and turned down Friday Street. Here the Earl, feeling faint, called out for something to drink; and it is most likely that the cup of wine which was brought to him came from the Mermaid. In a few hours the Earl and his principal followers were prisoners; before the end of the month the Earl was beheaded; Lord Southampton remained a prisoner in the Tower till the death of Elizabeth.

However Shakespeare may have been attracted by the social side of the tavern life of the time, there is little to be found in his writings in praise of strong drink, while there are some notable passages, as for instance in Othello and in Hamlet, against it. It is singular, too, that although smoking became so fashionable a habit in his day, there is not a single allusion to it by Shakespeare. Ben Jonson satirised the habit freely, as, for instance, in Every Man out of his Humour, one of the characters wishes to teach another to smoke, and says: "I will undertake in one fortnight to bring you that you shall take it plausibly in any ordinary, theatre, or the Tilt-yard if need be, i' the most popular assembly that is."

The humours of the London tavern have their part in the plays of Ben Jonson, notably the scenes at the Mitre in Every Man out of his Humour. But the

writings of Jonson can only be considered as documents when great allowance is made for the satiric intent of the artist. He was the Hogarth of the stage, and an uncorrected impression derived from him would lead to the belief that human beings in his time were nothing but what is base or ridiculous. As pictures of London life, Jonson's writings are admirable for points of detail; but for the larger outline and for the spirit of the age, Shakespeare is a more reliable guide. His scenes at the Boar's Head are probably more truly Elizabethan than Jonson's scenes at the Mitre.

And Shakespeare was always a poet. His observations were derived from the same source as Jonson's; but he gathered them all up into his imagination, and fused them with creative force. Jonson deepened the colours of vice, and heightened the effects of folly, to produce a sense of shame. Shakespeare selected what was admirable, and glorified it for an example. His pictures of villainy are artistic, not gross; the villain is a lost angel, whose soul is saved by his earthly destruction. In the language of today, the one was a Realist and the other an Idealist; but in the deep and true sense the Idealist was the more real.

It is to be doubted if Ben Jonson partook of the life of Nature in and around London as Shakespeare did. From his books to the busy haunts of men, thence to the tavern,—that was Jonson's life; there is no aroma of "God's out-of-doors" in his pages. We can imagine Shakespeare leaving him at the Mermaid, when the pipes were lit and the cups had been frequently replenished, although the sun was still shining outside from the west. Leaving Ben in his glory at the head of the table, it was with a sense of relief, perhaps, that Shakespeare walked in the direction of the sun, westward, through Paul's Churchyard, out by Ludgate into Fleet Street to New Street, as Chancery Lane was then called. Here he would probably turn towards Southampton House, and, as he came along by the garden-wall of his friend's mansion, he would see growing thereon the "Whitlowe Grasse " or "English Naile woort," described by Gerard in his Herball. But at this time his friend was in the Tower, and the song of the nightingale from the gardens of Lincoln's Inn would only add a cruel comment on the thought of his imprisonment. "No hungry generations tread thee down," Shakespeare may have thought with a modern poet, and conscious of inability to aid his benefactor, he

may have taken out his "tables," and have written, in answer to the satiric note of the bird, that sonnet which has not ceased to vibrate with his unwonted appeal to the future:

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes."

CHAPTER VI

WESTMINSTER AND WHITEHALL

HITHERTO We have concerned ourselves with the city and London life as the background of the playhouse and of Shakespeare's plays. But there is an essential factor in the influences of Shakespeare's career which remains to be considered. From the time that he became a servant of the Lord Chamberlain—and we know that he was in this position in the year 1594-Shakespeare stood in a definite relationship to the court. The first Lord Chamberlain under whom he served, Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth. Under him and under his successor, Shakespeare and his fellows frequently presented plays at court. On the death of the Queen the Lord Chamberlain's company became formally enrolled under the new sovereign as "The King's Servants," and took rank at court with the Grooms of the Chamber.

Had Shakespeare not been a poet, had he been

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