the players of the Queen of England, they might on this account be deemed and treated as the players of the King of Scotland.

Our chief reason for thinking it unlikely that Shakespeare would have accompanied his fellows to Scotland, at all events between October, 1599, and December, 1601, is that, as the principal writer for the company to which he was attached, he could not well have been spared, and because we have good ground for believing that about that period he must have been unusually busy in the composition of plays. No fewer than five dramas seem, as far as evidence, positive or conjectural, can be obtained, to belong to the interval between 1598 and 1602; and the proof appears to us tolerably conclusive, that HENRY V., TWELFTH NIGHT, and HAMLET, were written respectively in 1599, 1600, and 1601. 62

Besides, as far as we are able to decide such a point, the company to which our great dramatist belonged continued to perform in London; for although a detachment may have been sent to Scotland, the main body of the association called the Lord Chamberlain's players exhibited at court, at the usual seasons, in 1599, 1600, and 1601. Therefore, if Shakespeare visited Scotland at all, we think it must have been at an earlier period, and there was undoubtedly ample time between the years 1589 and 1599 for him to have done so.

1 The accounts of the revels' department at this period are not so complete as usual, and in Mr. P. Cunningham's book we find no details of any kind between 1587 and 1604. The interval was a period of the greatest possible interest, as regards the performance of the productions of Shakespeare, and we earnestly hope that the missing accounts may yet be recovered.

BEFORE he even set foot in London, James I. thought it necessary to put a stop to dramatic performances on Sunday. The proclamation he issued at Theobalds on 7th May, containing a paragraph for this purpose, has only recently come to light. There had been a long struggle between the Puritans and the players upon this point, and each party seemed by turns to gain the victory; for various orders were, from time to time, issued from authority forbidding exhibitions of the kind on the Sabbath, and those orders had been uniformly more or less contravened. We may suppose, that strong remonstrances having been made to the King, a clause with this special object was appended to a proclamation directed against monopolies and legal extortions. The circumstance of the company in which this paragraph, against dramatic performances on Sunday, is found, seems to prove that it was an after-thought, and that it was inserted, because his courtiers had urged that James ought not even to enter his new capital, until public steps had been taken to put an end to the profanation.1

1 The paragraph is in these terms:

"And for that we are informed, that there hath been heretofore great neglect in this kingdome of keeping the Sabbath day; for the better observing of the same and avoyding all impious propha nation, We do straightly charge and commaund that no, Bearebayting, Bul-bayting, Enterludes, common Playes, or other like

The King, having issued this command, arrived at the Charter-house on the same day, and all the theatrical companies, which had temporarily suspended their performances, began to act again on the 9th May. Permis sion to this effect was given by James I., and communicated through the ordinary channel to the players, who soon found reason to rejoice in the accession of the new sovereign; for ten days after he reached London he took the Lord Chamberlain's players into his pay and patronage, calling them "the King's servants,"-a title they always afterwards enjoyed. For this purpose he issued a warrant, for making out a patent under the great seal,' authorizing Fletcher, Shakespeare, Burbage, disordered or unlawful exercises, or pastimes, be frequented, kept, or used at any time hereafter upon the Sabbath day.

Given at our Court at Theobalds, the 7 day of May, in the first yeare of our Reigne."

It runs verbatim et literatim thus:

BY THE KING.

"Right trusty and welbeloved Counsellor, we greete you well, and will and command you, that under our privie Seale in your custody for the time being, you cause our letters to be derected to the keeper of our greate seale of England, commaunding him under our said greate Seale, he cause our letters to be made patents in forme following. James, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, Fraunce, and Irland, defendor of the faith, &e. To all Justices, Maiors, Sheriffs, Constables, Headboroughes, and

and others, to perform in his name, not only at the Globe on the Bankside, but in any part of the kingdom. Probably Laurence Fletcher did not acquire his prominence in the company by any remarkable excellence as an actor. He had been in Scotland, and had performed with his associates before James in 1599, 1600, and 1601; and in the latter year he had been registered as "his Majesty's Comedian," at Aberdeen. He might. therefore, have been a favourite with the King, and being also a considerable sharer in the association, he perhaps owed his place in the patent of May, 1603, to that circumstance. The name of Shakespeare comes next, and as author, actor, and sharer, we cannot be surprised at the situation he occupies. His progress upward had been gradual and uniform: in 1589 he was twelfth in a company of sixteen members; in 1596 he was fifth in a company of eight members; and in 1603 he was second in a company of nine members.

The degree of encouragement and favour extended to actors by James I., in the very commencement of his reign, is remarkable. Not only did he take the Lord Chamberlain's players unto his own service, but the Queen adopted the company which had acted under the name of the Earl of Worcester, of which the celebrated dramatist, Thomas Heywood, was then one; and the Prince of Wales that of the Lord Admiral, at the head of which was Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College. These three royal associations, as they inay be termed, were independent of others under the patronage of individual noblemen.

The policy of this course at such a time is evident, and James I. seems to have been impressed with the truth of the passage in HAMLET, (brought out, as we apprehend, very shortly before he came to the throne,)

other our officers and loving subjects greeting. Know ye, that we of our speciall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere motion have licenced and authorized, and by these presentes doe licence and authorize, these our servants, Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillippes, John Hemmings, Henrie Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowlye, and the rest of their associats, freely to use & exercise the arte and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Enterludes, Moralls, Pastoralls, Stage plaies, and such other like, as that thei have already studied or hereafter shall use or studie, aswell for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall thinke good to see them, during our pleasure. And the said Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Enterludes, Moralls, Pastoralls, Stage plaies, and such like, to shew & exercise publiquely to their best commoditie, when the infection of the plague shall decrease, as well within theire now usuall howse called the Globe, within our county of Surrey, as also within anie towne halls, or mout halls, or other convenient places within the liberties & freedome of any other citie, universitie, towne, or borough whatsoever within our said realmes and dominions. Willing and commaunding you, and every of you, as you tender our pleasure, not only to permit and suffer them heerin, without any your letts, hinderances, or molestations, during our said pleasure, but also to be ayding or assisting to them, yf any wrong be to them offered. And to allowe them such former courtesies, as hathe bene given to men of their place and qualitie: and also what further favour you shall shew to these our servants for our sake, we shall take kindly at your hands. And these our letters shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge in this behalfe. Given under our Signet at our mannor of Greenewiche, the seaventeenth day of May in the first yere of our raigne of England, France, and Ireland, & of Scotland the six & thirtieth.

Ex per Lake."

The patent under the great seal, made out in consequence of this warrant, bears date two days afterwards.

where it is said of these "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time," that it is "better to have a bad epitaph. than their ill report while you live." James made himself sure of their good report; and an epigram, attributed to Shakespeare, has descended to us, which doubtless was intended in some sort as a grateful return for the royal countenance bestowed upon the stage, and upon those who were connected with it. We copy it from a coeval manuscript in our possession, which seems to have belonged to a curious accumulator of matters of the kind, and which also contains an unknown production by Decker, as well as various other pieces by dramatists and poets of the time. The lines are entitled

SHAKESPEARE ON THE KING.

"Crowns have their compass, length of days their date,
Triumphs their tomb, felicity her fate:

Of nought but earth can earth make us partaker,
But knowledge makes a king most like his Maker."

We have seen these lines in more than one other old manuscript, and as they were constantly attributed to Shakespeare, and, in the form in which we have given them above, are in no respect unworthy of his pen, we have little doubt of their authenticity.

Having established his family in "the great house” called "New Place," in his native town, in 1597, by the purchase of it from Hercules Underhill, Shakespeare seems to have contemplated considerable additions to his property there. In May, 1602, he laid out £320 upon one hundred and seven acres of land, which he bought of William and John Combe,' and attached it to his dwelling. The original indenture and its counterpart are in existence, bearing date 1st May, 1602, but to neither of them is the signature of the Poet affixed; and it seems that, he being absent, his brother Gilbert was his immediate agent in the transaction, and to him the property was delivered to the use of William Shakespeare. In the autumn of the same year he became

1 Much has been said in all the Lives of our Poet, from the time of Aubrey (who first gives the story) to our own, respecting a satirical epitaph upon a person of the name of John a Combe. supposed to have been made extempore by Shakespeare: Aubrey words it thus:

"Ten in the hundred the devil allows,

But Combe will have twelve, he swears and he vows.
If any one ask, Who lics in this tomb?

Ho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe."

Rowe changes the terms a little, but the point is the same, and in Brathwaite's "Remains," 1618, we have another version of the lines, where they are given as having been written by that author "upon one John Combe of Stratford-upon-Avon, a notable usurer." We are by no means satisfied that they were originally penned by Brathwaite, from being imputed to him in that volume, and by a passage in "Maroccus Extaticus," a tract printed as early as 1595, it is very evident that the connection between the Devil and John a Combe, or John of Comber. (as he is there called,) was much older :-"So hee had had his rent at the daie, the devill and John of Comber should not have fetcht Kate L. to Bridewell." There is no ground for supposing that Shakespeare was ever on bad terms with any of the Combes, and in his will he expressly left his sword to Mr. Thomas Combe. In a MS. of that time, now before us, we find the following given as an epitaph upon Sir William Stone:

"Heer ten in the hundred lies dead and ingraved :
But a hundred to ten his soul is not saved."

And the couplet is printed in no very different form in "The More the Merrier," by H. P., 1608, as well as in Camden's "Remains."

the owner of a copyhold tenement (called a cotagium in the instrument) in Walker's-street, alias Dead-lane, Stratford. In November of the next year he gave Hercules Underhill £60 for a messuage, barn, granary, garden, and orchard, close to or in Stratford; but in the original fine, preserved in the Chapter-house, Westminster, the precise situation is not mentioned. In 1603, therefore. Shakespeare's property, in or near Stratford-upon-Avon, besides what he might have bought of, or inherited from, his father, consisted of New Place, with one hundred and seven acres of land attached to it, a tenement in Walker's-street, and the additional messuage, which he had recently purchased from Un

derhill.

Whether our great dramatist was in London at the period when the new king ascended the throne, we have no means of knowing; but that he was so in the following autumn we have positive proof; for in a letter written by Mrs. Alleyn, (the wife of Edward Alleyn, the actor,) to her husband, then in the country, dated 20th October, 1603, she tells him that she had seen "Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe" in Southwark. At this date, according to the same authority, most of the companies of players who had left London for the provinces, on account of the prevalence of the plague, and the consequent cessation of dramatic performances, had returned to the metropolis; and it is not at all unlikely that Shakespeare was one of those who had returned, H*

having taken the opportunity of visiting his family at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Under Elizabeth the Children of the Chapel (originally the choir-boys of the royal establishment) had become an acknowledged company of players, and these, besides her association of adult performers, Queen Anne took under her immediate patronage, with the style of the Children of her Majesty's Revels, requiring that the pieces they proposed to represent should first be submitted to, and have the approval of the celebrated poet Samuel Daniel. The instrument of their appointment bears date 30th January, 1603-4; and from a letter from Daniel to his patron, Sir Thomas Egerton, preserved among his papers, we may perhaps conclude that Shakespeare, as well as Michael Drayton, had been candidates for the post of master of the Queen's revels: he says in it, "I cannot but know, that I am lesse deserving than some that sued by other of the nobility unto her Majestie for this roome;" and, after introducing the name of "his good friend," Drayton, he adds the following, which, we apprehend, refers with sufficient distinctness to Shakespeare:-"It seemeth to myne humble judgment that one who is the author of playes, now daylie presented on the public stages of London, and the possessor of no small gaines, and moreover him selfe an actor in the Kinges companie of comedians, could not with reason pretend to be Master of the Queene's Majesties Revells, for as much as he wold 65

sometimes be asked to approve and allow of his own writings."

This objection would have applied with equal force to Drayton, had we not every reason to believe that before this date he had ceased to be a dramatic author. He had been a writer for Henslowe and Alleyn's company during several years, first at the Rose, and afterwards at the Fortune; but he seems to have relinquished that species of composition about a year prior to the demise of Elizabeth, the last piece in which he was concerned, of which we have any intelligence, being noticed by Henslowe under the date of May, 1602 this play was called "The Harpies," and he was assisted in it by Decker, Middleton, Webster, and Munday.

It is highly probable that Shakespeare was a suitor for this office, in contemplation of a speedy retirement as an actor. We have already spoken of the presumed excellence of his personations on the stage, and to the tradition that he was the original player of the part of the Ghost in HAMLET. Another character he is said to have sustained is Adam, in As YOU LIKE IT; and his 66

brother Gilbert, (who in 1602 had received, on behalf William Shakespeare, the one hundred and seven acres of land purchased from William and John Combe,) who probably survived the Restoration, is supposed to have been the author of this tradition. He had acted also in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humour," in 1598, and he is supposed to have written part of, as well as known to have performed in, the same author's "Sejanus," in 1603. This is the last we hear of him upon the stage, but that he continued a member of the company until April 9, 1604, we have the evidence of a document preserved at Dulwich College, where the names of the King's players are enumerated in the following order: Burbage, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Phil lips, Condell, Heminge, Armyn, Sly, Cowley, Ostler, and Day. If Shakespeare had not then actually ceased to perform, we need not hesitate in deciding that he quitted that department of the profession very shortly afterwards.

1 From lines preceding it in the 4to, 1605, we know that it was brought out at the Globe, and Ben Jonson admits that it was ill received by the audience.