by the company to which Shakespeare belonged, in all the property of which we know that he became a large owner. The sum which the Earl is said to have given to Shakespeare is so very large-being equal to thirty thousand dollars at our present rate of value, that while the world has willingly believed the substance of the story, many have doubted the correctness of its details. And yet, remembering the customs of those times, the more we consider how splendid a fellow young Southampton was, how munificent to men of letters, how whole-hearted to his friends, the more we shall be ready to receive the story of his generosity to Shakespeare without abatement. Between 1592 and 1596 Shakespeare produced, in addition to his Lucrece, King Richard the Third, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, King Richard the Second, and some of his Sonnets, probably also Romeo and Juliet and (with the name "Love's Labour's Won") All's Well That Ends Well, in earlier forms than those in which they have come down to us; works which, although none of them exhibited his genius in its full height and power, effectually established his supremacy among his contemporaries as a poet and a dramatist. England now began to ring with his praises. His brother dramatists made their lovers long for his Venus and Adonis by which to court their mistresses; other poets made their chaste heroines compare themselves to the Lucretia whom he had “revived to live another age"; they sung of his "hony-flowing vein," and that he had given new immortality even to the goddess of love and beauty; and some of them paid him the unequivocal compliment of plagiarism.* Even * See Willoughby's Arisa, 1594; Drayton's Matilda, 1594; Barnefield's Poems in Divers Humors, 1598; Heywood's Fair Maid of the Exchange, 1607, but written some years before; Phillis and Flora, by R. S., 1598; and Nichol Spenser, then at the height of his fame and his court favor, having in mind Shakespeare's two martial histories and his name, generously paid the young poet this pretty compliment in Colin Clout's come Home again, written in 1594: "And there, though last not least, is Ætion; Nay, in this interval Colin Clout's mistress, the imperial Elizabeth herself, distinguished him by her favor, won, or acknowledged, by the exquisite compliment in A Midsummer-Night's Dream. For we know upon Ben Jonson's and Henry Chettle's testimony, and from tradition, that she did delight in him; and it is not in mortal woman, least of all was it in Elizabeth, to know of such a compliment, and not to hear it and be captivated.† son's Acolastus his Afterwitte, 1600. In "A Letter from England to her three Daughters," reprinted in the British Bibliographer, (Vol. I. p. 274–285,) and which forms the second part of a book called Polimanteia, published in 1595, there is a marginal note, “All praise worthy Lucrecia Sweete Shakespeare." *It may be worth while to say that if Shakespeare's name had been Shaksper or Shakspere, as some would have it, this compliment would have been impossible. These well-known lines are from Jonson's verses in memory of Shakespeare, which were published in the folio of 1623: "Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appeare, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James." On the death of Queen Elizabeth, Chettle, in his England's Mourning Garment thus reproached Shakespeare that his verse had not bewailed his own and England's loss: "Nor doth the silver-tonged Melicert Drop from his honied Muse one sable tear, To mourne her death that graced his desert, And to his lines opened her royal eare. Shepheard remember our Elizabeth, And sing her rape done by that Tarquin, Death." Having this evidence of his reputation, and other of an equally pleasing and satisfactory character as to his increase in wealth, we can afford to be very indifferent in regard to the trustworthiness of a document about which there has been much ado, and the only interest of which consists in the fact that it enumerates Shakespeare among the owners of the Black-friars Theatre, and names him fifth among eight; but which, after a life of thirty years of antiquarian glory, has been "done to death by envious tongues" as spurious.* A like * This document exists in the State Paper Office at Westminster. (London.) It was brought to public notice by Mr. Collier in his History of English Dramatic Poetry, &c., 1831, (Vol. I. p. 297.) It professes to be an answer to a remonstrance by thirty inhabitants of the Liberty of the Black-friars "some of them of honour," against the repairing of the Black-friars Theatre. The remonstrance was said by Mr. Collier to be "preserved in the State Paper Office;" but it is not to be found there. This reply is so genuine in appearance that it was given in fac-simile even by Mr. Halliwell, in his great folio edition of Shakespeare's Works, although that gentleman was one of the first to pronounce many of the Collier Shakespeare MSS. spurious. It is as follows:"To the right honorable the Lords of her Maties most honorable privie Counsell. "The humble petition of Thomas Pope Richard Burbadge John Hemings Augustine Phillips Willm Shaksepeare Willim Kempe Willim Slye Nicholas Tooley and others, seruaunts to the right honorable the L. Chamberlaine to her Matie. "Sheweth most humbly that yor petitioners are owners and players of the priuate house or theater in the precinct and libertie of the Blackfriers, wch hath beene for manie yearse vsed and occupied for the playing of tragedies commedies histories enterludes and playes. That the same by reason of hauing beene soe long built hath falne into great decaye and that besides the reparation thereof it hath beene found necessarie to make the same more conuenient for the entertainement of auditories comming thereto. That to this end yor petitioners haue all and eche of them putt downe sommes of money according to their shares in the saide theater and whch they haue justly and honestlie gained by the exercise of their qualitie of Stage-players but that certaine persons (some of them of honour) inhabitants of the said precinct and libertie of the Blackfriers have as yor petitioners are enfourmed besought yor honorable Lps not to permitt the saide priuate house anie longer to remaine open but hereafter to be shut vpp and closed to the manifest and great injurie of yor petitioners who have no other meanes whereby to maintaine their wines and families but by the exercise of their qualitie as they have heretofore done. Furthermore that in the summer season yor petitioners are able to playe at their newe built house on the Bankside callde the Globe but that in the winter they are compelled to come to the Blackfriers and if yor honorable Lps giue consent vnto that whch is prayde against yor petitioners thay will not onely fate has befallen a memorandum which would otherwise show us that at this time Shakespeare lived in the part of London called Southwark. Malone speaks of a certain paper which was before him as he wrote, which belonged to Edward Alleyn, the player, and from which it appeared that in 1596 Shakespeare lived in Southwark, near the Bear Garden. Malone makes this statement in his Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Papers, which were forged by that scapegrace William Ireland; and eminent palæographers and Shakespearian scholars will have it that there was contamination in the subject, and that the following brief memorandum, while the winter endureth loose the meanes whereby they nowe support them selues and their families but be vnable to practise them selues in anie playes or enterluds when calde upon to performe for the recreation and solace of her Matie and her honorable Court, as they have beene heretofore accustomed. The humble prayer of yor petitioners therefore is that your honble Lps will graunt permission to finishe the reparations and alterations they have begunne and as your petitioners have hitherto been well ordred in their behauiour and just in their dealinges that yor honorable Lps will not inhibit them from acting at their aboue named priuate house in the precinct and libertie of the Blackfriers and your petitioners as in dutie most bounden will ever praye for the increasing honour and happinesse of yor honorable Lps." This document being in a public office, upon a grave suspicion of its genuineness, Sir John Romilly, Master of the Rolls, ordered a palæographic examination of it to be made; and there is now appended to it the following certificate: "We, the undersigned, at the desire of the Master of the Rolls, have carefully examined the document hereunto annexed, purporting to be a petition to the Lords of her Majesty's Privy Council, from Thomas Pope, Richard Burbadge, John Hemings, Augustine Phillips, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, William Slye, Nicholas Tooley, and others, in answer to a petition from the inhabitants of the Liberty of the Black-friars; and we are of opinion that the document in question is spurious. 30th January, 1860. FRA. PALGRAVE, K. H., Deputy Keeper of H. M. Public Records. T. DUFFUS HARDY, Assistant Keeper of Records. N. E. S. A. HAMILTON, Assistant, Dep. of MSS., British Museum." See Vol. II. p. xxxvii., for a professed copy of a letter from the Earl of Southampton concerning Shakespeare, now pronounced spurious with an equal weight of authority. which Mr. Collier brought forward as the paper to which Malone referred, is also spurious. 66 this Inhabitantes of Sowtherk as have complaned Mr. Markis Mr. Tuppin Mr. Langorth Wilson the pyper Mr. Barett Mr. Shaksper Phellipes Tomson Mother Golden the baude Nagges Fillpott and no more and soe well ended." It may be that this is a delusion, deliberately contrived. If it be, the rogue has baited his trap so well that he shall have me a willing prey. I cannot easily believe that such a genuine-seeming glimpse of real life is artificial; and I am loath to lose those neighbors of William Shakespeare upon whom his calm and searching glances fell, and who watched with curiosity the handsome player-poet as he went in and out on his way to and from the Black-friars. I sympathize too heartily with the writer as he shuts his ears against Wilson the piper, who had the real Lincolnshire drone - I have Falstaff's word for it—and as he tosses off Fillpot with such a round Amen of thankfulness. I mourn the vanishing Nagges, whom I think of as a humble kind of Silence, or perhaps Goodman Verges, and am injured at the assertion that Mother Golden - Mrs. Quickly in the flesh, and plenty of it is a myth; than which nothing could be more deplorable, except, indeed, that she were virtuous. The last five years of the sixteenth century are among the most interesting and important in the history of |