the emissary of such a traitor, Payn was informed that he should lose his head." And "Payn" is certainly near enough to "Poins" for romantic purposes. If the I. and II. of "Henry IV." were written to fit Sir John Oldcastle as he was in his youth, why these coincidental resemblances to the history and career of a certain Sir John Fastolffe? We have suggested that the part was enlarged in order to make as extreme a butt as possible of a man who had earlier proved himself distasteful to a powerful nobleman, as he might be. It almost looks as if the few years during which the fat character went by the name of Oldcastle, instead of the adoption of the name of Falstaff, were fortuitous; and the use of the latter, rather than the former, the dramatist's first intention. Nobody can guess what personal motive for lampooning Oldcastle Shakespeare may have cherished, but in ridiculing and scarifying Fastolffe I have already suggested he was sure to get himself on the fashionable side.

But if here were the royal orders, Shakespeare would obey. If a knight were to be shown as the butt of tradespeople, Shakespeare at least knew what particular knight he should prefer to select for the base office; while as for the moral, seeing that it was uncongenial anyhow, it seems to me that he proposed to revenge himself by gibing at the Queen herself and the tastes she thus confessed to. Even without the unmistakable drift of her order, or the previous record of Falstaff, there was certainly precedent and temptation enough for making the catastrophe run the other way. Even the good Bishop Wordsworth (while demonstrating with exuberant wealth of parallelism the author of "Venus and Adonis" and

"Love's Labour's Lost," to have been a pious follower of the precepts of the English Bible) concedes to him "the faults of his time." But how happens it that "the faults of his time" are not traceable here? There was every excuse, historical as well as royal, for making the tradesman's wife yield to the courtier. The Elizabethan chronicles state broadly enough that tradesmen ever relied on the charms of their wives quite as much as upon the merit of their goods, for lordly patronage. Was it because Falstaff, when discarded by a king, was no longer to be justified in those liberties with other people's prerogatives and purses to which he had been so entirely welcome when the yoke-fellow of a prince?

Of course the fat knight, in amorous chase after a pair of petticoats, is no more "in love" than previously with Dame Quickly or Doll Tearsheet. The pen that created Imogen and Desdemona, Perdita and Juliet, if seriously ordered to delineate a libertine controlled and ennobled by the passion that drives out self, would scarcely have failed to recognize a field for its genius. However, if Falstaff was still to titillate the fine humors of Elizabeth, he must be concupiscent always, but this time baffled, foiled and put to rout. And so, for the nonce, in a play for the eyes of a Virgin Queen and within the letter, even at the expense of the spirit of her royal orders, must wifely honor live outside of noble birth, and virtue walk in homespun.

Shakespeare was equal to any work assigned him. He could put into the mouth of Portia the most magnificent eulogy of mercy the world has

ever heard, and yet find none of it for a poor Jew who had offered to loan money as a friend, but had been challenged, instead, to loan it as to an enemy in order that he might "exact the penalty" ("Merchant of Venice," I. iii., 130, 136), preferring rather to devote the Jew to death by first assuming that he intended murder, and endowing Portia with an earthly power (that indeed did "show likest heaven's" for once) to sentence him to the gallows for the inmost secrets of his heart! After such an achievement as that, it were a comparatively light matter to transpose such a record as the following: "Sir John Fastolfe, Knight, Knight Banneret and Knight of the Garter, a military officer of high reputation during the wars in France in the reign of the Henrys IV., V., and VI., was so bountiful to this college (Magdalen) from the great affection he entertained for Bishop Waynflete, that his name is commemorated in an anniversary speech, and though the particulars of his bounty are not now remembered, because he enfeoffed the founder in his lifetime, it is yet known that the Boar's Head, in Southwark, now divided into tenements yielding £150 yearly, together with Caldicot Manor, in Suffolk, were part of the lands he bestowed on the college. Lovingland, in that county, is also thought to be another part of his donation." 1

1 "The History of Oxford: Its Colleges, Halls and Public Buildings." London: R. Ackerman, 1814. i. 243. I understand that until about 1838 (when Parliament seems to have relieved of the condition) masses were supposed to be said at Magdalen for the repose of Sir John's soul.

IX

Have We a Shakespeare Among Us?

HAVE elsewhere called attention to the fact that whatever "copyright," or right to literary property (of whatever description or by whatever name called) obtained in Shakespeare's lifetime, was not by virtue of any statute, but at common law and so perpetual. It follows, therefore, that could we trace the present heirs or assigns of whoever owned the literary rights existing in the plays in Shakespeare's own lifetime, we would find the present owners of those invaluable and constantly reprinted possessions.

It was not from any lawyer's instinct or hope of finding a party in whose behalf I could institute proceedings for piracy-not only against every living editor, and almost every existing publishing house, but for an accounting and mesne profits against the legal representatives of all the editors. and publishers since 1616-but from curiosity

that I asked my friend, Mr. John Wallace Bell, to set on foot an inquiry as to whether we had any Shakespeares in America. Indeed, had I cherished only the sordid motive, I should have instructed him to search rather for assigns of John Heminges and Henry Condell, Jaggard, Blount, Arthur Johnson, R. Boniars, H. Walley and all the others (including, perhaps, the unspeakable and shadowy "T. T.") who chiseled Shakespeare the engrossed man of affairs and proprietor of two theaters and his assigns out of so much that equitably ought to have been his and theirs. Mr. Bell was advised to hold his search closely to the name Shakespeare. And it is because I think the results of his search interesting (unsatisfactory as they are in the capital object) that I have asked permission to summarize his results here.

It seems that on the ninth day of February, 1884, there were just thirty persons (males) in the United States named Shakespeare. Of these, all but four are married and the fathers of families, so that the question at the head of this paper can be relied on to be constant, and not one to disappear with a single asking. These thirty group themselves as to vocations as follows: