rent of the same, but it shall be in men's holding either by leases or by copy granted before my time, and still continuing, and yet like to continue in the same state for the most part during my life, and percase my sons. ****** We are forced therefore to minish the third part of our household, or to raise the third part of our revenues, and for that we cannot so do of our own lands that is already in the hands of other men, many of us are enforced to keep pieces of our own lands when they fall in our own possession, or to purchase some farm of other men's lands, and to store it with sheep or some other cattle, to help make up the decay of our revenues, and to maintain our old estate withal, and yet all is little enough."

In such a transition state, we may readily imagine John Shakspere to have been a sufferer. But his struggle was a short one. He may have owed debts he was unable to pay, and have gone through some seasons of difficulty, deriving small rents from his own lands, “in the hands of other men," and enforced to hold "some farm of other men's lands" at an advanced rent. Yet this is not ruin and degradation. He maintained his social position; and it is pleasant to imagine that his illustrious son devoted some portion of the first rewards of his labour to make the condition of his father easier in that time of general uneasiness and difficulty. In ten years prosperity brightened the homes of that family. The poet bought the best house in Stratford; the yeoman applied to the College of Arms for bearings that would exhibit his gentle lineage, and asserted that he was a man of landed substance, sufficient to uphold the pretension. But in the period of rapid changes in the value of property,—a transition which, from the time of Latimer, was producing the most remarkable effects on the social condition of all the people of England, pressing severely upon many, although it was affording the sure means of national progress,—it is more than probable that Shakspere's father gradually found himself in straitened circumstances. This change in his condition might have directed his son to a new course of life which might be entered upon without any large pecuniary means, and which offered to his ambition a fair field for the exercise of his peculiar genius. There was probably a combination of neces

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sity and of choice which gave us 'Hamlet' and 'Lear.' William Shakspere had remained at Stratford he would have been a poet-a greater, perhaps, than the author of 'The Faery Queene;' but that species of literature which it was for him to build up, almost out of chaos, and to carry onward to a perfection beyond the excellence of any other age, might have been for him " an unweeded garden."

CHAPTER VII.

AMONGST those innumerable by-ways in London which are familiar to the hurried pedestrian, there is a well-known line of streets, or rather lanes, leading from the hill on which St. Paul's stands to the great thoroughfare of Blackfriars Bridge. Between Apothecaries' Hall and Printing-house Square is a short lane, leading into an open space called Playhouse Yard. It is one of those shabby places of which so many in London lie close to the glittering thoroughfares; but which are known only to their own inhabitants, and have at all times an air of quiet which seems like desolation. The houses of this little square or yard are neither ancient nor modern. Some of them were probably built soon after the great fire of London; for a few present their gable fronts to the streets, and the wide casements of others have evidently been filled up and modern sashes inserted. But there is nothing here, nor indeed in the whole precinct, with the exception of the few yards of ancient wall, that has any pretension to belong to what may be called the antiquities of London. In the heart of this precinct, close by the church of a suppressed monastery, surrounded by the new houses of the nobility, in the very spot which is now known as Playhouse Yard, was built, in 1575, the Blackfriars Theatre.

The history of the early stage, as it is to be deduced from statutes, and proclamations, and orders of council, exhibits a constant succession of conflicts between the civic authorities and the performers of plays. The Act of the 14th of Elizabeth, "for the punishment of vagabonds, and for relief of the poor and impotent," was essentially an Act of protection for the established companies of players. We have here, for the

first time, a definition of rogues and vagabonds; and it includes not only those who can "give no reckoning how he or she doth lawfully get his or her living," but "all fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes, and minstrels, not belonging to any baron of this realm, or towards any other honourable personage of greater degree; all jugglers, pedlers, tinkers, and petty chapmen; which said fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes, minstrels, jugglers, pedlers, tinkers, and petty chapmen, shall wander abroad, and have not licence of two justices of the peace, at the least, whereof one to be of the quorum, where and in what shire they shall happen to wander." The circumstance of belonging to any baron, or person of greater degree, was in itself a pretty large exception; and if in those times of rising puritanism the licence of two justices of the peace was not always to be procured, the large number of companies enrolled as the servants of the nobility offers sufficient evidence that the profession of a player was not a persecuted one, but one expressly sanctioned by the ruling powers. There was one company of players, the Earl of Leicester's, which, within two years after the legislative protection of this Act, received a more important privilege from the Queen herself. In 1574 a writ of privy seal was issued to the keeper of the great seal, commanding him to set forth letters patent addressed to all justices, &c., licensing and authorising James Burbage, and four other persons, servants to the Earl of Leicester, "to use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, stage-plays, and such other like as they have already used and studied, or hereafter shall use and study, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think good to see them." And they were to exhibit their performances "as well within our City of London and liberties of the same," as throughout our realm of England." Without knowing how far the servants of the Earl of Leicester might have been molested by the authorities of the City of London, in defiance of this patent, it is clear that this patent was of itself insufficient to insure their kind reception within the city; for it appears that, within three months after the date of the patent, a letter was written from the Privy Council to the Lord

Mayor, directing him " to admit the comedy players within the city of London, and to be otherwise favourably used." This mandate was probably obeyed; but in 1575 the Court of Common Council, without any exception for the objects of the patent of 1574, made certain orders, in the city language termed an Act, which assumed that the whole authority for the regulation of plays was in the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen; that they only could license theatrical exhibitions within the city; and that the players whom they did license should contribute half their receipts to charitable purposes. The civic authorities appear to have stretched their power somewhat too far; for in that very year James Burbage, and the other servants of the Earl of Leicester, erected their theatre amidst the houses of the great in the Blackfriars, within a stone's throw of the city walls, but absolutely out of the control of the city officers. The immediate neighbours of the players were the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Hunsdon, as we learn from a petition against the players from the inhabitants of the precinct. The petition was unavailing. The rooms which it states one Burbadge hath lately bought" were converted "into a common playhouse;" and within fourteen years from the period of its erection William Shakspere was one of its proprietors.

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The royal patent of 1574 authorised in the exercise of their art and faculty "James Burbadge, John Perkyn, John Lanham, William Johnson, and Robert Wilson," who are described as the servants of the Earl of Leicester. Although on the early stage the characters were frequently doubled, we can scarcely imagine that these five persons were of themselves sufficient to form a company of comedians. They had, no doubt, subordinate actors in their pay; they being the proprietors or shareholders in the general adventure. Of these five original patentees four remained as the "sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse" in 1589, the name only of John Perkyn being absent from the subscribers to a certificate to the Privy Council that the company acting at the Blackfriars "have never given cause of displeasure in that they have brought into their plays matters of state and religion." This certificate-which bears the date of November, 1589-exhibits to us the list of the

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professional companions of Shakspere in an early stage of his career, though certainly not in the very earliest. The certificate describes the persons subscribing it as jesty's poor players," and sets forth that they are "all of them sharers in the Blackfriars Playhouse." Their names are presented in the following order:-1. James Burbadge. 2. Richard Burbadge. 3. John Laneham. 4. Thomas Greene. 5. Robert Wilson. 6. John Taylor. 7. Anth. Wadeson. 8. Thomas Pope. 9. George Peele. 10. Augustine Phillipps. 11. Nicholas Towley. 12. William Shakespeare. 13. William Kempe. 14. William Johnson. 15. Baptiste Goodale. 16. Robert Armyn.

It would not be an easy matter, without some knowledge of minute facts and a considerable effort of imagination, to form an accurate notion of that building in the Blackfriars -rooms converted into a common playhouse-in which we may conclude that the first plays of Shakspere were exhibited. The very expression used by the petitioners against Burbage's project would imply that the building was not very nicely adapted to the purposes of dramatic representation. They say, "which rooms the said Burbage is now altering, and meaneth very shortly to convert and turn the same into a common playhouse." And yet we are not to infer that the rooms were hastily adapted to their object by the aid of a few boards and drapery, like the barn of a strolling company. In 1596 the shareholders say, in a petition to the Privy Council, that the theatre, "by reason of its having been so long built, hath fallen into great decay, and that, besides the reparation thereof, it has been found necessary to make the same more convenient for the entertainment of auditories coming thereto." The structure, no doubt, was adapted to its object, without any very great regard to durability; and the accommodations, both for actors and audience, were of a somewhat rude nature. The Blackfriars was a winter theatre; so that, differing from the Globe, which belonged to the same company, it was, there can be little doubt, roofed in. It appears surprising that, in a climate like that of England, even a summer theatre should be without a roof; but the surprise is lessened when we consider that, when the Globe was built in 1594, not