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

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?