seems to have fallen upon the busy merchant. His prosperity declined. He was unable to contribute to the customary civic levies for the relief of the poor, etc., his property had to be mortgaged to his brother-in-law, Edmund Lambert, and at last he was deprived of his seat in the Council on the ground of irregularity in attendance.

Shakespeare's Education.-During the first seven or eight years of his life William had probably known a fair measure of

domestic comfort. He would be sent, as was usual, to the Free Grammar School at Stratford, an old "foundation" re-organised by Edward VI. His teachers there would in all likelihood be Walter Roche, who was succeeded by Thomas Hunt in 1577, while the "matter" of the instruction imparted would be almost wholly classical. After the boys had gone through the Accidence (cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, IV. i.) and Lily's Latin Grammar, along with the Sententiae Pueriles, they passed on to the study of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Seneca, Cicero, Terence and Plautus, while Baptist Mantuanus, the popular Renaissance poet, was widely read as an introduction to Virgil. Greek was rarely taught in the provinces, and there are no traces of its having formed part of the school course in Stratford until later. That the system of education pursued in Shakespeare's case was thorough is evident from those scenes in Love's Labour's

THE TRAGEDY C

Lost where Holofernes appears, and also in the Merry Wives Windsor where Sir Hugh Evans is introduced examining his pu in the early pages of the Accidence. French, likewise, formed o of the branches in which the poet attained considerable proficienc as the dialogues in that language in Henry V. undeniably prov Some writers have found difficulty in accounting for Shakespeare marvellous fund of information by the amount of school trainin that had fallen to his lot. But he had received a sound middle class education, and had profited by it, as Shakespeare alone coul profit. During this period, any boy possessing that marvellou union of keen faculty with receptive capacity characteristic of him must have amassed, through the medium of the senses alone, jus such a vast store of information as he acquired. Sir Walter Scott' mind was constituted on somewhat similar lines, and in age he could repeat entire pages of ballads which he had heard only once recited in early youth.

Shakespeare begins Work.-Shakespeare's schooldays probably lasted from 1571-1577. At thirteen, owing to his father's increasing commercial difficulties, the boy was removed from school, and according to one tradition was apprenticed to his father's business, according to another, bound to a butcher. To this myth, Aubrey makes the addition, that when the future dramatist killed a calf he was wont to make a speech and do it in high style.

1583 their first child Susanna was born, followed in February 1585 by the twins Hamnet and Judith, and early next year the poet in all likelihood withdrew from Stratford. That he was comI pelled to leave his native town in consequence of his share in a poaching raid over the estates of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, is proved a myth by the fact that the Charlecote deer forest was not in existence at the time. Certainly Sir Thomas Lucy was an = extensive game-preserver, and, as Lee says, "owned at Charlecote a warren in which a few harts may have found a home, but there

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was no deer forest the e." The tradition goes on to say that Lucy, having prosecuted and punished Shakespeare, the latter retaliated in a satire so bitter in tone that the local magnate's wrath was increased to such a degree against its author, that the latter judged it expedient to withdraw from the district for a time. Whether due to this cause, or to the increasing expenses of a young family, towards the support of which he could contribute but little, or to his conviction that continued association with his wife was impossible under existing conditions, certain it is that by 1586 they were living apart, and the poet was either in London or directing his steps thither.

JULIUS CAESA

His First Position in London.-Tradition reports ma tales, obviously fictions, as to his employment during the six ye between 1586 and 1592. By one narrator he is said to ha been a schoolmaster, by another a soldier in the Low Countri by a third a vintner's drawer, by a fourth a holder of horses front of the theatres, and so forth. The most probable of such tales is that which states that he had been recommended the players by some of those Stratford friends they had mad during their visits there, and that he was employed as prompter assistant or "call-boy" at Burbage's playhouse, "The Theatre."

The Lot of the Elizabethan Player.-If Shakespear arrived in London in 1586, he would find two theatres in existence viz., "THE THEATRE," erected in 1576 in Shoreditch by Jame Burbage, father of the great tragic actor, and "THE CURTAIN," built about the same time as the other in Moorfields. Both were without the City boundaries, as the Corporation of London would not permit playhouses within the municipality. To the former of these Shakespeare became attached, and in the company he then joined the Earl of Leicester's-he remained until he quitted the stage. Actors in those days were all obliged to shelter themselves under the name of some leading personage. By an Act of Parliament passed in 1571 (14 Eliz., Cap. 2), they were enjoined, if they would escape being treated as rogues and vagabonds, to procure a license to pursue their calling from the monarch, from a peer of the realm, or from some high official of the Court. Both Elizabeth and the leading nobles of the time, however, were so liberal in granting permits that no player of any standing had difficulty in procuring the license which gave him a social status. There were at least six companies of adult actors playing at this time, and owning the licenses respectively of the Earls of Leicester, Oxford, Sussex and Worcester, the Lord Admiral (Charles Lord Howard), while one of them held the permit of the Queen, and was called the "Queen's Servants" or company of players. In addition, there were three companies of licensed boy-actors, formed from the choristers of St Paul's and the Chapel Royal, also from Westminster School. Between the adult and the boy-players intense rivalry existed, and the dramatists took sides in the dispute. For instance, the most of Lyly's plays are stated on the title-pages