originally undertaken by a popular comedian, and that Shakespeare adapted some of the speeches of that character to the peculiar talents of the actor.

The company are found playing at Oxford in the early part of the summer of 1604. In the Christmas holidays of the same year, on the evening of December 26, the comedy of Measure for Measure was performed before the Court at Whitehall, and if it were written for that special occasion, it seems probable that the lines, those in which Angelo deprecates the thronging of the multitude to royalty, were introduced out of special consideration to James I, who, as is well known, had a great dislike to encountering crowds of people. The lines in the mouth of Angelo appear to be somewhat forced, while their metrical disposition is consistent with the idea that they might have been the result of an afterthought.

Shakespeare's company performed a number of dramas before the Court early in the following year, 1605, including several of his own. About the same time a curious old play, termed The London Prodigal, which had been previously acted by them, was impudently submitted by Nathaniel Butter to the reading public as one of the compositions of the great dramatist. On May 4, a few days before his death, the poet's colleague, Augustine Phillips, made his will, leaving "to my fellowe, William Shakespeare, a thirty shillinges peece in goold." And in the following July, Shakespeare made the largest, and, in a monetary sense very likely the most judicious, purchase he ever completed, giving the sum of £440 for the unexpired term of the moiety of a valuable lease of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton and Welcombe.

On October 9 in the same year, 1605, Shakespeare's company, having previously traveled as far as Barnstaple, gave another performance before the Mayor and Corporation of Oxford. If the poet, as was most likely the case, was one of the actors on the occasion, he would have been lodging at the Crown Inn, a wine-tavern kept by one John Davenant, who had taken out his license in the previous year, 1604. The landlord was a highly respectable man, filling in succession the chief municipal offices, but, although of a peculiarly grave and saturnine disposition, he was, as recorded by Wood in 1692, "an admirer and lover of the plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare, who frequented his house in his journies between Warwickshire and London." His wife is described by the same writer as "a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and conversation." Early in the following year the latter presented her husband with a son, who was christened at St. Martin's Church on March 3, 1606, receiving there the name of William. They had several other children, and their married life was one of such exceptional harmony that it elicited the unusual honor of metrical tributes. A more devoted pair the city of Oxford had never seen, and John Davenant, in his will, 1622, expressly desires that he should be "buryed in the parish of St. Martin's in Oxford as nere my wife as the place will give leave where shee lyeth."

It was the general belief in Oxford, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, that Shakespeare was William Davenant's godfather, and there is no reason for questioning the accuracy of the tradition. Anthony Wood alludes to the special regard in which the poet was held by the worthy innkeeper, while the christian name

that was selected was a new one in the family of the latter. There was also current in the same town a favorite anecdote, in which a person was warned not to speak of his godfather lest he should incur the risk of breaking the Third Commandment. This was a kind of representative story, one which could be told of any individual at the pleasure of the narrator, and it is found in the generic form in a collection of tavern pleasantries made by Taylor, the Water-Poet, in 1629. This last fact alone is sufficient to invest a personal application with the gravest doubt, and to lead to the inference that the subsequent version related of Shakespeare was altogether unauthorized. If so, there can be little doubt that with the spurious tale originated its necessary foundation, -the oft-repeated intimation that Sir William Davenant was the natural son of the great dramatist. The latter surmise is first heard of in one of the manuscripts of Aubrey, written in or before the year 1680, in which he says, after mentioning the Crown tavern,-"Mr. William Shakespeare was wont to goe into Warwickshire once a yeare, and did commonly in his journey lye at this house in Oxen, where he was exceedingly respected." He then proceeds to tell us that Sir William, considering himself equal in genius to Shakespeare, was not averse to being taken for his son, and would occasionally make these confessions in his drinking bouts with Sam Butler and other friends. The writer's language is obscure, and might have been thought to mean simply that Davenant wished to appear in the light of a son in the poetical acceptation of the term, but the reckless gossip must needs add that Sir William's mother not only "had a very light report," but was looked upon in her own day

as a perfect Thais. Sufficient is known of the family history of the Davenants, and of their social position and respectability, to enable us to be certain that this onslaught upon the lady's reputation is a scandalous mis-statement. Anthony Wood also, the conscientious Oxonian biographer, who had the free use of Aubrey's papers, eliminates every kind of insinuation against the character of either Shakespeare or Mrs. Davenant. He may have known from reliable sources that there could have been no truth in the alleged illegitimacy, and anyhow he no doubt had the independent sagacity to observe that the reception of the libel involved extravagant admissions. It would require us to believe that the guilty parties, with incredible callousness, united at the font to perpetuate their own recollection of the crime; and this in the presence of the injured husband, who must be presumed to have been then, and throughout his life, unconscious of a secret which was so insecurely kept that it furnished ample materials for future slander. Even Aubrey himself tacitly concedes that the scandal had not transpired in the poet's time, for he mentions the great respect in which the latter was held at Oxford. Then, as if to make assurance to posterity doubly sure, there is preserved at Alnwick Castle a very elaborate manuscript poem on the Oxford gossip of the time of James I, including especially everything that could be raked up against its innkeepers and taverns, and in that manuscript there is no mention either of the Crown Inn or of the Davenants.

It is, indeed, easy to perceive that we should never have heard any scandal respecting Mrs. Davenant, if she had not been noted in her own time, and for long after

wards, for her exceptional personal attractions. Her history ought to be a consolation to ugly girls, that is to say, if the existence of such rarities as the latter be not altogether mythical. Listen to the antique words of Flecknoe, 1654,, referring to Lord Exeter's observation that the world spoke kindly of none but people of the ordinary types. "There is no great danger," he writes, even of the latter escaping censure, “calumny being so universal a trade now, as every one is of it; nor is there any action so good they cannot find a bad name for, nor entail upon 't an ill intention; insomuch as one was so injurious to his mistress's beauty not long since to say,she has more beauty than becomes the chaste."

A considerable portion of this year, 1606, was spent by the King's company in provincial travel. They were at Oxford in July, at Leicester in August, at Dover in September, and, at some unrecorded periods, at Maidstone, Saffron Walden, and Marlborough. Before the winter had set in they had returned to London, and in the Christmas holidays, on the evening of December 26, the tragedy of King Lear, some of the incidents of which were adopted from one or more older dramas on the same legend, was represented before King James at Whitehall, having no doubt been produced at the Globe in the summer of that year. No record of the character of its reception by the Court has been preserved, but it must have been successful at the theater for the booksellers, late in the November of the following year, made an arrangement with the company to enable them to obtain the sanction of the Master at the Revels for the publication of the tragedy, two editions of which shortly afterwards appeared, both dated in 1608. In these issues the author's