clever boy under such circumstances would not be long in picking up and knowing the meaning of many terms of the law. In 1582 occurred a very important event in Shakespeare's life-his marriage. His marriage bond to Anne Hathaway, daughter of a yeoman who lived near Stratford, is dated November 28, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, was born on May 26 of the following year-significant facts. Anne was eight years older than her husband, and their union does not seem to have been so happy as to afford any contradiction to the popular opinion that it is a foolish thing for a youth to marry a woman much older than himself. The facts of Shakespeare's life, and incidental allusions scattered through his works, alike go far to prove that his married life was not one of unbroken sunshine. It is difficult to believe that Shakespeare was not thinking of his own experience when he put in the mouth of the Duke in "Twelfth Night" the words— 66 ... Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, About 1586 Shakespeare left his wife and family, increased by the birth of twins in 1585, and went up to London to seek his fortune. The immediate cause of his leaving Stratford is thus related by his first biographer, Rowe :-" He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and, amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely, and in order to avenge the illusage, he made a ballad upon him. And though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to leave his business and family in The Elizabethan Stage. 77 Warwickshire for some time and shelter himself in London." In this tradition there is very likely a basis of truth, though the details are not to be depended on. It is supposed that Shakespeare went up to London with a company of players. From his sixth year he had been familiar enough with the representation of plays, for the Queen's company, Lord Leicester's company, Lord Worcester's company, and others, had performed at Stratford. Whether he took to the stage because he had a strong natural bent to it, or because it afforded him the readiest means for earning a livelihood, it is impossible to say. A London theatre was then a very different place from what it is now. Modern theatrical managers would save thousands of pounds if audiences were content to put up with as meagre scenery and as uncomfortable accommodation as satisfied the Londoners who listened to Shakespeare's plays or saw the great dramatist act. The first theatre in London was not erected till 1576. Until that time actors had been content to give their performances in inn-yards or any other suitable place that offered. After 1576 other theatres sprung up, but they were all very comfortless edifices, judged according to modern ideas. The following description of an Elizabethan theatre and its surroundings gives a sufficiently accurate notion of how plays were represented in the golden age of the English drama :"The building itself was a large circular edifice of wood, on the top of which a flag was hung out during the time of performance. The pit or yard was open to the sky (excepting in the private and winter theatres, which were enclosed), but galleries, with boxes beneath them, ran round the building, and these with the stage were roofed in. The wits, critics, and gallants were allowed to sit or recline at length on the rushes with which the stage was strewed, while their pages nanded them pipes and tobacco; and the audience generally, as in the tavern-theatres and singing saloons of our own day, enhanced the enjoyment of the intellectual pleasures of dramatic representation by the physical solaces of smoking, drinking ale, and eating nuts and apples. The performances commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon. Movable scenery was unknown till after the Restoration,1 when it was introduced by Sir William Davenant, but curtains called traverses were drawn across when required, and the stage was hung with coarse tapestry. To point out the place or scene in which the events of the play were supposed to take place, a board, painted or written in large letters, was hung prominently forward; and a few chairs and tables, a couch, a rude imitation of a tomb, an altar, a tree, or a tower, constituted the theatrical 'properties.' A sort of balcony at the back of the stage served to represent a raised terrace or the platform of a castle, on which, in particular scenes, the characters in the play might be understood to be walking. Much, therefore, had necessarily to be left to the imagination of the spectators; but there can be no doubt, as Mr. Collier remarks, that to this very poverty of stage appliances we are indebted for many noble passages in the works of our earlier dramatists, who found themselves called on to supply, by glowing and graphic description, what in aftertimes was more commonly left to the touch of the scene-painter. In the department, however, of stage costume, the managers of the theatres in the time of Elizabeth displayed great magnificence and expended large sums. The actor who spoke the prologue, entering after the third sounding of the trumpet, usually wore a cloak of black velvet, and we hear of twenty pounds, an immense sum in those days, being occasionally given for a splendid mantle. When tragedies were performed, the stage was sometimes hung with black and covered with matting. Music, singing, and dancing relieved the pauses between the acts; the clown was allowed great latitude in the way of extemporary buffoonery to amuse the groundlings,' as the audience in the pit was termed ; and at the close of the piece he delivered a rhyming rhapsody, called a jig, composed with reference to the popular topics of the day, in which he accompanied himself with the pipe and tabor, and which he occasionally varied by a dance." 6 1 Actresses also appeared first on the stage after the Restoration. In the early days of the drama female parts were acted by young lads. In Charles I.'s time, women occasionally acted; but the practice was not at all com. mon till the Restoration. Shakespeare's First Years in London. 79 The first years of Shakespeare's life in London are shrouded in obscurity. Doubtless he had a hard struggle, and much bitter experience of the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes. Actors are a jealous race, and the playwrights in favour at the time would look with no kindly eye upon the young Warwickshire man, who, though deficient in scholastic learning, knew better than any of them how to delineate human life, and how to touch the springs of emotion. The earliest undoubted literary allusion to Shakespeare occurs in poor Robert Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," published in 1592. There we read of "An upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide,'1 supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." This shows that by 1592 Shakespeare's fame had at least advanced far enough. to make him an object of jealousy. Greene's pamphlet was published after his death by his executor, Henry Chettle, also a playwright. Both Marlowe and Shakespeare took offence at the allusions to them contained in it; and in his "Kind Hart's Dream," published about three months after Greene's pamphlet, Chettle made his apologies to Shakespeare. "With neither of them that take offence," he says, "was I acquainted, and with one of them [Marlowe], I care not if I never be; the other [Shakespeare], whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat of living writers, and might have used my own discretion, especially in such a case, the author being dead, that I did not I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his 1 A line from an old play, "The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York;" also found in the "Third Part of Henry VI.," a recast of the "True Tragedy." art." Valuable testimony this, proving that Shakespeare was beginning to be appreciated both as a man and as an author. In 1593 Shakespeare published the first work to which he put his name, "Venus and Adonis," a poem full of youthful passion, rich in colour, and showing an exuberant imagination and delight in country sights and sounds. It was dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, a gallant and accomplished nobleman, well known as a patron of men of letters. To him was also dedicated the "Rape of Lucrece," published in the following year. By 1594 he is also supposed to have written several of his plays. "Titus Andronicus," "Henry VI.," Parts I., II., and III., the "Two Gentlemen of Verona,” the "Comedy of Errors," "Love's Labour's Lost," "Romeo and Juliet," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Richard II.,” and "Richard III.," are conjectured to belong to about this period. Their dates cannot be assigned with any approach to certainty. Probably Shakespeare began his work by retouching old plays, as he is supposed to have done in the case of "Titus Andronicus" and the first part of "Henry VI." Certainly neither of these dramas are distinguished by such excellence as to make us desirous to prove them the work of Shakespeare alone. From 1595 to 1601, during what is called the second period of his dramatic activity, the following plays are supposed by Mr. Furnivall to have been produced by Shakespeare:-"King John," the "Merchant of Venice," the "Taming of the Shrew" (an old play only retouched by Shakespeare), "Henry IV.," Parts I. and II., the "Merry Wives of Windsor," "Henry V.," "Much Ado About Nothing," "As You Like It,” “Twelfth Night," "All's Well that Ends Well." During this period Shakespeare attained entire mastery over his art in none of these plays do we find the slips and flaws incident to the work of a "prentice hand." To Shakespeare's third period, extending from 1601 to 1608, belong all his great tragedies. In it are believed to have been written "Julius Cæsar," "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," "Othello," "Macbeth," "King Lear," "Troilus and Cressida," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Coriolanus," and "Timon of |