24s. costs against John Addenbrooke, and as he could not be found he pursued his surety, Thomas Horneby, on 7 June. In 1611 his name appears as a donor towards costs of a bill in Parliament tor better repair of highways and amending defects in the former statutes; in the same year a fine was levied on the property he purchased in May 1602 and on twenty acres additional; in 1612, February 4, Richard Shakespeare, his only surviving brother, was buried; and now, having no surviving male relative, all hope of continuing the name and family is gone, and he finally quits his work after twenty years' hard exertion, having produced an average of two plays each year: about ten in each of his four periods, which curiously enough are each of about five years' duration. In March 1613 he bought a house near Blackfriars Theatre, abutting on a street leading to Puddle Wharf against the King's Majesty's Wardrobe, for 120/., paying 80l. and mortgaging the house for the balance. This house he let to John Robinson for ten years. In the same year the draft of a bill in Chancery, endorsed Lane, Greene, and Shakespeare complainants, intended to be presented to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, shows that on the moiety of tithes purchased by Shakespeare in 1605 too large a proportion of the reserved rent fell on the share of the complainants. His annual income from these tithes was 120/. In 1613 the Globe Theatre, and probably many of his MSS., was burnt down. This theatre was rebuilt the same year. In 1614 fifty-four houses were burnt in Stratford, and the town was agitated respecting the inclosure of certain common lands, which was opposed by the corporation. On 5 September his name occurs as one of the ancient freeholders to be compensated. On 8 October he and Thomas Greene, gent., enter into covenant regarding compensation for inclosure intended by William Replingham. Thomas Greene was clerk to the corporation, and being sent to London on this business, says, on 17 November:-"My cousin Shakespeare coming yesterday to town I went to see him, and he and Mr. Hall say they think there will be nothing done at all." On 23 December a hall of the corporation was held, and letters with nearly all the corporation's signatures were written to Mr. Manyring and Mr. Shakespeare, and Greene subjoins that he also writ to his cousin Shakespeare copies of all the acts and a note of the inconveniences that would happen. He holds the confidence of the public and of his relatives to the last. In 1614 his name is on the jury list in a copy of the customs of the manor of Rowington; he had property in fee from that manor. In the same year John Combe leaves him 57. in his will. There is also a notice in the Stratford Chamberlain's accounts of a quart of sack and a quart of claret given to a preacher at New Place, cost 20d. In 1616 Judith, his daughter, was married to Thomas Quiney, vintner, Stratford (February 10); on 25 March he made his will; on his fifty-third birthday he died, and was buried two days after in Trinity Church, Stratford, where the bust, made from a cast taken after death still exists, though, through Malone's want of taste, the hazel eyes, the auburn hair and beard, the scarlet doublet, black tabard, green and crimson cushion, and gilt tassels were all whitewashed. His wife survived him seven years. Five years' poverty, twenty years' hard work, three years' rest in bereavement, then the final rest in the grave. Such was Shakespeare's life after leaving his home in 1585-6; such is the life of most true men. La vie c'est le travail, said Poisson. Without the work he may have been happier ; but who would not accept his lot with all its troubles? Loved by his fellows, his relatives, and friends, respected by his citizens, favoured by two sovereigns, he sank into an honoured grave to become the favourite of his countrymen, and the idol of all that care for literature or art. A myriad-minded man, as all great men are, more or less: but more than this, a true-hearted, loving, catholic soul, one to whom nothing in God's universe is strange, nothing despicable; the nearest approach to perfect of all the mighty geniuses our little island has produced. I append in illustration of the preceding statements extracts from contemporaries alluding to Shakespeare personally, or to passages in his plays chronologically important. These will form the subject of the next chapter. The whitewash is now removed and the colours restored. CHAPTER II. PASSAGES SUPPOSED TO ALLUDE TO SHAKESPEARE, EXTRACTED FROM CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS. "It is a common practice nowadays among a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of noverint whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarce Latinise their neckverse if they should have need."-NASH, Preface to Greene's Menaphon, 1589. ... "New found songs and sonnets which every red-nose fiddler hath at his finger's end; . . . . make poetry an occupation, lying is their living, and fables are their movables. .. think knowledge a burden, tapping it before they have half tunned it, venting it before they have filled it, in whom the saying of the orator is verified: Ante ad dicendum quam ad cognoscendum veniunt. They come to speak before they come to know. They contemn arts as unprofitable, contenting themselves with a little country-grammar knowledge."-NASH, Anatomy of Absurdity, 1590. "With the first and second leaf he plays very prettily, and in ordinary terms of extenuating verdits Piers Penniless for a grammarschool wit; says his margin is as deeply learned as Fauste precor gelida."-NASH, Piers Penniless, 1592. For my part I do "Alas, poor Latinless authors. challenge no praise of learning to myself, yet have I worn a gown in the University, and so hath caret tempus non habet moribus; but this I dare presume, that if any Mecenas bind me to him by his bounty, or extend some sound liberality to me worth the speaking of, I will do him as much honor as any poet of my beardless years shall in England."-NASH, Piers Penniless, 1592. "Our pleasant Willy ah is dead of late," &c. SPENSER, Tears of the Muses, 1590, refers probably to Lilly, who "wrote no play after 1589," says Malone. "An upstart crow beautified in our feathers that, with his 'Tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide,' 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.”—GREENE, Groatsworth of Wit, 1592. "About three months since died Mr. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter written to divers playwriters is offensively by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be avenged, they wilfully forge in their conceits a living author; and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must needs light on me.. With neither of them that take offence 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. . . . that I did not I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault ; because myself have seen his demeanor no less civil than 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 wit. I protest it was all Greene's, and not mine nor Master Nash's, as some have unjustly affirmed."— CHETTLE, Kind Hart's Dream, 1592. .... "Shakespeare paints poor Lucreece' rape." Willobie, his Avisa, 1594 "And there though last not least is Aetion, SPENSER, Colin Clout's come Home again, 1595. ! But this more likely means Drayton (Rowland), author of Heroical Epistles and Idea (ideá alтiov). See extracts from Athenæum in Part ii. = Kempe." Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shake. speare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit. Burbage. "He is a shrewd fellow, indeed." Return from Parnassus, 1602 (?). "The sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honeytongued Shakespeare. Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucreece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends. Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour's Won, his Midsummer's Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. "The Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase if they would speak English," &c., &c.—MERES, Palladis Tamia, 1598. 66 "And Shakespeare, thou whose honey-flowing vein "Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare. Their rosy-tainted features clothed in tissue Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother: Fair firehot Venus, charming him to love her, Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses, Proud, lust-stung Tarquin seeking still to prove her; |