to whom and to whose family it contains a highly complimentary allusion; and " Macbeth," having been written in 1605, we suppose to have been produced at the Globe in the spring of 1606. Although it related to Scottish annals, it was not, like the play of "Gowry's Conspiracy," founded upon “recent history;" and many of the sentiments and allusions it contained, especially that to the "two-fold balls and treble sceptres," in Act iv. scene 1, must have been highly acceptable to the King. It has been supposed, upon the authority of Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, that King James with his own hand wrote a letter to Shakespeare in return for the com

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