to have been produced by "Her Majesty's Children and the Children of Paul's."

The Company to which Shakespeare belonged.Shakespeare's company was, as we have seen, licensed by the Earl of Leicester. On the death of the latter, Lord Strange (afterwards Earl of Derby) issued their licenses, and when he died in 1594 the first and second Lords Hunsdon-both of whom successively held the office of Lord Chamberlain―took the company under their protection. After the accession of James I. to the throne of England, he became their patron, and they were henceforth called "The King's Players."

Shakespeare's Work in connection with the Theatre. Subordinate though the position might be in which Shakespeare commenced his dramatic career, his surpassing genius would not be long in asserting itself and raising him rapidly up the successive rungs in the social as well as the dramatic ladder. As an actor, his success was said to have been only mediocre, but that estimate was a comparative one, based on the high standard of Burbage and Alleyn, and influenced moreover by the splendour of Shakespeare's own success in dramatic composition. Contemporary report passed this criticism upon his playing, that he performed parts of a regal and dignified character with a majestic impressiveness that was most effective.

From Editor to Dramatist.-But it was as an adapter and reviser of other men's plays to meet contemporary tastes and circumstances that Shakespeare proved of such signal service to his company, and almost imperceptibly he passed from redactor or editor into dramatist. His life henceforward, as far as its facts have reached us to-day, was really summed up in the production of the successive dramas in the great Shakespearian cycle. There is little else to chronicle from 1592, when the first undeniable contemporary references to him occur, to the time of his death in 1616. Of his career independent of his plays, suffice to say that he appeared along with his company before the Queen at Greenwich in 1594, his name being mentioned second on the list. In 1596, on the death of his son Hamnet, he probably visited Stratford, and afforded material assistance to his old father, for henceforth John

Shakespeare's monetary troubles come to an end, and he even applied to the College of Heralds for a "Coat of Arms." The application was not successful until 1599, but there can be little doubt that both the proposal and the suggestion as to device and motto proceeded from the poet.

Shakespeare purchases "New Place" and adjoining Lands. In the following year renewed evidences of prosperity were furnished. Shakespeare purchased New Place, the largest house in Stratford, which, after having repaired and otherwise improved it, he let for a term of years. A few years later he purchased from his neighbours, the Combes, on two several occasions, property to the extent of 127 acres of pasture and arable land adjoining the house.

Becomes a Shareholder in the "Globe." In 1599 Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, having built the "Globe Theatre on the Bankside, in part at least from the materials of the old "Theatre,' leased out for a term of twenty-one years, shares in the revenue accruing from the new house, "to those deserving men, Shakespeare, Hemings, Condell, Phillips A and others." The shares were sixteen in number, and

piece of glass, W.A.S. (William and Anne Shakespeare?) supposed to have come from New Place.

of these Shakespeare probably held two. They of course entailed responsibility for providing a share of the current working expenses of the theatre.

Shakespeare at the Zenith of his Powers and Fame. John Shakespeare died in 1601, and William, as the eldest son, inherited the two houses in Henley Street, the only portion of the property of the elder Shakespeare or his wife, as Mr Sydney Lee points out, which had not been alienated to creditors.

To his mother the poet granted the life-rent of one of them, but she did not long survive her husband, and in 1608 she too passed away. In March 1603 Queen Elizabeth closed her long and glorious reign. Exactly a year later, i.e. in March 1604, James I. made his State entry into London, and on that occasion nine actors belonging to the King's Players walked in the procession, each clad in a scarlet robe. First on the list, stands the name of William Shakespeare. In 1605 William D'Avenant was christened, the son of John D'Avenant of the Crown Inn, and Shakespeare stood as godfather. This babe was afterwards to become celebrated in literature as a Restoration dramatist, under the name of Sir William D'Avenant.

Marriage of Susanna Shakespeare.-That Shakespeare was not only a capable but even a keen man of business has frequently been asserted. Of this no better proof is needed than the investments he chose for his money. Land or house property was invariably his preference. In one case, however, he deviated from his rule, when in 1605 he purchased the unexpired term of thirty-one years of a ninety-two years' lease of a portion of the tithes of Stratford and district. Susanna Shakespeare, the poet's eldest daughter, was married in June 1607 to Dr John Hall of Stratford, who was yet to achieve fame as a physician and as author of a medical work of note in its day-Select Observations. The poet was tenderly attached to her and to her husband. This is proved by the terms of his will. To them he left the bulk of his property and appointed them the executors of his estate, besides entrusting to them the care of his wife.

His

Shakespeare retires to Stratford.-In 1611 Shakespeare appears to have left London and retired to Stratford. life had been a strenuously busy one, and he may have felt the approach of premature old age. Besides, his dramatic work was complete. With that calm, common-sense insight into the inmost soul of things native to him, he may have realised that his plays constituted "a full-orbed whole," that his creative period was ended, and that any additions to his works might only weaken not strengthen his hold on the public. From 1611 to 1616 he lived the life of a Warwickshire country gentleman, attending to his property and paying

periodical visits to London. In 1613 his third brother, Richard, died, followed eighteen months later by the poet's intimate friend, John Combe. Whether or not Shakespeare regarded these as warnings to set his house in order, whether or not he felt old age approaching, is unknown, but he seems to have had the idea that his life was not likely to reach the allotted span. Early in January 1616 he gave orders to prepare his will, just a week or two before his younger daughter Judith's marriage to Thomas Quiney, vintner, son of that Richard Quiney whose letter to the poet with respect to the loan of a sum of money is still extant. Almost before the will could be engrossed and the legal formalities completed, he was stricken down, and on the 23rd April 1616 the light of life for him went out, who more than any other son of man that ever lived has a prescriptive right to the title, "the intellectual monarch of the human race."

HE

Signature of Shakespeare from the deed mortgaging his house in Blackfriars, on March 11, 16123, now in the British Museum.

The Growth of Shakespeare's Genius.-The development of the genius of William Shakespeare should be traced altogether independent of the facts of his career. We have therefore

preferred to tell the story of his life first, thereafter to trace the growth of his many-sided mind in his dramas. Shakespeare is unquestionably the most extraordinary intellectual being the world has known. His genius consisted in the absolute equality or equipoise which existed between his imaginative and his intellectual natures. Had either been present in larger measure than the other, he might have become a profound philosopher or a great poet, but he never would have risen to the supreme heights of a Hamlet, an Othello, a Macbeth and a Lear.

Shakespeare's genius, therefore, developed with steady and equable persistence along the parallel lines of supreme imaginative