most with three months' imprisonment and treble damages. Sir Thomas Lucy, who was on terms of intimacy 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 seventeenth 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 cireumstances," 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 Lon

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don 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 Shaks pere, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will Shakspere could be had.” Steevens objects to this surpassing anecdote of the horseholding, 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 characterization, and these were called plays; and there were "storial shows" in the public theatres, to which the coarsest melo-drama that is now 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 first 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 Shakspere had unquestionably 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 the 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 realized a fortune. How had he been principally occupied from the time he left Stratford, to have become somewhat rapidly a person of importance amongst 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 manifested 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, continnes Malone, "Puttenham printed his Art of English Poesy;' and in that work also we look in vain for the name of Shakspere." The