be sure that, if he sought business as an attorney in London, he did not at once obtain it. Shakespeare although he was, no such miracle could be wrought for him; nay, the less would it be wrought because of his being Shakespeare. He doubtless in these first days hoped for a publisher; and not improbably this purpose was among those which led him up to London. Let who will believe that he went that journey without a manuscript in his pocket. For to suppose that a man of poetic power lives until his twenty-first year without writing a poem, which he then rates higher than he ever afterward will rate any of his work, is to set aside the history of poetry, and to silence those years which are most affluent of fancy and most eager for expression.

With Venus and Adonis written, if nothing else, but I think it not unlikely a play,Shakespeare went to London and sought a patron. For in those days a poet needed a patron even more than a publisher; as without the former he rarely or never got the latter. Shakespeare found a patron; but not so soon, we may be sure, as he had expected. Meantime, while he waited, the stage door stood ajar invitingly, and he was both tempted and impelled to enter. For that natural inclination to poetry and acting which Aubrey tells us he possessed had been stimulated by the frequent visits of companies of players to Stratford, at whose performances he

could not have failed to be a delighted and thoughtful spectator. Indeed, as it was the custom for the mayor or bailiff of a town visited by a travelling company to bespeak the play at their first exhibition, to reward them for it himself, and to admit the audience gratis, it may safely be assumed that the first theatrical performance in Stratford of which there is any record had John Shakespeare for its patron. For it was given in 1569, the year in which he was high bailiff; and the bailiff's son, although he was then only five years old, we may be sure was present. Between 1569 and 1586 hardly a year passed without several performances by one or more companies at Stratford. But natural inclination and straitened means of living were not the only influences which led Shakespeare to the theatre. Other Stratford boys had gone up to London, and some of them had become players. Thomas Greene, one of the most eminent actors of the Elizabethan period, he who gave his name to The City Gallant, which was known and published as "Greene's Tu Quoque," was in 1586 a member of the company known as "The Lord Chamberlain's Servants," to which Shakespeare became permanently attached. Greene was of a respectable family at Stratford, one member of which was an attorney, who had professional connections in London, and was Shakespeare's kinsman. Burbadge, Sly, Heminge, and Pope, who all bore Warwickshire

names, were on the London stage at the time of Shakespeare's arrival at the metropolis.* If Shakespeare went to London relying upon the good offices of friends, we may be sure that he looked more to his townsman, Greene the attorney, than to his other townsman, Greene the actor. But in that case, considering how shy attorneys are apt to be of the sort of young man who steals deer and writes verses, it is not at all surprising that the player proved to be the more serviceable acquaintance.

Many circumstances combine to show that it was in 1586 that William Shakespeare became connected with the London stage; a few month's variation - and there cannot be more - in the date, one way or the other, is of small importance. Betterton heard that "he was received into the company at first in a very mean rank," and the octogenarian parish clerk of Stratford, before mentioned, told Dowdall, in 1693, that he "was received into the play-house as a serviture." These stories have an air of truth. What claim had this raw Stratford stripling to put his foot higher than the first round of the ladder? In those days that round was apprenticeship to some well-established actor; and as such a servitor probability and tradition unite in assuring us that

* See the Remarks on the Preliminary Matter to the Folio, Vol. II. pp. xxxvi., xlvii., xlviii. of the author's edition of Shakespeare's Works.

William Shakespeare began his theatrical career. There is a story that his first occupation in London was holding horses at the play-house door; but it was not heard of until the middle of the last century, and is unworthy of serious attention.

Theatres had increased rapidly in London during the few years preceding Shakespeare's arrival. Not long before that time public acting was confined almost entirely to the court-yards of large inns, or to temporary stages which were erected in the open air or in booths; although sometimes the use of a large hall was obtained by the generosity of a nobleman or a corporation, or that of a churchyard, or even a church, by the paid connivance of the rector. The public authorities, more especially those who were inclined to Puritanism, exerted themselves in every possible way to repress the performance of plays and interludes. They fined and imprisoned the players, even stocked them, and harassed and restrained them to the utmost of their ability. But, like all such restrictive, persecuting folk, they began their work at the wrong end to warrant any hope of its accomplishment. They punished the players when they should have disciplined the public. Had they been able to root out the taste for dramatic entertainment, and checked the demand for it, they might have let the poor players go quietly on with their performances, sure that they would

soon come to an end. But the taste grew into a fierce appetite, and pervaded all classes of society; and the supply of the needful food was an inevitable necessity. The strait-laced aldermen of London would neither be mollified by the art of the player nor learn sufficient wisdom from experience to devote their energies to regulating that which they could not stop; and in 1575 the players were interdicted from the practice of their art (or rather their calling, for it was not yet an art) within the limits of the city.

Among the men who suffered from this new ordinance was James Burbadge, a Warwickshire

man.

He is said to have been a carpenter; but he added to the gains of his craft what he could get as one of a cry of players; and mayhap, like that other artisan actor, Nick Bottom, he had "simply the best wit of any handy-craft-man" in his city. Certainly whatever wit he had was put to good use; for, as he could not play in London, he determined to play just outside of it, and to use his skill as a carpenter in building that then unheard-of thing in England, a play-house. Borrowing the good round sum of £600 from a rich father-in-law, he leased a plot of ground and the buildings upon it in the suburb of Shoreditch for twenty-one years, with the privilege of putting up a theatre; and partly by altering, partly by building, as we have seen under similar circumstances in New York, he soon had his play-house