sage in Dugdale which shows how the revels at the Inns of changed their character according to the prevailing opinions: last measure is dancing, the Reader at the Cupboard calls to emen of the Bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to a song: who forthwith begins the first line of any psalm as he fter which all the rest of the company follow, and sing with ery like the edifying practice of the Court of Francis I., where lement Marot were sung to a fashionable jig, or a dance of pere had good authority when he made the clown say of his nen, "They are most of them means and basses: but one them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes." This is one of which Shakspere has to that rising sect, which in a few years he dominant power in the state. Ben Jonson attacks them with the most bitter indignation, and the coarsest satire. gird which Shakspere has at them is contained in the gentle oby to the steward, "Dost thou think, because thou art virbe no more cakes and ale?" In this very scene of Twelfth es the unreasoning hostility with which the Puritans themled by the ignorant multitude. Sir Toby asks to be told teward:

See The Alchymist,' and 'Bartholomew Fair.

Scottish Court than the quiet residence of a monarch like James VI. We have seen no record of such displays in the autumn of 1601.

Dunfermline was the jointure house of Anne of Denmark, and her son Charles was here born in November, 1600. It was a quiet occasional retreat from the turmoil of Edinburgh. But the favourite residence of James in the "latter summer" and autumn was Falkland. The account published by authority of the Gowrie conspiracy opens with a distinct picture of the King's habits: "His Majesty having his residence at Falkland, and being daily at the buck-hunting (as his use is in that season), upon the fifth day of August, being Tuesday, he rode out to the park, between six and seven of the clock in the morning, the weather being wonderful pleasant and seasonable." A record in Melville's Diary, within three weeks of this period, gives us another picture of the King and the Court: "At that time, being in Falkland, I saw a fuscambulus Frenchman play strong and incredible praticks upon stented [stretched] tackle in the palace-close before the King, Queen, and whole Court. This was politicly done to mitigate the Queen and people for Gowrie's slaughter; even then was Henderson tried before us, and Gowrie's pedagogue who had been buted [booted, tortured]." In the great hall of the palace of Falkland, of which enough remains to show its extent and magnificence, we think it probable that Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows exhibited very different performances in the following autumn. They would have abundant novelties to present to the Scottish Court, for all would be new. At the second Christmas after James had ascended the English throne, the early plays of Shakspere were as much in

request at the Court as those which belong to a later period. The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour 's Lost, Henry V., The Merchant of Venice, all the productions of the previous century, were produced at Court, and the King commanded The Merchant of Venice a second time. The constant performance of Shakspere's plays, as shown by the accounts. of the Revels, at this early period after James's accession, would seem to indicate something like a previous acquaintance with them; and this acquaintance we may justly assume took place upon the visit of Lawrence Fletcher and his company to Scotland in the autumn of 1601.

From Falkland to Aberdeen would be a considerable journey in those days of neglected roads, when rivers had to be forded, and mountains crossed by somewhat perilous paths. It is not improbable that the company halted at Perth, which was within a morning's ride of Falkland. The Presbytery of that town, as we have seen, were more favourably disposed some twelve years before to theatrical performances than the ministers of religion at Edinburgh; they tolerated them under wise restrictions. The King, in 1601, was anxious to stand well with the people of Perth, and he became a burgess of the city, and banqueted with the citizens. It was politicly done," as Melville says of the French rope-dancer. He might venture in that city to send his servants the players to amuse the people; for those who had supported his leanings towards Episcopalian Church government were strong there, and would gladly embrace any occasion to cultivate amusements that were disagreeable to their ascetic opponents. The same feelings would prevail still more strongly at Aberdeen. The young citizens of Bon Accord, as it was called, clung to the amusements of the older times, the Robin Hoods and Queens of May, in spite of the prohibitions of their magistrates. The Kirk Session prohibited maskers and dancers, but the people still danced; and upon the solemn occasion when the popish Earls of Huntley and Errol were received into the bosom of the Kirk, upon renouncing their errors, there was music and masking around the Cross, and universal jollity was mingled with the more solemn ceremonials. The people of Aberdeen were a loyal people, and we are not surprised that they welcomed the King's players with rewards and honours.

There is preserved, in the Library of Advocates, a very curious description of Aberdeen in the middle of the seventeenth century, written originally in Latin by James Gordon, parson of Rothemay, with a contemporary translation. The latter has been lately printed by the Spalding Club. The changes during half a century would not be very considerable; and the English players would therefore have sojourned in a city which, according to this authority, "exceeds not only the rest of the towns in the north of Scotland, but likewise any city whatsomever of that same latitude, for greatness, beauty, and frequency of trading." Gordon's description is accompanied by a large and well-executed plan, which has also been published; and certainly the new and old towns of Aberdeen, as they existed in those days, were spacious, and judiciously laid out, with handsome public buildings and well-arranged streets, backed by wooded gardens,—a pleasant place to look upon, with fruitful fields immedi

ately around it, though "anywhere you pass a mile without the town the country is barren like, the hills scraggy, the plains full of marshes and mosses." The parson of Rothemay, with a filial love for his native place, says, "The air is temperate and healthful about it, and it may be that the citizens owe the acuteness of their wits thereunto, and their civil inclinations." This, indeed, was a community fitted to appreciate the treasures which Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows would display before them; and it is to the honour of Aberdeen that, in an age of strong prejudices, they welcomed the English comedians in a way which vindicated their own character for "wisdom, learning, gallantry, breeding, and civil conversation." It is not to those who so welcomed them that we must chiefly lay the charge of the witch persecutions. In almost every case these atrocities were committed under the sanction of the Kirk Session; and in the same way, when a stern religious asceticism became the dominant principle in England, the feeling of religious earnestness, lofty as it was in many essentials, too often was allied with superstitious enthusiasm, which blinded the reason and blunted the feelings as fearfully as the worst errors of the ancient Church. The tolerant Shakspere would have listened to the stories of these persecutions with the same feelings with which he regarded the ruins of the great Dominican convent at Aberdeen, which was razed to the ground in 1560. A right principle was in each case wrongly directed: "There is some soul of goodness in things evil."

We have thus, upon evidence that we cannot doubt of Shakspere's company