he was tyrannical. Nevertheless the king was attacked through the players; of which the following very direct evidence has been found in a treatise on hunting preserved among the Sloane MSS. The writer, having censured the players for lack of decorum, thus continues: "What madnesse is it, I saye, that possesseth them under faigned persons to be censureing of their soveraigne surely though these poets for many years have, for the most part, lefte foles and devills out of their playes, yet nowe on the suddayne they make them all playe the foles most notoriouslye and impudently in medlinge with him (in waye of taxacion) by whome they live and have in manner there very being." In this grovelling and blasphemous style it was the fashion to speak of a man who was about as mean and sordid a creature as ever lived. There is a story which was first printed in Lintot's edition of Shakespeare's Poems, published in 1710, that King James wrote with his own hand an amicable letter to Shakespeare, which was once in the hands of Davenant, as a creditable person then living could testify; and conjecture, ever ready, has made Macbeth's prophetic vision of kings the occasion of the compliment. It is well to have a more creditable person than Davenant to corroborate such a story; and Oldys, in a manuscript note to his copy of Fuller's Worthies, says that the Duke of Bucking ham told Lintot that he had seen this letter in Davenant's possession. If Oldys meant George Villiers, the last Duke of Buckingham, which is possible, he added not much to our security for the mere existence of such a letter; but if he meant John Sheffield, the first Duke of the County of Buckingham, which is also possible, we can the more readily believe that Davenant produced such a letter as that in question, although even then we lack satisfactory evidence of its genuineness. Davenant is poor authority for any story about Shakespeare. This one, however, is more probable than another which places Shakespeare in royal company. It was unheard of till late in the eighteenth century, and is to the effect that Queen Elizabeth, being at the theatre one evening when Shakespeare was playing a king, bowed to him as she crossed the stage. He did not return the salutation, but went on with his part. To ascertain whether the omission was an intentional preservation of assumed character, or an oversight, the Queen again passed him, and dropped her glove. Shakespeare immediately picked it up, and, following the royal virgin, handed it to her, adding on the instant these lines to a speech which he was just delivering, and so aptly and easily that they seemed to belong to it. "And though now bent on this high embassy, Yet stoop we to take up our cousin's glove." The Queen, it is said, was highly pleased, and complimented him upon his adroitness and his courtesy. In judging the credibility of this story, it should be remembered that in Shakespeare's time the most distinguished part of the audience went upon the stage, during the performance, in what must have been a very confusing manner. But the anecdote is plainly one made to meet the craving for personal details of Shakespeare's life. In addition to its inherent improbability, Shakespeare well knew what the author of the verses seems not to have known, — that kings cannot go on embassies. Empty compliment and his share of payment to the company for services rendered seem to have been all the benefit that Shakespeare obtained from royal favor. There is not the least reason for believing that either the strong-minded woman or the weak-minded man in whose reigns he flourished recognized his superiority by special distinction or substantial reward.* *Mr. Peter Cunningham's Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court include the following entries of the performance of Shakespeare's plays before King James, between 1604 and 1611: The Plaiers. By the Kings Matis plaiers. By his Matia plaiers. Hallamas day being the first of Novembar, A play in the Banketinge called the Moor of The Poets which mayd the plaies. On the 5th of June, 1607, Susanna Shakespeare, who was her father's favorite daughter, and who seems to have been a superior woman, was married to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good repute in his county. On the 31st of December of the same year, Edmund Shakespeare was buried in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark. He was [Accounts from Oct. 31st, 1611, to Nov. 1st, 1612.] By the Kings players. The Kings players. Hallomas nyght was presented att Whithall a play called the Tempest. The 5th of November: A a player of no distinction, who probably had followed his brother to London and obtained a place in the Black-friars company by his influence. The inducements presented to Shakespeare by his Puritan townsman Sturley, as early as the year 1597, to the purchase of tithes in his native place, were insufficient at the time, or he had not the needful money at hand; for he then acquired no interest in them. But he seems to have entertained the project favorably, and to have formed the design of making an investment of this kind; for in 1605 he bought the moiety of a lease, granted in 1544, of all the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe; for which he paid down in cash £440. This is the most important purchase he is known to have made. The consideration was equal to between. eleven and twelve thousand dollars of our money. The natural desire of transmitting an honorable name and a fair estate to descendants seems to have been strong in Shakespeare, and his hopes, sadly disappointed by the early death of his only son, must have been a little dashed again by the event which made him first a grandfather, -the birth, in February, 1607-8, of a daughter to his daughter Susanna, the wife of Dr. Hall. She brought her husband no other children. In September following Mary Arden died, having survived her husband seven years. Shakespeare's mother must have been about seventy years old |