costumes. Novel luxuries found their way into use. Architecture improved, spacious halls and splendid mansions were erected. Forks were introduced, and table etiquette improved along with a more luxurious service. Great sums were expended in pageants and entertainments, to which the common citizens were often admitted. Men thought and spoke as they dressed and planned lavishly. The highly elaborate and artificial diction affected by Lyly and Sidney was imitated and exaggerated by the court; it too was significant of the time. In this epoch the imagination ruled. Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare were as truly types of the age in literature as were the men of daring and brilliant action already named. In the light of such conditions we may appreciate the language of the French historian Taine, when, in introducing his chapter on Shakespeare, he declares that this great age alone could have cradled such a child.

This was the character of the time when Shakespeare came to London. The Shepherds' Calendar had been written at Penshurst, where Sidney had framed the passionate sonnets comprised in Astrophel and Stella, and Spenser was now in Ireland busy in his leisure over the first three books of The Faerie Queene. Francis Bacon, recently admitted to the bar, was pursuing his unhappy career in search of preferment at court, and accepting favors from the young Earl of Essex, then prime favorite with the queen. Ben Jonson was attending Westminster School, a lad

of twelve. the court. Peele and Greene were in their prime, and Marlowe was at work on Tamburlaine, his first success. There is no exact record of Shakespeare's first experiences at the capital. In some manner he found employment at one of the two playhouses then open,

The comedies of Lyly were in fashion with

In London.

probably in some subordinate position such as caretaker or servant for the benefit of patrons. Then he became a member of the company, and in the adaptation of old plays he doubtless began his apprenticeship as a writer for the stage. In time, as his ability was recognized, he was set at more ambitious tasks, and, first in collaboration with established playwrights, then in the full freedom of his own exuberant fancy, he began to produce his works. Of Shakespeare's success as an actor few notes have been preserved. He is described by one contemporary as "excellent in the quality he professes.' "1 Another says that he was "a handsome, well-shaped man," and an old actor, William Beeston, asserted that he "did act exceeding well." We know that Shakespeare appeared in two of Ben Jonson's plays, Every Man in his Humor and Sejanus; also that he played the part of Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost in Hamlet; by one writer 2 this last rôle was referred to as top of his performance.' That he played principal parts in all his own dramas is affirmed in the first collected edition (1623) of his works.

Period.

66

the

Shakespeare's hand is felt in Titus Andronicus and in the First Part of King Henry VI. Concerning the former there is a tradition that some dramatist, His First now unidentified, brought the play to Shakespeare's company, and that it was turned over to the poet for revision. The "history" may have been written by Marlowe and Shakespeare in conjunction. About 1590 the young dramatist began original work. The result of the next five years included Love's Labour's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night's Dream,

1 Henry Chettle, publisher of Greene's Pamphlet, 1592.
2 Nicholas Rowe.

HIS FIRST PERIOD

137

Romeo and Juliet, the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI., Richard III., Richard II., and King John. Because of their preponderance, this is often called the period of the early comedies and histories. As it represents the experimental stage of Shakespeare's activity, Mr. Dowden describes it by the phrase "In the Workshop." That the poet's power was recognized is evident from an interesting note of the time which also indicates that his success was sufficiently marked to rouse the jealousy of some older men. In 1592 appeared a little book entitled A Groatsworth of Wit, the last utterance of the popular and profligate playwright, Robert Greene, who died in beggary just before the publication of his pamphlet. In a spirit of bitterness Greene remonstrates against the habits of new writers, accusing them of making too free with the material of his own plays and the productions of his friends, Marlowe and Peele. One sentence of his indictment addressed to the writers named gains importance because of its reference to Shakespeare:

"Yes, trust them not," he says, "for there is an upstart Crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapped in a players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes Factotum is, in his owne conceit, the only Shake-scene in the countrie."

In the Third Part of King Henry VI. occurs the line,

"Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide,"

and the allusion in Greene's attack suggests that possibly he, at least in part, was author of the original plays which Shakespeare recast finally in the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. But the charge made by Greene is of importance mainly as being the

earliest known allusion to the poet in print, and as throwing light upon the nature of his labors and their success. In a publication only three months later, Chettle apologizes for this reference, and warmly approves the dramatist and his art. The dedication of the two poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece (1593, 1594), is ample proof of Shakespeare's recognition by those who patronized the arts.

Between 1595 and 1601 Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, the two parts of King Henry IV., King Henry V., Merry Wives of Windsor, Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, As

Second
Period.

You Like It, Twelfth Night. This is the period of the later comedies—what Dowden denominates "In the World." Here we fall immediately under the spell of Shakespeare's perfect art. Never have sentiment and romance, pathos and humor, mingled so exquisitely as in these beautiful creations of rich poetic fancy and dramatic power. Five at least of the plays are masterpieces. Elizabeth is said to have been so taken with the character of Falstaff in King Henry IV. that she bade the author show that personage in love; and tradition ascribes the creation of the Merry Wives to this command. Evidences of the poet's prosperity are not wanting. In 1597 John Shakespeare was allowed the grant of a coat of arms; there after the title "Gentleman appears following any legal mention of Shakespeare's name. In that same year the playwright purchased New Place in Stratford, the home he occupied after his retirement from the stage. This was the first of a series of investments which imply a thrifty disposition as well as financial success. In 1597 also begins the publication of Shakespeare's plays. Sixteen of these were printed during the author's lifetime, and these were published