yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and friends in Warwickshire and shelter himself in London." Well can we imagine the anger of the slow-witted Midland squire at being subjected to the scathing wit of the poaching-poet!

So to London Shakspere went, and was soon incorporated into one of the theatrical companies lately formed, probably that belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and there he filled at first but the humble rôle of prompter's attendant, or call-boy. Jonson writes of him that 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."

London has seen great changes, but perhaps none greater than the contrast between the crowds which now patiently throng the streets waiting for the performance of "Twelfth Night" or "The Merchant of Venice," where once the author, an unknown homeless wanderer, earned the price of his next meal by holding a gentleman's horse!

Although his writings soon brought him widespread fame, Shakspere kept to the profession of an actor almost until his death, and travelled pro

bably with his company through a large part of England. The London theatrical companies of his day were accustomed to go "on tour" just as they do now, and rich material for his work must he have found while journeying from town to town and county to county.

As a boy he had probably seen some of the Morality Plays performed in Warwickshire, and when in the summer of 1575 all the countryside gathered to behold the pageants given at Kenilworth in honour of the Queen's visit to Leicester, it is not unlikely that the schoolboy may have caught the infection and trudged to see the show, over the fifteen miles that separated Kenilworth from Stratford.

Unlike many men of genius he had not to struggle long for worldly success: within ten years of his departure from Stratford he was being petitioned thence for help in local difficulties, as a man of assured wealth and position; and his friendship, at first that of a suitor to a patron, with the young Lord Southampton, in whom some have seen the Will of his Sonnets, seems to date from this period, when he had special leisure for writing, as the London theatres were closed on account of an outbreak of the plague.

His literary work seems to have occupied little

more than twenty years, but in it he has left us literature for a lifetime.

In 1601 his father died, and Shakspere inherited the Stratford house in Henley Street, in which he had been born, and also the one adjoining it; and in the following year he purchased for the sum of £320 one hundred and seven acres of arable land in the parish of Old Stratford, and also a cottage close by, with two orchards, gardens, and barns. His home still seems to have been in London, but he paid visits to his native place from time to time, where it seemed his ambition was one day to hold a place among the landed gentry. Little did he dream of the place he was to hold among all nations and for all time!

In 1607 his daughter Susanna married a wellto-do Stratford doctor, and in the next year the sorrow of his mother's death came upon him. It must have been shortly after this that he returned to live at Stratford among his old friends, and though he did not sever his connection with London, his home was henceforth in the little town among the meadows of Warwickshire.

At Stratford he had been born, and at Stratford he died, on Tuesday, April 23rd, 1616, at the age of fifty-two. He was buried in the chancel of the fine old parish church, and on

the flat stone above his grave were carved the

words :

"Good friend, for Jesu's sake forbeare

To dig the dust enclosed heare;

Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."

The rough lines, which have been ascribed to Shakspere himself, have served to keep his grave from sacrilege, and "they still hedge with a peculiarly solemn awe the modest sepulchre that holds the precious dust of England's 'Star of Poets.'"

Unlike the other great men of his time, his life was one of steadily increasing prosperity, and he died the death of a respectable and lamented citizen.

He who could paint tragedy as no Englishman has done before or since, seems to have lived the one comparatively uneventful life among his great contemporaries; his greatness lies in what he was, not in what he did. He needed no personal experiences from which to draw the figures or passions of his plays; to his vast intellect and creative power outward impressions were unnecessary; while he pursued the ordinary routine of his life his mind moved in a world of its own, and of that world he has left us the picture complete there move figures, seen through the mists

of more than four hundred years, as life-like still, as real and as fascinating as are any of the statesmen, knights, or ladies, any of the explorers by sea or land of the great Elizabethan Age.

To deal with Shakspere's plays and poems is the task of wise and learned men who have given their lives to the study of his works; it seems almost impertinent to attempt to touch upon them at all in such pages as these. But for the sake of young students who are beginning to open the vast treasure-house of his knowledge, it may be helpful to put clearly some of the divisions by which his work has been classified; and for our own sake perhaps we may be allowed to linger for a moment in that world of ever-living charm, and to touch once more with a loving hand old friends who have grown up with us from childhood, to listen again to Falstaff's cheery mirth, or Shylock's broken-hearted cry, to the battle sounds round Hotspur and Prince Hal, the dainty fun in the warm, sweet Midsummer Night, or the wit and brilliancy of such women as no man else has ever drawn, Portia, Rosalind, and Beatrice.

Shakspere's plays have been divided by Professor Dowden into four periods, the first of which contains his Early Comedies, Early History, and Early Tragedy.