very small distance from Stratford-upon-Avon; where Shakspeare found his wife. I find two families of this name settled in that town early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the daughter of John Heminge of Shottery, was baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon, March 12, 1567. This John might have been the father of the actor, though I have found no entry relative to his baptism: for he was probably born before the year 1558, when the Register commenced. In the village of Shottery also lived Richard Hemyng, who had a son christened by the name of John, March 7, 1570. Of the Burbage family the only notice I have found is an entry in the Register of the parish of Stratford, October 12, 1565, on which day Philip Green was married in that town to Ursula Burbage, who might have been sister to James Burbage, the father of the actor, whose marriage I suppose to have taken place about that time. If this conjecture be well founded, our poet, we see, had an easy introduction to the theatre.'

The same remark which concludes this paragraph is repeated by the commentator when speaking of Thomas Greene, whom he terms, a celebrated comedian, the townsman of Shakspeare, and perhaps his relation. The celebrity of Greene as an actor is fully ascertained by an address to the reader, prefixed by Thomas Heywood to his edition of John Cook's Greene's "Tu Quoque; or, The City Gallant;" "as for Maister Greene," says Heywood, "all that I will speak of him (and that without flattery) is this (if I were worthy to censure), there was not an actor of his nature, in his time, of better ability in performance of what he undertook, more applauded by the audience, of greater grace at the court, or of more general love in the city;" but the townsmanship and affinity rest only on the inference to be drawn from an entry in the parish-register of Stratford, and from some lines quoted by Chetwood from the comedy of the "Two Maids of Moreclack," which represent Greene speaking in the character of a clown, and declaring

"I prattled poesie in my nurse's arms,

And, born, where late our Swan of Avon sung,
In Avon's streams we both of us have lav'd,
And both came out together."+

As these lines are not, however, in the play from which they are pretended to have been taken; as they appear to be a parody on a passage in Milton's Lycidas, and as Chetwood has been detected in falsifying and forging many of his dates, little credit can be attached to their evidence, and we must solely depend upon the import of the register, which records that "Thomas Greene, alias Shakspere, was buried there, March 6th, 1589." If this Thomas were the father of the actor, and the probability of this being the case cannot be denied, and may even have led to the attempted imposition of Chetwood, the affinity as well as the townsmanship, will be established.

It seems, therefore, neither rash nor inconsequent to believe, in failure of more direct evidence, that the channel through which Shakspeare, immediately on his arrival in town, procured an introduction to the stage, was first opened by his relationship to Greene, who possessing, as we have seen, great merit and influence as an actor, could easily insure him a connection at the theatre, and would naturally recommend him to his countryman Heminge, who was then about thirty years of age, and had already acquired considerable reputation as a performer. +

Mr. Rowe's second assertion that he was received into the company, then in being, at first in a very mean rank, has given rise to some reports relative to the nature of his early employment at the theatre, which are equally inconsistent and degrading. It has been related that his first office was that of Call-boy, or at

* Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 539.

+ British Theatre, p. 9.

Mr. Chalmers, speaking of Heminges says " There is reason to believe, that he was, originally, a Warwickshire lad; a shire, which has produced so many players and poets; the Burbages, the Shakspeares, the Greens, and the Harts." Apology, p. 435, 436.

tendant on the prompter, and that his business was to give notice to the performers when their different entries on the stage were required. Another tradition, which places him in a still meaner occupation, is said to have been transmitted through the medium of Sir William Davenant to Mr. Betterton, who commnicated it to Mr. Rowe, and this gentleman to Mr. Pope, by whom, according to Dr. Johnson, it was related in the following terms:

"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 Shakspeare 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 ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will. Shakspeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will. Shakspeare could be had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. Shakspeare, finding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will. Shakspeare was summoned, were immediately to present themselves, I am Shakspeare's boy, Sir. In time, Shakspeare found higher employment: but as long as the practice of riding to the playhouse continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakspeare's boys.”

Of this curious anecdote it should not be forgotten, that it made its first appearance in Cibber's Lives of the Poets ;* and that if it were known to Mr. Rowe, it is evident he thought it so little entitled to credit that he chose not to risk its insertion in his life of the poet. In short, if we reflect for a moment that Shakspeare, though he fled from Stratford to avoid the severity of a prosecution, could not be destitute either of money or friends, as the necessity for that flight was occasioned by an imprudent ebullition of wit, and not by any serious delinquency; that the father of his wife was a yeoman both of respectability and property; that his own parent, though impoverished, was still in business; and that he had, in all likelihood, a ready admission to the stage through the influence of persons of leading weight in its concerns; we cannot, without doing the utmost violence to probability, conceive that, under these circumstances, and in the twenty-third year of his age, he would submit to the degrading employment of either a horse-holder at the door of a theatre, or of a call-boy within its walls.

Setting aside, therefore, these idle tales, we may reasonably conclude that by the phrase "a very mean rank," Mr. Rowe meant to imply, that his first engagement as an actor was in the performance of characters of the lowest class. That his fellow-comedians were ushered into the dramatic world in a similar way, and rose to higher occupancy by gradation, the history of the stage will sufficiently prove: Richard Burbage, for instance, who began his career nearly at the same time with our author, and who subsequently became the greatest tragedian of his age, had, in the year 1589, appeared in no character more important than that of a Messenger. If this were the case with a performer of such acknowledged merit, we may readily acquiesce in the supposition that the parts first given to Shakspeare were equally as insignificant; and as readily allow that an actor thus circumstanced might very properly be said to have been admitted into the company at first in a very mean rank.

As Shakspeare's immediate employment, therefore, on his arrival in town, appears to have been that of an actor, it cannot be deemed irrelevant if we should here enquire into his merits and success in this department.

Two traditions, of a contradictory complexion, have reached us relative to Shakspeare's powers as an actor; one on the authority of Mr. Aubrey, and the other on that of Mr. Rowe. In the manuscript papers of the first of these gentlemen, we are told that our author, "being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act

* Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 130.

exceedingly well;" but, in the life of the poet by the second, it is added, after mentioning his admission to the theatre in an inferior rank, that "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. His name is printed, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of what sort of parts he used to play; and though I have enquired, I could never meet with any further account of him this way, than that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet." Of descriptions thus opposed, a preference only can be given as founded on other evidence; and it happens that subsequent enquiry has enabled us to consider Mr. Aubrey's account as approximating nearest to the truth.

Contemporary authority, it is evident, would decide the question, and happily the researches of Mr. Malone have furnished us with a testimony of this kind. In the year 1592, Henry Chettle, a dramatic writer, published a posthumous work of Robert Greene's, under the title of "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance," in which the author speaks harshly of Marlowe, and still more so of Shakspeare, who was then rising into fame. Both these poets were justly offended, and Chettle, who was of course implicated in their displeasure, printed, in the December of the same year, a pamphlet, entitled " Kind Harts Dreame," to which is prefixed an address "to the Gentlemen Readers," apologizing, in the following terms, for the offence which he had given :

:

"About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others his "Groatsworth of Wit," in which a letter written to divers playmakers is offensively by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be reavenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a living author and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on me. How I have, all the time of my conversing in printing, hindered the bitter inveighing against schollers, it hath been very well known; and how in that I dealt, I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them (Marlowe') I care not if I never be. The other (Shakspeare'), whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the hate of living writers, and might have used my own discretion, (especially in such a case, the author being dead), that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because myselfe have seene his demeanour no less civil than he EXCELLENT IN THE QUALITIE He profesESS. Besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honestie, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art. For the first, whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene's book, strooke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ; or had it been true, yet to publish it was intollerable; him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve."

This curious passage clearly evinces that our author was deemed excellent as an actor (for the phrase "the qualitie he professes" peculiarly denoted at that time the profession of a player), in the year 1592, only five or six years, at most, after he had entered on the stage; and consequently that the information which Aubrey had received was correct, while that obtained by Rowe must be considered as unfounded.

So well instructed, indeed, was Shakspeare in the duties and qualities of an actor, that it appears from Downes's book, entitled "Roscius Anglicanus," that he undertook to teach and perfect John Lowin in the character of King Henry the Eighth, and Joseph Taylor in that of Hamlet.

Of his competency for this task, several parts of his dramatic works might be brought forward as sufficient proof. Independent of his celebrated instructions to the player in Hamlet, which would alone ascertain his intimate knowledge of the histrionic art, his conception of the powers necessary to form the accomplished tragedian, may be drawn from part of a dialogue which occurs between Richard the Third and Buckingham :

"Glo. Come, cousin, can'st thou quake and change thy colour? Murther thy breath in middle of a word?

It would be highly interesting to be able to point out what were the characters which Shakspeare performed, either in his own plays, or in those of other writers; but the information which we have on this subject is, unfortunately, very scanty. Mr. Rowe has mentioned, as the sole result of his enquiries, that the Ghost in Hamlet was his chef-d'œuvre. That this part, however, in the opinion of the poet, required some skill and management in the execution, is evident from the expressions attributed to Hamlet, who exclaims, on the appearance of the royal spectre, during the interview between himself and his mother,—

a description, which, there is reason to suppose, the author would not have ventured to introduce, unless he had been conscious of the possession of powers capable of doing justice to his own delineation.

Another tradition, preserved by Mr. Oldys, and communicated to him, as Mr. Malone thinks, by Mr. Thomas Jones of Tarbick, in Worcestershire, whom we have formerly mentioned, imports, as corrected by the commentator just mentioned, that a relation of the poet's, then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own plays, told Mr. Jones, that he had a faint recollection "of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." That this part was the character of Adam, in As You Like It, there can be no doubt, and if we add, that, from the arrangement of the names of the actors and of the persons of the drama, prefixed to Ben Jonson's play of " Every Man in his Humour, first acted in 1598, there is reason to imagine that he performed the part of Old Knowell in that comedy, we may be warranted probably in drawing the conclusion, that the representation of aged characters was peculiarly his forte.

It appears, also, from the first four lines of a small poem, written by John Davies, about the year 1611, and inscribed, "To our English Terence, Mr. William Shakspeare," that our bard had been accustomed to perform kingly parts;

* Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,

Hadst thou not play'd some kingly parts in sport,

Thou hadst been a companion for a king,
And been a king among the meaner sort ;” *

a passage which leads us to infer, that several of the regal characters in his own plays, perhaps the parts of King Henry the Eighth, King Henry the Sixth, and King Henry the Fourth, may have been appropriated to him, as adapted to the general estimate of his powers in acting.

From the notices thus collected, it will be perceived, that Shakspeare attempted not the performance of characters of the first rank; but that in the representation of those of a second-rate order, to which he modestly confined his exertions, he

* The Scourge of Folly, by John Davies of Hereford, no date.

was deemed excellent. We have just grounds also for concluding that of the theory of acting in its very highest departments, he was a complete master; and though not competent to carry his own precepts into perfect execution, he was a consummate judge of the attainments and deficiencies of his fellow-comedians, and was accordingly employed to instruct them in his own conception of the parts which they were destined to perform.

It may be considered, indeed, as a most fortunate circumstance for the lovers of dramatic poetry, that our author, in point of execution, did not attain to the loftiest summit of his profession. He would, in that case, it is very probable, have either sate down content with the high reputation accruing to him from this source, or would have found little time for the labours of composition, and consequently we should have been in a great degree, if not altogether, deprived of what now constitute the noblest efforts of human genius.

CHAPTER II.

Shakspeare commences a Writer of Poetry, probably about the year 1587, by the composition of his Venus and Adonis-Historical Outline of Polite Literature, during the Age of Shakspeare.

As the first object of Shakspeare must necessarily have been, from the confined nature of his circumstances, to procure employment, it is highly reasonable to conclude that he at first contented himself with the diligent discharge of those duties which fell to his share as an actor of inferior rank. That these, however, were calculated to absorb, for any length of time, a mind so active, ample, and creative, cannot for a moment be credited; and, indeed, we are warranted, by every fair inference, to assert, that, no sooner did he consider his situation at the theatre of Blackfriars as tolerably secured, than he immediately directed his powers to the cultivation of his favourite art-that of poetry.

Of his inclination to this elegant branch of literature, we have an early proof, in the mode of retaliation which he adopted, in consequence of his prosecution by Sir Thomas Lucy; and that the Venus and Adonis, "the first heir of his invention," as he terms it, was commenced, not long subsequent to this period, and shortly after his arrival in town, a little enquiry will induce us to consider as an almost established fact.

It has, indeed, been surmised, by a very intelligent critic, that this poem may have been written while its author "felt the powerful incentive of love," and consequently before he had sallied from Stratford;"" certainly," he adds, "before he was known to fame." The first suggestion we may dismiss as a mere supposition; the second must be acknowledged as founded on truth.

All the commentators agree in fixing on the year 1591, as the latest period for our author's commencement as a dramatic poet: for this obvious reason, that both Greene and Chettle have mentioned him as a writer of plays in 1592, and in such a manner, likewise, as proves that he was even then possessed of some degree of notoriety, the latter mentioning his "facetious grace in writing," and the former after calling him "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers," and parodying a line from the Third Part of King Henry VI., concludes by telling us, that he is in his own conceit the only SHAKE-SCENE in the country;" circumstances which have naturally induced the most sagacious critics on our bard to infer, that, thus early to have excited so much envy as this railing accusation evinces, he must without doubt have been a corrector and improver of plays anterior to 1590, and very probably in 1589.