defective education, his mean employments, and his want of all opportunities of culture, they have venerated him as a miraculous birth of time, to whom the whole world of being was revealed by a sort of Apocalyptic vision, and who was endowed with the gift of tongues by a species of Pentecostal fire. This is Shaksperiolatry run mad. When we venerate Shakespeare, we venerate him not as a miracle, but as a man; and the ordinary laws of nature are not suspended in the case of extraordinary men. It is here that the difficulty of the Shaksperian lies. Though poetry, as Bacon says, is a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, the intuitions of genius cannot supply a knowledge of material facts. Book-learning cannot be acquired without books, and books cannot be obtained in a neighbourhood that is bookless. The Arctic Whale may be capable of gulping in whole shoals of acalephæ and molluscs, but its enormous receptivity is naught if it has no acalephæ and molluscs to gulp.

Notwithstanding the contrast between the homeliness of the Stratford career of the young Player, and the breadth of observation and knowledge displayed in the works of which he is reputed to have been the author, Mr. Lee is of opinion that

the abundance of the contemporary evidence,' attesting his responsibility for the works published under the name of Shakespeare, 'gives the Baconian Theory no rational right to a hearing' (p. 309).

And, undoubtedly, if the Player's responsibility for the works published under the name of Shakespeare is duly attested, all controversy is concluded. In the presence of established fact antecedent improbabilities vanish, apparent impossibilities disappear, discussion is closed, and doubt itself is dumb. Let us see, then, what is the contemporary evidence which attests the responsibility of the young man who came up from Stratford for the works which were published under the name of Shakespeare.

WH

iv

Of the Identity of Shakespeare

HEN the young man from Stratford arrived in London there were only two Playhouses in the city-the Theatre, built in 1576 by James Burbage, the father of the famous tragic actor, and the Curtain, built about the same time by Philip Henslowe, the father-in-law of Alleyn. The Rose was built by Henslowe in 1592, and the Globe by the sons of Burbage in 1599. The Blackfriars was a subsequent erection. The site was demised to James Burbage in 1596, and was subdemised by him as a theatre for the Children of the Chapel, the little eyases of Hamlet, by whom it was occupied till 1609, when the sons of Burbage converted it into a theatre for men. The early Shakespearian plays had no peculiar home. Hamlet was performed at the Theatre, and Love's Labour's Lost at the Curtain, but the later plays were all performed at the Blackfriars or the Globe. Mr. Phillipps and Mr. Lee are of opinion that the earliest successes of Shakspere were achieved

at Henslowe's theatre, the Rose; but Henslowe, who kept a diary, in which he recorded his dealings with all the leading playwrights of the day, never once makes mention of his name. All our evidence, on the contrary, points to his early connexion with the Burbages. The elder Burbage kept a livery stable in the neighbourhood of the Theatre, and this, as Mr. Phillipps thinks, may explain the tradition of Shakspere's employment as a horseboy (i. 72). In was in company with Richard Burbage that he is first introduced to our notice as an actor (i. 109); and it is as a member of the Burbage troupe that he is known to us during the whole of his subsequent career. If there was anyone, therefore, who could have attested the responsibility of the young Stratford man for the Plays which were published under the name of Shakespeare, it was the Burbages. They were the owners of the theatres at which they were performed; they were the managers to whom the manuscripts must have been submitted; they were in daily intercourse with Shakspere; and yet, as Mr. Phillipps admits, the Burbages had no conception of the intellectual supremacy of their friend and fellow (i. 102). Of this we have a remarkable proof in the papers of which Mr. Phillipps has given us a transcript (i. 286). In 1635, Richard Burbage was dead, and his brother, Cuthbert, was involved in a dispute between the Actors and the Housekeepers' of the Blackfriars and the

Globe. The Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the survivor of the Incomparable Pair of Brethren to whom the Folio was dedicated, was the Lord Chamberlain of the day, and to him, as the autocrat of the stage, the matter was referred. In a memorial addressed to that nobleman, Cuthbert Burbage gives an account of the building of the Globe by his deceased brother and himself, and he relates the circumstances under which Shakspere became connected with the great Shakespearian Playhouse. To ourselves,' he says, 'we joined those deserving men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the profits of that they call the House' (i. 291); and he adds that when he and his brother took possession of the Blackfriars in 1609, they placed in it 'menplayers which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, &c.,' as successors to the Children of the Chapel. This is all we know of the circumstances under which Shakspere became connected with the Blackfriars and the Globe; and it cannot but appear strange that the proprietor of the Playhouses, which had been made famous by the production of the Shakespearian Plays, should, in 1635-twelve years after the publication of the Great Folio-describe their reputed author to the survivor of the Incomparable Pair, as merely a 'man-player,' and a 'deserving man.' But so

the record stands.

As to the earlier career of the young

Stratford