ed men! Lord Southampton went to the theatre every day. As early as 1570, one, and probably two, regular theatres existed in London. In 1583, a short time after the temporary victory gained by the Puritans over the performance of stage-plays in that city, there were eight troops of actors in London, each of whom performed three times a week. In 1592, that is, eight years before the time when Hardy at length obtained permission to open a theatre in Paris, which had previously been impossible on account of the useless privilege possessed by the "Brethren of the Passion," an English pamphleteer complained most indignantly of "some shallow-brained censurers," who had dared "mightily to oppugn" the performance of plays, which, he says, are frequented by all "men that are their own masters-as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London."* Finally, in 1596, so vast a multitude of persons went by water to the theatres, which were nearly all situated on the banks of the Thames, that it became necessary considerably to augment the number of boatmen.

A taste so universal and so eager could not long remain satisfied with coarse and insipid productions; a pleasure which is so ardently sought after by the human mind, calls for all the efforts and all the power of human genius, This national movement now stood in need only of a man of genius, capable of receiving its impulse, and raising the public to the highest regions of art. By what stimulus was Shakspeare prompted to undertake this glorious task? What circumstance revealed to him his mission? What sudden light illumined his genius? These questions we

*See Nash, "Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil," p. 59, reprinted by the Shakspeare Society in 1842.

can not answer. Just as a beacon shines in the nighttime without disclosing to our view the prop by which it is supported, so Shakspeare's mind appears to us, in his works, in isolation, as it were, from his person. Scarcely, throughout the long series of the poet's successes, can we discern any traces of the man, and we possess no information whatever regarding those early times of which he alone was able to give us an account. As an actor, it does not appear that he distinguished himself above his fellows. The poet is rarely adapted for action; his strength lies beyond the world of reality, and he attains his lofty elevation only because he does not employ his powers in bearing the burdens of earth. Shakspeare's commentators will not consent to deny him any of those successes to which he could possibly lay claim, and the excellent advice which Hamlet gives to the actors at the court of Denmark has been quoted in support of a theory that Shakspeare must have executed marvelously well that which he so thoroughly understood. But Shakspeare showed equal acquaintance with the characters of great kings, mighty warriors, and consummate villains, and yet no one would be likely to conclude from this that he was capable of being a Richard the Third or an Iago. Fortunately, we have reason to believe that applause, which was then so easily obtained, was not bestowed in a sufficient degree to tempt an ambition which the character of the young poet would have rendered it too easy for him to satisfy; and Rowe, his first historian, informs us that his dramatic merits "soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer."

Years nevertheless elapsed before Shakspeare made his appearance on the stage as an author. He arrived in London in 1584, and is not known to have engaged in any

employment unconnected with the theatre during his residence in the metropolis; but "Pericles," his first work, according to Dryden, though many of his other critics and admirers have rejected it as spurious, did not appear until 1590. How was it possible that, amid the novel scenes. that surrounded him, his active and fertile mind, whose rapidity, according to his contemporaries, "equaled that of his pen," could have remained for six years without producing any thing? In 1593, he published his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he dedicated to Lord Southampton as "the first heir of his invention;" and yet, during the two preceding years, two dramas which are now ascribed to him had achieved success upon the stage. The composition of the poem may have preceded them, although the dedication was written subsequently to their production; but if the "Venus and Adonis" is anterior to all his dramas, we must come to the conclusion that, in the midst of his theatrical life, Shakspeare's eminently dramatic genius was able to engage in other labors, and that his first productions were not intended for the stage.

A more probable supposition is that Shakspeare spent his labor, at first, upon works which were not his own, and which his genius, still in its novitiate, has been unable to rescue from oblivion. Dramatic productions, at that time, were less the property of the author who had conceived them than of the actors who had received them. This is always the case when theatres begin to be established; the construction of a building and the expenses of a performance are far greater risks to run than the composition of a drama. To the founder of the theatre alone is dramatic art indebted, at its origin, for that popular concourse which establishes its existence, and which the talent of the poet could never have drawn together with

out his assistance. When Hardy founded his theatre at Paris, each troop of actors had its poet, who was paid a regular salary for the composition of plays, just in the same way as the chaplain of the Earl of Northumberland. In the time of Shakspeare, the English stage had made much greater progress, and already enjoyed the facility of selection and the advantages of competition. The poet no longer disposed of his labor beforehand, but he sold it when completed; and the publication of a piece, for permission to perform which an author had been paid, was regarded, if not as a robbery, at least as a want of delicacy which he found it difficult to defend or excuse. While dramatic property was in this state, the share which the self-love of an author might claim in it was held in very low account; the success of a work which he had sold did not belong to him, and its literary merit became, in the hands of the actors, a property which they turned to account by all the improvements which their experience could suggest. Transported suddenly into the midst of that moving picture of human vicissitudes which even the paltriest dramatic productions then heaped upon the stage, the imagination of Shakspeare doubtless beheld new fields opening to its view. What interest, what truthfulness might he not infuse into the store of facts presented to him with such coarse baldness! What pathetic effects might he not educe from all this theatrical parade! The matter was before him, waiting for spirit and life. Why had not Shakspeare attempted to communicate them to it? However confused and incomplete his first views may have been, they were rays of light arising to disperse the darkness and disorder of chaos. Now a superior man possesses the power of making the light which illumines his own eyes evident to the eyes of others. Shakspeare's com

rades doubtless soon perceived what new successes he might obtain for them by remodeling the uncouth works which composed their dramatic stock; and a few brilliant touches imparted to a ground-work which he had not painted a few pathetic or terrible scenes intercalated in an action which he had not directed-and the art of turning to account a plan which he had not conceived, were, in all probability, his earliest labors, and his first presages of glory. In 1592, a time at which we can scarcely be certain that a single original and complete work had issued from his pen, a jealous and discontented author, whose compositions he had probably improved too greatly, speaks of him, in the fantastic style of the time, as an "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; an absolute Johannes Factotum, who is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in the country."*

It was, we are inclined to believe, while engaged in these labors, more conformable to the necessities of his position than to the freedom of his genius, that Shakspeare sought to recreate his mind by the composition of his "Venus and Adonis." Perhaps even the idea of this work was not then entirely new to him; for several sonnets, relating to the same subject, occur in a volume of poems published in 1596, under Skakspeare's name, and the title of which, "The Passionate Pilgrim," is expressive of the condition of a man wandering, in affliction, far from his native land. The amusement of a few melancholy hours, from which the age and character of the poet had not availed to preserve him at his entrance upon a painful or uncertain destiny-these little works are doubtless the first productions which Shakspeare's poetic genius allowed him to avow; and several of them, as well as the * Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," published in 1592.