non-dramatic prose compositions of Shakespeare that have descended to modern times, while the former are, alas, the sole remaining samples of his epistolary writings. The latter are of course by far the more interesting, and, making allowances for the inordinate deference to rank which then prevailed, they are perfect examples of the judicious fusion of independence with courtesy in a suggestive application for a favor, and in expressions of gratitude for its concession. In the June of this same year, 1594, Titus Andronicus was performed at Newington Butts by the Lord Chamberlain's, then acting in conjunction with the Lord Admiral's, Servants, the poet most likely taking a part in the representation. The earliest definite notice, however, of his appearance on the stage, is one in which he is recorded as having been a player in two comedies that were acted before Queen Elizabeth in the following December, at Greenwich Palace. He was then described as one of the Lord Chamberlain's Servants, and was associated in the performances with Kemp and Burbage, the former of whom was the most favorite comedian of the day. It is not known to what company or companies Shakespeare belonged previously to his adhesion to the one last named; but the probabilities are these.-It is well ascertained that Henslowe was an exceedingly grasping manager, and it is therefore, most unlikely that he would have speculated in new plays that were not intended for immediate use. We may then fairly assume that every drama composed for him would be, in the first instance, produced by the actors that occupied his theater when the manuscript was purchased. Now, as Shakespeare was an actor as well as a dramatist, there is an inclination towards the belief that he would have been engaged at Henslowe's theater when employed to write for that personage, and, if we accept the theory of early production, would have belonged to those companies by whom the first representations of his dramas were given. If this view be taken, it would appear not altogether unlikely that the poet was one of Lord Strange's actors in March, 1592; one of Lord Pembroke's a few months later; and that he had joined the company of the Earl of Sussex in or before January, 1594. There were rare doings at Gray's Inn in the Christmas holidays of the year last mentioned. The students of that house had usually excelled in their festive arrangements, and now they were making preparations for revels on a scale of exceptional magnificence, sports that were to include burlesque performances, masques, plays and dances, as well as processions through London and on the Thames. A mock Court was held at the Inn under the presidency of one Henry Helmes, a Norfolk gentleman, who was elected Prince of Purpoole, the ancient name of the manor, other students being elected to serve under him in all the various offices then appertaining to royalty and government. The grand entertainment of all was arranged for the evening of Innocent's Day, December 28, on which occasion high scaffolds had been erected in the hall for the accommodation of the revelers and the principal guests, a larger number of the latter having received invitations. Among the guests, the students of the Inner Temple, joining in the humor of their professional neighbors, and appearing as an embassy credited by their Emporer, arrived about nine o'clock "very gallantly appointed." The ambas sador, we are told, was "brought in very solemnly, with sound of trumpets, the King-at-Arms and Lords of Purpoole making to his company, which marched before him in order; he was received very kindly by the Prince, and placed in a chair beside his Highness, to the end that he might be partaker of the sports intended." Complimentary addresses were then exchanged between the Prince and the Ambassador, but, owing to defective arrangements for a limitation of the number of those entitled to admission on the stage, there followed a scene of confusion which ended in the Templarians retiring in dudgeon. "After their departure," as we are told in the original narrative, "the throngs and tumults did somewhat cease, although so much of them continued as was able to disorder and confound any good inventions whatsoever; in regard whereof, as also for that the sports intended were especially for the gracing of the Templarians, it was thought good not to offer anything of account saving dancing and reveling with gentlewomen; and, after such sports, a Comedy of Errors, like to Plautus his Menechmus, was played by the players; so that night was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was afterwards called the Night of Errors." This is the earliest notice of the comedy which has yet been discovered, but that it was written before the year 1594 may be inferred from an allusion in it to the civil war for and against Henry IV, the Protestant heir to the French throne, a contest which terminated in 1593. The spacious and elegant open-roofed hall of Gray's Inn, the erection of which was completed in the year 1560, is one of the only two buildings now remaining in London in which, so far as we know, any of the plays of Shakespeare were performed in his own time. In accordance with the then usual custom of the Inns of Court, professional actors were engaged for the representation of the Comedy of Errors, and although their names are not mentioned, it may be safely inferred that the play was acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Company, that to which Shakespeare was then attached, and the owners of the copyright. The performance must have taken place very late on the night following the day in which the poet appeared before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich. On the next evening there was a Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Gray's Inn to enquire into the circumstances of the misfortunes of the previous night, the cause of the tumult being assigned to the intervention of a sorcerer; but it is hardly pleasant to be told, even in burlesque, that this personage was accused of having "foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions." The Comedy of Errors, the perfection of dramatic farce, long continued an acting play, it having been performed before James I on December 28, 1604. When Greene thought to be sarcastic in terming Shakespeare "an absolute Johannes Factotum," he furnished an independent and valuable testimony to the poet's conspicuous activity. It is but reasonable to assume that part of this energy in theatrical matters was devoted, in accordance with the ordinary practice of the time, to the revision and enlargement of the plays of others, work then assigned by managers to any convenient hands, without reference to sentimental views of authorial integrity. No record, however, has been discovered of the name of even one drama so treated by Shakespeare in the early period of his career, so that, if any such composition is preserved, the identification necessarily depends upon the tests of internal evidence. These are valueless in the chief direction, for there is surely not a known possible example in which is to be traced the incontestible supremacy of dramatic power that would on that account sanction the positive attribution of even one of its scenes to the pen of the great dramatist. Other tests, such as those of phraseology and mannerism, are nearly always illusory, but in an anonymous and popular drama entitled the Reign of King Edward III, produced in or before the year 1595, there are occasional passages which, by most judgments, will be accepted as having been written either by Shakespeare, or by an exceedingly dexterous and successful imitator of one of his then favorite styles of composition. For who but one or the other could have endowed a kind and gentle lady with the ability of replying to the impertinent addresses of a foolish sovereign in words such as these, As easy may my intellectual soul Be lent away, and yet my body live, or have enabled the king, when instinctively acknowledging the dread effect of her beauty, to thus express a wish that "ugly treason" might lie, No farther off than her conspiring eye, |