"THIS William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now Ben Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor. He began early to make Essays at Dramatic Poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well." So writes honest Aubrey, in the year 1680, in his Minutes of Lives' addressed to his "worthy friend, Mr. Anthony à Wood, Antiquary of Oxford." Of the value of Aubrey's evidence we may form some opinion from his own statement to his friend :-" "T is a task that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me, saying that I was fit for it by reason of my general acquaintance, having now not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have also been much tumbled up and down in it; which hath made me so well known. Besides the modern advantage of coffeehouses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations or societies, I

might add that I come of a longævous race, by which means I have wiped some feathers off the wings of time for several generations, which does reach high."* It must not be forgotten that Aubrey's account of Shakspere, brief and imperfect as it is, is the earliest known to exist. Rowe's 'Life' was not published till 1707; and although he states that he must own a particular obligation to Betterton, the actor, for the most considerable part of the passages relating to this life -"his veneration for the memory of Shakspeare 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 veneration"-we have no assistance in fixing the date of Betterton's inquiries. Betterton was born in 1635. From the Restoration, until his retirement from the stage, about 1700, he was the most deservedly popular actor of his time; "such an actor," says 'The Tatler,' as ought to be recorded with the same respect as Roscius among the Romans." He died in 1710; and, looking at his busy life, it is probable that he did not make this journey into Warwickshire until after his retirement from the theatre. Had he set about these inquiries earlier, there can be little doubt that the Life' by Rowe would have contained more precise and satisfactory information, if not fewer idle tales. Shakspere's sister was alive in 1646; his eldest daughter, Mrs. Hall, in 1649; his second daughter, Mrs. Quiney, in 1662; and his grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, in 1670. The information which might be collected in Warwickshire, after the death of Shakspere's lineal descendants, would necessarily be mixed up with traditions, having for the most part some foundation, but coloured and distorted by that general love of the marvellous which too often hides the fact itself in the inference from it. Thus, Shakspere's father might have sold his own meat, as the landowners of his time are reproached by Harrison for doing, and yet in no proper sense of the word have been a butcher. Thus, the supposition that the poet had intended to satirize the Lucy family, in an allusion to their arms, might have suggested that there was a grudge between him and the knight; and what so likely a subject of dispute as the killing of venison? the tradition might have been exact as to the dispute; but the laws of another century could alone have suggested that the quarrel would compel the poet to fly the country. Aubrey's story of Shakspere's coming to London is a simple and natural one, without a single marvellous circumstance about it "This William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London." This, the elder story, appears to us to have much greater verisimilitude than the later:-" He was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." Aubrey who has picked up all the gossip "of coffeehouses in this great city," hears no word of Rowe's story which would certainly have been handed down amongst the traditions of the theatre to Davenant and Shadwell, from whom he does hear something:-"I have heard Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell (who is counted the best comedian we have now) say, that he had a most prodigious wit." Neither does he say, nor indeed any one else till two centuries and a quarter after Shakspere is

This letter, which accompanies the 'Lives,' is dated London, June 15, 1680.

May 26 Snfanna dange for to Brilliam Shakspent

February 2. Hannet & Indeth fonne & daughter to williã Shakspore

dead, that, "after four years' conjugal discord, he would resolve upon that plan of solitary emigration to the metropolis, which, at the same time that it released him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, succeeded so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with a train of circumstances so vast for all future ages.' "'* It is certainly a singular vocation for a writer of genius to bury the legendary scandals of the days of Rowe, for the sake of exhuming a new scandal, which cannot be received at all without the belief that the circumstance must have had a permanent and most evil influence upon the mind of the unhappy man who thus cowardly and ignominiously is held to have severed himself from his duty as a husband and a father. We cannot trace the evil influence, and therefore we reject the scandal. It has not even the slightest support from the weakest tradition. It is founded upon an imperfect comparison of two documents, judging of the habits of that period by those of our own day; supported by quotations from a dramatist of whom it would be difficult to affirm that he ever wrote a line which had strict reference to his own feelings and circumstances, and whose intellect in his dramas went so completely out of itself that it almost realizes the description of the soul in its first and pure nature-that it "hath no idiosyncrasies; that is, hath no proper natural inclinations which are not competent to others of the same kind and condition."+ In the baptismal register of the parish of Stratford. for the year 1583 is the entry of the birth of Susanna. This record necessarily implies the residence of the wife of William Shakspere in the parish of Stratford Did he himself continue to reside in this parish? There is no evidence of his residence. His name appears in no suit in the Bailiff's Court at this period. He fills no municipal office such as his father had filled before him. But his wife continues to reside in the native place of her husband, surrounded by his relations and her own. His father and his mother no doubt watch with anxious solicitude over the fortunes of their first son. He has a brother, Gilbert, seventeen years of age, and a sister of fourteen. His brother Richard is nine years of age; but Edmund is young enough to be the playmate of his little Susanna. In 1585 there is another entry in the parochial register, the birth of a son and a daughter:

*

Encyclopædia Britannica.

+ Enquiry into the Opinion of the Eastern Sages concerning the Præ-existence of Souls. By the Rev. Joseph Glanvil.

William Shakspere has now nearly attained his majority. While he is yet a minor he is the father of three children. The circumstance of his minority may perhaps account for the absence of his name from all records of court-leet, or bailiff's court, or common-hall. He was neither a constable, nor an ale-conner, nor an overseer, nor a jury-man', because he was a minor. We cannot affirm that he did not leave Stratford before his minority expired; but it is to be inferred, that, if he had continued to reside at Stratford after he was legally of age, we should have found traces of his residence in the records of the town. If his residence were out of the borough, as we have supposed his father's to have been at this period, some trace would yet have been found of him, in all likelihood, within the parish. Just before the termination of his minority we have an undeniable record that he was a second time a father within the parish. It is at this period, then, that we would place his removal from Stratford; his flight, according to the old legend; his solitary emigration, his unamiable separation from his family, according to the new discovery. That his emigration was even solitary we have not a tittle of evidence. The one fact we know with reference to Shakspere's domestic arrangements in London is this: that as early as 1596 he was the occupier of a house in Southwark. "From a paper now before me, which formerly belonged to Edward Alleyn, the player, our poet appears to have lived in Southwark near the Bear-garden, in 1596."* Malone does not describe this paper; but Mr. Collier found it at Dulwich College, and it thence appears that the name of "Mr. Shaksper" was in a list of "Inhabitants of Sowtherk as have complaned, this — of Jully, 1596." It is immaterial to know of what Shakspere complained, in company with "Wilson the piper," and sundry others. The neighbourhood does not seem to have been a very select one, if we may judge from another name in this list. We cannot affirm that Shakspere was the solitary occupier of this house in Southwark. Chalmers says, "it can admit of neither controversy nor doubt, that Shakspere in very early life settled in a family way where he was bred. Where he thus settled, he probably resolved that his wife and family should remain through life; although he himself made frequent excursions to London, the scene of his profit, and the theatre of his fame." Mr. Hunter has discovered a document which shews that "William Shakespeare was, in 1598, assessed in a large sum to a subsidy upon the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. He was assessed, also, in the Liberty of the Clink, Southwark, in 1609; but whether for a dwelling-house, or for his property in the Globe, is not evident. His occupation as an actor both at the Blackfriars and the Globe, the one a winter, the other a summer theatre, continued till 1603 or 1604. His interest as a proprietor of both theatres existed in all probability till 1612. In 1597 Shakspere became the purchaser of the largest house in Stratford, and he resided there with his family till the time of his death in 1616. Many circumstances show that his interests and affections were always connected with the place

of his birth.

William Shakspere, "being inclined naturally to poetry and acting," naturally became a poet and an actor. He would become a poet, without any

He

impelling circumstances not necessarily arising out of his own condition. began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, which at that time was very low." Aubrey's account of his early poetical efforts is an intelligible and consistent account. Shakspere was familiar with the existing state of dramatic poetry, through his acquaintance with the stage in the visits or various companies of actors to Stratford. We have shown what that condition was in 1580. It was not much improved in 1585. In the previous year there had been three sets of players at Stratford, remunerated for their performances out of the public purse of the borough. These were the players of "my Lord of Oxford," the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Essex. In 1585 we have no record of players in the borough. In 1586 there is only one performance paid for by the Corporation. But in 1587 the Queen's players, for the first time, make their appearance in that town; and their performances are rewarded at a much higher rate than those of any previous company. Two years after this, that is in 1589, we have undeniable evidence that Shakspere had not only a casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many players were, but was a shareholder in this very Queen's company, with other shareholders below him in the list. The fair inference is, that he did not at once jump into his position; and even that two years before, when the Queen's players visited Stratford for the first time, there was some especial cause for their visit; and that the cause is easily found in the circumstance that one of their company was a native of Stratford, with influential friends and connexions there, and that he was not ashamed to exhibit his vocation amongst the companions of his youth. Rowe says that, after having settled in the world in a family manner, and continued in this kind of settlement for some time, the extravagance of which he was guilty in robbing Sir Thomas Lucy's park obliged him to leave his business and family. He could not have so left, even according to the circumstances which were known to Rowe, till after the birth of his son and daughter in 1585. But the story goes on:-' It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first in a very mean rank; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer." Six years after the time of Rowe the story assumed a more circumstantial shape, as far as regards the mean rank which Shakspere filled in his early connexion with the theatre. Dr. Johnson adds one passage to the 'Life,' which he says "Mr. Pope related, as communicated to him by Mr. Rowe." It is so remarkable an anecdote that it is somewhat surprising that Rowe did not himself add it to his own meagre account :

"In the time of Elizabeth, coaches being yet uncommon, and hired coaches not at all in use, those who were too proud, too tender, or too idle to walk, went on horseback to any distant business or diversion. Many came on horseback to the play; and when Shakspere fled to London from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the playhouse, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be