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required; and a balcony, which answered the purpose of the battlements, windows, and raised terraces, sometimes required to carry out different parts of the dialogue. Changes of scene were indicated by signboards, on which were painted the names of the places to which the action was about to be removed. The female parts were generally acted by boys, a custom that continued down to the Restoration, when the whole system underwent a complete revolution.

The exact date of Shakspeare's retirement from the stage has not been ascertained. The last notice of his appearance is in the cast of Jonson's Sejanus, produced at the Globe, in 1603. His name occurs in the list of the King's company, in 1604; but there is reason to believe that at that time he had finally taken up his residence at Stratford. In 1602, he had added considerably to his property in that neighbourhood, by the purchase of 107 acres of arable land, for which he paid £320, and a further purchase of an estate which cost him £60. In 1604, we find him bringing an action against one Philip Rogers, for malt he had sold to him; and in 1605, he made the largest of his investments, purchasing, for £440, an unexpired term in a lease of certain tithes. From these circumstances, and the frequent recurrence of his name in connection with legal and other proceedings, having reference to Stratford, it may be inferred that he closed his relations with London, as an actor, shortly after his appearance in Sejanus, at the Globe. Ward, the vicar of Stratford, whose diary bears the date of 1662, repeats a tradition he had heard in the town, to the effect that Shakspeare lived in his latter days at Stratford, and supplied the stage with two plays annually, which enabled him to expend £1000 a-year. The amount is obviously an error, arising from the exaggerated notion the common people entertained of his wealth.

The value of the property amassed by Shakspeare has been variously estimated. Malone computes it at £200 a-year, Gildon at £300. Even the lower amount would have furnished him with an ample income.

A passage in a contemporary tract called Ratseis Ghost is

supposed to refer to Shakspeare's successful progress as an actor, his accumulation of wealth, and his final settlement in the country. The date of the tract may be surmised from its subject. Ratsey, a famous highwayman, whose 'madde pranks and robberies' are here recorded, was executed at Bedford in March, 1605. The history of his exploits was no doubt published immediately afterwards; and it appears to have been so favourably received that the compiler added a Second Part, from which the following extract is taken. Both parts were, probably, printed before the close of 1605, or early in 1606; and if the supposition be well founded that the personal allusion is to Shakspeare, it fixes, with tolerable certainty, the date of his retirement to Stratford. Ratsey is described addressing the principal performer in a company of strolling players, and advising him to go to London, 'for,' he says, 'if one man were dead, they will have much need of such as thou art.' This 'one man' was Richard Burbage, for Ratsey goes on to say that he would risk all the money in his purse on his protégé 'to play Hamlet with him for a wager'-a part in which Burbage excelled. The remainder of Ratsey's speech to the strolling player throws an important light upon the history of the stage, and shows that it was not only a lucrative profession, but that its members were distinguished by the thriftiness of their habits.

'There thou shall learn to be frugal (for players were never so thrifty as they are now about London), and to feed upon all men; to let none feed upon thee; to make thy hand a stranger to thy pocket, thy heart slow to perform thy tongue's promise ; and when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place of lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy money may then bring thee to dignity and reputation: then thou needest care for no man; no, not for them that before made thee proud with speaking their words on the stage.' 'Sir, I thank you,' quoth the player, 'for this good council: I promise you I will make use of it, for I have heard, indeed, of some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy.'

Shakspeare seems to be plainly pointed out in this passage. Other actors had made fortunes, but the particular circumstances indicated apply to Shakspeare alone. Other actors had come meanly to London, some of them, it is conjectured, from Warwickshire, and had in time acquired wealth; but of none of them is it recorded that they had bought lordships in the country. It is remarkable, also, that Shakspeare's personal intercourse with the actors who performed in his plays fell off upon his retirement. There is no trace of his having received any of them at Stratford; although, with the affectionate fidelity of his character, he left tokens of remembrance in his will to his 'fellows,' Heminge, Burbage, and Condell; and to this cessation of intercourse, Ratsey apparently alludes, when he says, that the retired actor need care for no man, 'not for them that before made him proud with speaking their words on the stage.' Shakspeare was not the only London actor who had written plays, and who might be said to be made proud by the delivery of their words on the stage; but his conspicuous position as a dramatist, his lordship in the country, and the loosening of his theatrical ties, clearly identify him with the whole description.

The Stratford tradition preserved by Ward, that Shakspeare supplied the stage with two plays a year after his retirement affords as satisfactory a proof as can now be obtained that the period of his withdrawal from the theatre was not coincident, as has been generally supposed, with the termination of his dramatic labours. It enables us, also, to distinguish with some approach to accuracy those plays that were written in the ease and leisure of the country, from those that were produced amidst the hurry and excitement of the actor's life in London. The chronology of Shakspeare's plays is formed altogether upon circumstantial evidence, and must always be considered liable to correction, from the discovery of new facts. The following list is founded on such materials as now exist for the determination of dates. It includes the comedy of Love's Labour Won, spoken of by Meres, and supposed to be lost, and the First Part of Henry VI., and Titus Andronicus, which some of Shakspeare's editors have rejected as spurious, although they were included in the folio of 1623.

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Assuming, then, that Shakspeare finally took up his residence at Stratford about 1604 or 1605, we find that he produced at least eight plays after he left the stage, perhaps nine or ten. His time, therefore, was not wholly consumed in law-suits and the augmentation of his property; and it is pleasant to have some grounds for believing that when independence left him free to choose his pursuits, he reverted to the literature which his genius had adorned and dignified. His labours between the years 1604 and 1611 were quite as constant as at any former period.

During the early part of his settlement in the country, he appears to have occasionally visited the metropolis. In 1608 and 1609 he was engaged in a suit with a townsman for the recovery of a debt, and the proceedings were protracted over a whole year. It is presumed that the delays were occasioned by Shakspeare's absence. In 1609, an assessment was made upon him for the relief of the poor of Southwark, possibly accruing from some property he held there. We have an additional evidence of his relations with the metropolis in the fact of a purchase he made in 1613 of a tenement in the Blackfriars, from which it has been inferred that even up to that date he had not entirely withdrawn from his interest in the theatre. In 1614, Shakspeare was certainly in London, as we discover from some curious documents brought to light by Mr. Halliwell, respecting an attempt that was made to enclose certain open fields near the town, to which rights of common were attached. The tithes Shakspeare had formerly purchased extended over these fields, and as the value of the tithes would have been affected by the enclosures, he insisted upon receiving compensation from the parties with whom the design originated. The Corporation, being equally interested in preserving the rights of common for the benefit of the poor, applied to Shakspeare for his co-operation; and their clerk, whom they sent to London for the purpose, had an interview with him on the subject. Shakspeare evidently took an active part in resisting the proposed encroachment; and a memorandum, dated on the 1st September, 1615, represents him saying to one of the persons concerned, that 'he was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe.' The importance attached to his personal influence is exhibited in the pains taken by the Corporation to secure it. The letter they transmitted to him by their clerk was signed by nearly the whole body.

* The date of its original publication; but in the order of production this play is, probably, one of the earliest.

+ The date here assigned to The Tempest is that of the earliest authentic notice extant of its performance. It was played at Court in Nov., 1611, which suggests the presumption that it was then a new piece. Some of the commentators are of opinion that it is one of the early plays; but the opinion is unsupported by evidence.

Shakspeare's three children, Susannah, Hamnet, and Judith, were all born before he left Stratford; and when he returned to reside there two only were surviving. Hamnet died in 1596. Susannah was married to Dr. Hall on the 5th of June, 1607; and in the December of the same year Edmund Shakspeare died in London. The entry of his burial at St. Saviour's, on the last day of the year, as we should now call it, is almost as striking as that of Massinger: '1607, Dec. 31, Edmond Shakespeare, a player: in the church. On this occasion 20s. were paid for a 'forenoon knell of the great bell,' probably at the desire of his brother. In the following September, Shakspeare's mother died. The next incident on record connected with the poet is that of his having stood godfather in the October of 1608 to William Walker, the child of a townsman.

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