years older than he was, and, though I saw little by her, methought she was inclined to be shrewish. Maybe untoward circumstances had soured her temper: for they were but poorly off when Shakespeare (or gentle Will as we were wont to call him) offered to join our company. Indeed, a man must have been very poor or very wretched to take up with such a band of stragglers as we were then, little better than the Earl of Essex' men or L. Chandos', and noway to be compared to Her Majesty's or the Admiral's. Little did we think that one who came to London with us so poor should become a wealthy burgess of his native place, the friend and poet of my Lord Southampton, one of the chief sharers in the finest theatres in London, and, as Master Jonson hath said, a "Star of poets," who deserves the homage of all the stages in Europe.

For about two years we led this wandering life, acting in London when we could, but in the country for the most part, when the death of our noble patron, the Earl of Leicester, in September, 1588, left us to seek for a new lord. Just in the nick Master Edward Alleyn, the famous founder of the College of God's Gift, at Dulwich, was seeking how to make up a company for my Lord Strange. Ned Alleyn, as we always called him, was a shrewd man with a quick eye to business, and what does he do but straight buys me up all the playbooks and apparel and properties, which had belonged to the Earl of Worcester's men, whose lord died in February, 1589, and with these he sets us up in London; acting one while at the Curtain which was then one of the two great theatres, at another while at the Cross Keys innyard. After a short time we began to prosper under Ned's management, to which his unparalleled acting contributed not a little moreover he got Master Wilson to write plays for us, to the no slight annoyance of Master Robert Greene, who was still the chief writer for the Queen's men, and also Master George Peele. But neither the witty jests of the one nor the humorous characters of the other could have sufficed to bombast out the blank verse, of which Kit Marlowe had set the fashion, had they not had a coadjutor in gentle Will. It were useless to give a list of the many plays in

which he aided these poets, seeing that in our late issue of his plays we have thought fit not to preserve them: indeed many of them were lost, and in some of those that remained he had replaced the lines of his early tutors by better of his own, as you will see hereafter. But if you are curious in this matter you may find in the stolen copies of his 'Romeo' and his 'Merry Wives of Windsor' some of the lines he thus replaced, and enough is as good as a feast in this matter. I say not this in disparagement of the worthies of those times, but since gentle Will and rare Ben, to say nothing of Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Webster and the rest, who have since graced our stage with their rare productions, it were mere folly to expect a reader to spend his time on these infants of our scarce-grown theatre. The only poet of that time worthy to be named with the giants of later growth was Kit Marlowe the "dead shepherd," so dear to our Will, as those who have read his comedies well know; and to his joining with our company, we are not yet come.

There is only one matter connected with this time that I need notice here in November, 1589, our company, together with my Lord Admiral's, were inhibited by the Lord Mayor for "handling in our plays certain matters of Divinity and State." My Lord Admiral's men thereon left playing; but, seeing that neither the Paul's boys nor the Queen's men, who had brought Divinity and Master Marprelate on the stage, were included in the inhibition, we did not think fit to obey an order so manifestly partial and unjust; and accordingly we played at the Cross Keys that same afternoon. The Lord Mayor pretended that he could not hear of those other players; but as immediately after our "contempt," as he was pleased to call it, he prohibited "all playing" till Lord Burghley's pleasure should be further known; and as the orders for the licensing of plays, made within a week from the time of his committing two of our fellows to the Comptor, applied to all the companies alike; it is certain that the Council did not regard the matter with the same eyes as my Lord Mayor. The whole stir was originated by that pestilent reprobate Parson Robert Greene, who was jealous of our growing advancement and in one of his

later libellous paperbucklers,

This

The play

accused Master Wilson of "simple abusing of Scripture." he did just a year afterwards, in November, 1590. which was thus set forth as offensive against Divinity was 'Fair Em; but the real offence was that in it Wilson, who had till then been acting in the adulterous parson's plays for the Queen's men, and who indeed had brought this scurrilous knave to that company, had brought him in this play on the stage as Manvile. The other play which meddled with state matters was, if I remember aright, 'David and Bethsaba,' by Master George Peele, in which the matter of the late Queen of Scots was supposed to have been travestied by my Lord Admiral's men. And in truth it is not easy to read now, much less was it to speak then, the lament of David over Absalom, whom he had allowed to be slain by Joab, without thinking of our own Queen's sorrowing over the execution of Queen Mary.

Nothing of note do I remember that happed during the next two years; but in the Christmas of 1592 a great change ensued in the position of our company. On St. John's Day we for the first time were honored by our gracious Queen's acceptance of our service in the presentation of a play at Court for her delectation; her own company having acted before Her Majesty on St. Stephen's Day preceding for the last time. From that day until this present our fellows have always held the chief place in all Court presentations during the reigns as well of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth as of her lamented successor the father of our present sovereign, whom God defend. We trust to maintain by our industry no lower room in the favor of His Majesty for the time

to come.

You may be sure that the sudden change in Her Majesty's favor had no small effect on her own men, who had till then been our most fortunate rivals. They never held up their heads again, but went into the country, scarce ever showing in London after this. Nay, the chiefest of them straightway left their company and joined our own; among them Dick Burbadge, Harry Condell, Will Sly, and Harry Cordy. To this success, which stayed always in the

remembrance of our fellow Shakespeare as our battle of Agincourt, he makes allusion in the witty play of The Taming of the Shrew,' as he last presented it, when he makes one Sly say, "Look in the chronicles: the Slys are no rogues: we came in with Richard Conqueror;" meaning thereby that Will Sly came in with Dick Burbadge who played the part of Richard the Conqueror in that strange old half-German play of 'Alphonsus the Emperor of Germany.' These men brought with them many old plays written by Greene, Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, and other men; and Ned Allen, who was then courting Joan Woodward, stepdaughter of Philip Henslow, being the leader and a chief sharer in our company, thought it would be for our advantage, seeing that we stood so well in Court favor and had now a goodly number of plays in our possession, if we could have a theatre of our own, and not be driven to play in innyards, such as the Cross Keys, as we had often had to do; for there were at that time but two theatres about London, the Theater and the Curtain, both in Shoreditch; and four companies, the Admiral's, my Lord of Pembroke's, my Lord of Sussex', and our own: two or more of whom ofttimes desired to play on the same day at one of these theatres. So after some wrangling we determined that we would join with the aforesaid Philip Henslow and set up our rest at the Rose on the Bankside, which he had then in hand a building as a theatre. The place was convenient for us, being easy to get to by water; while the other theatres for the better sort were only to be reached on horse-back, the ways to them being miry and heavy; and it was handier to call for a sculler, when the play was over, than to hire a boy to care for one's horse, while the play was performing. Nor could we choose a nearer place, no playing being then allowed within the walls as now it is.

F. G. Fleav.

(To be continued.)

SHAKESPEARE'S

TENNYSON'S

MIRANDA AND

ELAINE.

EORGE ELIOT, speaking of Dessoir, the actor, tells us that she was very much pleased by the simplicity with which he one day said, "Shakespeare ist mein Gott; ich habe keinen anderen Gott."

We have here an unmistakable case of "acute Shakespeareolatry." But whether we call it simplicity or gross impiety, such praise, or indeed any praise, of Shakespeare, is superfluous and even wearisome to the ears of English-speaking people. We all believe in his supreme excellence both as a dramatic artist and as a deep-sighted interpreter of human nature; and if we have learned to regard him as the standard by which all other competitors are to be measured, and their shortcomings ascertained, we can still conceive the possibility of a Poet-Pantheon in which more than one Immortal has a place.

Tennyson, while perhaps the best-known and most popular of contemporary English poets, has his limitations, like all the rest; whereas the genius of Shakespeare is said to be universal.* Any comparison, therefore, between two such widely differing characters, being a comparison between the infinite and the finite, would be illogical and meaningless.

Tennyson has been accused of numerous plagiarisms which, it is supposed, constitute no inconsiderable offset against his claim to originality. Mr. Collins is not the first or only one who has observed that his poetry is constantly re-echoing the tones and thoughts of others, unconsciously to himself, it may be, but none

Indeed, extravagance has gone so far as to call him the most universal genius; Gervinus, following Hazlitt, says: "Es kann wenig Zweifel sein dass Shakespeare der universellste Genius war, der je lebte." This is quite as bad as Colonel Bath's eulogy in Amelia,' "That Shakespeare was a fine feliow. He was a very pretty poet indeed." Thackeray says: "I should like to have been Shakespeare's shoe-black, just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped him, to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet, serene face."