first left Stratford, he was not all but destitute of polished accomplishments. He could not, at all events, under the circumstances in which he had then so long been placed, have had the opportunity of acquiring a refined style of composition. After he had once, however, gained a footing in London, he would have been placed under different conditions. Books of many kinds would have been accessible to him, and he would have been almost daily within hearing of the best dramatic poetry of the age. There would also no doubt have been occasional facilities for picking up a little smattering of the continental languages, and it is almost beyond a doubt that he added somewhat to his classical knowledge during his residence in the metropolis. It is, for instance, hardly possible that the Amores of Ovid, whence he derived his earliest motto, could have been one of his school-books.

Although Shakespeare had exhibited a taste for poetic composition before his first departure from Stratford-onAvon, all traditions agree in the statement that he was a recognized actor before he joined the ranks of the dramatists. This latter event appears to have occurred on March 3, 1592, when a new drama, entitled Henry, or Harry, the Sixth, was brought out by Lord Strange's Servants, then acting either at Newington or Southwark under an arrangement with Henslowe, a wealthy stage manager, to whom no doubt the author had sold the play. In this year, as we learn on unquestionable authority, Shakespeare was first rising into prominent notice, so that the history then produced, now known as the First Part of Henry the Sixth, was, in all probability, his earliest complete dramatic work. Its extraordinary success must have secured for the author a substantial position in the theatrical world

of the day. The play had, for those times, an unusually long run, so that Nash, writing in or before the following month of July, states that the performances of it had, in that short interval, been witnessed by "ten thousand spectators at least," and, although this estimate may be overstrained, there can be no hesitation in receiving it as a valid testimony to the singular popularity of the new drama. The Second Part of Henry the Sixth must have appeared soon afterward, but no record of its production on the stage has been preserved. The former drama was published for the first time in the collective edition of 1623. A garbled and spurious version of the second play, the unskillful work of some one who had not access to a perfect copy of the original, appeared in the year 1594 under the title of the First Part of the Contention betwixt the Houses of York and Lancaster. It was published by Millington, the same bookseller who afterwards issued the surreptitious edition of Henry the Fifth.

Robert Greene, a popular writer and dramatist, who had commenced his literary career nine years previously, died on September 3, 1592. In a work entitled the Groatsworth of Wit, written shortly before his death, he had travestied, in an interesting sarcastic episode respecting some of his contemporaries, a line from one of Shakespeare's then recent compositions,-0, tiger's heart, wrapp'd in a woman's hide! This line is of extreme interest as including the earliest record of words composed by the great dramatist. It forms part of a vigorous speech which is as Shakespearean in its natural characterial fidelity, as it is Marlowean in its diction. That speech of the unfortunate Duke of York's is one of the most striking in the play, and the above line was probably selected for quo

tation by Greene on account of its popularity through effective delivery. The quotation shows that the Third Part of Henry the Sixth was written previously to September, 1592, and hence it may be concluded that all Shakespeare's plays on the subject of that reign, although perhaps subsequently revised in a few places by the author, were originally produced in that year. A surreptitious and tinkered version of the third part, made up by an inferior hand chiefly out of imperfect materials, appeared in 1595 under the title of the Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, and therein stated to have been "sundry times acted by the Earl of Pembroke's servants."

There is no reason for wonder in the style of a young author being influenced by that of a popular and accomplished contemporary, and judgment on the authorship of much of the above-named plays should not be ruled by a criticism which can only fairly be applied to the rapidly approaching period when the great dramatist had outlived the possibility of appearing in the character of an imitative writer. That Shakespeare commenced his literary vocation as, to some extent, a follower of Marlowe can hardly be denied, even were the line quoted by Greene the only remnant of his early plays; and that the three parts of Henry the Sixth had been some years on the stage, when Henry the Fifth was produced in 1599, may be gathered from that interesting relic of literary autobiography, the final chorus to the latter play. No theory respecting the history of the former dramas is wholly free from embarrassing perplexities, but that which best agrees with the positive evidences is that which concedes the authorship of the three plays to Shakespeare, their production to the year 1592, and the quarto editions of the second and

third parts as vamped, imperfect, and blundering versions of the poet's own original dramas.

The Groatsworth of Wit was published very soon after the unfortunate writer's decease, that is to say, it appeared towards the end of September, 1592; and it is clear that one portion of it had been composed under the influence of a profound jealousy of Shakespeare. Greene is addressing his fellow-dramatists, and speaking of the actors of their plays, thus introduces his satirical observations on the author of the Third Part of Henry the Sixth, with a travesty of the line above mentioned,-"trust them not, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceit, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." It was natural that these impertinent remarks should have annoyed the object of them, and that they were so far effective may be gathered from an interesting statement made by the editor, Henry Chettle, in a work of his own, entitled Kind-Heart's Dream, that he published a few weeks afterward, in which he specially regrets that the attack had proved offensive to Shakespeare, whom, he observes,-"at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that, as I have moderated the heate of living writers, and might have usde my owne discretion, especially in such a case, the author beeing dead, that I did not I am as sory as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his demeanor no lesse civill than he exelent in the qualitie he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace

in writting, that aprooves his art." Apologies of this kind are so apt to be overstrained that we can hardly gather more from the present one than the respectable position Shakespeare held as a writer and actor, and that Chettle, having made his acquaintance, was desirous of keeping friends with one who was beginning to be appreciated by the higher classes of society. The annoyance, however, occasioned by Greene's posthumous criticism was soon forgotten by the poet amid the triumphs of his subsequent career.

Removing now the scene of our fragmentary history from the metropolis to the country, we find, at the time of Greene's lampoonry, the poet's father busily engaged with his counters in appraising the goods of one Henry Field, a tanner of Stratford-on-Avon, whose inventory, attached to his will, was taken in August, 1592. This tradesman's son, Richard, who was apprenticed to a printer in London in the year 1579, took up his freedom in 1587, and soon afterwards commenced business on his own account, an elegant copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1589, being among the numerous works that issued from his press. It is most likely, indeed all but certain, that Shakespeare participated in his father's acquaintance with the printer's relatives, and at all events there was the provincial tie, so specially dear to Englishmen when at a distance from the town of their birth, between the poet and Richard Field. When, therefore, the latter is discovered, early in the year 1593, engaged in the production of Venus and Adonis, it is only reasonable to infer that the author had a control over the typographical arrangements. The purity of the text and the nature of the dedication may be thought to strengthen this opinion, and although poems