When

what goods or their value. On the same occasion a young apprentice of Belott's, named William Eaton, deposed to what he had heard Mr Shakespeare say, which was much to the same effect as the above. he was going on to repeat more that Mr Shakespeare had told the Plaintiff, he was cut short, probably by the president of the Court, and the clerk struck out the words And Mr Shakespeare told the Plaintiff ". . . a hiatus valde deflendus.

From this suit we also learn an interesting by-fact, namely that Belott and his wife, after quitting the Mountjoys, lived in the house of George Wilkins,* *the playwright who had the honour of collaborating with Shakespeare in 'Pericles' and possibly in 'Timon' and wrote that powerful play, 'The Yorkshire Tragedy,' in which some have seen traces of Shakespeare's hand.

Even more useful are Dr Wallace's discoveries concerning the Blackfriars' and Globe' Theatres, and Shakespeare's interest in them. Other documents throw light on the 'aery of children, little eyasses,' at Blackfriars 1597-1603. Especially interesting is the suit between Osteler and Heminge, in which Thomasine, the youthful widow of the actor Will Osteler, sued her father with respect to her husband's shares in the two theatres. We find that Shakespeare, from 1614 till his death, owned 1/14th share in the Globe and 1/7th in the Blackfriars Theatre.

Another suit, unearthed by the same persevering and efficient searcher, is one brought by John Witter, who married the widow of the actor Augustine Phillips,† a partner in the 'Globe,' against Heminge, Condell, and other shareholders. This was to recover possession of the 1/4th share inherited by his wife from Phillips, and forfeited owing to Witter's refusal to share in the expenses of rebuilding the Globe' when it was burnt down in 1613. These shares were all held in joint tenancy, and could not legally be alienated, falling back at death into the hands of the surviving shareholders. Shakespeare does not mention his shares in his will, and

* In St Sepulchre's parish.

† By his will in 1605 he left Shakespeare a 30s. piece in gold, possibly, says Mr E. Law, his payment for acting as Groom of the Chamber.-See below.

they no doubt relapsed to Heminge* and others. Dr Wallace has shown that the income received by Shakespeare from these shares was about the same in either case, and at most 300l. in all, equivalent in our currency to at least four or five times that sum. But after the rebuilding of the 'Globe' its shares became more remunerative. We find Heminge and Condell spoken of as being of 'great living, wealth and power.'

The conclusions, however, drawn by their discoverer from these new documents have not all found acceptance. With respect to the site of the Globe Theatre there is a distinct and puzzling conflict of evidence. The title deeds of Barclay's Brewery, strongly supported by tradition, place the site upon their property; but Dr Wallace, relying on the boundaries mentioned in his records and the reports of the Sewer Commission of the time, confidently fixes the site as north of Maiden Lane and not south of it, where the Brewery now stands. Some one has blundered, evidently, but the established view still finds the most favour.

Minor successes have been achieved by other searchers. Mrs Stopes has thrown light on many points in connexion with Shakespeare's family and environment. The earliest mention of a Shakespeare, Geoffrey by name and Surrey by county, is her discovery. Her efforts to overthrow the accepted view of the Lucy episode cannot be called successful. Her industry is right happy, but her inference is not always abreast of it. Original work of value has also been done by Mr E. Law, who, by finding the authority for it, has proved authentic the statement of Halliwell-Phillipps that Shakespeare with his fellows acted on one occasion as 'Groom of the Chamber' to the King. In his book on the subject Mr Law gives a graphic account of the circumstances in which Shakespeare's company, with him undoubtedly among them, acted in the capacity of Grooms-in-Waiting' on the King when he welcomed the Spanish Ambassador and his suite, for the signing of the Spanish Treaty in August 1604. Incidentally he shows that they did not, as generally supposed, march in the Royal

* There seems to be no evidence that they passed to Dr Hall, as Sir Sidney Lee supposes.

procession when James I celebrated his accession, though like all the other 'servants' of the King they received the customary livery of red cloth. However, Shakespeare and his eleven fellows, in their red doublets, were in attendance on Juan Fernandez de Velasco from Aug. 9 to 27.* The entry runs :—

'To Augustine Phillips and John Hemynges for the allowance of themselves and ten of their fellows, His Majesty's Grooms of the Chamber and Players, for waiting and attending on His Majesty's Service by commandment upon the Spanish Ambassador at Somerset House for the space of XVIII days, viz. from the IXth day of August 1604 until the XXVIIth day of the same, as appeareth by a bill thereof signed by the Lord Chamberlain-XXI XI".'

Shakespeare must have been present to make up the number of players mentioned. In the matter of the grant of cloth his name, as the best known, comes first. The patent conferring the status of Groom-of-theChamber is not extant. It is somewhat strange that the players were not also asked to show their talent before the Spanish grandees. They seem to have been there only to lend colour to the pageant, and to have had no further duties, menial or other, to perform.

Shakespeare's fee for the eighteen days was but 2s. a day in money of the period, perhaps 107. in all, not in itself a remunerative payment, even though, as is likely, board and lodging and other perquisites were added.

It will be seen from the foregoing remarks that recent discoveries have been of a most valuable and unexpected kind, giving us every reason to hope that there is still much priceless information stored up in public and private archives, waiting only to be unsealed. Taking legal records alone, we know that litigation was almost as much a hobby with Shakespeare and his contemporaries as it was in the times of Aristophanes. Within a year before his death Shakespeare joined other complainants in a successful suit against Mathew Bacon, a former owner of the Blackfriars house, for the restitution of deeds connected with this and other neighbouring

* Audit Office, Declared accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, Roll 41, Bundle 388; a second copy is in the Pipe Office, Bundle No. 543.

property.* The Stratford records contain references to an amazing number of suits between prominent citizens, neighbours, and even friends. John Shakespeare has half a hundred to his own share. The townsmen were evidently wont to do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily but eat and drink as friends.'t We may expect, therefore, to find some more legal evidences relating to Shakespeare.

There are other lines of search also that are waiting to be followed up. For instance, the inventory of Ben Jonson's goods is said to be in existence; and the late Dr Furnivall thought there was a good chance of the inventory of Lady Bernard's goods being found in one of the 28 boxes mentioned above. Documents of the greatest interest may still be in the possession of the heirs of Edward Bagley, the executor of Lady Bernard's will, or of descendants from her husband's children by his first wife. It has been supposed that some 'Shakespearean letters' were actually in the possession of Colonel Gardiner, one of these descendants.‡

The MS book of Dr Hall's, containing notes of 1000 medical cases, from which Dr Cooke in 1657 published about 180 in his 'Select Observations on English Bodies,' was known to Malone, who borrowed it from a Dr Wright. It has since disappeared, and every effort should be made to trace it. It would seem hopeless to recover the other MS, 'prepared for the press,' which Cooke took away with this one from Mrs Hall's house in 1644 (see above, p. 230).

Such discoveries as those of the Lamport Hall books, of the Plume MSS, which gave us the only glimpse of John Shakespeare at his home cracking jests with his famous son, and the recent find of fresh letters of Gabriel Harvey, Chapman, and Jonson, raise hopes that we may come upon still other caches of the same kind.

In Sir Sidney Lee's revised 'Biography of Shakespeare' we have an adequate presentment of all known

* Discovered by Dr Wallace.

+ Taming of the Shrew,' 1, 2, 278.

‡ ‘Notes and Queries,' V Ser. vii, 287. Mr Belloc, in 1908, condescended to perpetrate a circumstantial hoax, tracing a certain Charlemagne K. Hopper from a daughter of Lady Bernard by her first husband Thomas Nash (but here called Hall).

facts bearing on his life and work. The editor 'loves the man and honours his memory on this side idolatry as much as any,' but he has the good sense and historic honesty not to burke unpleasant facts or try to archangelise the subject of his book. He is not afraid even to quote the Countess of Southampton's letter to her husband, with its veiled but possible allusion to Shakespeare as Sir John Falstaff. If the ascription is correct, Shakespeare must have had a liaison, while living apart from his wife in London about 1599. There is another but otherwise unsupported, and from the source whence it is derived unlikely, tradition, reported in 1727 by Theobald, that the Poet had a natural daughter, old enough, about 1613, to be presented with a new play of her father's.* The Bohemian life of a player and the somewhat tainted atmosphere that surrounded a playhouse must have made it hard for a man of so passionate a nature, and so genial, not to say jovial, a character as was Shakespeare's, to live in such an environment a wholly moral life. We owe to Mrs Stopes the discovery that an Edward Shakespeare, player, had an illegitimate son baptised at St Giles, Cripplegate, on Aug. 12, 1607. This must refer to Shakespeare's brother Edmund, who was buried at St Saviour's, Southwark, on Dec. 31 of that year. The same authority gives us an entry from the register of St Clement Danes, which records the burial on Aug. 8, 1609, of Jane, daughter of William Shakspeer. But, as a John Shakespeer had a daughter Jane baptised on the 16th of July previous, she is inclined to consider William an error for John, a by no means certain conclusion.

We know, however, that many of the players of Shakespeare's company were communicants at St Mary Overy's, Southwark. Nat. Field, who was a Bishop's brother, made a vehement defence of himself and his fellows against the outrageous attack of a Mr Sutton, a preacher in Southwark, on their profession in the very year of Shakespeare's death.

With regard to the Davenant scandal, a careful consideration of the whole circumstances of the story

It is difficult to see how the play, if written for a company, was his to give.

† See Carew Hazlitt, p. 95.