fact of the adverse circumstances of his father at the time rendering it impossible for him to have received effectual assistance from his parents; nor is there reason for believing that he was likely to have obtained substantial aid from the relatives of his wife. Johnson no doubt accurately reported the tradition of his day, when, in 1765, he stated that Shakespeare "came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments." To the same effect is the earlier testimony given by the author of Ratseis Ghost, 1605, where the strolling player, in a passage reasonably believed to refer to the great dramatist, observes in reference to actors, "I have heard, indeede, of some that have gone to London very meanly and have come in time to be exceedingly wealthy." The author of the last-named tract was evidently well acquainted with the theatrical gossip of his day, so that his nearly contemporary evidence on the subject may be fairly accepted as a truthful record of the current belief.

It has been repeatedly observed that the visits of theatrical companies to the poet's native town suffice to explain the history of his connection with the stage, but it is difficult to understand how this could have been the case. There is no good evidence that a single one of the actors belonged to his neighborhood, and even if he had casually made the acquaintance of some of the itinerants, it is extremely unlikely that any extent of such intimacy would have secured the admission of an inexperienced person into their ranks. The histrionic art is not learned in a day, and it was altogether unusual with the sharers to receive into the company men who had not had the advantage of a very early training in the profession. It might, therefore, have been reasonably inferred, even in the ab

sence of tradition, that at this time Shakespeare could only have obtained employment at the theater in a very subordinate capacity, nor can it be safely assumed that there would have been an opening for him of any kind. The quotations above given seem to indicate that his earlier occupation was something of a still lower character. A traditional anecdote was current about the middle of the last century, according to which it would appear that the great dramatist, if connected in any sort of manner with the theater immediately upon his arrival in London, could only have been engaged in a servile capacity, and that there was, in the career of the great poet, an interval which some may consider one of degradation, to be regarded with either incredulity or sorrow. Others may,

with more discernment and without reluctance, receive the story as a testimony to his practical wisdom in accepting any kind of honest occupation in preference to starvation or mendicancy, and cheerfully making the best of the circumstances by which he was surrounded. The tale is related by several writers, but perhaps the best version is the one recorded by Dr. Johnson, in 1765, in the following terms,-"in the time of Elizabeth, coaches being yet uncommon and hired coaches not at all in use, those who were too proud, too tender or too idle to walk, went on horseback to any distant business or diversion;—many came on horseback to the play, and when Shakespeare fled to London from the terror of a criminal prosecution, his first expedient was to wait at the door of the play-house, and hold the horses of those that had no servants that they might be ready again after the performance;-in this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will

Shakespeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will Shakespeare could be had; this was the first dawn of better fortune;-Shakespeare, finding more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will Shakespeare was summoned, were immediately to present themselves, 'I am Shakespeare's boy, sir;'-in time Shakespeare found higher employment, but as long as the practice of riding to the play-house continued the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakespeare's Boys." Dr. Johnson received this anecdote from Pope, to whom it had been communicated by Rowe; and it appears to have reached the last-named writer through Betterton and Davenant.

It has been and is the fashion with most biographers to discredit the horse tradition entirely, but that it was originally related by Sir William Davenant, and belongs in some form to the earlier half of the seventeenth century, cannot reasonably be doubted. The circumstance of the anecdote being founded upon the practice of gentlemen riding to the theaters, a custom obsolete after the Restoration, is sufficient to establish the antiquity of the story. In a little volume of epigrams by Sir John Davis, printed at Middleborough in or about the year 1599, a man of inferior position is ridiculed for being constantly on horseback, imitating in that respect persons of higher rank, riding even "into the fieldes playes to behold." Most of these horsemen were probably accustomed to a somewhat lavish expenditure, and it may very well be assumed that Shakespeare not unfrequently received more than the ordinary fee of a tester for his services. There is, at all events, no valid reason for enrolling the tradition

among the absolute fictions that have been circulated respecting the poet. Several writers have taken that course mainly on the ground that, although it was known to Rowe, he does not allude to it in his Life of Shakespeare, 1709; but there is no improbability in the supposition that the story was not related to him until after the publication of that work, the second edition of which in 1714 is a mere reprint of the first. Other reasons for the omission may be suggested, but even if it be conceded that the anecdote was rejected as suspicious and improbable, that circumstance alone cannot be decisive against the opinion that there may be glimmerings of truth in it. This is, indeed, all that is contended for. Few would be disposed to accept the story literally as related by Johnson, but when it is considered that the tradition must be a very early one, that its genealogy is respectable, and that it harmonizes with the general old belief of the great poet having, when first in London, subsisted by "very mean employments," little doubt can fairly be entertained that it has at least in some way or other a foundation in real occurrences. It should also be remembered that horse-stealing was one of the very commonest offenses of the period, and one which was probably stimulated by the facility with which delinquents of that class obtained pardons. The safe custody of a horse was a matter of serious import, and a person who had satisfactorily fulfilled such a trust would not be lightly estimated.

It is important to observe that all the early traditions, to which any value can be attached, concur in the belief that Shakespeare did not leave his native town with histrionic intention. Even in the absence of those evidences, although it might not necessarily, still it might, and most

likely would, be a fallacy to assume that his dramatic tastes impelled him to undertake an arduous and premeditated journey to encounter the risk of an engagement at a metropolitan theater, however powerfully they may have influenced his choice of a profession after he had once arrived in London. For, residing throughout his youth in what may fairly be considered a theatrical neighborhood, with continual facilities for the cultivation of those tastes, if he had yielded in his boyish days to an impulsive fascination for the stage, it is most likely that he would in some way have joined the profession while its doors were readily accessible through one of the numerous itinerant companies, and before, not after, such inclinations must have been in some measure restrained by the local domestic ties that resulted from his marriage. If he had quitted Stratford-on-Avon in his early youth, there would be no difficulty in understanding that he became one of the elder player's boys or apprentices, but it is extremely unlikely that, at the age of twenty-one, he would have voluntarily left a wife and three children in Warwickshire for the sake of obtaining a miserable position on the London boards.

It is not, therefore, requisite to assume that Shakespeare rushed in the first instance to the theater or its neighborhood in search of employment, and a plausible explanation can be given of the circumstances which led him to the occupation mentioned in the Davenant anecdote. It appears that James Burbage, the owner of the theater, rented premises close by Smithfield in which he "usually kept horses at liverye for sundry persons"; his assistant, or rather manager, of the stable being "a northerne man usually called by the name of Robyn," possibly the same indi