In 1599 Shakespeare received a not very welcome tribute to his poetic eminence. A bookseller named Jaggard, who, even in those days of extremest license in his craft, was distinguished by his disregard of the rights of literary property and literary reputation, printed a volume of verses under the unmeaning title The Passionate Pilgrim, upon the title-page of which he impudently placed Shakespeare's name, although but a part of its meagre contents were from his pen, and that part had been surreptitiously obtained. Shakespeare was much offended that Jaggard made so bold with his name. This we know on the testimony of Heywood, who in a second edition saw two of his own compositions also attributed to the favorite of the hour, and who publicly claimed his own.* Shakespeare, although offended at the personal liberty, seems to have been careless of any possible injury to his reputation. No evidence of any public denial on his part is known to exist; and it was not until after the publication of the third edition of the volume, in 1612, that his name

one speaking to him, Cæsar thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause; and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his virtues. There was euer more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned." Discoveries. De Shakespeare nostrat. Lond., fol., 1640, p. 97.

* These were two poetic epistles, from Paris to Helen and from Helen to Paris. See the postscript to Heywood's Apology for Actors, 1612. The Passionate Pilgrim was printed only on one side of each leaf, to eke out the volume.

was taken from the title-page. In 1600 he was made for a time to father Sir John Oldcastle; but the publisher appears to have been speedily undeceived, or compelled to do justice; for Shakespeare's name was omitted from some part of the impression. We know from Henslow's Diary that Sir John Oldcastle was written by Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway, jointly. The removal of Shakespeare's name from the title-page was more probably owing to their pride and jealousy than to Shakespeare's. An edition of King Henry the Fifth was published in this year, which shows from internal evidence that the bookseller was so eager to put this work of Shakespeare's before the public that he used a version obtained by surreptitious means, and so mangled as to be almost without connection from page to page. A misfortune, which we may well believe was more seriously regarded by Shakespeare than any liberty with his reputation, fell upon him also in this year, through the plot which cost Essex his head, and his friend and Shakespeare's patron, Southampton, his liberty during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign.

The latter years of John Shakespeare's checkered life seem to have been passed in tranquil though humble ease, through the filial care of his distinguished son. He died in September, 1601, as we know by the record of his burial on the 8th of that month; being then, if we set him down

as twenty-one or twenty-two years old when we first hear of him at Stratford, somewhat more than seventy years of age. His house in Henley Street, and probably such other real property as he may have owned at the time of his death, descended to William, who, though the possessor and occupier of the Great House which had doubtless impressed his youthful imagination by its magnitude and its village pre-eminence, clung to the memories of his humbler home, and always kept it in his possession. During the next year he added to his landed estate one hundred and seven acres of land in the parish of Old Stratford, which he bought from the brothers William and John a Combe. He also bought a cottage in Henley Street from Walter Gettey; and from Hercules Underhill, a messuage with two barns, two orchards, and two gardens. He was not in Stratford at the time of the completion of the first of these purchases, in which he was represented by his brother Gilbert. In this year, while he was thus rapidly acquiring that landed interest in his native county without which no man in his day could maintain a respectable position as a gentleman of family, the burgesses of Stratford passed an ordinance forbidding the exhibition of plays of any kind in the chamber, the guild-hall, or any part of the house or court, -a proscription which was made more rigid in 1612. Is it strange that under these circumstances Shakespeare did not

show much solicitude about the careful publication of his dramas and the perpetuation of his fame as a playwright?

The death of Elizabeth in 1603, which gave our fathers, instead of a royal family that tyrannized firmly and sagaciously, one that was at once despotic, feeble, and vacillating, and whose monstrous outrages upon the rights of Englishmen contributed mainly to the founding of an English nation upon this continent, produced a change in Shakespeare's professional position, traces of which remain in the mother country until this day. One of King James's earliest warrants under the privy seal of England made the company of which Shakespeare was a member "His Majesty's servants"; a designation which has since always pertained to the performers at the leading theatre of London. In this warrant Shakespeare's name appears second, Laurence Fletcher's being first.*

* It is, verbatim et literatim, thus:—

"BY THE KING.

"Right trusty and welbeloved Counsellor, we greete you well, and will and commaund 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, &c. To all Justices, Maiors, Sheriffs, Constables, Headboroughes, and other our officers and loving subjects greeting. Know ye, that we of our speciall grace, certaine knowledge, and

And in this year, too, if we could believe in the authenticity of a letter professing to be written by the poet Daniel to Sir Thomas Egerton, and which Mr. Collier brought to light in 1835,* Shakespeare 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, as well 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.