to Shakspere: it is a letter from Lord Southampton to Lord Ellesmere, the lord chancellor; and it contains the following passage :*

"These bearers are two of the chief of the company; one of them by name Richard Burbidge, who humbly sueth for your Lordship's kind help, for that he is a man famous as our English Roscius, one who fitteth the action to the word and the word to the action most admirably, By the exercise of his quality, industry, and good be haviour, he hath become possessed of the Black Friars playhouse, which hath been employed for plays since it was built by his father, now near fifty years ago. The other is a man no whit less deserving favour, and my especial friend, till of late an actor of good account in the company, now a sharer in the same, and writer of some of our best English plays, which, as your Lordship knoweth, were most singularly liked of Queen Elizabeth, when the company was called upon to perform before her Majesty at court, at Christmas and Shrovetide. His most gracious Majesty King James also, since his coming to the crown, hath extended his royal favour to the company in divers ways and at sundry times. This other hath to name William Shakespeare, and they are both of one county, and indeed almost of one town: both are right famous in their qualities, though it longeth not to your Lordship's gravity and wisdom to resort unto the places where they are wont to delight the public ear. Their trust and suit now is, not to be molested in their way of life whereby they maintain themselves and their wives and families (being both married and of good reputation), as well as the widows and orphans of some of their dead fellows."

We may now suppose that the great poet, thus honoured and esteemed, had retired to Stratford, retaining a property in the theatre-regularly writing for it. There is an opinion that he ceased to act after 1603. In that year

* Some doubts have been cast upon the authenticity of this paper; and it would be well if the Shakspere Society would endeavour to clear them up.

his name is found amongst the performers of one of Ben Jonson's plays. But the years from 1605 to his death, in the April of 1616, were not idly spent. He was a practical farmer, we have little doubt. In 1604 he bought a moiety of the tithes of Stratford, which he would then probably collect in kind. He occupied the best house of the place; he had there his "curious knotted garden to amuse him; and his orchard had many a pippin of his "own graffing." James I. recommended the cultivation of mulberry-trees in England; and who has not heard of Shakspere's mulberry-tree? Vulgar tradition at this time represents him as writing a bitter epitaph upon his friend and neighbour John Combe, as he had satirized Sir Thomas Lucy. He was doing, we think, something better. To the first half of the period between 1604 and his death may be assigned-- Macbeth,' 'Cymbeline,' The Winter's Tale,' and 'The Tempest.' The very recital of the names of these glorious works, associated as they are with that quiet country-town, its beautiful Avon, its meadows, and its woodlands, is enough to make Stratford a name dear and venerable in every age.

The register of marriages at Stratford-upon-Avon for the year 1607 contains the entry of the marriage of John Hall, gentleman, and Susanna Shakspere, on the 5th June. Susanna, the eldest daughter of William Shakspere, was now twenty-four years of age. John Hall, gentleman, a physician settled at Stratford, was in his thirty-second year. This appears in every respect to have been a propitious alliance. Shakspere received into his family a man of learning and talent.

The season at which the marriage of Shakspere's elder daughter took place would appear to give some corroboration to the belief that, at this period, he had wholly ceased to be an actor. It is not likely that an event to him so deeply interesting would have taken place during his absence from Stratford. It was the season of performances at the Globe. It is at this period that we can fix the date of Lear.' " That wonderful tragedy was first published in 1608; and the title-page recites that "It was plaid before the King's Majesty at White-Hall,

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uppon S. Stephen's Night; in Christmas Hollidaies.” This most extraordinary production might well have been the first fruits of a period of comparative leisure; when the creative faculty was wholly untrammelled by petty cares, and the judgment might be employed in working again and again upon the first conceptions, so as to produce such a masterpiece of consummate art without afterlabour. The next season of repose gave birth to an effort of genius wholly different in character; but almost as wonderful in its profound sagacity and knowledge of the world as Lear' is unequalled for its depth of individual passion. Troilus and Cressida' was published in 1600. The year 1608 brought its domestic joys and calamities to Shakspere. In the same font where he had been baptized, forty-three years before, was baptized, on the 21st of February, his grand-daughter, "Elizabeth, daughter of John Hall." In the same grave where his father was laid in 1601, was buried his mother, "Mary Shakspere, widow," on the 9th of September, 1608. She was the youngest daughter of Robert Arden, who died in 1556. She was probably, therefore, about seventy years of age when her sons followed her to the "house of all living."

There is a memorandum existing, by Thomas Greene, a contemporary of Shakspere, residing at Stratford, which, under the date of November 17th, 1614, has this record:

"My cousin Shakspere coming yesterday to town, I went to see him how he did." We cite this memorandum here, as an indication of Shakspere's habit of occasionally visiting London; for Thomas Greene was then in the capital, with the intent of opposing the project of an inclosure at Stratford. The frequency of Shakspere's visits to London would essentially depend upon the nature of his connexion with the theatres. He was a permanent shareholder, as we have seen, at the Blackfriars; and no doubt at the Globe also. His interests as a sharer might be diligently watched over by his fellows; and he might only have visited London when he had a new play to bring forward, the fruit of his leisure in the country. But until he disposed of his wardrobe and other pro

perties, more frequent demands might be made upon his personal attendance than if he were totally free from the responsibilities belonging to the charge of such an embarrassing stock in trade.

There is distinct evidence that Shakspere was not a resident in London in 1613; for in an indenture executed by him on the 10th of March, in that year, for the purchase of a dwelling-house in the precinct of the Blackfriars, he is described as "William Shakespeare of Stratforde Upon Avon in the countie of Warwick gentleman;" whilst his fellow John Hemyng, who is a party to the same deed, is described as "of London, gentleman." From the situation of the property it would appear to have been bought either as an appurtenance to the theatre, or for some protection of the interests of the sharers. In the deed of 1602 Shakspere is also described as of Stratford-upon-Avon. It is natural that he

should be so described, in a deed for the purchase of land at Stratford; but upon the same principle, had he been a resident in London in 1613, he would have been described as of London in a deed for the purchase of property in London. Yet we also look upon this conveyance as evidence that Shakspere had in March, 1613, not wholly severed himself from his interest in the theatre.

Every one agrees that during the last three or four years of his life Shakspere ceased to write. Yet we venture to think that every one is in error. The opinion is founded upon a belief that he only finally left London towards the close of 1613. It is evident, from his purchase of a large house at Stratford, his constant acquisition of landed property there, his active engagements in the business of agriculture, the interest which he took in matters connected with his property in which his neighbours had a common interest, that he must have partially left London before this period. But his biographers, having fixed a period for the termination of his connexion with the active business of the theatre, assume that he became wholly unemployed; that he gave himself up, as Rowe has described, to 66 ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends." His income was enough,

they say, to dispense with labour; and therefore he did not labour. But when the days of leisure arrived, is it reasonable to believe that the mere habit of his life would not assert its ordinary control; that the greatest of intellects would suddenly sink to the condition of an everyday man-cherishing no high plans for the future, looking back with no desire to equal and excel the work of the past? At the period of life when Chaucer began to write the Canterbury Tales,' Shakspere, according to his biographers, was suddenly and utterly to cease to write. We cannot believe it. Is there a parallel case in the career of any great artist who had won for himself competence and fame? Is the mere applause of the world, and a sufficiency of the goods of life, “the end-all and the be-all" of the labours of a mighty mind? These attained, is the voice of his spiritual being to be heard no more? If those who reason thus could present a satisfactory record of the dates of all Shakspere's works, and especially of his later works, we should still cling to the belief that some fruits of the last years of his literary industry had wholly perished. It is unnecessary, as it appears to us, to adopt any such theory. Without the means of fixing the precise date of many particular dramas, we have indisputable traces, up to this period, of the appearance of at least five-sixths of all Shakspere's undoubted works. Are there any dramas whose individual appearance is not accounted for by those who have attempted to fix the exact chronology of other plays? There are such dramas, and they form a class. They are the three great Roman plays of Coriolanus,' 'Julius Cæsar,' and Antony and Cleopatra.'

The happy quiet of Shakspere's retreat was not wholly undisturbed by calamity, domestic and public. His brother Richard, who was ten years his junior, was buried at Stratford on the 4th of February, 1613. Of his father's family his sister Joan, who had married Mr. William Hart of Stratford, was probably the only other left. There is no record of the death of his brother Gilbert; but as he is not mentioned in the will of William, in all likelihood he died before him. Oldys, in