gate which Hotspur built, and look upon the Castle in which the Percies dwelt. T'wo centuries had passed since Hotspur fell at Shrewsbury; but his memory lived in the ballads of his land, and the dramatic poet had bestowed upon it a more lasting glory. The play of Henry IV. was written before the union of England and Scotland under one crown, and when the two countries had constant feuds which might easily have broken out into actual war. But Shakspere, at the very time when the angry passions of England were excited by the Raid of Carlisle, thus made his favourite hero teach the English to think honourably of their gallant neighbours :

Hath taught us how to cherish such high deels,
Even in the bosom of our adversaries,"

John Taylor contrived to be eighteen days on the road riding from Edinburgh to London: he was fifteen days in his progress from Berwick to Islington. Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows would make greater speed, and linger not so recklessly over the good cheer of the inns and mansions that opened their gates to them. "The way from Berwick to York and so to London" is laid down very precisely in Harrison's Description of England; and the several stages present a total of 260 miles. The route thus given makes a circuit of several miles at Tadcaster; and yet it is 82 miles shorter than the present distance from Berwick to London. Taylor says, "The Scots do allow altnost as large measure of their miles as they do of their drink." So it would appear they did also in England in the days of Shakspere. Sir Robert Carey crept out of the Palace of Richmond, where Elizabeth had just died, at three o'clock in the morning of Thursday the 24th of March, and he reached Edinburgh on the night of Saturday the 26th. He had of course relays of horses. Lawrence Fletcher and his fellows without this advantage would be ten or twelve days on the same road.

'AT our feast we had a play called Twelve Night; or, What you Will, much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmus in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from a lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c., and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." The student of the Middle Temple, whose little diary, after snugly lying amongst the Harleian Manuscripts, now in the British Museum, unnoticed for two centuries and a quarter, luckily turned up to give us one authentic memorial of a play of Shakspere's, is a facetious and gossiping young gentleman, who appears to have mixed with actors and authors, recording the scandal which met his ear with a diligent credulity. The 2nd of February, 1602, was the Feast of the

Purification, which feast and All-Hallown Day, according to Dugdale, "are the only feasts in the whole year made purposely for the Judges and Serjeants of this Society, but of later time divers noblemen have been mixed with them." The order of entertainment on these occasions is carefully recorded by the same learned antiquary.* The scarlet robes of the Judges and Serjeants, the meat carried to the table by gentlemen of the house under the bar, the solemn courtesies, the measures led by the Ancient with his white staff, the call by the reader at the cupboard "to one of the gentlemen of the bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to give the Judges a song," the bowls of hypocras presented to the Judges with solemn congees by gentlemen under the bar,all these ceremonials were matter of grave arrangement according to the most exact precedents. But Dugdale also tells us of "Post Revels performed by the better sort of the young gentlemen of the Society, with galliards, corantos, and other dances; or else with stage plays." The historian does not tell us whether the stage plays were performed by the young gentlemen of the Society, or by the professional players. The exact description which the student gives of the play of Twelfth Night would lead us to believe that it had not been previously familiar to him. It was not printed. The probability therefore is that it was performed by the players, and by Shakspere's company. The vicinity of the Blackfriars would necessarily render the members of the two Societies well acquainted with the dramas of Shakspere, and with the poet himself. There would be other occasions than the feast days of the Society that Shakspere would be found amidst those Courts. Amongst "the solemn temples" which London contained, no one would present a greater interest than that ancient edifice in which he might have listened, when a young man, to the ablest defender of the Church which had been founded upon the earlier religion of England; one who did not see the wisdom of wholly rejecting all ceremonials consecrated by habit and tradition; who eloquently wrote "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power." It was in the spirit of this doctrine that Shakspere himself

wrote

Dugdale's

"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order."‡

He

Origines' was published six years after the Restoration. speaks of the solemn revels of the Inns of Court, with reference to their past and to their existing state. They had wont to be entertained with Post Revels, which had their dances and their stage plays. This was before the domination of the Puritans, when stage plays and dancing were equally denounced, as "the very works, the pomps, inventions, and chief delights of the devil."§

'Origines Juridiciales,' p. 205.

Troilus and Cressida, Act I., Scene III.

+ Hooker's 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' Book I.

§ Prynne's Histrio-Mustix.'

There is a passage in Dugdale which shows how the revels at the Inns of Court gradually changed their character according to the prevailing opinions : "When the last measure is dancing. the Reader at the Cupboard calls to one of the Gentlemen of the Bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to give the Judges a song: who forthwith begins the first line of any psalm as he thinks fittest; after which all the rest of the company follow, and sing with him." This is very like the edifying practice of the Court of Francis I., where the psalms of Clement Marot were sung to a fashionable jig, or a dance of Poitou.* Shakspere had good authority when he made the clown say of his three-man song-men, "They are most of them means and basses: but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes." This is one of the few allusions which Shakspere has to that rising sect, which in a few years was to become the dominant power in the state. Ben Jonson attacks them again and again with the most bitter indignation and the coarsest satire.‡ The very hardest gird which Shakspere has at them is contained in the gentle reproof of Sir Toby to the steward, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" In this very scene of Twelfth Night he ridicules the unreasoning hostility with which the Puritans them.selves were assailed by the ignorant multitude. Sir Toby asks to be told something of the steward :

See Warton's ' History of English Poetry,' Section xlv.

+ Winter's Tale, Act IV. Scene II.

See 'The Alchymist,' and 'Bartholomew Fair.'