materials that were necessary for the construction of a substantial biography. The exact period is not known, but most likely at some time about the year 1690, Thomas 8 Betterton, the most celebrated Shakespearean actor of that day, paid a visit to Warwickshire with the express object of ascertaining what could be there learnt respecting the personal history of the great dramatist. The particulars that he managed to glean upon this occasion were afterwards communicated by him to his friend Nicholas 119 Rowe, a well-known dramatist, and some of them were incorporated by the latter into an account that was published in 1709. "I must own," observes Rowe, in speaking of Betterton, "a particular obligation to him for the most considerable part of the passages relating to his life which I have here transmitted to the public, his veneration for the memory of Shakespeare having engaged him to make a journey into Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what remains he could of a name for which he had so great a value." We are indebted to this enthusiasm for the rescue of several valuable fragments which would otherwise have been lost; and no sufficient reason has yet been given for impugning Rowe's general accuracy. There are, indeed, a few errors in the minor details of his biographical sketch, but that he drew it up mainly from reliable sources is unquestionable. An evidence of the latter opinion will be noticed in the remarkable manner in which two at least of his traditional notices, those which refer to the embarrassed circumstances of John Shakespeare, and to the name of Oldcastle, -have been verified by modern research; while there are several allusions which indicate that the whole is the result of original enquiry. That he exercised also unusual caution in dealing with his materials is obvious

from the prelude to the Southampton anecdote, as well as from the hesitating manner in which he introduces many of his statements. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this prudence has added immeasurably to his credibility, and rendered every word of his essay deserving of respectful attention.

There are many who question the value of the stray morsels collected by Betterton and others in the seventeenth century. The main external argument brought forward in support of their incredulity is the late period at which the traditions have been recorded. Thus it is said, and with truth, that there is no intimation of the poet having followed the trade of a butcher until nearly a century afterwards, that the poaching exploit remained unnoticed for a still longer time, and so on; these long terms of silence being, it is considered, fatal to a dependence upon such testimonies. But it appears to be overlooked that the Stratford biographical notices, unless we adopt the incredible theory that they were altogether gratuitous and foolish inventions, were in all probability mere repetitions of gossip belonging to a much earlier period. This gossip, it must be remembered, was of a character that was seldom jotted down, and that still more rarely found its way into print. Independently even of these considerations, the above line of argument, however plausible, will not bear the test of impartial examination. It would apply very well to the present age, when incessant locomotion and the reign of newspapers have banished the old habit of reliance upon hearsay for intelligence or for a continuity in the recollection of minor events. The case was very different indeed in the country towns and villages of bygone days, when reading of any kind was the luxury of

the few, and intercommunication exceedingly restricted. It may be confidently asserted that, previously to the time of Rowe, books or journals were very rarely to be met with at Stratford-on-Avon, while the large majority of the inhabitants had never in their lives travelled beyond twenty or thirty miles from their homes. There was in fact a conversational and stagnant, not a reading or a travelling, population; and this state of things continued, with gradual but almost imperceptible advances in the latter directions, until the development of the railway system. The oral history of local affairs thus became in former days imprisoned, as it were, in the districts of their occurrence; and it is accordingly found that, in some cases, provincial incidents have been handed down through successive generations with an accuracy that is truly marvellous. There has been, for example, a tradition current at Worcester from time immemorial that a robber of the sanctus-bell was flayed, and his skin nailed to one of the doors of the cathedral. This is a species of barbarity that must be assigned to a very remote period, and yet the fact of its perpetration has been established in recent years by a scientific analysis of fragments hanging to an ancient door which is still preserved in the crypt. Other instances nearly as curious. might be adduced, including the verification, already mentioned, of one of Rowe's statements that was first given by him from an oral source a hundred and thirty years after the period to which it refers. These concordances naturally suggest a pause before the exclusion of country traditions on the ground of recency, but of course the nearer their promulgation reaches to our own times the greater should be the caution exercised in their acceptance.

The London traditions, which were subjected through a long series of years to very different influences, do not merit the same degree of consideration. The violent disruption of the theatrical world in the middle of the seventeenth century was attended with the loss of nearly all its original character, and at the creation of a new stage there was retained little beyond fragmentary recollections of the old. It has been clearly ascertained that even Dryden had a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the latter, and there is nothing to indicate that he cared to gather any particulars respecting the life of the great dramatist. Very few indeed there must have been in the Restoration period who took a sincere interest in the subject, not any, so far as we know, excepting Davenant and Betterton. The best of the metropolitan reports are traceable to the latter, most of the others that were recorded after his death in 1710 being exceedingly meagre and unsatisfactory. In the compilation of the following pages it has, therefore, been thought advisable, in estimating the authority of the various traditions, to give the preference, wherever selection was necessary, to the rural versions. It may also be observed that great reliance has been placed on the general credibility of those anecdotes, whether gleaned from London or the provinces, that include references to facts or conditions which have been verified by modern enquiry, but which could only have been known to the narrators through hearsay.

The literary history of Shakespeare cannot of course be perfected until the order in which he composed his works has been ascertained, but, unless the books of the theatrical managers or licensers of the time are discovered, it is not likely that the exact chronological arrangement

will be determined. The dates of some of his productions rest on positive testimony or distinct allusions, and these are stand-points of great value. In respect, however, to the majority of them, the period of composition has unfortunately been merely the subject of refined and useless conjecture. Internal evidences of construction and style, obscure contemporary references, and metrical 251 or grammatical tests, can very rarely in themselves be relied upon to establish the year of authorship. Specific phases of style or metre necessarily had periods of commencement in Shakespeare's work, but, so long as 252 most of those epochs are merely conjectural, little real progress is made in the enquiry. No sufficient allowances appear to be made for the high probability of the intermittent use of various styles during the long interval which elapsed after the era of comparative immaturity had passed away, and in which, so far as constructive and delineative power was concerned, there was neither progress nor retrogression. Shakespeare's genius arrived 203 at maturity with such celerity that it is perilous to assert, from any kind of internal evidence alone, what he could not have written at any particular subsequent period, and dramatic style frequently varies not only with the subject of the adopted narrative, but with the purpose of authorship. It may be presumed, for instance, that the diction. and construction of a drama written with a view to its performance at the Court might be essentially dissimilar from those of a play of the same date composed merely for the ordinary stage, where the audiences were of a more promiscuous character and the usages and appliances of the actors in some respects of a different nature. Nor have the various theories that are found in æsthetic 2 criticism, those by which the gradation of the author's