We miss from this list the names of Thomas Pope, William Kempe, and Nicholas Tooley, who had belonged to the company in 1596; and instead of them we have Laurence Fletcher, Henry Condell, and Robert Armyn, with the addition of Richard Cowley. Pope had been an actor in 1589, and perhaps in May, 1603, was an old man, for he died in the February following. Kempe had joined the Lord Admiral's players soon after the opening of the Fortune, on his return from the Continent, for we find him in Henslowe's pay in 1602. Nicholas Tooley had also perhaps withdrawn from the association at this date, or his name would hardly have been omitted in the patent, as an established actor, and a man of some property and influence; but he, as well as Kempe, not long subsequently rejoined the association with which they had been so long connected.

We may assume, perhaps, in the absence of any direct testimony, that Laurence Fletcher did not acquire his prominence in the company by any remarkable excellence as an actor. He had been in Scotland, and had performed with his associates before James in 1599, 1600, and 1601, and in the latter year he had been registered as "his Majesty's Comedian" at Aberdeen. He might, therefore, have been a favourite with the King, and being also a considerable sharer in the association, he perhaps owed his place in the patent of May, 1603, to that circumstance'. The name of Shake

Nothing seems to be known of the birth or origin of Laurence Fletcher, (who died in September, 1608,) but we may suspect that he was an elder brother of John Fletcher, the dramatist. Bishop Fletcher, the father, died on 15 June, 1596, having made his will in October, 1594, before he was translated from Worcester to London. This document seems never to have been examined, but it appears from it, as Mr. P. Cunningham informs us, that he had no fewer than nine children, although he only mentions his sons Nathaniel and John by name. He died poor, and among the Lansdowne MSS. is one, entitled "Reasons to move her Majesty to some commiseration towards the orphans of the late Bishop of London, Dr. Fletcher :" this is printed in Birch's "Memoirs." He incurred the lasting displeasure of Queen Elizabeth by marrying, for his second wife, Lady Baker of Kent, a woman of more than questionable character, if we may believe general report, and a satirical poem of the time, handed down only in manuscript, which begins thus :→→→

"The pride of prelacy, which now long since
Was banish'd with the Pope, is sayd of late
To have arriv'd at Bristowe, and from thence
By Worcester into London brought his state.

It afterwards goes on thus:

"The Romaine Tarquin, in his folly blind,

Of faire chaste Lucrece did a Lais make;
But owr proud Tarquin beares a braver mind,
And of a Lais doth a Lucrece make."

We cannot venture to quote the coarse epithets liberally bestowed upon Lady Baker, but the poem ends with these lines:

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speare comes next, and as author, actor, and sharer, we cannot be surprised at the situation he occupies. His progress upward, in connexion with the profession, had been gradual and uniform: in 1589 he was twelfth in a company of sixteen members: in 1596 he was fifth in a company of eight members; and in 1603 he was second in a company of nine members.

The degree of encouragement and favour extended to actors by James I. in the very commencement of his reign is remarkable. Not only did he take the Lord Chamberlain's players unto his own service, but the Queen adopted the company which had acted under the name of the Earl of Worcester, of which the celebrated dramatist, Thomas Heywood, was then one; and the Prince of Wales that of the Lord Admiral, at the head of which was Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College. These three royal associations, as they may be termed, were independent of others under the patronage of individual noblemen'.

The policy of this course at such a time is evident, and James I. seems to have been impressed with the truth of the passage in "Hamlet," (brought out, as we apprehend, very shortly before he came to the throne) where it is said of these "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time," that it is "better to have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live." James made himself sure of their good report; and an epigram, attributed to Shakespeare, has descended to us, which doubtless was intended in some sort as a grateful return for the royal countenance bestowed upon the stage, and upon those who were connected with it. We

"But yet, if any will the reason find,

Why he that look'd as lofty as a steeple
Should be so base as for to come behind,

And take the leavings of the common people,
'Tis playne; for in processions, you know,
The priest must after all the people goe."

We ought to have mentioned that the poem is headed "Bishop Fletcher and my Lady Baker." The Bishop had buried his first wife, Elizabeth, at Chelsea Church in December, 1592. Nathaniel Fletcher, mentioned above as included with his brother John in his father's will, is spoken of on a preceding page as "servant" to Mrs. White; but who Mrs. White might be, or what was the precise nature of "Nat. Fletcher's" servitude, we have no information.

1 However, an Act of Parliament was very soon passed (1 Jac. I. c. 7,) to expose strolling actors, although protected by the authority of a peer, to the penalties of 39 Eliz. c. 4. It seems to have been found that the evil had increased to an excess which required this degree of correction; and Sir Edward Coke in his Charge to the Grand Jury at Norwich in 1607, (when at was printed) observes, "The abuse of stage-players, wherewith I find the country much troubled, may easily be reformed, they having no commission to play in any place without leave; and therefore by your willingness if they be not entertained, you may soon be rid of them."

copy it from a coeval manuscript in our possession, which seems to have belonged to a curious accumulator of matters of the kind, and which also contains an unknown production by Dekker, as well as various other pieces by dramatists and poets of the time. The lines are entitled, "SHAKESPEARE ON THE KING.

"Crowns have their compass, length of days their date, Triumphs their tomb, felicity her fate:

Of nought but earth can earth make us partaker, But knowledge makes a king most like his Maker." We have seen these lines in more than one other old manuscript, and as they were constantly attributed to Shakespeare, and in the form in which we have given them above, are in no respect unworthy of his pen, we have little doubt of their authenticity1.

Having established his family in "the great house" called "New Place" in his native town in 1597, by the purchase of it from Hercules Underhill, Shakespeare seems to have contemplated considerable additions to his property there. In May, 1602, he laid out £320 upon 107 acres of land, which he bought of William and John Combe2, and attached

1 Boswell appears to have had a manuscript copy of this epigram, but the general position in the last line was made to have a particular application by the change of "a" to the. See Shakspeare by Boswell, vol. ii. p. 481. There were other variations for the worse in Boswell's copy, but that which we have noticed completely altered the character of the production, and reduced it from a great general truth to a mere piece of personal flattery-"But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker."

2 Much has been said in all the Lives of our poet, from the time of Aubrey (who first gives the story) to our own, respecting a satirical epitaph upon a person of the name of John a Combe, supposed to have been made extempore by Shakespeare: Aubrey words it thus :"Ten in the hundred the devil allows,

But Combe will have twelve, he swears and he vows.
If any one ask, Who lies in this tomb?

Ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe."

We

Rowe changes the terms a little, but the point is the same, and in
Brathwaite's "Remains," 1618, we have another version of the lines,
where they are given as having been written by that author" upon
one John Combe, of Stratford-upon-Avon, a notable usurer."
are by no means satisfied that they were originally penned by Brath-
waite, from being imputed to him in that volume, and by a passage
in "Maroccus Extaticus," a tract printed as early as 1595, it is very
evident that the connexion between the Devil and John a Combe, or
John of Comber (as he is there called) was much older:-" So hee had
had his rent at the daie, the devill and John of Comber should not
have fetcht Kate L. to Bridewell." There is no ground for supposing
that Shakespeare was ever on bad terms with any of the Combes,
and in his will he expressly left his sword to Mr. Thomas Combe.
In a MS. of that time, now before us, we find the following given
as an epitaph upon Sir William Stone:-

"Heer ten in the hundred lies dead and ingraved :
But a hundred to ten his soul is not saved."

And the couplet is printed in no very different form in "The More the Merrier," by H. P., 1608, as well as in Camden's "Remains."

it to his dwelling. The original indenture and its counterpart are in existence, bearing date 1st May, 1602, but to neither of them is the signature of the poet affixed; and it seems that he being absent, his brother Gilbert was his im mediate agent in the transaction, and to Gilbert Shakespeare the property was delivered to the use of William Shakespeare. In the autumn of the same year he became the owner of a copyhold tenement (called a cotagium in the instrument) in Walker's Street, alias Dead Lane, Stratford, surrendered to him by Walter Getley'. In November of the next year he gave Hercules Underhill £60 for a messuage, barn, granary, garden, and orchard close to or in Stratford; but in the original fine, preserved in the Chapter House, Westminster, the precise situation is not mentioned. 1603, therefore, Shakespeare's property, in or near Stratford-upon-Avon, besides what he might have bought of, or inherited from, his father, consisted of New Place, with 107 acres of land attached to it, a tenement in Walker's Street, and the additional messuage, which he had recently purchased from Underhill,

In

Whether our great dramatist was in London at the period when the new king ascended the throne, we have no means of knowing, but that he was so in the following autumn we have positive proof; for in a letter written by Mrs. Alleyn, (the wife of Edward Alleyn, the actor) to her husband, then in the country, dated 20th October, 1603, she tells him that she had seen "Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe" in Southwark'. At this date, according to the same authority, most of the companies of players who had left London for the provinces, on account of the prevalence of the plague, and the consequent cessation of dramatic performances, had returned to the metropolis; and it is not at all unlikely that Shakespeare was one of those who had returned, having taken the opportunity of visiting his family at Stratfordupon-Avon.

Under Elizabeth the Children of the Chapel (originally the choir-boys of the royal establishment) had become an acknowledged company of players, and these, besides her association of adult performers, Queen Anne took under her immediate patronage, with the style of the Children of her Majesty's Revels, requiring that the pieces they proposed to represent should first be submitted to, and have the approval of, the celebrated poet Samuel Daniel. The

1 A coeval copy of the court-roll is in the hands of the Shakespeare Society. Malone had seen it, and put his initials upon it. No doubt it was his intention to have used it in his unfinished Life of Shakespeare.

2 See the "Memoirs of Edward Alleyn," printed for the Shakespeare Society, p. 63.

instrument of their appointment bears date 30th January, 1603-4; and from a letter from Daniel to his patron, Sir Thomas Egerton, preserved among his papers, we may perhaps conclude that Shakespeare, as well as Michael Drayton, had been candidates for the post of master of the Queen's revels: he says in it, "I cannot but know, that I am lesse deserving than some that sued by other of the nobility unto her Majestie for this roome;" and, after introducing the name of "his good friend," Drayton, he adds the following, which, we apprehend, refers with sufficient distinctness to Shakespeare:--" It seemeth to myne humble judgement that one who is the authour of playes, now daylie presented on the public stages of London, and the possessor of no small gaines, and moreover him selfe an actor in the Kinges companie of comedians, could not with reason pretend to be Master of the Queene's Majesties Revells, for as much as he wold sometimes be asked to approve and allow of his own writings."

This objection would have applied with equal force to Drayton, had we not every reason to believe that before this date he had ceased to be a dramatic author. He had been a writer for Henslowe and Alleyn's company during several years, first at the Rose, and afterwards at the Fortune; but he seems to have relinquished that species of composition about a year prior to the demise of Elizabeth, the last piece in which he was concerned, of which we have any intelligence, being noticed by Henslowe under date of May, 1502 this play was called "The Harpies," and he was assisted in it by Dekker, Middleton, Webster, and Munday.

It is highly probable that Shakespeare was a suitor for this office, in contemplation of a speedy retirement as an actor. We have already spoken of the presumed excellence of his personations on the stage, and to the tradition that he was the original player of the part of the Ghost in "Hamlet." Another character he is said to have sustained is Adam, in "As you like it" and his brother Gilbert, (who in 1602 had received, on behalf William Shakespeare, the 107 acres of land purchased from William and John Combe) who probably survived the Restoration, is supposed to have been the author of this tradition'. He had acted also in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," in 1598, after (as we believe) introducing it to the company; and he is supposed to have written part of, as well as known to have performed in, the same author's "Sejanus," in 16032. This is

1 See the Introduction to "As you like it."

2 From lines preceding it in the 4to, 1605, we know that it was brought out at the Globe, and Ben Jonson admits that it was ill received by the audience.

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