instituted against James Burbage and his partners, we may presume that they would have continued quietly to reap their augmented harvest. We are led to infer, however, that they also apprehended, and experienced, some measure of restraint, and feeling conscious that they had given no just ground of offence, they transmitted to the privy council a sort of certificate of their good conduct, asserting that they had never introduced into their representations matters of state and religion, and that no complaint of that kind had ever been preferred against them. This certificate passed into the hands of Lord Ellesmere, then attorney-general, and it has been preserved among his papers. We subjoin a copy of it in a note'.

7

It seems rather strange that this testimonial should have come from the players themselves: we should rather have expected that they would have procured a certificate from some disinterested parties; and we are to take it merely as a statement on their own authority, and possibly as a sort of challenge for inquiry. When they say that no complaint of the kind had ever been preferred against them, we are of course to understand that the assertion applies to a time previous to some general representation against theatres, which had been made in 1589, and in which the sharers at the Blackfriars thought themselves unjustly included. In this document we see the important fact, as regards the biography of Shakespeare, that in 1589 he was, not only an actor, but a sharer in the undertaking at Blackfriars; and whatever inference may be drawn from it, we find that his name, following eleven others, precedes those of Kempe, Johnson, Goodale, and Armyn. Kempe, we know, was the successor of Tarlton (who died in 1588) in comic parts, and must have been an actor of great value and eminence in the company : Johnson, as appears by the royal licence, had been one of the theatrical servants of the Earl of Leicester in 15749: of Goodale we have no account, but he bore a Stratford name'; and Armyn, though he had been instructed by Tarlton, was perhaps at this date quite young, and of low rank in the association. The situation in the list which the name of Shakespeare occupies may seem to show that, even in 1589, he was a person of considerable importance in relation to the success of the sharers in Blackfriars theatre. In November, 1589, he was in the middle of his twentysixth year, and in the full strength, if not in the highest maturity, of his mental and bodily powers.

8 In the dedication of his "Almond for a Parrot," printed without date, but not later than 1589, (the year of which we are now speaking) Thomas Nash calls Kempe "Jestmonger and Vice-gerent general to the ghost of Dick Tarlton." Heywood, in his "Apology for Actors," 1612, (Shakespeare Society's reprint, p. 43) tells us that Kempe succeeded Tarlton "as well in the favour of her Majesty, as in the opinion and good thoughts of the general audience."

9 He was also one of the executors under Tarlton's will, and was also trustee for his son Philip. See p. xxxvii. What became of Johnson after 1589, we have no information.

1 He was one of the actors, with Laneham, in the anonymous manuscript play of "Sir Thomas More," (Harl. Coll., No. 7368) which, we may conjecture, was licensed for the stage before 1592.

2 This fact is stated in a publication entitled "Tarlton's Jests," of which the earliest extant impression is in 1611, but they were no doubt collected and published very soon after the death of Tarlton in 1588.

VOL. I.

g

We can have no hesitation in believing that he origin✓ally came to London, in order to obtain his livelihood by the stage, and with no other view. Aubrey tells us that he was "inclined naturally to poetry and acting;" and the poverty of his father, and the difficulty of obtaining profitable employment in the country for the maintenance of his family, without other motives, may have induced him readily to give way to that inclination. Aubrey, who had probably taken due means to inform himself, adds, that "he did act exceedingly well;" and we are convinced that the opinion, founded chiefly upon a statement by Rowe, that Shakespeare was a very moderate performer, is erroneous. It seems likely that for two or three years he employed himself chiefly in the more active duties of the profession he had chosen; and Peele3, who was a very practised and popular play-wright, considerably older than Shakespeare, was a member of the company, without saying anything of Wadeson, regarding whom we know nothing, but that at a subsequent date he was one of Henslowe's dramatists; or of Armyn, then only just coming forward as a comic performer. There is reason to think that Peele did not continue one of the Lord Chamberlain's servants after 1590, and his extant dramas were acted by the Queen's players, or by those of the Lord Admiral: to the latter association Peele seems subsequently to have been attached, and his "Battle of Alcazar," printed in 1594, purports on the title-page to have been played by them. While Peele remained a member of the company of the Lord Chamberlain's players, Shakespeare's services as a dramatist may not materially have interfered with his exertions as an actor; but afterwards, when Peele had joined a rival establishment, he may have been much more frequently called upon to employ his pen, and then his value in that department becoming clearly understood, he was less frequently a performer.

Out of the sixteen sharers of which the company he belonged to consisted in 1589, (besides the usual proportion of "hired men," who only took inferior characters) there would be more than a sufficient number for the representation of most plays, without the assistance of Shakespeare. He was, doubtless, soon busily and profitably engaged as a dramatist; and this remark on the rareness of his appearance on the stage will of course apply more strongly in his after-life, when he produced one or more dramas every year.

His instructions to the players in "Hamlet" have often been noticed as establishing that he was admirably acquainted with the theory of the art; and if, as Rowe asserts, he only took the short part of the Ghost1 in this tragedy, we are to recollect that even if he had considered himself competent to it, the study of such a character as Hamlet, (the longest on the stage as it is now acted, and still longer as it was originally written) must have consumed more time than he could well afford to bestow upon it, especially when we call to mind that there was a member of the company who had hitherto represented most of the heroes, and whose excellence was as undoubted, as his popularity was extraordinary. To Richard Burbage was therefore assigned the arduous character of the Prince, while the author took the brief, but important part of the Ghost, which required person, deportment, judgment, and voice, with a delivery distinct, solemn, and impressive. All the elements of a great actor were needed for the due performance of "the buried majesty of Denmark."

It may be observed, in passing, that at the period of our drama, such as it existed in the hands of Shakespeare's immediate predecessors, authors were most commonly actors also. Such was the case with Greene, Marlowe', Lodge, Peele, probably Nash, Munday, Wil