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years, and early in 1593 seems to have put it into the hands of a printer, named Richard Field, who, it has been said, was of Stratford, and might be the son of the Henry Feelde, or Field, whose goods John Shakespeare was employed to value in 1592. It is to be recollected that at the time "Venus and Adonis" was sent to the press, while it was printing, and when it was published, the plague prevailed in London to such an excess, that it was deemed expedient by the privy council to put a stop to all theatrical performances'. Shakespeare seems to have availed himself of this interval, in order to bring before the world a production of a different character to those which had been ordinarily seen from his pen. Until " Venus and Adonis" came out, the public at large could only have known him by the dramas he had written, or by those which, at an earlier date, he had altered, amended, and revived. The poem caine from Field's press in the spring of 1593, preceded by a dedication to the Earl of Southampton. Its popularity was great and instantaneous, for a new edition of it was called for in 1594, a third in 1596, a fourth in 1600, and a fifth in 16022: there may have been, and probably were, intervening impressions, which have disappeared among the popular and destroyed literature of the time. We may conclude that this admirable and unequalled production first introduced its author to the notice of Lord Southampton; and it is evident from the opening of the dedication, that Shakespeare had not taken the precaution of ascertaining, in the first instance, the wishes of the young nobleman on the subject. Lord Southampton was more than nine years younger than Shakespeare, having been born on 6th Oct. 1573.

We may be sure that the dedication of "Venus and Adonis" was, on every account, acceptable, and Shakespeare followed it up by inscribing to the same peer, but in a much more assured and confident strain, his "Lucrece" in the

1 By the following order, derived from the registers :"That for avoyding of great concourse of people, which causeth increase of the infection, it were convenient that all Playes, Bearbaytings, Cockpitts. common Bowling-alleyes, and such like unnecessarie assemblies, should be suppressed during the time of infection, for that infected people, after their long keeping in. and before they be cleared of their disease and infection, being desirous of recreation, use to resort to such assemblies, where, through heate and thronge, they infect many sound personnes."

In consequence of the virulence and extent of the disorder, Michaelmas term, 1593, was kept at St. Alban's. It was about this period that Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" was acted as a private entertainment at Croydon.

2 Malone knew nothing of any copy of 1594. The impression of 1602 was printed for W. Leake; only a single copy of the edition has come down to our day it had been entered by him as early as 1596.

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

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succeeding year. He then "dedicated his love" to his juvenile patron, having "a warrant of his honourable dispo sition" towards his "pamphlet" and himself. "Lucrece was not calculated, from its subject and the treatment of it, to be so popular as "Venus and Adonis," and the first edition having appeared from Field's press in 1594, a reprint of it does not seem to have been called for until after the lapse of four years, and the third edition bears the date of 1600.

It must have been about this period that the Earl of Southampton bestowed a most extraordinary proof of his high-minded munificence upon the author of "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece." It was not unusual, at that time and afterwards. for noblemen, and others to whom works were dedicated, to make presents of money to the writers of them; but there is certainly no instance upon record of such generous bounty, on an occasion of the kind, as that of which we are now to speak': nevertheless, we have every reliance upon the authenticity of the anecdote, taking into account the unexampled merit of the poet, the known liberality of the nobleman, and the evidence upon which the story has been handed down. Rowe was the original narrator of it in print, and he doubtless had it, with other information, from Betterton, who probably received it directly from Sir William Davenant, and communicated it to Rowe. If it cannot be asserted that Davenant was strictly contemporary with Shakespeare, he was contemporary with Shakespeare's contemporaries, and from them he must have obtained the original information. Rowe gives the statement in these words :

"There is one instance so singular in the munificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that, if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William Davenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his [Shakespeare's] affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to."

No biographer of Shakespeare seems to have adverted to the period when it was likely that the gift was made, in combination with the nature of the purchase Lord Southampton had heard our great dramatist wished to complete, or, it seems to us, they would not have thought the tradition by any means so improbable as some have held it.

1 The author of the present Life of Shakespeare is bound to make one exception, which has come particularly within his own knowl edge, but of which he does not feel at liberty to say more.

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The disposition to make a worthy return for the dedications of "Venus and Adonis" and Lucrece" would of course be produced in the mind of Lord Southampton by the publication of those poems; and we are to recollect that it was precisely at the same date that the Lord Chamberlain's servants entered upon the project of building the Globe Theatre on the Bankside, not very far to the west of the Southwark foot of London Bridge. "Venus and Adonis" was published in 1593; and it was on the 22nd Dec. in that year that Richard Burbage, the great actor, and the leader of the company to which Shakespeare was attached, signed a bond to a carpenter of the name of Peter Street for the construction of the Globe. It is not too much to allow at least a year for its completion; and it was during 1594, while the work on the Bankside was in progress, that "Lucrece came from the press. Thus we see that the building of the Globe, at the cost of the sharers in the Blackfriars theatre, was coincident in point of time with the appearance of the two poems dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. Is it, then, too much to believe that the young and bountiful nobleman, having heard of this enterprise from the peculiar interest he is known to have taken in all matters relating to the stage, and having been incited by. warm admiration of "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," in the fore-front of which he rejoiced to see his own name, presented Shakespeare with 10007., to enable him to make good the money he was to produce, as his proportion, for the completion of the Globe?

We do not mean to say that our great dramatist stood in need of the money, or that he could not have deposited it as well as the other sharers in the Blackfriars'; but Lord Southampton may not have thought it necessary to inquire, whether he did or did not want it, nor to consider precisely what it had been customary to give ordinary versifiers, who sought the pay and patronage of the nobility. Although Shakespeare had not yet reached the climax of his excellence, Lord Southampton knew him to be the greatest dramatist this country had yet produced; he knew him also to be the writer of two poems, dedicated to himself, with which nothing else of the kind could bear comparison; and in the exercise of his bounty he measured the poet by his deserts, and "used him after his own honour and diguity," by bestowing upon him a sum worthy of his title and char

Neither are we to imagine that Shakespeare would have to contribute the whole sum of 1000. as his contribution to the cost of the Globe: probably much less; but this was a consideration which, we may feel assured, never entered the mind of a man like Lord Southampton.

acter, and which his wealth probably enabled him without difficulty to afford. We do not believe that there has been any exaggeration in the amount, (although that is more possible, than that the whole statement should have been a fiction) and Lord Southampton may thus have intended also to indicate his hearty good will to the new undertaking of the company, and his determination to support it'.

CHAPTER X.

The opening of the Globe theatre, on the Bankside, in 1595. Union of Shakespeare's associates with the Lord Admiral's players. The theatre at Newington Butts. Projected repair and enlargement of the Blackfriars theatre: opposition by the inhabitants of the precinct. Shakespeare's rank in the company in 1596. Petition from him and seven others to the Privy Council, and its results. Repair of the Blackfriars theatre. Shakespeare a resident in Southwark in 1596: proof that he was so from the papers at Dulwich College.

WE have concluded, as we think that we may do very fairly, that the construction of the new theatre on the Bankside, subsequently known as the Globe, having been commenced soon after the signature of the bond of Burbage to Street, on 22d Dec. 1593, was continued through the year 1594: we apprehend that it would be finished and ready for the reception of audiences early in the spring of 1595. It was a round wooden building, open to the sky, while the stage was protected from the weather by an overhanging roof of thatch. The number of persons it would contain we have no means of ascertaining, but it was certainly of larger dimensions than the Rose, the Hope or the Swan, three other edifices of the same kind and used for the same purpose, in the immediate vicinity. The Blackfriars was a private theatre, as it was called, entirely covered in, and of smaller size; and from thence the company, after the Globe had been completed, was in the habit of removing in the spring, perhaps as soon as there was any indication of the setting in of fine cheerful weather".

1 After the Globe had been burned down in June, 1613, it was rebuilt very much by the contributions of the king and the nobility, Lord Southampton may have intended the 10007., in part, as a contribution to this enterprise, through the hands of an individual whom he had good reason to distinguish from the rest of the company.

2 We know that they did so afterwards, and there is every reason to believe that such was their practice from the beginning. Dr. Forman records, in his Diary in the Ashmolean Museum, that he saw "Macbeth at the Globe, on the 20th April, 1610; "Richard II." on

Before the building of the Globe, for the exclusive use of the theatrical servants of the Lord Chamberlain, there can be little doubt that they did not act all the year round. at the Blackfriars: they appear to have performed sometimes at the Curtain in Shoreditch, and Richard Burbage, at the time of his death, still had shares in that playhouse1. Whether they occupied it in common with any other association is not so clear; but we learn from Henslowe's Diary, that in 1594, and perhaps at an earlier date, the company of which Shakespeare was a member had played at a theatre in Newington Butts, where the Lord Admiral's servants also exhibited. At this period of our stage-history the performances usually began at three o'clock in the afternoon; for the citizens transacted their business and dined early, and many of them afterwards walked out into the fields for recreation, often visiting such theatres as were open purposely for their reception. Henslowe's Diary shows that the Lord Chamberlain's and the Lord Admiral's servants had joint possession of the Newington theatre from 3d June 1594, to the 15th November, 1596; and during that period various pieces were performed, which in their titles resemble plays which unquestionably came from Shakespeare's pen. That none of these were productions by our great dramatist, it is, of course, impossible to affirm; but the strong probability seems to be, that they were older dramas, of which he subsequently, more or less, availed himself. Among these was a "Hamlet," acted on 11th of June, 1594: a "Taming of a Shrew," acted on 11th June, 1594; an “Andronicus," acted on 12th June, 1594; a "Venetian Comedy," acted on 12th Aug. 1594; a “Cæsar and Pompey," acted 8th Nov. 1594; a "Second Part of Cæsar," acted 26th June, 1595; a Henry V.,” acted on 28th Nov. 1595; and a "Troy,” acted on the 22d June, 1596. To these we might

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the 30th April, 1611, and "The Winter's Tale" on the 15th May, in the same year. See the Introductions to those several plays.

1 The same was precisely the case with Pope, the celebrated comedian, who died in Feb. 1604. His will, dated 22d July, 1603, contains the following clause: "Item, I give and bequeath to the said Mary Clark, alias Wood, and to the said Thomas Bromley, as well all my part, right, title, and interest, which I have, or ought to have, in and to all that playhouse, with the appurtenances, called the Curtain, situate and being in Holywell, in the parish of St. Leonard's in Shoreditch, in the county of Middlesex; as also my part, estate. and interest, which I have, or ought to have, in and to all that playhouse, with the appurtenances, called the Globe. in the parish of St. Saviour's, in the county of Surrey."-Chalmers' Supplemental Apology, p. 165.

Richard Burbage lived and died (in 1619) in Holy well-street, near the Curtain theatre, as if his presence were necessary for the superintendence of the concern, although he had been an actor at the Blackfriars for many years, and at the Globe ever since its erection.

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