markable if Shakspere had not acquired, involves the use of the familiar law-terms of his day, fee simple, fine and recovery, entail, remainder, escheat, mortgage. The commonest practice of the law, such as a sharp boy would have learnt in two or three casual attendances upon the Bailiff's Court at Stratford, would have familiarised Shakspere very early with the words which are held to imply considerable technical knowledge-action, bond, warrant, bill, suit, plea, arrest. It must not be forgotten that the terms of law, however they may be technically applied, belong to the habitual commerce of mankind; they are no abstract terms, but essentially deal with human acts, and interests, and thoughts: and it is thus that, without any fanciful analogies, they more readily express the feelings of those who use them with a general significancy, than any other words that the poet could apply. A writer who has carried the theory of Shakspere's professional occupation farther than even Malone, holds that the Poems are especially full of these technical terms; and he gives many instances from the 'Venus and Adonis,' the Lucrece,' and the 'Sonnets,' saying, "they swarm in his poems even to deformity."a Surely, when we read those exquisite lines, "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past," we think of anything else than the judge and the crier of the court; and yet this is one of the examples produced in proof of this theory. Dryden's noble use of "the last assizes" is no evidence that he was a lawyer Many similar instances are given, equally founded, we think, upon the mistake of believing that the technical language has no relation to the general language. Metaphorical, no doubt, are some of these expressions, such as "But be contented when that fell arrest but the metaphors are as familiar to the reader as to the poet himself. They present a clear and forcible image to the mind; and, looking at the habits of society, they can scarcely be called technical. Dekker describes the conversation at a a Brown's 'Autobiographical Poems,' &c. Ode on Mrs. Killigrew.' third-rate London ordinary:—' "There is another ordinary, at which your London usurer, your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorney, do resort ; the price threepence; the rooms as full of company as a jail; and indeed divided into several wards, like the beds of an hospital. The compliment between these is not much, their words few ; for the belly hath no ears every man's eye here is upon the other man's trencher, to note whether his fellow lurch him, or no: if they chance to discourse, it is of nothing but of statutes, bonds, recognizances, fines, recoveries, audits, rents, subsidies, sureties, enclosures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judgments, commissions, bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible matter." a Here is pretty good evidence of the general acquaintance with the law's jargon; and Dekker, who was himself a dramatic poet, has put together in a few lines as many technical terms as we may find in Shakspere. The ancient accounts of the Chamberlain of the borough of Stratford exhibit a number of payments made out of the funds of the corporation for theatrical performances. In 1569, when John Shakspere was chief magistrate, there is a payment of nine shillings to the Queen's players, and of twelve-pence to the Earl of Worcester's players. In 1573 the Earl of Leicester's players received six shillings and eight-pence. In 1574 "my Lord of Warwick's players" have a gratuity of seventeen shillings, and the Earl of Worcester's players of five and seven-pence. In 1577 "my Lord of Leicester's players" receive fifteen shillings, and "my Lord of Worcester's players" three and four-pence. In 1579 and 1580 the entries are more circumstantial :— "1579. Item paid to my Lord Strange men the xith day of February at the comaundement of Mr. Bayliffe, vs. P4 at the comandement of Mr. Baliffe to the Countys of Essex plears, xivs. vid. 1580. Pa to the Earle of Darbyes players at the comaundement of Mr. Baliffe, viiis. ivd.” It thus appears that there had been three sets of players at Stratford within a short distance of the time when William Shakspere was sixteen years of age. a Dekker's 'Gulls Hornbook:' 1609. It is a curious circumstance that the most precise and interesting account which we possess of one of the earliest of the theatrical performances is from the recollection of a man who was born in the same year as William Shakspere. In 1639 R. W. (R. Willis), stating his age to be seventy-five, published a little volume, called 'Mount Tabor,' which contains a passage, 66 upon a stage-play which I saw when I was a child," which is essential to be given in any history or sketch of the early stage. "In the city of Gloucester the manner is (as I think it is in other like corporations) that, when players of interludes come to town, they first attend the mayor, to inform him what nobleman's servants they are, and so to get licence for their public playing; and if the mayor like the actors, or would show respect to their lord and master, he appoints them to play their first play before himself and the aldermen and common council of the city; and that is called the mayor's play, where every one that will comes in without money, the mayor giving the players a reward as he thinks fit, to show respect unto them. At such a play my father took me with him, and made me stand between his legs, as he sat upon one of the benches, where we saw and heard very well. The play was called 'The Cradle of Security,' wherein was personated a king or some great prince, with his courtiers of several kinds, amongst which three ladies were in special grace with him, and they, keeping him in delights and pleasures, drew him from his graver counsellors, hearing of sermons, and listening to good counsel and admonitions, that in the end they got him to lie down in a cradle upon the stage, where these three ladies, joining in a sweet song, rocked him to sleep, that he snorted again, and in the mean time closely conveyed under the clothes wherewithal he was covered a vizard like a swine's snout upon his face, with three wire chains fastened thereunto, the other end whereof being holden severally by those three ladies, who fall to singing again, and then discovered his face, that the spectators might see how they had transformed him going on with their singing. Whilst all this was acting, there came forth of another door at the farthest end of the stage two old men, the one in blue, with a sergeant-at-arms his mace on his shoulder, the other in red, with a drawn sword in his hand, and leaning with the other hand upon the other's shoulder, and so they two went along in a soft pace, round about by the skirt of the stage, till at last they came to the cradle, when all the court was in greatest jollity, and then the foremost old man with his mace stroke a fearful blow upon the cradle, whereat all the courtiers, with the three ladies and the vizard, all vanished; and the desolate prince, starting up barefaced, and finding himself thus sent for to judgment, made a lamentable complaint of his miserable case, and so was carried away by wicked spirits. This prince did personate in the moral the wicked of the world; the three ladies, pride, covetousness, and luxury; the two old men, the end of the world and the last judgment. This sight took such impression in me, that when I came towards man's estate it was as fresh in my memory as if I had seen it newly acted." We now understand why the bailiff of Stratford paid the players out of the public money. The first performance of each company in this town was the bailiff's, or chief magistrate's, play; and thus, when the father of William Shakspere was bailiff, the boy might have stood "between his legs as he sat upon one of the benches." The hall of the Guild, which afterwards became the Town Hall, was the occasional theatre of Stratford. It is now a long room, and somewhat low, the building being divided into two floors, the upper of which is used as the GrammarSchool. The elevation for the Court at one end of the hall would form the stage; and on one side is an ancient separate chamber to which the performers would retire. With a due provision of benches, about three hundred persons could be accommodated in this room; and no doubt Mr. Bailiff would be liberal in the issue of his invitations, so that Stratford might not grudge its expenditure of five shillings. It would appear from Willis's description that 'The Cradle of Security' was for the most part dumb show. It is probable that he was present at its performance at Gloucester when he was six or seven years of age; it evidently belongs to that class of moral plays which were of the simplest construction. And yet it was popular long after the English drama had reached its highest eminence. When the pageants and mysteries had been put down by the force of public opinion, when spectacles of a dramatic character had ceased to be employed as instruments of religious instruction, the professional players who had sprung up founded their popularity for a long period upon the ancient habits and associations of the people. Our drama was essentially formed by a course of steady progress, and not by rapid transition. We are accustomed to say that the drama was created by Shakspere, Marlowe, Greene, Kyd, and a few others of distinguished genius; but they all of them worked upon a foundation which was ready for them. The superstructure of real tragedy and comedy had to be erected upon the moral plays, the romances, the histories, which were beginning to be popular in the very first days of Queen Elizabeth, and continued to be so, even in their very rude forms, beyond the close of her long reign. The controversy upon the lawfulness of stage-plays was a remarkable feature of the period which we are now noticing; and, as pamphlets were to that age what newspapers are to ours, there can be little doubt that even in the small literary society of Stratford the tracts upon this subject might be well known. The dispute about the Theatre was a contest between the holders of opposite opinions in religion. The Puritans, who even at that time were strong in their zeal, if not in their numbers, made the Theatre the especial object of their indignation, for its unquestionable abuses allowed them so to frame their invectives that they might tell with double force against every description of public amusement, against poetry in general, against music, against dancing, associated as they were with the excesses of an ill-regulated stage. A treatise of John Northbrooke, licensed for the press in 1577, is directed against “dicing, dancing, vain plays, or interludes." Gosson, who had been a student of Christchurch, Oxford, had himself written two or three plays previous to his publication, in 1579, of 'The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such-like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth.' This book, written with considerable ostentation of learning, and indeed with no common vigour and occasional eloquence, defeats its |