this letter to Shakespeare, which is still preserved, with address and signature and seal : "Loving countryman, I am bold of you, as of a friend craving your help with xxx li. upon Mr. Bushell's and my security, or Mr. Mytten's with me. Mr. Rosswell is not come to London as yet, and I have especial cause. You shall friend me much in helping me out of all the debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet my mind, which would not be indebted. I am now towards the Court, in hope of answer for the dispatch of my business. You shall neither lose credit nor money by me, the Lord willing; and now but persuade yourself so, as I hope, and you shall not need to fear but with all hearty thankfulness I will hold my time, and content your friend, and if we bargain farther, you shall be the paymaster yourself. My time bids me hasten to an end, and so I commit this to your care, and hope of your help. I fear I shall not be back this night from the Court. Haste; the Lord be with you and with us all, Amen! "From the Bell, in Carter Lane, the 25 October, 1598. "Yours in all kindness, "To my loving good friend and countryman Mr. Willm. Shackespere deliver these." "RIC. QUYNEY." It seems to have been on the same day, and after receiving a not unfavourable answer to the above, that Quiney wrote home a letter, to which we have the reply from Abraham Sturley; it is highly characteristic, and in style and tenor reminds not a little of Shallow's intermingling quotations from the Psalmist and current prices of live stock. Here, however, can only be found room for the commencement: "Nov. 4, 1598. All health, happiness of suit, and welfare be multiplied unto you and your labours in God our father by Christ our Lord. "Your letter of the 25th Oct. came to my hands the last of the same at night, per Greenway, which imported a stay of suits by Sir Edward Greville's advice, until, &c. and that only you should follow on for tax and sub. presently, and also your travail and hindrance of answer therein by your long travail and th' affairs of the court; and that our countryman Mr. Wm. Shak. would procure us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when and where and how; and I pray let not go that occasion if it may sort to any indifferent condition." The scanty incidents that can be gleaned for Shakespeare's biography in the three last years of Elizabeth those of the disgrace, outbreak, trial, and execution of Essex, and the imprisonment of his friend Lord Southampton-are speedily chronicled. In 1600, the Stratford register gives the birth of William Hart, son of Shakespeare's sister Joan and her husband William Hart, hatter: in July of the same year died the Sir Thomas Lucy of Shakespeare's youth and manhood, transmitting his dignities to his son. On the 8th of September, 1601, is recorded the burial of John Shakespeare, leaving a widow, who survived him seven years to a day. In May, 1602, Gilbert Shakespeare completed for his brother William, then absent from Stratford, an important purchase from William and John Combe, of 107 acres of arable land; in September of the same year he acquired a house or cottage in Dead Lane, opposite New Place; and lastly, purchased a messuage, with barns, gardens, and orchards, of Hercules Underhill, for £60. In this year died his correspondent Richard Quiney. On the 17th of December, 1602, the corporation ordered, "that there shall be no plays or interludes played in the chamber, the guildhall, nor in any part of the house or court from henceforward, upon pain that whosoever of the bailiff, aldermen, and burgesses of this borough shall give leave or licence thereunto shall forfeit for every offence xs." It is pleasant to find that the order failed of its effect for ten years, when, in 1612, the penalty was raised to £10. "The inconvenience of plays being seriously considered of, with the unlawfulness, and how contrary the sufferance of them is against the orders heretofore made, and against the examples of other well governed cities and boroughs, &c. &c." Such is the unsympathetic greeting that the dramatic poet of all time was likely to find when he turned again to settle in his own country and among his own kindred; and who shall blame him if he made it an object to take his place among persons of a rank rather better in other respects besides occupation, than the former corporate companions .of his father-according to Rowe, and to indications in his will, among "the gentlemen of the neighbourhood." In 1600, Henry IV. Part II., Henry V., Titus Andronicus, and Much Ado About Nothing were printed, and As You Like It was entered in the Stationers' books.1 In 1602 the Merry Wives of Windsor is found in print; and the Diary of a Barrister records a performance of Twelfth Night, or What You Will, on the 2nd of February, in Middle Temple Hall. On March 23, 1602-3, Queen Elizabeth died; with her died many a fantastic folly, but also a sympathy with the better spirit of the nation that was wanting on the English throne for many a long year after. The arts, however, had still a respite; and general tradition, and the warrant of Ben Jonson, assure us that James was no unworthy successor of Elizabeth, at least as an appreciator of the Shakespearian drama. "Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames On the allusion to the Queen in Midsummer Night's Dream, and on her suggestion of the love misadventures in the Merry Wives of Windsor, I have commented in the Essays on those plays. Chettle, in his "Englund's Mourning Garment," 1603, complains of Shakespeare, with other poets, neglecting to elegize her memory :— "Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert Drop from his honied muse one sable tear And sing her rape, done by that Tarquin death." In the terms employed by Chettle, there is a suggestion that he at least recognized as Shakespeare's-the honied 1 The dates of other entries are as follows:-Venus & A., 1593; T. Andronicus, 1593-4; Lucrece, 1594; 1 Henry IV., Romeo, Richard II., Rich. III., 1597; Love's L. Lost, 1598; Pass. Pilgrim, 1599; M. Night's Dream, M. of Venice, 1600; Hamlet,1602; Lear,1607; Pericles, 1608; Sonnets, Troilus,1609. 2 Published separately, uniform with this edition. streams of the lamentation of Spenser's Gentle Shepherd in a similar stanza, p. xlix. The players stood well for the new reign: James's taste for the drama had already declared itself in Scotland: as early as 1589, we find an English company, called "Her Majesties Players," at the Scottish court, but this title was given to more than one company, and I do not find proof that Shakespeare's, " the Lord Chamberlain's servants," were ever so styled. At a later date, 1599, James is found braving the ministers of Edinburgh by licensing a company of English comedians to play within the burgh, in spite of sermons, and acts of session, and threats of church censure on people resorting to them. In October, 1601, the company called, for the occasion at least, the King's servants, are found at Aberdeen, with special recommendation of his Majesty to the Provost, Bailiff, and Council, and on the strength of it receive thirty marks for their performances; and, by the like recommendation, the freedom of the borough is conferred among others of various degrees, from knight to trumpeter, upon "Laurence Fletcher, comedian to his Majesty." Of the origin and previous history of Laurence Fletcher nothing is known, and nothing, we may safely say, of the company he leads at this time. the accession of James, however, to the English throne, he returned to England; and in an early patent, which probably his influence obtained, is associated with Shakespeare and his fellows. James's proclamation before entering London denounced the impious profanation of the Sabbath by bear-baiting and common plays, on the 7th of May, 1603. On the 9th he authorized the reopening of the theatres, and on the 17th May he granted the following patent, addressed to the Lord Privy Seal :--- On "Know ye that we . . . . by these presentes doo licence and authorize these our servantes, Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillippes, John Henninges, (sic) Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowlye and the rest of their associates, freely to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing comedies, trage dies, histories, enterludes, moralles, pastoralles, stage plaies, and such other as well within their now usuall howse called the Globe witnin our countie of Surrey, as also within any towne halles or mouthalles, or other convenient places, within the liberties and freedome of any other cittie, universitie, towne or borough whatsoever within our said realmes and do minions (HALLIWELL'S Illustrations, p. 83.) In April, 1604, there is a letter from the Lords of the Council to the Lord Mayor of London, and the Magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex, by which “The Kings Majesty's Players are permitted to exercise ther plaies in ther severall and usuall howses for that purpose and noe other; viz.: the Globe, situate in Maiden Lane on he Banckside in the Countie of Surrey, the Fortune in Goldinge Lane, and the Curtaine in Hollywelle, in the countie of Middlesex." The Queen adopted the Earl of Worcester's players, of whom Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was one, and the Prince of Wales the company of the Lord Admiral, at the head of which was Edward Alleyn, founder of Dulwich College. In 1604 appeared an accurate edition of Hamlet, "Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was according to the true and perfect copy." How recently the poet may have made the additions that now first got into print is not to be known, but there is something that tastes of the time, as well in the satire on popular fickleness respecting portraiture of royalty alive or dead, as in that on the companies of children, who have carried it off from adult players, "Hercules and his load to," perhaps an allusion to empty benches at the Globe Theatre, of which the ensign is said to have been Hercules or Atlas bearing the Globe; motto, "Totus mundus agit histrionem." The scanty details of the poet's life for 1604, furnish one more record of him, but it is as engaged in affairs prosaic enough. He had sold malt at Stratford to Philip Rogers, at several times, to the amount of £1 15s. 10d., and not being able to get his money, commenced an action, by filing a declaration in the Stratford Court of |