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office, there is one piece of direct evidence. This is an alleged libel upon him by a contemporary-published to the world in his lifetime-which, if it do actually refer to him, must be considered as the foundation of a very strong inference of the fact.

Leaving Stratford and joining the players in London in 1586 or 1587, there can be no doubt that his success was very rapid; for, as early as 1589, he had actually got a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, and he was a partner in managing it with his townsman Thomas Green and his countryman Richard Burbadge. I do not imagine that when he went up to London he carried a tragedy in his pocket to be offered for the stage as Samuel Johnson did 'IRENE.' The more probable conjecture is, that he began as an actor on the London boards, and being employed, from the cleverness he displayed, to correct, alter, and improve dramas written by others, he went on to produce dramas of his own, which were applauded more loudly than any that had before appeared upon the English stage.

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and rivals whom he surpassed not only envied Shakespeare, but grossly libelled him. Of this we have an example in An Epistle to the Gentlemen Students of the Two Universities, by Thomas Nash,' prefixed

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to the first edition of Robert Greene's 'MENAPHON' (which was subsequently called Greene's ARCADIA '), -according to the title-page, published in 1589. The alleged libel on Shakespeare is in the words following, viz. :—

"I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators. It is a common practice now-a-days, amongst 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 neck-verse if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candle-light, yields many good sentences, as blood is a beggar, and so forth; and you intreat him fair, in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets; I should say handfuls of tragical speeches. But O grief! Tempus edax rerum-what is that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry; and Seneca, leț blood, line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage."

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Now, if the innuendo which would have been introduced into the declaration in an action, "Shakespeare v. Nash," for this libel ("thereby then and there meaning the said William Shakespeare "-) be made out, there can be no doubt as to the remaining innuendo "thereby then and there meaning that the said William Shakespeare had been an attorney's clerk, or bred an attorney."

In Elizabeth's reign deeds were in the Latin tongue;

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and all deeds poll, and many other law papers, began with the words "NOVERINT universi per presentes -"Be it known to all men by these presents that, &c." The very bond which was given in 1582, prior to the grant of a licence for Shakespeare's marriage with Ann Hathaway, and which Shakespeare most probably himself drew, commences "NOVERINT universi per presentes.' The business of an attorney seems to have been then known as "the trade of NOVERINT." Ergo, "these shifting companions are charged with having abandoned the legal profession, to which they were bred; and, although most imperfectly educated, with trying to manufacture tragical speeches from an English translation of Seneca.

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For completing Nash's testimony (valeat quantum) to the fact that Shakespeare had been bred to the law, nothing remains but to consider whether Shakespeare is here aimed at? Now, independently of the expressions "whole Hamlets" and "handfuls of tragical speeches," which, had Shakespeare's 'HAMLET' certainly been written and acted before the publication of Nash's letter, could leave no doubt as to the author's intention, there is strong reason to believe that the intended victim was the young man from Warwickshire, who had suddenly made such a sensation and such a revolution in the theatrical world. Nash and Robert Greene, the author of 'Menaphon' or 'Arcadia,' the

work to which Nash's Epistle was appended, were very intimate. In this very epistle Nash calls Greene "sweet friend." It is well known that this Robert Greene (who, it must always be remembered, was a totally different person from Thomas Green, the actor and part proprietor of the Blackfriars Theatre) was one of the chief sufferers from Shakespeare being engaged by the Lord Chamberlain's players to alter stock pieces for the Blackfriars Theatre, to touch up and improve new pieces proposed to the managers, and to supply original pieces of his own. Robert Greene had been himself employed in this department, and he felt that his occupation was gone. Therefore, by publishing Nash's Epistle in 1589, when Shakespeare, and no one else, had, by the display of superior genius, been the ruin of Greene, the two must have combined to denounce Shakespeare as having abandoned "the trade of Noverint" in order to "busy himself with the endeavours of art," and to furnish tragical speeches from the translation of Seneca.

In 1592 Greene followed up the attack of 1589 in a tract called "The Groatsworth of Wit.' Here he does not renew the taunt of abandoning "the trade of NoVERINT," which with Nash he had before made, but he pointedly upbraids Shakespeare by the nickname of Shake-scene, as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers," having just before spoken of himself as "the man to whom actors had been previously beholding."

He goes on farther to allude to Shakespeare as one who "supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of his predecessors," as "an absolute Johannes Factotum," and "in his own conceit the only SHAKE-SCENE in a country." In 1592 Robert Greene frankly complains that Shake-scene had undeservedly met with such success as to be able to drive him (Greene) and others similarly circumstanced from an employment by which they had mainly subsisted.* This evidence, therefore, seems amply sufficient to prove that there was a conspiracy between the two libellers, Nash and Robert Greene, and that Shakespeare was the object of it.

But I do not hesitate to believe that Nash, in 1589, directly alludes to 'HAMLET' as a play of Shakespeare, and wishes to turn it into ridicule. I am aware that an attempt has been made to show that there had been an edition of Menaphon' before 1589; but no copy of any prior edition of it, with Nash's Epistle appended to it, has been produced. I am also aware that 'Hamlet,' in the perfect state in which we now behold it, was not finished till several years after; but I make no doubt

* You no doubt recollect that Robert Greene actually died of starvation before his 'Groatsworth of Wit,' in which he so bitterly assailed Shakespeare as "Shake-scene," was published.

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