fessions, he probably, like many others who have been forced into busy life, cultivated his early scholarship only so far as he found it practically useful, and had little leisure for unnecessary display. His mind was too large to make a display of anything. But what professed scholar has ever engrafted Latin words upon our vernacular English with more facility and correctness? Who amongst the greatest of scholars has ever shown a more profound acquaintance with the spirit of ancient customs, and manners, and modes of thought? Malone has found a Latin letter written to his father by Richard Quiney, when a boy and some ten years Shakspere's junior; and he very properly assumes that Shakspere himself could have written such a letter. The father of this boy was an alderman of Stratford; he himself, the Latin letter-writer, was afterwards a grocer; and there was another alderman, his contemporary, and the contemporary of Shakspere's father, who used also to write long Latin letters to Alderman Quiney upon matters of business. What does this prove? That amongst those who were educated at all there was a higher standard existing than the mere ability to read and write. The men who wrote and received these Latin letters were tradesmen at Stratford, and had probably been educated at its free-school. The masters of that school, from 1572 to 1587, were Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins. They are unknown to fame. They were, no doubt, humble and pious men, satisfied with the duties of life that were assigned to them. Hunt was the curate of a neighbouring village, Luddington. It is most probable that they did their duty to Shakspere. At any rate they did not spoil his marvellous intellect.

There are local associations connected with Stratford which could not be without their influence in the formation of Shakspere's mind. Within the range of such a boy's curiosity were the fine old historic towns of Warwick and Coventry, the sumptuous palace of Kenilworth, the grand monastic remains of Evesham. His own Avon abounded with spots of singular beauty, quiet hamlets, solitary woods. Nor was Stratford shut out from the general world, as many country towns are. It was a great highway; and dealers with every variety of merchandize resorted to its fairs. The eyes of Shakspere must always have been open for observation. When he was eleven years old Elizabeth made her celebrated progress to Lord Leicester's castle of Kenilworth; and there he might even have been a witness to some of the "princely pleasures" of masques and mummeries which were the imperfect utterance of the early drama. At Coventry, too, the ancient mysteries and pageants were still exhibited in the streets, the last sounds of those popular exhibitions which, dramatic in their form, were amongst the most tasteless and revolting appeals to the

senses.

More than all, the players sometimes even came to Stratford. What they played, and with what degree of excellence, we shall presently have occasion to mention. The ambition of the boy Shakspere would not have been very extravagant if he had fancied that he could make a better play than any that the players could have shown him.

A belief has obtained, and it has been taken up by men of higher mark than the original promulgators, that William Shakspere's family, about his fourteenth year, became embar rassed in their circumstances, and subsequently fell into great poverty. The question is not uninteresting, looking at the probable influence of such a state of his father's circumstances upon the future destiny of the great poet. It is of little consequence to the present age to know whether an alderman of Stratford, nearly three hundred years past, became unable to maintain his social position; but it is of consequence to know whether the greatest amongst the minds of England had passed through early sorrow and suffering-had encountered the degradations of positive want-had fled his country for deerstealing had left his family, to hold horses at the door of a London theatre. We do not believe that any such consequences of the alleged poverty of his family ever took place. There is the best evidence for not believing so. Neither do we believe that Shakspere's father was reduced at all in his cir

cumstances, certainly not that he lost his social position. A passage in the poet's 'Life' by Rowe has led to the pains-takings by which this theory has been sought to be established :—“ His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that, though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a freeschool, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was master of; but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his farther proficiency in that language. It is without controversy that in his works we scarce find any traces of anything that looks like an imitation of the ancients." Rowe then goes on to assume that because he did not copy from the ancients he had never read them. This only shows the imperfect knowledge and false reasoning of Rowe as regarded Shakspere's education; he has given us no facts to prove the narrowness of his father's circumstances. Malone, however, says, there is "abundant proof" that when our author was about fourteen years old his father was "by no means in affluent or even easy circumstances." This may be. The purchase of his houses in Henley-street, Stratford, was made in 1574. His son William inherited that estate. In 1578 John Shakspere mortgaged his wife's estate for a sum much under its value; and the bill in Chancery, twenty years after, to which we have alluded, was filed against the mortgagee, who appears to have used unfair means to have retained possession of it. This purchase of one property, and the mortgage within four years of another property, indicates certainly some change either of circumstances or of occupation; but it does not indicate what Malone broadly affirms to have been the case, that John Shakspere was in "a distressed situation" at this period. Malone contends that the records of the borough of Stratford afford "decisive proof" of the fact. At a common hall of the borough held in January, 1578, it is agreed "that every alderman except such underwritten should pay towards the furniture of three pikemen, two billmen, and one archer, 6s. 8d." Mr. Plymley, an alderman, was to pay 5s., and Mr. Shakspere 3s. 4d. This is Malone's first "decisive proof" of ". distressed circumstances." The record adds, "the inhabitants of every ward are taxed, as by the notes delivered to them it may appear." There was clearly, then, a variable tax, determined probably according to the nature of the occupancy of each inhabitant. Is it possible to imagine that the corporation sat in inquisition on the means of their own members? But we have another of these "decisive proofs." In a hall of 1578 “ it is ordained that every alderman shall pay weekly towards the relief of the poor 4d., saving John Shakspere and Robert Bratt, who shall not be taxed to pay anything." Can we believe that this was on account of their reputed poverty? Would the undoubted possessor of two houses in Stratford, and the ostensible proprietor of an estate in the neighbourhood, have been excused by reason of "distressed circumstances?" Do fiscal officers ever act in this way? Do those who have to labour under fallen means ever proclaim their poverty in this way ? In 1579 there is an account rendered of moneys levied by certain officers upon the inhabitants for armour, &c.; and Master Shakspere, with two other masters, besides various plain Johns and Thomases, are returned for sums unpaid. This is held to be another decisive proof of "distressed circumstances ;" The tax-collectors' books of the year 1841, if they come to be examined three centuries hence, will show many such defaulters who will die worth a plum. A man's will, too, has been found, reciting a debt of five pounds owing to him by Mr. John Shakspere, for which two of his friends appear to have been security. Malone boldly maintains that this is a proof of "insolvency." Lastly, in 1586, a return is made into the Bailiff's Court, upon an action for debt, upon which distraint was ordered against John Shakspere; and the return sets forth that he has nothing upon which distress can be levied. This would, indeed, imply a breaking up of the family, a scattering

of all their worldly goods. But Malone, who has taken very laudable pains to show that their was another John Shakspere in Stratford, the shoemaker, who married in 1584, and actually received a loan out of a charity-fund about that time, does not suggest the possibility that this might be the John Shakspere who had no goods to be taken in execution. The return in the Bailiff's Court does not designate the debtor by the alderman's received title of master, or magister. The rise, however, of our poet's father must have been as rapid as his fall-if he had fallen; for there is a memorandum affixed to the grant of arms in 1596-" he hath lands and tenements, of good wealth and substance, 5007." Malone assumes that this is a fiction of the Heralds' Office. Why cannot we, who read the past thus darkly-who even know so little of the present-be content with what is obvious in private or public history? Why must we be so all-penetrating?

Inquiries such as these would be worse than useless, unless they had some distinct bearing on the probable career of William Shakspere. Of the earlier part of that career nothing can, probably, ever be known with certainty. He may have been taken from school, according to Rowe, to assist his father in his trade of a dealer in wool; he might have carried out gloves-yea, even killed a calf in a high style-without inducing a belief in our minds that he was not doing something higher at a very early age. But we believe that he was doing none of these things. His father added to his independent means, we have no doubt, by combining several occupations in the principal one of looking after a little land; exactly in the way which Harrison has described. Shakspere's youth was, in all probability, one of very desultory employment, which afforded him leisure to make those extraordinary acquisitions of general knowledge which could scarcely have been made, or rather the foundations of which could not have been established, during the active life which we believe he led from about his twentieth year. It is in this manner, we are inclined to think, that we must reconcile the contradictory traditions of his early employment. As his father, carrying on various occupations connected with his little property, might, after the lapse of years, have been a woolman in the imperfect recollection of some, and a butcher in that of others, so his illustrious son, having no very settled employment, may have been either reputed an assistant to his father, a lawyer's clerk, a schoolmaster, or a wild scapegrace, according to the imperfect chroniclers of a country-town, who, after he returned amongst them a rich man, would rejoice in gossiping over the wondrous doings of the boy. It is thus, we believe, that old Aubrey, having been amongst the parish-clerks and barbers of Stratford some fifty years after Shakspere was dead, tells us, "from Mr. Beeston" "though, as Ben Jonson says of him, that he had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country." His precocious gravity as a schoolmaster must have been as wonderful as his poetical power; for Aubrey also tells us," this William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, and did act exceedingly well......He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well." Here, we think, is a statement not very far from the truth, a statement derived from Aubrey's London information. The stories of the butcher and the schoolmaster were Stratford traditions, perhaps also with some shadow of reality about them. It is held by some that Shakspere had been a lawyer. It is not unlikely,-it is highly probable. His plays abound with legal phraseology, employed invariably with technical exactness. But then Shakspere, out of the abundance of his knowledge, employs other technical and professional modes of thought and expression with equal correctness; and the practice as well as the grounds of law were in those days familiar to most educated men. But if he had not been in an attorney's office, he had the reputation of having been so engaged. In an Epistle to the Gentlemen Students of the two Universities,' prefixed to Greene's Arcadia,' and

published in 1589, Thomas Nashe thus speaks of a play which there can be little difficulty in believing to have been the first draft of Shakspere's 'Hamlet;'-Shakspere was then twenty-five, and a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre." It is a common practice now-a-days, among a sort of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neckverse if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as blood is a beggar, and so forth; and, if you entreat him far in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches." Greene and Nashe were proud of their scholarship; they were University-men; rival writers for the stage. They were loose and profligate persons, yet ready enough to sneer at "shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none." The "trade of Noverint" was a name for the lawyers' trade, the common writs beginning with Noverint. The application of this spite to some author of some "Hamlet' is perfectly clear, and the only doubt can be whether Shakspere's 'Hamlet' was then in being. No other Hamlet' is known. We have expressed a decided opinion that Shakspere had written Hamlet,' and other plays, in 1589.* Had he pursued "the trade of Noverint" in the country? It was observed to us by Mr. Wheler that he had inspected hundreds of title-deeds and other documents bearing date from 1580 to 1590, in the hope to find William Shakspere's signature; and that, if he had been a lawyer's clerk in Stratford, or indeed in any neighbouring town, his signature must have been attached to some document as an attesting witness, that formality being then required on the slightest occasions. This is certainly strong evidence against the belief that he was in the office of an attorney at Stratford. Might he have gone to London, there to apply himself to the legal profession? The passage from the office-desk to the Blackfriars Theatre was not a very difficult transition. But we must go back for a short time before we place Shakspere in London.

The earliest connected narrative of Shakspere's life, that of Rowe, thus briefly continues the history of the boy :-" Upon his leaving school he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." The information which Betterton thus collected as to Shakspere's early marriage was perfectly accurate. He did marry "the daughter

of one Hathaway," and he was no doubt "a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." At Shottery, a pretty village within a mile of the town, there is yet a farmhouse, now divided into two tenements, where it is affirmed that Hathaway dwelt. By a copy of Court Roll, of the date of 1543, it appears that John Hathaway then held a copyhold estate at Shottery. The identical farm-house or cottage, with its little garden and orchard, remained in the possession of the descendants of the Hathaways till 1838: it was then sold. William Shakspere was married to Anne Hathaway before the close of the year 1582. He was then eighteen years and a half old. This was, indeed, an early marriage. His wife was considerably older than himself. Her tombstone states that she died "the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of sixty-seven years." In 1623 Shakspere would have been fifty-nine years old. The marriage bond and licence was discovered amongst the papers of the Consistorial Court at Worcester, in 1836; and was published by Mr. Wheler, in the Gentleman's Magazine.' The bondsmen are, Fulk Sandells, of Stratford, farmer, and John Richardson, of the same place, farmer, and they are held and bound in the sum of 401., &c. This bond is dated the 28th of November, in the 25th year of Elizabeth-that is, in 1582. The bondsmen

• See Pictorial Edition of Shakspere,' edited by Charles Knight. Introductory Notice to Hamlet; Essay on Henry VI., &c.

subscribe their marks. The licence, affixed to the bond, then proceeds as follows:

"The condition of this obligation is such, that if hereafter there shall not appear any lawful let or impediment by reason of any precontract or affinity, or by any other lawful means whatsoever, but that William Shakspere on the one party, and Anne Hathway of Stratford, in the diocese of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony, and in the same afterwards remain and continue like man and wife, according unto the laws in that case provided; and moreover, if there be not at this present time any action, suit, quarrel, or demand, moved or depending before any judge ecclesiastical or temporal, for and concering any such lawful let or impediment; and moreover, if the said William Shakspere do not proceed to solemnization of marriage with the said Anne Hathway without the consent of her friends; and also if the said William Shakspere do upon his own proper costs and expenses defend and save harmless the Right Reverend Father in God Lord John Bishop of Worcester and his officers for licensing them, the said William and Anne, to be married together with once asking of the bans of matrimony between them, and for all other causes which may ensue by reason or occasion thereof, that then the 'said obligation to be void and of none effect, or else to stand and abide in full force and virtue."

The remarkable part of this licence is that they were to be married" with once asking of the bans ;" they were not to be married" without the consent" of Anne's friends. There is

no record where they were married. In 1583 an entry, of which we give the fac-simile (No. 3), is found in the Stratford Register of Baptisms.

The entry is the fourth of the month, the word May being attached to the first entry of the month. A comparison of the dates of the marriage licence and the baptism of Shakspere's first child leads to the obvious conclusion that the same fault into which the courtly Raleigh and the high-born Elizabeth Throgmorton had fallen had disturbed the peace of the humble family of the Hathaways, and had no doubt made the mother of the imprudent boy-poet weep bitter tears. But there was instant reparation-a reparation, too, that must have been the voluntary act of him who had committed the error. The trothplight had no doubt preceded the legal marriage. There was, however, no public shame. William Shakspere was an inhabitant of Stratford, and his wife is denoted as such in the licence; and there they dwelt when they were married;and there their children were born;-and there they lived in their later years in opulence ;--and there they died. We can see no useful purpose to be served in drawing inferences unfavourable to the general character of Shakspere's wife from the document which has been discovered, and especially in assuming that domestic unhappiness banished him from Stratford.

There is a remarkable passage in the comedy of 'Twelfth Night' which has been supposed to bear upon the private history of Shakspere; and there is another in the Tempest,' in which Prospero pronounces a solemn charge to Ferdinand, which is supposed to bear upon the circumstances which led to his own hasty marriage. We believe that such conjectures are in general founded upon a misapprehension of the dramatic spirit in which he worked; and that such notions especially as that he was himself jealous, because he has so truly depicted the passion of jealousy,—or that he had himself felt the bitter pang of filial irreverence, because he had written,

"Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster !"-

are altogether idle and worthless. The details, however, of Shakspere's private life are so few, and the facts and traditions which have come down to us require such careful examination, that we need not be surprised that the language which he has held to be characteristic of the persons and incidents of his dramas should have been deemed, with more or less ingenuity, to be characteristic of himself, his actions, and his cir

February

[No. 4.]

2. Kannet & Judete sonne & dautthter to millia Chadspore

am

cumstances. Amongst the least overstrained of these applications is the passage in Twelfth Night;' and the inferences to be drawn from it are recommended by the opinion of one of the most original of living prose-writers :

"Shakspere himself, looking back on his youthful history from his maturest years, breathes forth pathetic counsels against the errors into which his own inexperience had been ensnared. The disparity of years between himself and his wife he notices in a beautiful scene of the Twelfth Night.' The Duke Orsino, observing the sensibility which the pretended Cesario had betrayed on hearing some touching old snatches of a love-strain, swears that his beardless page must have felt the passion of love, which the other admits. Upon this the dialogue proceeds thus:

Duke. Too old, by heaven: Let still the woman take

An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart.
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.

Viola.

I think it well, my lord.

Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;

For women are as roses; whose fair flower,
Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.'

"These councils were uttered nearly twenty years after the event in his own life to which they probably look back; for this play is supposed to have been written in Shakspere's thirtyeighth year. And we may read an earnestness in pressing the point as to the inverted disparity of years, which indicates pretty clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experience."*

It is not our purpose in this place to enter into any minute examination of the reasonableness of the application of these lines to Shakspere's domestic history. Upon the general principle which we have stated,—that is, the wonderful subjection of his conception of what was individually true to what was universally true, he would, we think, have rejected whatever was peculiar in his own experience, if it had been emphatically recommended to his adoption through the medium of his selfconsciousness. In this belief we think that Mr. de Quincey's theory ought to be qualified by the consideration of the dramatic character of the person who proffers his advice to Viola. Although Olivia describes the Duke as of" fresh and stainless youth," his was not the youthfulness of which she was enamoured in Viola,—

"For they shall yet belie thy happy years

That say, thou art a man."

The advice which he gives to Viola is clearly in keeping with the whole conception of his character, the romance even of which is staid and dignified. But be this as it may, there is one thing perfectly clear, whether the Duke dramatically speaks, or whether Shakspere, speaking from his own experience, uses an unwonted earnestness in pressing the caution against "disparity of years" in marriage--he casts no reproach upon the female. There are two lines, which Mr. de Quincey has omitted in his quotation, not without their point in reference to the possibility of Shakspere in this scene looking back upon his youthful history, and breathing forth prophetic counsel. The quotation we have given ends with,

"For women are as roses, whose fair flower,

Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour."

But Viola adds,

"And so they are: alas that they are so ;

To die, even when they to perfection grow !”

If the passage, then, is to be received as evidence of Shakspere's own feelings, it is to be received also as being condemnatory of himself, and as just, also, toward the object of his early love, then grown 66 to perfection." In the same way, if some portions of his private history are to be held as shadowed forth in the Sonnets,-if his fancies are there painted as giddy and unfirm," these representations are always accompanied with bitter self-reproach,-never with any extenuation arising out of such circumstances as those to which in 'Twelfth Night' he is supposed to allude.

The cause which drove Shakspere from Stratford is thus stated by Rowe :-"He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the

Mr. de Quincey's 'Life of Shakspere' in the Encyclopædia Britannica,' 7th edit., vol. xx. p. 179.

first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." All this, amongst a great deal of falsehood, probably contained some tissue of the truth-such as the truth appeared to the good old folks of Stratford in Betterton's time, who had heard stories from their grandfathers of what a wild young fellow the rich man was who bought the largest house in Stratford. Malone gravely undertakes to get rid of the deer-stealing tradition, by telling us that there was no park, properly so called, at Charlecote. It is more material that the statute of the 5th of Elizabeth, which Malone also recites, shows clearly enough that the hunting, killing, or driving out deer from any park was a trespass, punished at the 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 au 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 17th 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 louses rampant for his arms." Is it necessary to do more than recite such legends to furnish the best answer to them? Poor Shakspere! oft whipped, sometimes imprisoned, forced to fly your native country,-your genius must have been wondrously harassed in your own good town; and yet, we are inclined to think, you composed your Venus and Adonis' there, and that there you were much given to something better than all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits! We shall have a few words to say about Rowe's "ballad" upon the prosecutor of poachers, and Davies's 'Justice Clodpate,' in some other place.

Early in 1585 two other children were born to him,-and they were baptized on the 2nd of February as "Hamnet and Judeth." (See Fac-simile, No. 4.)

Although John Shakspere, at the time of his son's early marriage, was not, as we think, "in distressed circumstances," 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 connexion 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 London, 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 Shakspere, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will Shakspere could be had." The author of 'Venus and Adonis,' before he engaged in this dignified employment, which is described in the most circumstantial history before us as opening to him "the dawn of

At the door of the playhouse, having described the horse, Will Shakspere was to make acquaintance with the proud riders of Elizabeth's court; and from this experience he was afterwards to produce the celebrated passage of

"I saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat

As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship."+

Steevens objects to this surpassing anecdote of the horseholding, and to the statement which follows, that Shakspere "hired boys to wait under his inspection," and that, "as long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakspere's boys,"— he objects 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 melodrama 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 playhouse-door, 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 burthen: 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 great 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

Venus and Adonis. Henry IV., Part I.

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.

Our belief has been repeatedly expressed, during the publication of The Pictorial Edition of Shakspere,' that the great poet became a writer for the stage at a much earlier period than has been usually determined. Our general reasons for this opinion were formed, upon the publication of the first play in that edition; and we have seen no evidence which can induce us to depart from it. Up to the period when Shakspere reached the age of manhood there were no writers in existence competent to produce a play which can be called a work of art. The state of the drama generally is thus succinctly, but most correctly, noticed by a recent anonymous writer :"From the commencement of Shakspere's boyhood, till about the earliest date at which his removal to London can be possibly fixed, the drama lingered in the last stage of a semi-barbarism. Perhaps we do not possess any monument of the time except Whetstone's 'Promos and Cassandra;' but neither that play, nor any details that can be gathered respecting others, indicate the slightest advance deyond a point of development which had been reached many years before by such writers as Edwards and Gascoyne. About 1585, or Shakspere's twentyfirst year, there opened a new era, which, before the same decad was closed, had given birth to a large number of dramas, many of them wonderful for the circumstances in which they arose, and several possessing real and absolute excellence."* Of the poets which belong to this remarkable decad we possess undoubted specimens of the works of Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Lodge, Greene, Kyd, and Nashe. There are one or two other inferior names, such as Chettle and Munday, connected with the latter part of this decad. We ourselves hold that Shakspere belongs to the first as well as to the second half of this short but most influential period of our literature. But the critics and commentators appear to have agreed that Shakspere, whose mental powers were bestowed upon him in the extremest prodigality of Nature, was of wonderfully slow growth towards a capacity for intellectual production. They have all amused themselves with imagining his careful progress, from holding horses at the playhousedoor, to the greater dignity of a candle-snuffer within its walls, till in some lucky hour, when his genius was growing vigorous-that is, at the age of twenty-seven-he produced a play. They have little doubt that Shakspere was in London, and connected with the theatre, as early as 1584; but then he had been a deer-stealer, and had seven years of probation to undergo! There was nothing extraordinary in Ben Jonson writing for the stage when he was only nineteen; but then Shakspere, you know, was an untutored genius, &c. &c.! A great deal of this monstrous trash has been swept away by the exertions of a gentleman equally distinguished for his acuteness and his industry. 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 Edin. Review, July, 1840, p. 469.