and tenements to the guild of the Holy Cross, to maintain "a priest fit and able in knowledge to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to the school in the said town to him, taking nothing of the scholars for their teaching." Thus was the Grammar School initiated and at the dissolution, the guild and its appendages fell into the king's hands. But in the seventh year of his reign, Edward VI. granted the whole again to the corporation of Stratford for charitable and public uses. The old Chapel of the Guild founded by Robert de Stratford exists not, and the present chancel appears to be of the age of Henry VI., or perhaps even earlier. The other part of the chapel and tower was certainly rebuilt by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII. But reverting to the Grammar School as connected with our great bard, Mr. Halliwell says that "Shakespeare was certainly educated at the free-school at Stratford; for even had we no direct evidence to that effect, when we consider his father's position in the corporation during his youth, we should most undoubtedly make the same assertion."*

There can indeed be no doubt about the fact that Shakespeare had his education here: for Rowe states that it was here that he acquired "what Latin he was master of: but that family circumstances forced him to withdraw from the school before he had made full proficiency.

It appears that the Chapel of the Guild was occupied

as the school about 1594; and probably Shakespeare may have" conned his task" in the chapel. In one of his plays he describes Malvolio as most villainously cross-gartered, "like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church"-not unlikely to have been one of his own

recollections.

The Hall of the ancient Guild occupies the groundfloor of the Grammar School, and the Latin schoolroom is situate above it, and is nearest the Guild Chapel. This was, until lately, a plain room with a low plaster ceiling, supported by thick beams projecting from the sides of the room. In years that are past here were some old forms and clumsy old desks, worn, cut, notched and marked by the boys of half a dozen generations. One, primitive enough in its construction to have suited the venerable Bede, and perhaps coeval with the foundation of the school, had somehow got to bear the name of Shakespeare's desk: not, indeed, that it was ever likely to have been his exclusively, but perhaps some schoolfellow may have remembered his using it when there, or lolling upon it, 66 as was his custom of an afternoon"-and so it was appropriated to him. It is now kept locked up, but we should have faith in Shakespeare's having at least seen-perhaps kicked it! The school-rooms have now been repaired, and their antique aspect is gone. In Shakespeare's time they were approached by an antique external staircase, roofed with tile; but this characteristic feature has also passed

away.

There is a circumstance connected with the Guildhall

below, which, as possibly tinging the thoughts of the bard's early youth, it is necessary to mention. It was usual in Queen Elizabeth's time when "players of enterludes" came to any town, first to attend on the mayor, inform him what "nobleman's servants" they were, and so get license for their public playing, the mayor, aldermen and council of the city appointed the first play, attending upon it, and paying the actors out of the corporation purse, the audience on that occasion being admitted gratis. The place of performance in Stratford was this Guildhall; and Mr. Halliwell, in his "Life of Shakespeare," says, that when the poet was a boy, "the bailiff and aldermen of Stratford encouraged the exhibition of dramatic performances in their ancient town. The accounts of the chamberlains contain several notices of such performances; but there were no doubt many others not mentioned in these documents." It appears, too, that Shakespeare's father was even then an especial patron of the players. The first companies who exhibited their plays in the hall, according to the corporation records, were so favoured when John Shakespeare was bailiff of Stratford in 1569; and "the Quene's players" received for their services on that occasion the sum of nine pounds. The Earl of Worcester's "players" were at Stratford the same year. Will. Shakespeare was then five years of age; and we can easily imagine that the embryo dramatist might have been taken by his father to see the performance. Mr. Halliwell says, that he was tator of the performances."

"in all likelihood a spec

In 1573, Lord Leicester's

players visited the town, and in 1576 when Shakespeare was twelve years of age two companies are mentioned, those of the Earls of Warwick and Worcester, and from thence to 1587 players seem constantly to have visited Stratford. Plays were then very different to the farces and pantomimes of our day, and attended by grave personages such as would go to a scientific lecture now. In fact they were considered vehicles of instruction as well as entertainment, and this Shakespeare himself glances at in Hamlet,

"I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions."

Mr. Halliwell suggests that probably Shakespeare may have joined some "travelling companies of comedians" for a strolling spree ere he devoted himself to the stage. Such an idea may possibly have struck him, and wild spirits have urged less talented men to "strut their little hour," but whether carried out by the bard does not appear, with the exception of a tradition at Leicester, that Shakespeare once performed in the Guildhall of that city. It is, however, certain that the Queen's players were in Stratford in 1587, and two years later Shakespeare was himself an humble member of the company. Here his wit, talents, and ready pen soon made him conspicuous amongst them; and that he was fit to reform and dignify the drama, an extract

D

from his own lecture on the subject in Hamlet fully shows:

"Let your discretion be your tutor, suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others."

Such advice as this, with reference to its peculiar subject, is indeed "for all times," and as judicious now as when it was first delivered. Humanity was sometimes in Shakespeare's time "imitated abominably" as he says, and so it has been often since :-"O, reform it altogether."