Tapster. Nay, tarry, Slie, for Ile go home with thee, And heare the rest that thou hast dreamt to-night.

The variations between the copies of 1594 and 1607 are not material, the latter being a reprint from the former; unless, as Reed asserts, there was an intermediate edition in 1596*. One circumstance has not been remarked by the commentators, viz., that the scene of the old Taming of a Shrew is laid in Athens, and that the names of the characters are a mixture of Greek, Latin, Italian, English, and Scotch. Shakespeare transferred it to Padua, and altered the dramatis persona, observing in this particular, and some others, more dramatic propriety.

* Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, ii. 341.

84

THE IMMEDIATE

PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE.

INTRODUCTION.

ANTERIOR to the year 1593, when it has been assumed that Shakespeare first began to attract notice as a dramatic poet, we have seen that the following five theatres were certainly open :—the Blackfriars, the Whitefriars, the Rose on the Bankside, a playhouse at Newington Butts, and Paris Garden, where plays were occasionally performed. Besides these, it is probable that the Hope was also in use at this period, and the school-room at St. Paul's had been early applied to the purpose of acting plays: the employment of inn-yards also, as temporary places of exhibition, had not been entirely discontinued. It is not possible, perhaps, to arrive at anything like a correct notion with regard to the number of companies at any one time playing in London and its vicinity: the writer of a letter to Secretary Walsingham, quoted under the date of 1586 in the Annals of the Stage,' mentions the players of the Queen, of Lord Leicester, of Lord Oxford, Lord Nottingham, and divers others,' then performing; and in the whole he states that there were

not less than two hundred players in and near the metropolis. Allowing for puritanical exaggeration on the part of the writer, and supposing the number to be only about one hundred, each company at that date could scarcely exceed ten or twelve persons, and this calculation would give about ten companies performing in London and its vicinity in 1586.

Philip Henslowe's manuscript Diary commences about five years afterwards, and two years before Shakespeare became an author of mark and likelihood.' His business, judging from his own accounts, seems originally to have been that of a sort of pawnbroker, who advanced money upon various kinds of property, but especially upon wearing apparel. The players often pledged their dresses with him, and afterwards hired them when they were wanted: this probably was the commencement of Henslowe's connection with plays and theatres. Various companies in this manner might become his debtors, and he ultimately possessed a large share of the wardrobe and properties of the playhouses with which he was concerned. In 1591, he either extensively repaired or built the Rose on the Bankside; and on the 19th of February, in that year, he began to register his proportion of the receipts. The house was then in the occupation of Lord Strange's players. On the 27th of December, 1593, he was connected in the same way with Lord Sussex's players, who, in April following, joined the Queen's players; but the union appears to have been of very short duration, and after April, 1593, Hen

slowe's concern with Lord Strange's, Lord Sussex's, and the Queen's players seems to have ceased entirely. His interest in the receipts by the Earl of Nottingham's (Lord Admiral) players must have commenced in May, 1594; and we do not find that he was engaged at all permanently with any other association of actors until James I. had been for some time on the throne. In his Diary or account-book (still preserved in Dulwich College), he has merely written the name of the play, and the amount of the takings' at the doors he was entitled to receive from February, 1591, to December, 1597; and we can only ascertain the poets who contributed their productions in that interval, by such of their works as have been printed and have come down to us, or regarding which there exists any extraneous intelligence.

It is probable that prior to the year 1592, or 1593, the copy-right of plays was little understood and less recognised; and that various companies were performing the same dramas at the same time, although perhaps they had been bought by one company for its sole use. The only security against invasions of the kind seems to have been the non-publication of plays, which will account for the few that have reached us, compared with the vast number known to have been written: it will account also for the imperfect state of many of them, especially of those of the earliest dates. A popular play, written for one company, and perhaps acted by that company as it was written, might be surreptitiously obtained by another, having been at

best taken down from the mouths of the original performers: from the second company it might be procured by a third, and after a succession of changes, corruptions, and omissions, it might find its way at last to the press. I take it for granted, therefore, that such favourite authors as Robert Greene, Christopher Marlow, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Thomas Kyd, and some few others, furnished dramatic entertainments not for one company only, but for most of the associations of actors in the metropolis prior to 1593; and when we find early in Henslowe's Diary an entry of Tamburlaine, played by Lord Strange's actors, we may conclude that it was exhibited also by the Queen's, Lord Nottingham's, Lord Oxford's, or any other company that could contrive to get up something like the original performance. The extremely popular play by Christopher Marlow, just named, is an instance exactly in point. On the title-page of the printed copy in 1590, we are told that it was played. by the servants of the Lord Admiral, yet Henslowe five times mentions its performance by the servants of Lord Strange prior to April, 1592.

At a subsequent date, the case seems to have been different, and after December, 1597, when Henslowe began to insert the names of authors, as well as the titles of plays, we find few notices of pieces which appear distinctly to have been employed by other companies than that acting under the name of the Lord Admiral. This circumstance enables us to judge, in