The property is delivered to Gilbert Shakspere to the use of William. Gilbert was two years and a half younger than William, and in all likelihood was the cultivator of the land which the poet thus bought, or assisted their father in the cultivation.

We collect from this document that William Shakspere was not at Stratford on the 1st of May, 1602, and that his brother Gilbert was his agent for the payment of the three hundred and twenty pounds paid "at and before the sealing" of the conveyance. In the following August the Lord Chamberlain's company performed Othello in the house of the Lord Keeper at Harefield. The accounts of the large expenditure on this occasion, in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Mainwaring, were discovered by Mr. Collier amongst the Egerton Papers, and they contain the following entry :

"6 August, 1602. Rewardes to the vaulters, players, and dauncers. Of
this xi to Burbidge's players for Othello, lxiiij" xviij3. xa.” '

The Queen came to Harefield on the 31st of July, and remained there during the 1st and 2nd of August. In those days Harefield Place was "a fair house standing on the edge of the hill, the river Coln passing near the same through the pleasant meadows and sweet pastures yielding both delight and profit." This is Norden's description, a little before the period of Elizabeth's visit. The Queen was received, after the usual quaint fashion of such entertainments, with a silly dialogue between a bailiff and a dairymaid, as she entered the domain; and the house welcomed her with an equally silly colloquy between Place and Time. The Queen must have been somewhat better pleased when a copy of verses was delivered to her in the morning, beginning

The weather, we learn from the same verses, was unpropitious:

Some great poet was certainly at work upon this occasion, but not Shakspere.↑ It was enough for him to present the sad story of

"The gentle lady married to the Moor."

Another was to come within some thirty years who should sing of Harefield

* This important entry was first published by Mr. Collier in his 'New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' 1836. Mr. Collier in the same tract publishes "a poetical relic," of which he says, "Although I believe it to be his, I have some hesitation in assigning it to Shakespeare." This copy of verses, without date or title, found amongst the same papers, bears the signature W. Sh. or W. Sk. (Mr. Collier is doubtful which). If the verses contained a single line which could not be produced by any one of the "mob of gentlemen who write with ease," we would venture to borrow a specimen.

These verses, with other particulars of the entertainment, were first published from an original manuscript in Nicholls's 'Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.'

with the power of a rare fancy working upon classical models, and who thus makes the Genius of the Wood address a noble audience in that sylvan

Scene:

"For know, by lot from Jove I am the Power
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,
Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites,
Or hurtful worm with canker'd venom bites.
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallow'd ground;
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumb'ring leaves, or tassel'd horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout

With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless."

Doubly honoured Harefield! Though thy mansion has perished, yet are thy groves still beautiful. Still thy summit looks out upon a fertile valley, where the gentle river wanders in silent beauty. But thy woods and lawns have a charm which are wholly their own.-Here the Othello of William Shakspere

was acted by his own company; here is the scene of the Arcades of John Milton.

Amongst the few papers rescued from "time's devouring maw" which enable us to trace Shakspere's career with any exactness, there is another which relates to the acquisition of property in the same year. It is a copy of Court Roll for the Manor of Rowington, dated the 28th of September, 1602, containing the surrender by Walter Getley to the use of William Shakspere of a house in Stratford, situated in Walker Street. This tenement was opposite Shakspere's house of New Place. It is now taken down; it was in existence a few years ago.

This document, which was in the possession of Mr. Hunt, the worthy town-clerk of Stratford, but has been presented by him to the Museum formed at the Shakspere House, shows that at the latter end of September, 1602, William Shakspere, the purchaser of this property, was not at Stratford. It could not legally pass to him, being a copyhold, till he had done suit and service in the Lord's Court; and the surrender, therefore, provides that it should remain in the possession of the lord till he, the purchaser, should appear.

In the September of 1602 the Earl of Worcester, writing to the Earl of Shrewsbury, says, "We are frolic here in Court, much dancing in the Privy Chamber of country-dances before the Queen's Majesty, who is exceedingly p.eased therewith." In the December she was entertained at Sir Robert Cecil's house in the Strand, and some of the usual devices of flattering mummery were exhibited before her. A few months saw a period to the frolic and the flattery. The last entry in the books of the Treasurer of the Chamber during the reign of Elizabeth, which pertains to Shakspere, is the following ;-melancholy in the contrast between the Candlemas-Day of 1603, the 2nd of February, and the following 24th of March, when Elizabeth died :-"To John Hemynges and the rest of his companie, servaunts to the Lorde Chamberleyne, uppon the Councells Warraunte, dated at Whitehall the xxth of Aprill, 1603, for their paines and expences in presentinge before the late Queenes Mtie twoe playes, the one uppon St. Stephens day at nighte, and thother upon Candlemas day at night, for ech of which they were allowed, by way of her Mats rewarde,

tenne poundes, amounting in all to xx"." The late Queen's Majesty! Before She had seen the play on Candlemas-day, at night, she had taken Sir Robert Carey by the hand, and wrung it hard, saying, Robin, I am not well." At the date of the Council's warrant to John Hemings, Elizabeth had not been deposited in the resting-place of Kings at Westminster. Her pomp and glory

were now to be limited to the display of heralds and banners and officers of state; and, to mark especially the nothingness of all this, "The lively picture of her Majesty's whole body, in her Parliament-robes, with a crown on her head, and a sceptre in her hand, lying on the corpse enshrined in lead, and balmed; covered with purple velvet; borne in a chariot, drawn by four horses, trapped in black velvet."

King James I. of England left his good city of Edinburgh on the 5th of April, 1603. He was nearly five weeks on the road, banqueting wherever he rested; at one time releasing prisoners, "out of his princely and Christian commiseration," and at another hanging a cut-purse taken in the fact. He entered the immediate neighbourhood of London in a way that certainly

monarch never entered before or since :—" From Stamford Hill to London was made a train with a tame deer, that the hounds could not take it faster than his Majesty proceeded." On the 7th of May he was safely lodged at the Charter-House; and one of his first acts of authority in the metropolis, after creating four new peers, and issuing a proclamation against robbery on the Borders, was to order the Privy Seal for the patent to Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakspere, and others.* We learn from the patent itself that the King's servants were to perform publicly "when the infection of the plague shall decrease." It is clear that the King's servants were not at liberty then to perform publicly. How long the theatres were closed we do not exactly know; but a document is in existence, dated April 9th, 1604, directing the Lord Mayor of London, and Justices of Middlesex and Surrey, "to permit and suffer the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince to exercise their plays in their several and usual houses." On the 20th of October, 1603, Joan, the wife of the celebrated Edward Alleyn, writes to her husband from London,-" About us the sickness doth cease, and likely more and more, by God's help, to cease. All the companies be come home, and well, for aught we know." Her husband is hawking in the country, and Henslow, his partner, is at the Court. Another letter has been found from Mrs. Alleyn to her husband, which, if rightly interpreted, would show that not only was Shakspere in London at this time, but went about pretty much like other people, calling common things by their common names, giving advice about worldly matters in the way of ordinary folk, and spoken of by the wife of his friend without any wonder or laudation, just as if he had written no Midsummer Night's Dream, or Othello :-" About a weeke a goe there came a youthe, who said he was Mr. Francis Chaloner, who would have borrowed xl to have bought things for . . . . and said he was known unto you and Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, who came. . . . said he knewe hym not, onely he herde of hymn that he was a roge. so he was glade we did not lend him the monney. . . . . Richard Johnes [went] to seeke and inquire after the fellow, and said he had lent hym a horse. I feare me he gulled hym, thoughe he gulled not us. The youthe was a prety youthe, and hansome in appayrell: we knowe not what became of hym." The authority of this letter has been thus disputed by Mr. Halliwell :-"It has been stated that Shakspeare was in London in October, 1603, on the strength of a letter printed in Mr. Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 63: but having carefully examined the original, I am convinced it has been misread, The following is now all that remains," And then Mr. Halliwell prints "all that remains," which does not contain the name of Shakspere at all. Mr. Collier avers that he saw the words which he for the first time published; though the letter was much damaged by the damp, and was falling to pieces.

.

Whether or not Shakspere was in London on the 20th of October, 1603, it is tolerably clear that the performances at the public theatres were not resumed till * See the Patent at the end of this Chapter.

+ Malone's 'Inquiry,' p. 215. Mr. Collier prints the document in his 'Life of Alleyn,' by which it appears that there had been letters of prohibition previously issued that had reference to the continuance of the plague, and that it still partially continued.

From the Papers in Dulwich College printed in Mr. Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn.'