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ampton, of one county with Shakspeare, and indeed almost of one town." The position in which Shakspeare was received was probably that of servitor or apprentice, the nature of which may at once be seen from the following memorandum in Henslow's Manuscript Register, in which he states that he "hired as a covenant servant William Kendall, for two years, after the statute of Winchester, with two single pence, and he to give him for his said services every week of his playing in London, ten shillings, and in the country five shillings, for the which he covenanteth for the space of those two years to be ready at all times to play in the house (theatre) of the said Philip, and in no other, during the said term." William Shakspeare was not likely to remain very long a mere servitor, and in point of fact, Mr. Collier's researches among the Ellesmere papers, have furnished documentary proof that in November, 1589, he was already (it does not appear for how long before) a sharer in the theatre, that is, a person sharing in the daily profits of the representations. As to Shakspeare's histrionic powers, Aubrey reports that he "did act exceedingly well;" and the balance of evidence bears out the statement.

The first incontestable notice of Shakspeare by a contemporary writer is assigned by Mr. Halliwell to a tract published at the close of the year 1592, and the author of which is supposed by Mr. Collier to have been Henry Chettle, who, however, published it as Greene's Groat'sworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance. In this lucubration, the author denounces to some brother dramatists "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart, wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country." Mr. Chettle being called over the coals for this and some other pleasantries of the like nature in the Groat'sworth of Wit, took occasion, after Greene's death, to publish an apology, the portion of which relating to Shakspeare runs thus: "The other, whom I did not at the time so much spare as since I wish I had,—that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour, no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of

dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, which approves his art." These allusions to Shakspeare prove how active he had been as early as 1592, and to what practical purpose, both as regards reputation and as regards commercial progress. What were the precise operations by which he laid the foundation of his worldly fortunes does not very clearly appear. There is no doubt, however, that one very large stone consisted of a munificent donation presented to him by Lord Southampton, in return for the dedication to that nobleman of Venus and Adonis. The donation assumes in Rowe's narrative the absurdly exaggerated form of a thousand pounds; but the amount may fairly be assumed to have been liberal, and, according to the statement of Sir William Davenant (who claimed to be Shakspeare's son, and to know all about him), it was given to the poet "in order to enable him to go through with a purchase which he (Lord Southampton) heard he had a mind to." The purchase so contemplated Mr. Collier considers to have been a share in the new playhouse, The Globe, then (1593) about to be erected as a summer theatre for the Lord Chamberlain's servants, the Blackfriars Theatre being their winter arena. In 1596, we find Shakspeare, in the capacity of part owner of the Blackfriars Theatre, putting down a sum of money towards the repairing of that theatre; and in the same year, Mr. Collier's research exhibits him, as occupant of a house in Southwark, signing, somewhat invidiously, a complaint to the authorities against Alleyn's Bear Garden. In 1597, the thriving actor, dramatist, and speculator, made his first investment in his native town, by purchasing New Place, one of the best houses in Stratford, "with two barns and two gardens, and their appurtenances," for £60, the exact date of the purchase, as produced by Mr. Halliwell, being in the Easter Term, 13 Eliz. 1597. In one of the two gardens set forth grew the mulberry-tree, planted by Shakspeare, and a scion of which now flourishes on the site of the parent stock. A mulberry-tree, planted by the hand of Shakspeare's royal Mistress, in the garden of a mansion in Cheyne-walk, Chelsea, now occupied by my friends the Handfords, has been more fortunate than Shakspeare's tree, for it remains in full and productive vigour. New Place, as occupied by Shakspeare, was demolished by a wretched man, one Rev. Francis Gastrell,

who unhappily came into the property somewhere about 1751. It was the same reverend iniquity who destroyed the mulberry-tree. In New Place, Shakspeare's family chiefly resided from 1597 to the time of his death; and Mr. Halliwell adduces, from the local records, various passages which exhibit Shakspeare himself as much there, and engaged, if not actually in agriculture, at least in negotiations of a kindred character. In fact, he appears to have omitted no honourable means of increasing his store. A subsidy roll of 1598, for example, quoted by Mr. Hunter, shows him to have been the holder of a house in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate; and as there are no indications that he ever lived in that locality, the probability is, that he had bought the lease of the premises as a speculation. The place was altogether out of the way of his occupation as actor, which he continued certainly up to 1603, in which year he was one of the principal performers in Ben Jonson's Sejanus. It is probable that, upon the whole, the year 1604 may be assigned as the period at which he finally retired from the stage as actor, though his connection with it as owner and comanager* continued some years longer. Old Aubrey tells us that "he was wont to go to his native country once a year;" it is likely that his journeys were more frequent, but whenever they occurred, we are informed by Anthony à Wood he always lodged at the sign of the Crown, in the Corn-market at Oxford,-a hostelry of which considerable portions still remain, and which at the time was kept by John Davenant, a very grave and discreet citizen, who had to wife a very beautiful woman, and of a very good wit, and of conversation extremely agreeable." The son of this couple, Sir William Davenant, who was born March 1605-6, used, "when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate friends, e.g. Sam Butler (author of Hudibras), &c., to say that it seemed to him that he wrote with the very spirit that Shakspeare wrote, and was contented enough to be thought his son." If there be no better basis for this pleasantry than the poetlaureate's conceit that he wrote like Shakspeare, the fair fame of Mrs. Davenant, and the morality of William Shakspeare, in the particular case, have been needlessly vindicated. Chirping old Aubrey, however, who is always

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*It was probably in the capacity of manager that he found occasion to bring Ben Jonson forward.

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ready to trump any imbecility, adds as clincher: "Now, by the way, his (Davenant's) mother had a very light report. In those days she was called a trader (prostitute)." The actual period at which Shakspeare permanently retired to Stratford appears to have been the year 1611. His means for accomplishing this retirement were ample; his shares in the Blackfriars and Globe Theatres alone are estimated by Messrs. Collier and Halliwell, from documents, to have produced him (about 1608) £366. 13s. 4d. per annum, besides his income from houses and lands, and from his writings. Mr. Ward, the rector of Stratford, in a diary written in 1662, states that Shakspeare, in his elder days, lived at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for that paid an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of £1,000 a year, as I have heard." This estimate may be considered as much above the mark, as that of Malone, who computes Shakspeare's retiring income at £200 per annum, is probably below it. Shakspeare's will, of which a copy is given in its proper place, scarcely affords a satisfactory solution of the question; but, as Mr. Halliwell aptly suggests, a portion of the poet's property was perhaps employed before his death in making provisions for those members of his family who have been thought by some biographers to have been neglected by him in his will.

Mr. Ward, in the passage above extracted, speaks of Shakspeare as having in his elder days supplied the stage with two plays every year, impliedly from Stratford; but upon the supposition that he did not retire permanently to his "place of lordship in the country" until 1611, he must have written the bulk of his plays previous to that retirement. His sonnets were probably among his earliest productions; but when they were written, where, and to whom they were addressed, and of whom they discourse, are all matters of mystery. Mr. Halliwell conjectures several of them to have been composed at Stratford before his marriage, and to have been addressed to Anne Hathaway; and such may very well have been the case compatibly with Mr. Dyce's opinion, "after repeated perusals of the sonnets, that the greater number of them were composed in an assumed character, on different subjects, and at different times, for the amusement and probably at the suggestion of the author's intimate associates."

Venus and Adonis, which Shakspeare himself designates the "first heir of his invention," meaning no doubt his first production of weight, was published in 1593. This was followed, in 1594, by the publication of Lucrece, and these two poems seem to have been petted much more than the plays, not only by contemporary writers, but even by Shakspeare himself; at least if we may draw any conclusion to the purpose from the fact that these were his only productions in the publication of which he at all concerned himself. The circumstance may, indeed, be attributable to the greater anxiety on such a subject of a young man just feeling his way to fortune; but it has more probable connection with that utter indifference to fame which so singularly contrasts Shakspeare, in this particular, with Milton, and which occasioned him evidently to feel no concern whether his works were given to the world in a perfect or imperfect state. Even while in the enjoyment of his retirement at Stratford, he did not so much as take the trouble to collect his writings together, and it was not until seven years after his death that his plays were formed into a volume by two of his old associates. Milton, on the contrary, who was haunted from his youth upwards, with the thought of composing some great work which should live for ages, when his Paradise Lost was published, blind as he was, and trifling as was the emolument it brought him, caused the printing to be superintended with the most minute care, and corrected the orthography throughout on a system peculiarly his own.

The order in which the plays of Shakspeare were written will probably never be determined with precision; each biographer and each commentator, either from actual conscientious belief, the result of new discoveries, real or supposed, or simply by way of being original at all events, has framed a scheme of his own, more or less differing from that of his predecessors. As a matter of fact, Meres, a contemporary writer, shows that in 1598, Shakspeare, then thirty-four years of age, had written, at all events, twelve plays: viz., 1. The Two Gentlemen of Verona; 2. The Comedy of Errors; 3. Love's Labour Lost; 4. Love's Labour Won (All's Well that Ends Well; or according to Halliwell, a separate play, now lost); 5. Midsummer Night's Dream; 6. Merchant of Venice; 7. Richard II.; 8. Richard III.; 9. Henry IV.; 10. King John; 11.