acter, how to regulate imagery and diction so that they should never pass into the epical; and while amending the pieces of others his own genius would have enough of play to gain in strength, and enough of restraint to save it from the waste of exuberant power.

But the poet in Shakespeare could not be content with what may be justly described as in a certain degree hackwork. The poet in Shakespeare aspired to an independent existence, and apparently he did not yet perceive that through the drama alone could

his genius explore the heights and depths of passion and of song. In the passage quoted from KindHart's Dreame the author informs his readers that "divers of worship" have reported to him Shakespeare's "facetious grace in writing". Possibly Shakespeare had already earned the good opinion and good-will of the Earl of Southampton. Early in 1593 Richard Field, the son of a Stratford tanner, himself a London printer, was carrying through the press Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, which was published in that year with a dedication to Southampton, in which the author, speaking of his young patron with graceful homage and of his poem with becoming modesty, describes it as "the first heire of my invention". Doubtless several plays of merit by Shakespeare had already appeared upon the stage; but they had not been published by the press; they formed in the eyes of Shakespeare's contemporaries hardly a part of literature proper; they could not compete in dignity with such a miniature epic as this which now appeared, and in which Shakespeare first claimed his rank as poet.

2

Venus and Adonis at once became popular, and edition followed edition during a series of years. In the dedication Shakespeare promises that if his poem should please the earl, he would take advantage of all idle hours to prepare some "graver labour" for his patron's honour. This graver labour, the Lucrece, followed in 1594; graver because of its

13) tragic theme, and its celebration of the wronged,

It is dedicated

yet triumphant, purity of woman.
to Southampton in words of loyal affection: "What
I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours,
being part in all I have, devoted yours"; and a
reference to favours received proves that the regard
and esteem were not on Shakespeare's side alone.
"There is", says Rowe, "one instance so singular
in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's,
that, if I had not been assured that the story was
handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was
probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I
should not have ventured to have inserted; that my
Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thou-
sand pounds to enable him to go through with a
purchase which he heard he had a mind to". It is
supposed that the purchase was that of the large
house named New Place in the centre of the town
of Stratford-on-Avon, which Shakespeare bought
for £60 in the spring of 1597, a gabled house of
brick, resting on stone foundations, with a bay-
window on the garden side. Report-if this be so-
exaggerated the amount of Southampton's gift, but
even sixty pounds in the days of Elizabeth was a
very considerable sum of money.

§ 12. In December, 1594, Shakespeare appeared in

two comedies before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace. Two eminent actors of his company, that known as the Lord Chamberlain's servants, Richard Burbage, the tragedian, and Kemp, a popular comedian, were associated with him on this occasion.1 The queen, who had a keen eye for merit, honoured Shakespeare and his art. Ben Jonson in his memorial lines prefixed to the First Folio speaks of those "flights" of the "Swan of Avon "

upon the bankes of Thames, That so did take Eliza, and our Iames.

Shakespeare's company repeatedly performed before the queen at Richmond Palace, at Greenwich Palace, at Whitehall. In the Christmas holidays of 1597 her Majesty witnessed a performance of Love's Labour's Lost in its revised form, "newly corrected and augmented". Next Christmas three plays were given at Whitehall, among them probably The Merry Wives of Windsor, by Elizabeth's express desire. It is a well-known tradition that the queen was so highly entertained by Falstaff, as seen in the two parts of King Henry IV., that she commanded the dramatist to continue the character for one play more, and show the fat knight in love. That bright comedy of English rural life, The Merry Wives, is said to have been the work of a fortnight. At times, by special arrangement, Shake

speare's plays were performed for the grave lawyers of the Inns of Court in their mirth-loving hours of leisure. On Innocents' Day, 1594, the day after Shakespeare's performance before the queen at Greenwich, The Comedy of Errors was presented before a distinguished company in the hall of Gray's Inn; there had been some confusion and disturbance in the earlier part of the evening, which ceased while the spectators watched the entanglements of the twins of Syracuse and Ephesus; ever afterwards that night of Dec. 28, 1594, was remembered as the Night of Errors. (Early in February, 1601-2, the benchers of the Middle Temple witnessed in their hall (which still exists) a performance of that delightful comedy Twelfth Night; the law student John Manningham records the fact in his diary, and tells us of his diversion at the odd figure of the deluded Malvolio. But of these occasional performances by Shakespeare's company the most remarkable were two which took place in the preceding year. On February 8th, 1601, the Earl of Essex, accompanied by Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, made their rash revolt in the streets of London. On the preceding afternoon, by special arrangement between the conspirators and the Lord Chamberlain's servants, "a play of the deposing and killing of King Richard" [i.e. possibly Shakespeare's King Richard II.] was represented at the Globe Theatre. It was not a new play, and

the actors, to provide against loss if the attendance should be small, required that the sum of forty shillings should be added by their employers to whatever might be taken at the door. Less than two years previously, in this same Globe Theatre, Shakespeare's lines in honour of Essex, then her Majesty's representative in Ireland, had been delivered as part of the prologue to the last act of King Henry V. The unfortunate earl was executed on February 25. Perhaps to make an outward show of equanimity, Elizabeth spent the evening before his execution in witnessing at Richmond Palace a dramatic performance by the same company of actors who, a few days previously, had been employed to prepare the minds of the Londoners for the treasonable outbreak of the doomed favourite. (When the queen died, in 1603, it was noticed in print by Henry Chettle, the former editor of Greene's pamphlet, that Shakespeare did not join in the poetical lamentations of the time.

§ 13. James I. had not been many days in London before he granted a license to the members of Shakespeare's company to enact plays both in town and in the provinces. In December, 1603, while the king was a visitor at Wilton, the seat of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, they received a call to perform before the royal party. The editors of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays (1623), in the dedication of that volume, addressing William Herbert and his brother Philip, Earl of Montgomery, refer to the great favour which these patrons of art had shown both to the author of the plays and the plays themselves. When his Majesty's long-delayed

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