when, on the accession of James I., she took a company under her patronage.'

The frequent performances of 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 colour to his mind, and a direction to his pursuits. Considering that he was then only in his eleventh year, we cannot believe he found his way into that gorgeous and august assembly. Kenilworth was fourteen miles distant: John Shakespeare, although he had been bailiff, and was still head-alderman of Stratford, was not a man of sufficient rank and importance

1 It has been conjectured, and we believe upon the evidence of the following entry in the register of deaths at Stratford, that Greene was in some way related to Shakespeare:

1589. March 6. Thomas Green, alias Shakspere."

to be there in any official capacity; and he probably had not means to equip himself and his son for such an expedition. It may be very well as a matter of fancy to indulge such a notion, but every reasonable probability is against it.' 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 the 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 Gascoigne's "Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth" and Laneham's "Letter" to assist his memory.

1 Upon this point we differ from the Rev. Mr. Halpin in his ingenious and agreeable "Essay upon Oberon's Vision," printed by the Shakespeare Society. Bishop Percy, in his ") "Reliques," was the first to start the idea that Shakespeare had been present at the entertainment at Kenilworth, and the Rev. Mr. Halpin calls it "a pleasant conceit," which had been countenanced by Malone and adopted by Dr. Drake: nevertheless, he afterwards

seriously argues the matter, and arrives at the conclusion that Shakespeare was present in right of his gentry on both sides of the family. This appears to us even a more "pleasant conceit" than that of Percy, Malone, and Drake, who suppose Shakespeare to have gone to Kenilworth "under the wing" of Thomas Greene.

IN reference to the period when our great dramatist abandoned his native town for London, sufficient attention has not been paid to an incident in the life of his father. John Shakespeare was deprived of his gown 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; but there is no doubt, as Malone ascertained from an inspection of the ancient books of the borough, that he had ceased to attend the halls, when they were "warned" or summoned, from the year 1579 downwards. This date of 1579 is the

This use of the word "warned" occurs several times in Shakespeare: in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, Octavius tells Antony,"They mean to warn us at Philippi here :"

more important, although Malone was not aware of the fact, 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 41.

We have thus additional reason 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 office. What connection this last event may have had with William Shakespeare's determination to quit Stratford cannot be known from any circumstances that have since come to light; but it will not fail to be remarked, that in point of date the events seem to have been coincident.

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 and in KING JOHN, after King Philip has said,

"Some trumpet summon hither to the walls
These men of Angiers,"

a citizen exclaims from the battlements,

"Who is it that hath warn'd us to the walls?"

until about a year and seven months afterwards. 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 afterwards, when we find him a sharer in the Blackfriars theatre. It had been constructed (or, possibly, if not an entirely new building, some large edifice had been adapted to the purpose) 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. In 1589 some general complaints seem to have been made, that improper matters were introduced into plays; and it is quite certain that "the children of Paul's," as the acting choirboys of that cathedral were called, and the association of regular professional performers occupying the Theatre in Shoreditch at this date, had introduced Martin Marprelate upon their stages, in a manner that had given great offence to the Puritans. The master of the revels had interposed, and having brought the matter to the knowledge of Lord Burghley, two bodies of players, those of the Lord Admiral and Lord Strange, (the latter by this time having advanced from tumblers to actors,) 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 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 preferred against them. This certificate passed into the hands of Lord Ellesmere, then attorneygeneral, and it has been preserved among his papers.'

1 It is on a long slip of paper, very neatly written, but without any names appended.

These are to certifie your right Honble Lordships, that her Majesty's poore Playeres, James Burbadge. Richard Burbadge, John Lancham, Thomas Greene, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, Anth. Wadeson, Thomas Pope, George Peele, Augustine Phillipps, Nicholas Towley, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Johnson, Baptiste Goodale, and Robert Armyn, being all of them sharers in the blacke Fryers playehouse, have never given cause of displeasure, in that they have brought into their playes maters of state and Religion, unfitt to be handled by them, or to be presented before lewde spectators: neither hath anie complaynte in

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. Kempe, we know, was the successor of Tarlton, (who died in 1588,) in comic parts, and must have been an actor of great value and eminence in the company: Johnson, as appears by the royal license, had been one of the theatrical servants of the Earl of Leicester, in 1574. Of Goodale we have no account, but he bore a Stratford name; and Armyn, though he had been instructed by Tarlton, was perhaps at this date quite young, and of low rank in the association. 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 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, 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 playwright, considerably older than Shakespeare, was a member of the company, without saying any thing 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. There is reason to think that Peele did not continue one of the Lord Chamberlain's servants after 1590, and his extant dramas were acted by the Queen's players, or by those of the Lord Admiral: to the latter association Peele seems subsequently to have been attached, and his 66 Battle of Alcazar," printed in 1594, purports on the title-page to have been played by them. While Peele remained a member of the company of the Lord Chamberlain's players, Shakespeare's services as a dramatist may not materially have

that kinde ever bene preferrde against them, or anie of them Wherefore, they trust most humblie in your Lordships considera tion of their former good behaviour, being at all tymes readie and willing, to yeelde obedience to any command whatsoever your Lordships in your wisdome may thinke in such case meete,

etc.

"Nov. 1589."

Here we see that Shakespeare's name stands twelfth in the enumeration of the members of the company; but we do not rest much on the succession in which they are inserted, because among the four names which follow that of our great dramatist are certainly two performers, one of them of the highest reputation, and the other of long standing in the profession.

interfered with his exertions as an actor; but afterwards, when Peele had joined a rival establishment, he may have been much more frequently called upon to employ his pen, and then his value in that department becoming known, he was less frequently a performer

Out of the sixteen shares 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 atford to bestow upon it, especially when we call to nind that there was a member of the company who had hitherto represented most of the heroes, and whose excellence was as 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

1 "His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play; and though I have inquired, I never could meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own HAMLET."-Rowe's Life. Shakespeare's name stands first among the players of " "Every Man in his Humour," and fifth among those of " Sejanus." 30

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, probably Nash, Munday, Wilson, and others: the same practice prevailed with some of their successors, Ben Jonson, Heywood, Webster, Field, etc.; but at a somewhat later date dramatists do not appear to have trodden the stage. We have no hint that Decker, Chapman, or Marston, though contemporary with Ben Jonson, were actors; and Massinger, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, Daborne, and Shirley, who may be said to have followed them, as far as we now know, never had any thing to do with the performance of their own dramas, or of those of other poets. In their day the two departments of author and actor seem to have been generally distinct, while the contrary was certainly the case some years anterior to the demise of Elizabeth.

It is impossible to determine 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 disposed to believe, but that he had not ventured upon original composition it would be too bold to assert. The COMEDY OF ERRORS

1 From a MS. epitaph upon Burbage, (who died in 1619,) sold among the books of the late Mr. Heber, 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: in those of other dramatists he was Jeronimo, in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy;" Antonio, in Marston's "Antonio and Mellida;" Frankford, in T. Heywood's "Woman killed with Kindness;" Philaster, in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of that name; Amintor, in their "Maid's Tragedy."-See "The Alleyn Papers," printed by the Shakespeare Society, p. XXX. On a subsequent page we have inserted the whole passage relating to his characters from the epitaph on Burbage.

we take to be one of the pieces, which, having been first written by an inferior dramatist, was heightened and amended by Shakespeare, perhaps about the date of which we are now speaking, and Love's LABOUR'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 early 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 morally certain that VENUS AND ADONIS was in being anterior to Shakespeare's quitting Stratford. It bears all the marks of youthful vigour, 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

1 Upon this point we cannot agree with Mr. F. G. Tomlins, who has written a very sensible and clever work called "A brief view of the English Drama," 12mo. 1840, where he argues that Shakespeare probably began with original composition, and not with the adaptation and alteration of works he found in possession of the stage when he joined the Lord Chamberlain's players. We know that the earliest charge against him by a fellow dramatist was, that he had availed himself of the productions of others, and we have every reason to believe that some of the plays upon which he was first employed were not by any means entirely his own. It seems to us more likely that Shakespeare in the first instance confined himself to alterations and improvements of the plays of predecessors, than that he at once found himself capable of inventing and constructing a great original drama. However, it is but fair to quote the words of Mr. Tomlins. "We are thus driven to the conclusion that his writing must have procured him this distinction. What had he written? is the next question that presents itself. Probably original plays, for the adaptation of the plays of others could scarcely be entrusted to the inexperienced hands of a young genius, who had not manifested his knowledge of stage matters by any productions of his own. This kind of work would be jealously watched by the managers, and must ever have required great skill and experience. Shakespeare, mighty as he was, was human, and it is scarcely possible that a genius, so ripe, so rich, so overflowing as his, should not have its enthusiasm kindled into an original production, and not by the mechanical botching of the inferior productions of others."

Upon this passage we have only to remark that, according to our view, it would have required much more "skill and experience" to write a new play, than merely to make additions to the speeches or scenes of an old one.

"His sugar'd sonnets" were handed about "among his private friends" many years before they were printed: Francis Meres mentions them in the words we have quoted, in 1598.

Southampton, "the first heir of his invention" in a double sense, 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, 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 "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. Johnson, 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 in a station of life, 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, first printed in 1594. It is in a different stanza, and in some respects in a different style; and 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 acquaintance with the modes and habits of society; but 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 connection with the stage while he was yet resident in his native town, and before he had made up his mind to quit it. 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,

1 It is almost to be wondered that the getters up of this piece of information did not support it by reference to Shakespeare's obvious knowledge of horses and horsemanship, displayed in so many parts of his works. The description of the horse in VENUS AND ADONIS will at once occur to every body; and how much it was admired at the time is evident from the fact, that it was plagiarised so soon after it was published. For his judgment of skill in riding, among other passages, see his account of La mord's horsemanship in HAMLET: the propagators and supporters of the horse-holding anecdote ought to have added, that Shakespeare probably derived his minute and accurate acquaintance with the subject from his early observation of the skill of the English nobility and gentry, after they had remounted at the play-house door :

"But chiefly skill to ride seems a science

Proper to gentle blood."-Spenser's F. Q. b. ii. c. .