1594, because they are the first of all, and because, obscure as they are in some respects, they yet show how early Shakespeare became a man of mark. The other instances will be quoted more briefly.

This same Henry Chettle a few years later refers to Shakespeare again, under the name of Melicert, taking him to task for not sounding the praises of Elizabeth, at the time of her death.

Nor doth the silver-tonged Melicert

Drop from his honied muse one sable teare,
To mourn her death that graced his desert,
And to his laies open'd her royall eare:
Shepheard, remember our Elizabeth,

And sing her rape, done by that Tarquin, Death.

Henry Willobie, an Oxford man, in a volume called Willobie, His Avisa, published in 1594, the very year that the Lucrece was published, thus mentions the new poem:

Though Collatine have dearly bought

To high renowne, a lasting life,

And found-that most in vaine have sought To have a fair and constant wife, Yet Tarquyne pluckt his glistering grape, And Shake-speare paints poore Lucrece rape. Gabriel Harvey, who figured largely in those days as a literary critic, and who was much mixed up with the affairs of Spenser and Sidney, published in 1592 four letters especially touching Robert Greene and other parties by him abused." In the third letter is a paragraph addressed to one of the parties thus abused by Greene. The circumstances of the publication make it wellnigh certain that the person thus addressed was Shakespeare. The passage is so accepted by Dr. Ingleby, one of the most careful and exact of Shakespearian scholars. Harvey's words are: "Good sweete Oratour, be a devine poet indeede; and use heavenly eloquence indeede; and employ thy golden talent with amounting usance indeede; and with heroicall cantoes honour right vertue, and have brave valour indeede; as noble Sir Philip Sidney, and gentle Maister Spencer have done, with immortall Fame; and I will bestow more complements of rare amplifications upon thee then ever any bestowed uppon them; or this Tounge ever affoorded."

Six years later, 1598, Harvey wrote: "The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to please the wiser

sort."

Drayton, in his Matilda, also of 1594, gives the following allusion to the new poem:

Lucrece, of whom proud Rome hath boasted long,
Lately reviv'd to live another age,
And here arriv'd to tell of Tarquin's wrong,
Her chaste denial, and the tyrant's rage,
Acting her passions on our stately stage,
She is remember'd, all forgetting me,

Yet I as fair and chaste as ere was she.

In a work called Polimanteia, 1595, the following expression occurs: "All praise the Lucrece of sweet Shakespeare."

The Return from Parnassus, a play acted by the students of Cambridge, 1606, contains remarks on several contemporary poets-Spenser, Constable, Lodge, Daniel, Watson, Drayton, Davis, Marston, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Churchyard. Of Shakespeare the following is said:

Who loves Adonis' love or Lucrece' rape,
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life;
Could but a graver subject him content,
Without love's foolish, lazy languishment.

In the prose part of the play, the following dialogue occurs between the actors, Kemp and Burbage.

Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare.

Honie-tong'd Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them, and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features cloth'd in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddesse said to be their mother.
Rose-checkt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her;
Chaste Lucretia, virgine-like her dresses,

Prowd lust-stung Tarquine, seeking still to prove her; Romea, Richard, more whose names I know not, Their sugred tongues and power-attractive beauty Say they are saints, althogh that Sts they shew not, For thousands vowe to them subjective dutie: They burn in love, thy childre, Shakespear hat the, Go, wo thy Muse! more Nymphish brood beget them. These various extracts, I may remark in passing, are quoted, not for their value as poetry, but for their value as evidence, and in this respect there seems no possibility of gainsaying their force.

In 1598, Richard Barnefield writes:

"And Shakespeare, thou whose hony-flowing Vaine
(Pleasing the world) thy praises doth obtaine,
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste)
Thy name in fame's immortall Booke have plac't,
Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever;

Well may the Bodye dye; but Fame dies never."

In this same year are other incidental notices, either of Shakespeare himself, or of some of his writings. But I must omit these notices in order to dwell more at length upon the most important of all, the testimony of Francis Meres. Meres was a clergyman, "Master of Arts in both universities," ". an approved good scholar," and a compiler of school-books. His testimony is the more valuable both because of its fulness and explicitness, and because, from his very occupation as a compiler, he would be more likely than almost any other kind of writer to be a reflector and representative of public opinion. Meres's book, called Palladis Tamia, or Wit's Treasury, was published in 1598. It was a text-book for schools, giving a brief account of the chief English poets, comparing them with the corresponding Greek, Latin, and Italian poets. In this work, after enumerating the great tragic poets of Greece and Rome, Meres says we have in English Marlowe, Peele, Watson, Kyd, Shakespeare, Drayton, Decker, Ben Jonson (the names are given in chronological order). Again, in like manner, our writers of comedy are given Lily, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Nash, Heywood, etc. After quoting the Greek and Latin poets who had excelled in lyric poetry, he says, the best among our lyric poets are Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, etc. În like manner, those famous for elegy are Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh, Dyer, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, and so on. Referring to the exegi monumentum of Horace, he says, we have in English like enduring monuments in the works of Sidney, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare. He even quotes Shakespeare as one of those by whom the language had been improved : "The English tongue is mightily enriched and gorgeouslie invested in rare ornaments and resplendent (h)abiliments by sir Philip Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and Chapman. Some of Meres's particular expressions are remarkable. As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete, wittie soule of

Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c."

"As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speak with Plautus' tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say, that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speake English."

"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage for Comedy, witnes his Getleme of Verona, his Errors, his Love's labor's lost, his Love's labour's wonne, his Midsummers-night dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet."

Here, then, in 1598, we have Shakespeare, after a career of only twelve years in the metropolis, quoted publicly in a text-book as among the great English authors whose works alone are a monument "ære perennius;" his name placed conspicuously in four successive lists of writers who have distinguished themselves severally in Comic, Tragic, Lyric, and Elegiac poetry, and in still another list of those who by the

Ben Jonson. (From an old print). elegance of their writings have enriched and beautified the language, his name, too, occurring in these various eulogies more frequently than that of any other English writer, even Spenser and Drayton, who, in this respect come next, standing at considerable distance away; and, lastly, we find quoted by name, besides the Venus and Adonis, the Lucrece, the Sonnets, no less than twelve of his great dramas, the whole coupled with the significant judgment of the critic (after naming all the great lights of English literature down to that day, except Chaucer) "that the sweet witty soul of Ovid seemed to live in mellifluous honey-tongued Shakespeare, and that if the Muses should ever deign to speak English, they would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase."

To say, after this, that Shakespeare was not known or recognized in his own day, is as absurd as it would be to say the same of Spenser, Sydney, Raleigh, and Ben Jonson. What admirer of Shakespeare even now could well speak of him in higher terms of praise than

did this Francis Meres in 1598? All this, too, be it remembered, when he was, as it were, only at the beginning of his career, and with eighteen years of the most productive and most conspicuous part of his life still before him. Was either Longfellow or Tennyson, with all the prestige of university honors and influence, and with all the machinery of modern book-making and advertising, better known or more fully recognized at the age of thirty-eight than was Shakespeare at that age? Could either of them at that age have been ranked as best of English writers, in each of the four classes of Lyric, Elegiac, Comic, and Tragic verse?-or, in each of these styles, have been safely placed in comparison with the greatest of Grecian and Roman writers? Ben Jonson, who was as competent to speak of Shakespeare as would be Longfellow to speak of Tennyson, even more competent, for Jonson and Shakespeare were intimately acquainted personally, wrote for the same stage, lived in the same city, dined at the same tavern, where they had those famous "wit-combats" of which Fuller speaks-Jonson, in the lines prefixed to the first Folio, speaks of Shakespeare in terms, not only of the greatest affection, but of the most exalted eulogy,-speaks not only of his unpar

alleled genius, but of his consummate art; and extols him as surpassing, not only Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, and all other English writers, but even the ancients whom Ben worshipped, - su passing even Aristophanes, Terence, and Plautus in comedy, Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles in tragedy!

sur

The strange hallucination that Shakespeare was unknown among his contemporaries may have come in this way. Soon after his death, all stageplays were at a discount under the sway of the Puritans. On the overthrow of the Commonwealth and the incoming of the Stuarts, French notions of taste were in the ascendant. The stage was indeed revived, but it was that of France, not the good old English drama. Then again with William of Orange and Queen Anne came the reign of Classicism. And so, for one cause and another, for a full century after the close of the great Elizabethan period, Shakespeare, it is admitted, was under a cloud. Even so late as 1793, Steevens, one of the great Shakespearian editors of the last century, could write of the Sugared Sonnets, whose praises the men of Shakespeare's own day could never tire of sounding, that it was not within the omnipotence of an Act of Parliament to compel people to read them, and he actually refused to print them in his extended edition of Shakespeare's works, regarding those wonderful lyrics as so much worthless rubbish. "We have not reprinted the Sonnets, etc., because the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service."

In his own day, however, Shakespeare was the acknowledged sun of the literary firmament. We of the present century have but revived and raised somewhat the estimate in which the English people held him two hundred and fifty years ago.

Before dismissing this topic, it is worth while to notice, in these many references to Shakespeare by his contemporaries, how uniformly he is mentioned in terms of affection. This would seem, as before observed, to indicate the possession on his part of an amiable and obliging disposition, and gives plausibility to the tradition handed down by Aubrey, showing the origin of the friendship between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. "His acquaintance with Ben Jonson," says Aubrey, "began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good nature. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time

altogether unknown to the world, had offer'd one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turn'd it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natur'd answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakespear luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the publick."

We no longer "damn him with faint praise," after the fashion of the time of Alex. Pope, nor give him half-hearted, patronizing commendations, after the fashion of the time of Dr. Sam. Johnson, but rather, like the renowned scholar and dramatist of Shakespeare's own day, look up to him with admiring, almost adoring wonder, as the most exalted of the Dii Majores of the dramatic art, the very Jupiter Olympus of the poetic pantheon, in whose presence the greatest even of the great Greek and Roman masters are content to stand at a respectful distance! Such was the trumpetnote of praise sounded by Rare Ben Jonson, in Shakespeare's own day, two centuries and a half ago. Have we even at this day gone much beyond it?

I have not thus far referred to the Shakespeare-Bacon theory. The whole question seems to me to be contained in a nutshell. Stripped of verbiage, it is simply this: could the Creator who gave the world Dante and Homer have made a man of equal or even greater genius in Stratford-upon-Avon? Granted the genius, and all the other conditions of the problem are easy enough. Whoever had the genius to conceive these plays, would, in Shakespeare's surroundings, have had all the needed opportunities for education and acquired knowledge exhibited in the plays. The advocates of the Bacon theory quietly assume, in the face of all the lately accumulated evidence to the contrary, that Shakespeare was without education and without the means of acquiring knowledge. They go back to the old exploded notion of Queen Anne's day, that Shakespeare was a man of clownish ignorance, and that the plays, if by him, were the product of an inspired idiot. I could understand the argument, if applied to a man in the condition of John Bunyan. But Shakespeare was a man of letters. He had ample means of being such, and he was accepted as such by the men of letters with whom he lived in familiar, daily intercourse. Besides, it is little less than monstrous to suppose that the greatest poetry of all time, and such an immense body of it, was the product of one whose acknowledged writings, enormous likewise in quantity, show no evidence of special poetic gifts. Bacon's genius lay in the domain of science and philosophy, not of song, the few poor specimens of verse he has given only showing how much he was out of his element in that species of composition. We might as well suppose Aristotle capable of writing the Iliad, Wickcliffe the Canterbury Tales, John Hampden the Paradise Lost, or John Stuart Mill the Idylls of the King, as suspect the author of the Norum Organum capable of the Midsummer-Night's Dream, Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth. If these wondrous creations were not by the Bard of Avon, assuredly they were not by the author of Instauratio Magna and De Augmentis Scientiarum.

Misham Shulspren

Shakespeare's Signature.

CHAPTER XIII.

RELATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMPANY TO QUEEN ELIZABETH AND KING JAMES.

THE

HE company to which Shakespeare belonged was under the patronage of Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, a kinsinan and favorite of Queen Elizabeth, who had given the Lord Chamberlain use of the splendid palace of Somerset House, in which palace, it can hardly be doubted, the Chamberlain's company often played for the amusement of the Queen and Court. Shakespeare's plays, and Shakespeare himself, were well known to Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, one of the best authenticated traditions in regard to him is that the comedy of the Merry Wives of Windsor was written at her express suggestion. The refraining of Shakespeare from adulation, considering how grateful it was to the ears of the royal maids, speaks also trumpet-tongued for his manly independence. Blue eyes, blonde complexion, and golden hair, all predicable of Elizabeth herself, had become, by a sort of legal presumption, the only types of female loveliness. Yet in the face of this, the dramatist has the courage, perhaps, considering the imperious temper of the Queen, we might call it the audacity, to admire a regular brunette: He thus writes to some sweetheart:

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the East,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even
Doth half that glory to the sober West,
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
O, let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black
And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

Sonnet cxxxii.

Spenser, or Sidney, or Raleigh, would as soon have cut off his right hand as to express admiration for such

a woman.

Shakespeare, in this as in many other matters, was wiser than his time; he well knew that in the age to come his one delicate allusion to the Maiden Queen, in the passage in Midsummer's-Night's Dream, already quoted, would be counted of greater worth than all the open flatteries poured out by his contemporaries with such lavish profusion.

Elizabeth was fond of theatrical exhibitions, and it was probably in consequence of this inclination of hers that the play-houses, which at different times, under the influence of the Puritan party, were ordered to be closed by the authorities of the city of London, were yet enabled to continue their performances, with little interruption, to the close of her reign.

On the accession of James, the Puritan party renewed their efforts to suppress the play-houses, and at first met with some success; but soon after reaching London, the new monarch changed his mind and took the Lord Chamberlain's Players (Shakespeare's company) under his own protection, allowing them henceforth to be called the King's Players, and giving them a royal license with special privileges. The date of this license is 1603, and the name of the players, as given in it, are Fletcher, Shakespeare, Burbage, Phillipps, Heminge, Condell, Sly, Armin, Cowley,-nine, Shakespeare being second on the list. We note also, that in a list of the comedians who represented the dramatis persone at the performance of Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humor, at the Blackfriars, in 1598, Shakespeare's name heads the list.

The first occasion, apparently, on which this company played before King James was when the Earl of Pembroke, Dec. 2d, 1603, gave, at his seat at Wilton, a great entertainment to the King. An entry of the fiscal accounts of that date show that £30 (£150) was paid on that occasion to John Heminge 'on behalf of his Majesty's Players of the Globe," to perform at the festival before the King; and we know from another source that both Pembroke, who gave the entertainment, and his brother, the Earl of Montgomery, were great admirers and favorers of Shakespeare. Ben Jonson speaks expressly of the favor with which both Elizabeth and Jaines regarded Shakespeare:

"Those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James."

There are two traditions on this subject which it may be well to notice here. The first is that on one

occasion, during the progress of the play,* her Majesty purposely dropped her glove in such a way as to oblige the poet to stop his acting and pick it up, which he did, saying (as a king, in character),

"And though now bent on this high embassy,

Yet stoop we to take up our cousin's glove."

The other tradition, pretty well authenticated, is that "King James I. was pleased with his own hand to write an amicable letter to Mr. Shakespeare." John Davies, of Hereford, a contemporary poet, seems to have thought the dramatist not unworthy of such royal companionship. In a poem, The Scourge of Folly, 1607, Davies says:

To our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shakespeare.
Some say, good Will, which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not plaid some kingly parts in sportt
Thou hadst bin a companion for a king,
And beene a king among the meaner sort:
Some others raile; but, raile as they thinke fit,
Thou hast no rayling, but a raigning wit:
And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape,
So, to increase their stocke, which they do keep.

CHAPTER XIV.

SHAKESPEARE'S PECUNIARY AFFAIRS - HIS EXTRAORDINARY BUSINESS THRIFT - ACCUMULATION OF PROP

ERTY AT STRATFORD- - AMBITION TO BE A RETIRED COUNTRY GENTLEMAN - EVIDENCES OF HIS TACT IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT EVIDENCES OF HIS KINDLY DISPOSITION AND CONCILIATORY MANNERS.

THER HERE are other evidences of Shakespeare's prosperity besides those drawn from the annals of the Blackfriars and the Globe. In 1596, John Shakespeare and wife recovered by law, evidently by the aid of money received from London, the estate of Asbies, the marriage portion of William's mother, which had been alienated during the period of the father's pecuniary misfortunes. In 1596, again, the grant of arms to John Shakespeare by the herald's office was consummated evidently through influence put forth in London. In 1597, the poet bought the principal dwellinghouse in Stratford, an old mansion formerly belonging to the Clopton family, and called the Great House. Shakespeare, on acquiring this property, fitted it up for his own residence, and changed its name to the New Place.

From a document dated 24 Jan., 1597-8, we learn that Shakespeare's influence with Lord Treasurer Burleigh is invoked by the Stratford burghers, to aid them in getting from the government some abatement of taxes, as well as a portion of the government grant for the relief of certain cities and towns that had suffered by the plague or by fire. From the same document we learn that "he is willing to disburse some money on some odd yard land or other at Shottery," the birthplace and early home of his youthful sweetheart, Anne Hathaway. In Feb., 1598, in an inventory of corn and malt in Stratford, taken in apprehension of scarcity, William Shakespeare is entered as possessing ten quarters, being the third largest holder in his ward. In this year also we find him selling a load of stone to the corporation of Stratford. In October of the same year he is assessed in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, showing him to be a property holder in London, his rates being 138. 4d. In this same month, too, Richard Quiney of Stratford, [father of the Quiney who afterwards married Shakespeare's youngest daughter,] writes to his "loving good friend and countryman, Mr. William Shakespeare," asking the loan of £30,-showing that the poet was not only a property holder but a moneylender. Four years later, 1602, Shakespeare, for and in consideration of the sum of £320 of current English money, purchased 107 acres of arable land in the parish of old Stratford, the negotiation being conducted by his brother Gilbert. Later in the same year he bought a house in Walker Street, near New Place, Stratford; and later still, for the sum of £60 ($1500), one messuage, two orchards, two gardens, and two barns, with their appurtenances." Three years later, 1605, he made his largest purchase, buying the unexpired lease of a portion of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, for the sum of £440. Shakespeare's annual income from these tithes, as we learn from another document, was £120 (i. e. $3000 now). Later still, 1612, he bought a house, with ground attached, near the Blackfriars Theatre, London, for the sum of £140. We find him also, 1604, bringing an action against Philip Rogers, in the Court of Stratford, for £1 158. 10d. being the price of malt sold to him at different times; and, again, 1609, instituting process for £6 debt and 248. damages and costs, against John Addenbrock of Stratford, these things showing clearly that "poetry and acting" did not make the man of genius negligent in matters of business.

66

- all

Now, putting together these various facts, we find that the dramatist was steadily advancing in fortune as well as in fame, and that, at the end of twenty years from the time of his going to London, he had, by a steady pursuit of his profession, risen to be a man of mark in the theatrical world. Every step in his history, so far as we are able to trace it, shows that he gained his success, not by sudden and capricious flights of genius, but by hard work and persevering industry. As his writings show him to have been one of the greatest of geniuses, so his life shows him to have been one of the most industrious and methodical of workers. He chose one profession; he pursued it without intermission for a period of thirty years; he pursued it in connection with the same company; he pursued it in the same place. He rose, not by a bound, in consequence of some particular performance dashed off in a heat and a hurry, which is the vulgar idea of genius, but step by step, year by year, slowly, steadily, surely, triumphantly. He produced, in the twentyfive years devoted mainly to authorship, no less than

† Had you not been an actor.

half plays a year, the latest plays ever the best, each

succeeding year showing a higher style of workmanship, an ever-growing productiveness and power. He is another proof, if any were needed, that one would not go far astray in defining genius to be an enormous capacity for labor, or, as Longfellow puts it, "the infinite capacity of taking trouble."

the hounds from the scent. They represent him as drunk every day." In consequence of these irregularities, three of the players were arrested, and the performances were prohibited. These indiscretions and difficulties among the King's Players, occurring in quick succession after Shakespeare had ceased to be of the company, speak trumpet-tongued of those which did not occur during the eighteen years that he was in the management.

CHAPTER XV.

PROBABLE PERIOD OF HIS WITHDRAWAL FROM THE STAGE AND FROM LONDON-STATE OF HIS AFFAIRS AND OF HIS FAMILY AT THE TIME OF HIS RETIREMENT.

It not known what time

is not certainly known at what time Shakespeare

year 1604, however, is generally regarded as the probable time. The growing importance and popularity of his plays and his continued increase in wealth make it improbable that he continued to act later than the date named. The last record of his name in the company of the King's Players is on April 9, 1604, when he stands second on the list, the only one above him being Burbage, who had for a long time stood at the head of his profession as an actor. The general belief is that Shakespeare ceased to appear as a player soon after this, in other words, when he was forty years old, and had been eighteen years in London. This may be considered as the culminating point in his personal history.

I have already expressed the opinion that Shakespeare possessed an unusual degree of common sense, that he was amiable, conciliatory, and prudent; in short, that he had that class of qualities which fit a man for business, while they are vulgarly thought to be incompatible with genius. This is a class of qualities which it is difficult to show. Of indiscretion the proofs are generally positive and tangible. But prudence and discretion in the management of affairs must be established by negative evidence. It is certainly, however, no unmeaning circumstance that during the whole period that Shakespeare exercised a controlling influence in the theatrical company, its affairs were managed, not only with thrift, but without those quarrels and jars for which the profession in all ages has been notorious, and also without those causes of offence which the other theatres were perpetually giving to particular individuals or classes, civil, political, or religious. It is noticeable also that almost immediately after Shakespeare's withdrawal from the management, the company were beset with difficulties, and numerous complaints were lodged against them for offences against morals, manners, or taste. Thus, December, 1604, John Chamberlain writes of a certain tragedy by the King's Players, in which kings and princes are brought upon the stage, "I hear that some great councillors are much displeased with it, and so it is thought it shall be forbidden." Again, 1605, the Mayor of London complains that "Kempe, Armyn, and others, at the Blackfriars, have 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." Again, in 1606, it is complained that they brought upon the stage the Queen of France in a manner very offensive to the French ambassador; also, "They brought forward their own king [James] and 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

James I. of England and VI. of Scotland.

After ceasing to be an actor, Shakespeare's connection with the stage was that only of a writer of plays, and this connection he continued to the end of his life. This, however, did not necessarily require his residence in London. Even while living in London, he was wont, according to Aubrey, "to go to his native county once a year. Various documents show that he early contemplated the project, which he finally executed, of retiring from London, to spend the close of life in his native village. We have already seen how regularly, from year to year, he invested in and around Stratford the money accumulated from his - professional labors. At least seven years before he ceased being an actor, and fifteen years before retiring from London, he had become a property-holder in his native town. The village tradition, in the generation after his death, was that Shakespeare, "in his elder days, lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large that he spent at the rate of £1,000 a year." This, doubtless, is an exaggeration, certainly as to the amount of money spent. At the same time, the tradition obviously had some foundation in truth. He had already, some years before, bought the largest and finest residence in Stratford, that built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII., and known as "The Great House," and afterwards as "The New Place;" and there is good reason for believing that his style of living there was that of a "fine old English gentleman, all of the olden time."

The time when Shakespeare retired entirely from London is not known. The most probable conjecture is that which places it in 1612, when he was fortyeight years old, and after a city life of twenty-six years. His father, mother, and two younger brothers