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the rest, to give the Judges a song: who forthwith begins the first line of any psalm as he thinks fittest; after which all the rest of the company follow, and sing with him." This is very like the edifying practice of the Court of Francis I., where the psalms of Clement Marot were sung to a fashionable jig, or a dance of Poitou.* Shakspere had good authority when he made the clown say of his three-man songmen, "They are most of them means and basses: but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes."+ This is one of the few allusions which Shakspere has to that rising sect, which in a few years was to become the dominant power in the state. Ben Jonson attacks them again and again with the most bitter indignation, and the coarsest satire. The very hardest gird which Shakspere has at them is contained in the gentle reproof of Sir Toby to the Steward, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" In this very scene of "Twelfth Night" he ridicules the unreasoning hostility with which the Puritans themselves were assailed by the ignorant multitude. Sir Toby asks to be told something of the Steward :

:

"Mar. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.

Sir And. O, if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog.

Sir Toby. What, for being a Puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight?
Sir And. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason good enough."

* See Warton's "History of English Poetry," Section xlv.
"Winter's Tale," Act IV., Scene II. See "The Alchymist," and "Bartholomew Fair."

This is in the best spirit of toleration, which cannot endure that any body of men should be persecuted for their opinions, and especially by those who will show no reason for their persecution but that they "have reason good enough."

In May, 1602, Shakspere made a large addition to his property at Stratford by the purchase, from William and John Combe, for the sum of three hundred and twenty pounds, of one hundred and seven acres of arable land in the town of Old Stratford. The indenture, which is in the possession of Mr. Wheler of Stratford, is dated the 1st of May, 1602.* The conveyance bears the signatures of the vendors of the property. But although it concludes in the usual form, "The parties to these presents having interchangeably set to their hands and seals," the counterpart (also in the possession of Mr. Wheler) has not the hand and seal of the purchaser of the property described in the deed as "William Shakespere, of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the countie aforesaide, Gentleman." The counterpart is not signed, and the piece of wax which is affixed to it is unimpressed with any scal. The property was delivered to Gilbert Shakspere to the use of William. Gilbert was two years and a half younger than William, and in all likelihood was the cultivator of the land which the poet thus bought, or assisted their father in the cultivation.

We collect from this document that William Shakspere was not at Stratford on the 1st of May, 1602, and that his brother Gilbert was his agent for the payment of the three hundred and twenty pounds paid "at and before the scaling" of the conveyance. In the following August the Lord Chamberlain's company performed "Othello" in the house of the Lord Keeper at Harefield. The accounts of the large expenditure on this occasion, in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Mainwaring, were discovered by Mr. Collier amongst the "Egerton Papers," and they contain the following entry :

"6 August, 1602. Rewardes to the vaulters, players, and dauncers. Of

this x to Burbidge's players for Othello, lxiiijli xviijs, xd."†

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The Queen came to Harefield on the 31st of July, and remained there during the 1st and 2nd of August. In those days Harefield Place was a fair house standing on the edge of the hill, the river Coln passing near the same through the pleasant meadows and sweet pastures, yielding both delight and profit." This is Norden's description, a little before the period of Elizabeth's visit. The Queen was received, after the usual quaint fashion of such entertainments, with a silly dialogue between a bailiff and a dairymaid, as she entered the domain; and the house welcomed her with an equally silly colloquy between Place and Time. The Queen must have been somewhat better pleased when a copy of verses was delivered to her in the morning, beginning

"Beauty's rose, and virtue's book,
Angel's mind and angel's look."

The weather, we learn from the same verses, was unpropitious :

"Only poor St. Swithin now

Doth hear you blame his cloudy brow."

*The document, which contains nothing remarkable in its clauses, is given in Mr. Wheler's "History of Stratford-upon-Avon."

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†This important entry was first published by Mr. Collier in his "New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare," 1836. Mr. Collier in the same tract publishes "a poetical relic," of which he says, Although I believe it to be his, I have some hesitation in assigning it to Shakespeare." This copy of verses, without date or title, found amongst the same papers, bears the signature W. Sh. or W. Sk. (Mr. Collier is doubtful which). If the verses contained a single line which could not be produced by any one of the "mob of gentlemen who write with ease," we would venture to borrow a specimen.

T

Some great poet was certainly at work upon this occasion, but not Shakspere.* It was enough for him to present the sad story of

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Another was to come within some thirty years who should sing of Harefield with the power of a rare fancy working upon classical models, and who thus makes the Genius of the Wood address a noble audience in that sylvan scene:

"For know, by lot from Jove I am the Power

Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill:
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,
Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites,
Or hurtful worm with canker'd venom bites.
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallow'd ground;

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*These verses, with other particulars of the entertainment, were first published from an original manuscript in Nicholls's "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth."

And early, ere the odorous breath of morn

Awakes the slumb'ring leaves, or tassel'd horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout

With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless."

Doubly honoured Harefield! Though thy mansion has perished, yet are thy groves still beautiful. Still thy summit looks out upon a fertile valley, where the gentle river wanders in silent beauty. But thy woods and lawns have a charm which are wholly their own.-Here the "Othello" of William Shakspere was acted by his own company; here is the scene of the "Arcades" of John Milton.

Amongst the few papers rescued from "time's devouring maw" which enable us to trace Shakspere's career with any exactness, there is another which relates to the acquisition of property in the same year. It is a copy of Court Roll for the Manor of Rowington, dated the 28th of September, 1602, containing the surrender by Walter Getley to the use of William Shakspere of a house in Stratford, situated in Walker Street. This tenement was opposite Shakspere's house of New Place. now taken down; it was in existence a few years ago.

It is

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This document, which is in the possession of Mr. Hunt, the town-clerk of Stratford, shows that at the latter end of September, 1602, William Shakspere, the purchaser of this property, was not at Stratford. It could not legally pass to him, being a copyhold, till he had done suit and service in the Lord's Court; and the surrender therefore provides that it should remain in the possession of the lord till he, the purchaser, should appear.

In the September of 1602, the Earl of Worcester, writing to the Earl of Shrewsbury, says, "We are frolic here in Court, much dancing in the Privy Chamber of country-dances before the Queen's Majesty, who is exceedingly pleased therewith." In the December she was entertained at Sir Robert Cecil's house in the Strand, and some of the usual devices of flattering mummery were exhibited before her. A few months saw a period to the frolic and the flattery. The last entry in the books of the Treasurer of the Chamber during the reign of Elizabeth, which pertains to Shakspere, is the following;-melancholy in the contrast between the Candlemas-Day of

1603, the 2nd of February, and the following 24th of March, when Elizabeth died: -"To John Hemynges and the rest of his companie, servaunts to the Lorde Chamberleyne, uppon the Councells Warraunte, dated at Whitehall the xxth of Aprill, 1603, for their paines and expences in presentinge before the Queenes Matie twoe playes, the one uppon St. Stephens day at nighte, and thother upon Candlemas day at night, for ech of which they were allowed, by way of her Ma's rewarde, tenne poundes, amounting in all to xx"." The late Queen's Majesty! Before she had seen the play on Candlemas-day, at night, she had taken Sir Robert Carey by the hand,

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and wrung it hard, saying, "Robin, I am not well." At the date of the Council's warrant to John Hemings, Elizabeth had not been deposited in the resting-place of Kings at Westminster. Her pomp and glory were now to be limited to the display of heralds and banners and officers of state; and, to mark especially the nothingness of all this, "The lively picture of her Majesty's whole body, in her Parliament-robes, with a crown on her head, and a sceptre in her hand, lying on the corpse enshrined in lead, and balmed; covered with purple velvet; borne in a chariot, drawn by four horses, trapped in black velvet."

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