London was the Blackfriars, between St. Paul's and Blackfriars' Bridge. It was built in 1575, and it was on its boards that Shakespeare first appeared. It was a winter theatre, and was therefore roofed in, differing in that respect from the Globe, built twenty years later by the company to which Shakespeare belonged. So early as 1583, the year before Shakespeare came to London, the taste for stage representations had so much increased that there were at least eight distinct companies of players in London. It was only by becoming a member of a regularly licensed company that a player could escape being considered, in the phraseology of the statute law, a "vagabond," and subjected to the pains and penalties imposed on "jugglers, pedlers, and tinkers." The Lord Chamberlain had the power of issuing, in favour of certain of the court nobility, licenses which entitled the granter to incorporate a company of players. In this way were founded Lord Leicester's company, Lord Warwick's, Lord Howard's, the Earl of Essex's, the Earl of Derby's, the Lord Admiral's, and other companies.

The company which Shakespeare joined was the most distinguished both then and afterwards. It was first the Lord Chamberlain's, and afterwards the King's. It had visited Stratford the year before, when Shakespeare probably came into contact with some of its leading members. James Burbage was manager and head of the company, and his brother Richard was the first actor of the day. The Burbages are believed by Malone to have been born in

or about Stratford, and to have been early acquaintances of Shakespeare. If this conjecture be correct, his introduction to their theatre would not be amatter of any difficulty. He would be welcomed all the more readily if known to be himself a composer; for at that period there was a close alliance between dramatic poetry and histrionic art. It was indeed almost an understood thing that the dramatist should aid in the representation of his own pieces. Such men as Greene, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Heywood, Webster, and others, united both arts.

later

Richard Burbage, who was born three years than Shakespeare, and died three years after him, was a devoted friend of the poet, and, according to all tradition, as fine a Shakespearian actor as the stage has ever seen. It is said that his just and truthful representation of almost all Shakespeare's leading characters first riveted public attention on them. He was not of large stature, but, in the words of one of his admiring contemporaries, he was "beauty to the eye and music to the ear." He did not appear in comic parts; but he had a wide range of histrionic talent; for it is recorded of him that he was equally delightful in the youthful Pericles and the aged Lear; and that he achieved great success in Hamlet, Richard III., Shylock, Romeo, Brutus, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus. An old writer says, " One of his chief parts wherein, beyond the rest, he moved the heart, was the grieved Moor,"—a well-chosen epithet, and indicative that the actor had a delicate appreciation of the character.

It

may readily be believed that dearer to the heart of Richard Burbage than all contemporary praise were the four words in Shakespeare's last will, bequeathing to him a ring in token of the poet's loving remembrance.

By the time James VI. ascended the throne, Shakespeare's company, having prospered in the Blackfriars, had built and removed to a newer and better theatre, the Globe. James adopted the company as his own, and its members were then for the first time designated His Majesty's servants. He granted in their favour a royal license in the year 1603, in which he licenses and authorizes Laurence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, John Hemings, and the rest of their associates, "freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage plays, and such like other as they have already studied, or hereafter shall use or study, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them." This license was the more valuable that it was not limited to "their now usual house, called the Globe," but entitled them "to show and exercise publicly, to their best commodity, within any townhall or moute-halls, or other convenient places within the liberties and freedom of any other city, university, town, or burgh whatsoever, within our said realms and dominions."

Shakespeare held shares both in the Blackfriars d

and the Globe, the one being principally used as a summer and the other as a winter theatre. It is worthy of remark that in a Petition presented by the company to the Privy Council in 1596, Shakespeare is mentioned only fifth, but that in the King's license in 1603, he stands second, having no doubt acquired additional property and position in the interval. Laurence Fletcher, who is mentioned before Shakespeare, and had succeeded James Burbage in the management, had performed before King James in Scotland, where he was with his company from October, 1599, to December, 1601. Fletcher must have taken the company to different towns in Scotland, and must have conducted himself in a creditable manner, for the municipal records of Aberdeen instruct that he was presented with the freedom of the city on October 22d, 1601, and was entered as a burgess under the designation of "Comedian to His Majesty." This suggests the interesting inquiry, whether Shakespeare did not also visit Scotland as one of Fletcher's associates. Sir John Sinclair, in his statistical account, when referring to the local traditions respecting Macbeth's castle at Dunsinnan, infers from their coincidence with the drama that Shakespeare, "in his capacity of actor, travelled in Scotland in 1599, and collected on the spot materials for the exercise of his imagination." A subsequent writer objects that Shakespeare could not have heard the country people pronounce the word Dunsinnan, as they always put the accent on the second syllable, whereas he throws it on the last. It is true that he

does so frequently, but not always, as witness the lines,

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinnan hill
Shall come against him."

Mr. Charles Knight argues strongly in favour of the probability of Shakespeare having been in Scotland. He contends that the company which James patronized in Scotland, and the manager of which is there recognized as "His Majesty's Comedian," was the same to which he granted the letters patent in 1603. If so, Shakespeare was a leading member of it as well in 1601 as in 1603, and could not be spared when an expedition was undertaken to Scotland. Being also by this time a poet of distinction, Mr. Knight thinks that his presence would operate as an additional inducement to the worthy magistrates of Aberdeen to confer the freedom of the city on the head of the company. All this is very conjectural; but yet every Scotchman must wish to believe that the poet saw with his own eyes our glens and mountains, heard our ancient tongue, inquired concerning our national superstitions, and listened, not unmoved, to some of our old-world stories of witches and weird women,—

"Posters of the sea and land."

How pleasant it is to believe that he had himself observed the "temple-haunting martlet" making its "pendant bed and procreant cradle" among the ruins of Macbeth's castle; that he had breathed the