and Anne Shakespeare; they were no doubt christened after Hamnet Sadler, baker by trade, and Judith his wife, a firm friend of the poet till death, and remembered by him in his will. These were the last children that were born from the marriage, and the fact has been absurdly wrested to support a futile theory, that it was not a happy one. In the same sense stress has been laid on the poet's repeated allusion to the disadvantage of seniority for a wife: the fact of repetition certainly gives an impression that Shakespeare had the maxim at heart, but it argues at the same time that he had it not painfully so. I would not say that in writing it down he had not some feeling of self-accusation, but this is more than balanced by a grateful admission of admirable permanence in feminine attachment. "Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him; Then let thy love be younger than thyself, The traditions are too steady and consistent of Shakespeare's regular visits and constant attachment to Stratford all through his life, for us to believe that he found there lying in wait for him either disgrace abroad or conjugal discomfort in his home. A tradition seems to have reached Oldys, that Anne Hathaway was beautiful; the epitaph placed on her grave by her daughter bespeaks that she was the object of filial affection, and from this point of view some value may be attached to the gossip of the old parish clerk, who, gossip as he might be, probably chimed in with the general tone of tradition of a united domestic hearth, in reporting that the wife and the daughter earnestly desired to share Shakespeare's grave. It was the great service of Mr. Knight, to point out that after his death his widow, from the nature of his property, would be amply provided for by dower, through the known and usual operation of the English law: this simple indication happily sweeps away as nonsense a web of ill-contrived comment on her position in his will. Before Shakespeare then reached his twenty-first year in 1585 he had a wife and three children to provide for, and may readily have betaken himself to the most promising means, his father's doubtful occupation, or, as one tradition would have it, to that of a schoolmaster. From the familiarity with legal technicalities displayed in his writings, and his fondness for, I had almost said addiction to, metaphors from legal instruments and proceed. ings, an opinion has gained ground that he was for a time in a lawyer's office, and I must say, I think there is more in it than can be accounted for by an alternative supposition: this is, that the habit may have been acquired from listening to the legal talk and terms that were rife around him through the multifarious processes in which his father was a party, and the frequent and complicated changes in the disposition of his real property and that of his wife. Positive record of Shakespeare's course we have none, from that of the baptism of his twins till seven years later, when, at the age of twenty-eight, he is distinctly alluded to by Greene as a dramatist, fertile and flourishing, in London. Great political events had agitated the interval: the Queen of Scots was executed in 1587, and the next year the enthusiasm and confidence of the nation was raised to the highest pitch by the defeat of the Armada. The annals of the drama, for the same year, record the death of Tarlton, a comedian, who was himself a national drama; and in the current years a settled and decided character had been given to the productions of the stage by the best works of Lyly, Marlowe, and Greene, who were at the height of their powers and reputation. Beside them Shakespeare had taken his place by 1592, a formidable and advancing rival; but how, and why, and when he first joined the players is only matter of doubtful tradition. The terms of Greene imply that the success of Shake speare was brilliant and decided, and had given him a position in marked contrast to his commencement. Greene was at the premature end of a short, disappointed, and dissipated life, and dying in September, 1592, a work was shortly after published in his name by Henry Chettle, also a dramatist, entitled, " A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a million of Repentance," and inscribed " To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, who spend their wits in making plays." In the course of it he urges three friends, it is thought Marlowe, Nash, and Peele, to give up writing for the players :— "Base minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned: for unto none of you like me sought those burs to cleave: those puppets, I mean, who speak from. our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they have all been beholding; is it not like that you, to whom they have all been beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart Crow, beautified in our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country. Oh that I might intreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions. I know the best husband of you all will never prove an usurer, and the kindest of them all will never prove a kind nurse; yet, whilst you may, seek you better masters, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude grooms." The parodied name of the combined actor and author would be decisive, without the parody of a line from the Third Part of Henry VI., one of the pieces produced by Shakespeare by the process of adaptation which also seems to be cavilled at. Chettle, who published the tract, defended himself in another from the charge of having been the writer of In "Kind-Heart's Dream," published a few months ter, he also adverts to the offence that it had given to wo persons, one apparently Marlowe, on whom it had fixed the vulgar, and at that time perilous stigma of atheism, and the other Shakespeare. "About three months since died Mr. 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 avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceits 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 scholars, 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, I care not if I never be: the other, whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat 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 bad been my fault; because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, 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 struck out what then in conscience I thought he with some displeasure writ, or had it been true, yet to publish it was intolerable, him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve." The comparison of the original tract proves that it is only from looseness of wording that the apology seems to indicate that the offended play-wrights were both of the number the letter was specially addressed to. The reference to the standing the poet had obtained with "divers of worship" is fully borne out by the terms in which, within a year, he dedicated his Venus and Adonis to Lord Southampton. The poet exclusively, complains bitterly of the advantage of a rival who was an actor also, and as productive and energetic as he was versatile in either faculty; and this combination of qualities seems, indeed, to have been a leading cause of Shakespeare's material success. There is an indication in Hamlet that appears much to the point. The prince was to write a scene for insertion in a stock piece of the players, and after its desired and marked effect, he exclaims in an excitement, perhaps chiefly of literary success-" Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me), with two Provençal roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players? Horatio. Half a share. Hamlet. A whole one, I." Even so it was when Shakespeare's own fortunes were none of the kindest, that he donned the buskin and cothurn, and with flowing pen and fancy free supplied corrections and completions, and then novelties of his own; and aided by vigilance, activity, and the talent for business, of which there is abundant proof, secured the way to more than independence; and yet with such a liberality of spirit, that he kept steadily in view, against many drawbacks, that dignity of social rank, which Greene had possessed but forfeited, and more than this, attracted the attachment and affectionate esteem of the finer spirits who were capable of such sentiments. It is on our appreciation of the distinction already attained by Shakespeare, as expressed in this notice, and of the length of career which it implies within the limits of the preceding seven years, that must depend whether we are prepared to apply to him another allusion, that, if brought home, is, at least as regards his literary history, of still greater interest. A single year, a single half year, may make vast difference in the history of Shakespeare and the stage at this point; but evidence is so lamentably deficient, that we must be content with generalities. Greene took his degree of M. A. in Shakespeare's nineteenth year; and, as on his own evidence he left the University young, he cannot have been very much his senior. Marlowe took the same degree when Shakespeare was twenty-three, in 1587, and his remarkable and celebrated play of Tamburlaine is mentioned the next year. Shakespeare's renown when he was taxed as an upstart, was at least not anterior to that of Marlowe in 1588, and yet it was confirmed before 1592. This cannot have been upon the strength ne or two plays only; and if not, we must conclude besides the alterations of Henry VI. and others may have been less extensively touched by him, |