VI, in 1598-99, so as to make it more worthy of its place in the sequence.1

After Henry V, as though weary of Falstaff and the disreputable crew that had grown up about him, Shakespeare turned to tragedy, with the hope, we may suppose, of repeating the success of Romeo and Juliet. In North's translation of Plutarch, whence he had recently drawn material for A Midsummer Night's Dream, he found the story of Brutus, Cæsar, and Antony told in a beautiful and effective way; and this story he worked into the first of his Roman plays. That Julius Cæsar was composed in the later half of 1598 or the earlier half of 1599 is shown by several bits of evidence. John Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, written in 15992 as a counterblast to the defamation of Oldcastle in I and II Henry IV, contains an unmistakable allusion to the famous orations of Brutus and Antony:

The many-headed multitude were drawn

By Brutus' speech that Cæsar was ambitious;
When eloquent Mark Antony had shown
His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious?
Man's memory with new forgets the old;
One tale is good until another's told.

Ben Jonson, who was notoriously slow at composition, in Every Man out of his Humor, produced at or soon after the opening of the Globe Playhouse in the summer of 1599, makes Buffone exclaim "Et tu Brute!" and has Clove utter this fustian: "Then coming to the pretty animals — as Reason long since is fled to animals, you know." Obviously Jonson was making capital of a play well known to the London public. Finally, we have an actual record of a performance of Julius Cæsar at the

1 See C. F. Tucker Brooke's edition of the play in The Yale Shakespeare Series, 1908, pp. 124-25, 136.

2 Though not published until 1601, the author states in the Dedication that the poem was made ready for the press "some two years ago."

Globe in September, 1599. A German traveler, Thomas Platter, noted in his Reisebeschreibung:

On the twenty-first of September [1599], I with my companions, after dinner, somewhere about two o'clock, were rowed across the river to see in the straw-thatched house there the tragedy of the first emperor, Julius Cæsar, acted extremely well [gar artlich] with scarcely more than fifteen persons.1

The tragedy was in striking contrast to those studies in boisterous humor with which Shakespeare had just been amusing the public; yet Brutus and Cæsar seem to have met with success hardly less than that attained by Falstaff and Shallow. Leonard Digges thus describes the effect the play produced on the audience:

So have I seen, when Cæsar would appear,
And on the stage at half-sword parley were
Brutus and Cassius-oh, how the audience

Were ravish'd! With what wonder they went thence!

Julius Cæsar marks the close of the first period of Shakespeare's labors for the Chamberlain's Company. Before his next group of plays appeared, he and his fellowactors had moved to the Bankside, where in their new and splendid playhouse, the Globe, they began an even more brilliant career as the leading dramatic company of London.

1 Quoted by Gustav Binz, in "Londoner Theater und Schauspiele im Jahre 1599," Anglia, xxii (1899), 458.

CHAPTER XIII

RISE IN FAME AND IN SOCIAL DIGNITY

SHAKESPEARE had been working hard for his fellows, producing on the average three plays a year, besides revamping old manuscripts. As a result of his efforts he had enabled the Chamberlain's Company to rise above its rival, the Admiral's Company, and stand undisputed as the leading troupe in London. He had rendered Burbage immortal in the titular rôles of Richard III, Romeo, and the like, and had increased the fame of Kempe as the leading comedian of the age. The names of these two actors were now household words throughout England. In a play written at Cambridge University, we read: "Who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kempe? He is not counted a gentleman that knows not Dick Burbage and Will Kempe. There's not a country wench... but can talk of Dick Burbage and Will Kempe." Finally, he had made his fellow-sharers in the company rich through the throngs that daily flocked to see his plays. Yet only four years had elapsed since he gave up his career in pure letters and threw in his lot with the theatre.

What had he earned for himself? First of all let it be observed that, in spite of the general notion of plays as mercenary and ephemeral products, he had won frank recognition as England's chief man of letters. John Weever, who set himself up as a critic, writes in his Epigrames (1599):

Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not.

Their sugred tongues and power-attractive beauty

Say they are Saints, although that Saints they shew not,
For thousands vowe to them subjective duty.

1 II Return from Parnassus, 1601, ed. by W. C. Macray, p. 139.

In the three Parnassus plays, written and acted by the students of Cambridge University between 1597 and 1601, we find not only quotations from Shakespeare's poems, and scraps from Romeo and Juliet and Henry IV, but also specific mentions of him by name, showing that the young men of the university then recognized him as the most popular writer in England:

Ey, marry sir, these have some life in them! Let this duncified world esteem of Spenser and Chaucer, I'll worship sweet Mr. Shakespeare.1

And one of the students in his enthusiasm exclaims:

O sweet Mr. Shakespeare! I'll have his picture in my study at the court.2

Francis Meres, scholar and critic, who describes himself as "Master of Arts of both Universities," in attempting in 1598 to evaluate English literature in comparison with classical literature, unhesitatingly placed Shakespeare in the front rank of literary artists, and indicated his position as the greatest living English man of letters. He writes:

3

As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet, witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honytongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, etc. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour's Won, his Midsummer-Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak 1 I Return, 1600, ed. by Macray, p. 63. I.e., Inns of Court. Ibid., p. 58.

'Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury, Being the Second part of Wits Commonwealth. By Francis Meres, Master of Artes of both Universities. London, 1598.

with Plautus' tongue if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they would speak English.

It is hard to see how Meres could have used stronger language to express the esteem in which even at this early date Shakespeare was held. He further mentions the poet in six special categories as among those who have mightily enriched" the English tongue, who have rendered themselves immortal in verse, who are "our best for tragedy," "the best for comedy," "the best lyric poets," "and the most passionate among us.'

Did space allow, more witnesses could be cited to the high fame in letters which Shakespeare had achieved by the close of 1598. Those who are interested should consult The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, where references to the poet are arranged in chronological order.

At the same time, of course, Shakespeare was attaining wealth. From his position as a full-sharer in the Chamberlain's Company he derived a large and steady income, and from the sale of his plays, from his benefit performances,1 and from his appearances at Court and elsewhere, he gained not a little in addition. Thus he was now a man of affluence, able to live in the style his tastes dictated. Yet his tastes, we may suspect, were simple, and his manner of living frugal. The author of Ratsies Ghost seems to have him specially in mind when he writes of players: "I have heard indeed of some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy"; and he implies that the accumulation of this wealth was the result of careful husbandry: "There thou shalt learn to be frugal, for players were never so thrifty as they are now about London."

But, however simply or frugally he lived, his recog

1 See pp. 442-44.

For an estimate of his annual income, see pp. 441-45.