fellow-players; he is master of his art; his successes as a playwright are renewed from year to year. Proofs of his increasing wealth abound. Actors' profits were large, as we have seen, far more so than authors'; and this is, doubtless, why Shakespeare, who never attained more than an honourable rank in the histrionic profession, continued nevertheless to act until about the time he retired from active life. Besides his interests in the Blackfriars theatre, he seems to have owned two whole shares at the Globe out of a total of sixteen; which two brought in some £400 a year, worth about eight times as much, or £3,200 of our money. As a player he won yearly from £130 to £180; as an author, judging from the figures in Henslowe's diary, from £6 to £10 pounds per play during the first half of his career, and more afterwards. The performances at court were a supplementary source of profit.

No wonder that, a few years after his beginnings, the practical citizen and the man of genius, so closely associated in the person of the poet, should have been able to develop as perfectly one as the other, which is not saying little. Shakespeare looks towards his native town; there he intends to be some one; he visits it periodically. He first sets aright his father's affairs; the proceedings against the penniless old merchant cease; as early as 1596, about eight years after his first play, the poet makes in favour of his father an application for a coat of arms, which fails, but he renews it in 1599 with success, and the erstwhile insolvent John Shakespeare has henceforth armorial bearings all his own, with the "speare" of imaginary ancestors, and the French motto "Non sans droict," not

1 Computations of Mr. Sidney Lee, "Life," pp. 196, ff.

2 Not an unusual case, quite the reverse. Harrison, in his "Description of Britaine," shows that the purchase of armorial bearings under similar circumstances was of constant occurrence in his time: "Who soever studieth the lawes... abideth in the universitie . . . or professeth physicke and the liberall sciences, or . . . can live without manuall labour, and thereto is able

an inappropriate one for a blazon duly paid for. To sneerers he might have answered, like Beaumarchais later: Not mine?" Monsieur, j'en ai la quittance."

Sneerers were not lacking. Ben Jonson, who possessed a hereditary coat of arms, and who has not let any of his contemporaries' foibles pass without deriding them, showed thereupon on the stage, that same year, the countryman's son, "so enamoured of the name of a gentleman that he will have it though he buys it." An obliging go-between offers his services to the would-be gentleman: "Why, now you ride to the city, you may buy one; I'll bring you where you shall ha' your choice for money. . . . You shall have one take measure of you and make you a coat of arms to fit you, of what fashion you will.” So said, so done; the new gentleman comes away quite dazzled from the heralds' office: "They do speak i' the strangest language and give a man the hardest terms for his money that ever you know. . . . I thank God I can write myself gentleman now; here is my patent, it cost me thirty pound." His brand-new coat of arms shines with all the colours of the rainbow. "A boar's head proper" adorns it " on a chief argent." And what may the motto be?— "Not without mustard."1

and will beare the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he shall, for monie, have a cote of armes bestowed upon him by heralds (who in the charter of the same doo of custome pretend antiquitie and service, and manie gaie things) and thereunto being made so good cheape, be called master," ed. Furnival (texts of 1577 and 1587), New Shakspere Society, vol. i. p. 128 Shakespeare's friend and fellow-player, Augustine Phillipps, had quietly appropriated the arms of Sir W. Phillipp, Lord Bardolph, who had distinguished himself at Agincourt. Shakespeare himself figures in the list drawn in 1599 by Ralph Brooke, York Herald, of twenty-four persons to whom coats of arms had been unlawfully conceded. See Sidney Lee, "The Future of Shakespearean Research," Nineteenth Century, May, 1906, p. 773.

Every Man out of his Humour," acted in 1599 and printed in 1600. The play was performed at the Globe; whether or not Shakespeare saw in it a personal allusion, as usual he made no protest; most likely he was the first to laugh. His transferring the name of Lord Bardolph to Falstaff's red

It was a matter of indifference to Shakespeare to give cause for laughter to the wits of the capital; he laughed himself at justices proud to sign “ Armiger” (Esquire), at new-made gentlemen and ennobled clowns :

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"I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.

Ay, and have been so any time these four hours."I A purchased coat of arms was then one of those vanities such as there have been many since, which the great city could make fun of, but which the country town took quite seriously; and, in his country town, Shakespeare meant to be one of the foremost citizens. In 1597 he had bought New Place, the largest house in Stratford, built in former days, near the Guild chapel, by that Hugh Clopton long the most illustrious nursling of the city.2

He is henceforth, in his native borough, the personage in view, the capitalist who can buy an estate, lend money, appeal to the authorities. In their financial or administrative difficulties the inhabitants advise one another to visit, in London, "our countriman Mr. Shaksper,"3 and claim his assistance.

nosed companion was not improbably done in jocose allusion to his friend Augustine Phillipps' self-bestowed ancestry.

"Winter's Tale," v. 2. Concerning Justice Shallow " armigero," see "Merry Wives,” i. 1.

"This Clopton buildid also, by the north syde of this chapell, a praty howse of brike and tymbar, wherein he lived in his lattar dayes and dyed.”— Leland, "Itinerary," ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, 1907-8, iv. 49.

3 Letter from Abraham Sturley, January 24, 159[8], to Richard Quiney, the latter being in London. Already in this letter the purchase of the lease of the Stratford tithes, which the poet was to make seven years later, is mentioned as "a faire marke for him to shoote at, and not impossible to hitt." Text in Halliwell-Phillipps, "Outlines," vol. ii. p. 57, with other letters in which the poet figures only as a rich and influential capitalist. One of his means of success in the enterprises which his compatriots recommend him to undertake is "the frendes he can make."

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Towards 1595 commences the period of maturity of Shakespeare's genius; it lasts until about 1608, comprising first a majority of joyous and triumphant plays, then a succession of sombre tragedies and sorrowful dramas. On the summit of life two inclines meet: the ascent lighted by the rising, the descent by the declining sun.

The first of these plays are all filled with happiness, merriment, turbulent joy. The shrew is tamed amid shouts of laughter; the jesters, the grotesques, the characters belonging to the coarsest or to the most delicate comedy know that their hour has come, and they do not scruple to take advantage of it. Even in plays drawn from the national history, the part allotted to comedy, laughter, and merry-making is now considerable. between statesmen and heads of armies, archbishops'

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"The Taming of the Shrew," performed about 1596-7, first printed in the 1623 folio; allusions, in the Induction, to Warwickshire localities; some critics think they recognise a different hand in the under-plot, story of Bianca and her lovers. Source, A Pleasant Conceited History, called the taming of a Shrew," pr. 1594, mentioned by Henslowe as acted by his players, same year, other editions 1596, 1607, closely followed by Shakespeare, Induction included, but he omits in his play, such as we have it, the necessary counterpart to the Induction, that is, the awakening of Sly. At the end of the old " Taming," Sly is shown opening his eyes and wondering

whether he is not a lord:

Tapster. A Lord with a murrin: come, art thou dronken still? Threatened with what his wife may do to him, Sly declares that he does not care; he has had "the breavest dreame . . .

I know now how to tame a shrew,

I dreamt upon it all this night till now.

Similar anecdote told of Philip of Burgundy and of a drunkard, by Burton quoting Vives; see below, p. 507. Katherine's submission, in the end, should be compared with that "de celle qui saillit sur la table," as told by La Tour Landry in his "Livre. pour l'enseignement de ses filles," ed. Montaiglon, Fletcher wrote a continuation and counterblast to Shakespeare's play: "The Woman's Prize or the Tamer tamed," acted before 1633.

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appeals to wisdom, fiery speeches by brave Hotspur, unable to use "holiday and lady terms," heroes' grave discourses and lyrical apostrophes, alternate with tavern and highway scenes, in which immortal Falstaff, surrounded by his myrmidons, displays his corpulency, his gluttonness, his shamelessness, and, more than all, his unfailing high spirits. The drama in which is played, under Henry IV., the fate of England, and, under Henry V., that of France, is commingled with a farcical, powerful, and truculent comedy, overflowing, noisy, ill-flavoured, full of coarse saws, clever repartees, gross jokes, and peerless traits of observation; people, words, and places, low, filthy, greasy, but put on the stage with such a joyous impetuosity, provoking such fits of irrepressible hilarity as to make a very Rabelais envious.1

These plays appeal to a patriotism as crude as before; adversaries are still cowards, braggarts, traitors, etc.; the Dauphin has so exactly the same faults as the one in "King John" that he seems to be the same prince negligently transferred from one play and from one century to another. No more now than formerly do Shakespeare or his public ask themselves what glory there could have been in vanquishing this supposed lot of poltroons, so abject that one of them surrenders at the first

'I and 2" Henry IV.," probably acted between 1596 and 1598, 1st editions: "The History of Henrie the Fourth; With the battell at Shrewsburie . . . With the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstaffe," 1598, 2nd ed. 1599, 8th, 1639; "The Second part of Henrie the fourth, continuing to his death, and coronation of Henrie the fift. With the humours of sir Iohn Falstaffe, and swaggering Pistoll .. Written by William Shakespeare," 1600, another issue same year. "Henry V," performed about 1599, 1st ed., very imperfect, "The Cronicle History of Henry the fift, With his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Togither with Auntient Pistoll," 1600, other ed. 1602, 1608 (not 1608 but 1619 according to Greg, The Library, April, 1908). Source, Holinshed, and an old play, "The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth containing the Honourable Battell of Agin-court," printed 1598, other ed. 1617; in it, an example of scenes between ridiculous watchmen, viz., John Cobler, Robert Pewterer, and others.