"Cressets, or large open lanterns, served to illuminate the body of the house, and two ample branches, of a form similar to those now hung in churches, gave light to the stage. The band of musicians, which was far from numerous, sat, it is supposed, in an upper balcony, over what is now called the stage-box. The instruments chiefly used were trumpets, cornets, hautboys, lutes, recorders, viols, and organs.

"The amusements of the audience previous to the commencement of the play, were reading, playing at cards, smoking tobacco, drinking ale, and eating nuts and apples; even during the perfor mance it was customary for wits, critics, and young gallants, who were desirous of attracting at tention, to station themselves on the stage, either lying on rushes, or seated on hired stools, while their pages furnished them with pipes and tobacco *.

"At the third sounding or flourish of trumpets, the exhibition began. The curtain, which concealed the stage from the audience, was then drawn, opening in the middle, and running upon iron rods. Other curtains, called traverses, were used as a substitute for scenes. At the back of the stage was a balcony, the platform of which was raised about eight or nine feet from the ground, it served as a window gallery or upper chamber from it a portion of the dialogue was sometimes spoken, and in front of it curtains were suspended, to conceal if necessary those who occupied it from the audience. The internal roof of the stage, either painted blue, or adorned with drapery of that colour, was termed the heavens. The stage was generally strewed with rushes, but on extraordinary occasions was matted. Moveable painted scenery assuredly there was none; a board containing the name of the place of action in large letters was displayed in some conspicuous situa-tion. Occasionally, when a change of scene was necessary, the audience were required to suppose that the performer, who had not quitted the boards, had passed to a different spot; a bed thrust forth showed that the stage was a bed-chamber, and a table with pen and ink intimated that it was a counting-house. Rude contrivances were employed to imitate towers, walls of towns, hell mouths, trees, dragons, etc.; trap-doors had been early in use, but to make a celestial personage ascend to the roof of the stage, was more than the mechanists of the theatre could always accomplish.

"The best theatrical wardrobes at the better theatres were of a costly kind. The performers of male characters occasionally wore periwigs; female parts were played by boys or young men who sometimes used vizards; the speaker of the prologue was usually dressed in a black velvet cloak : an epilogue was often dispensed with. During the play, the clown would break forth into extemporaneous buffoonery; there was dancing and singing between the acts; and at the end of the piece there was a song or a jig, a farcical rhyming composition, of considerable length, sung or said by the clown, and accompanied with dancing and playing on the pipe and tabor. A prayer for the queen offered by the actors on their knees, concluded the whole.

The price of admission appears to have varied according to the rank and estimation of the theatres; a shilling was charged for a place in the best boxes, the entrance money to the pit and galleries was sixpence, twopence, and sometimes a penny the performances commenced at three o'clock, During the reign of Elizabeth, plays were acted on Sundays as well as on other days of the week; but during that of her successor, dramatic exhibitions on the Sabbath appear to have been tolerated only at court."

There is every reason to believe that Shakspeare commenced his career as a dramatic author, by adapting the works of preceding writers to the stage. Before the end of 4592, he had certainly been thus employed; in that year Greene died, and left for publication bis Groat's-worth of Wit," in which, alluding evidently to Shakspeare, he says, "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country!

It is probable, however, that Shakspeare had already made some, though few, attempts as an origi nal dramatist; in the mean time, there is reason to suspect that he may have written some of those andramatic poems which apparently raised his reputation very high, whilst his dramatic renown was

This nuisance of stage intruders continued down to the time of Garrick.

yet in the dawn. He himself calls his "Venus and Adonis" the first heir of his invention: that poem appeared in 1593, and the "Rape of Lucrece" in the following year. The luxuriance of the former poem is prurient-the morality of the latter is somewhat dull; yet they acquired him reputation, not only before some of his better dramas had appeared, but even afterwards. Both of them were dedicated to the Farl of Southampton, who, according to Rowe, presented our bard with a thousand pounds. The truth of this anecdote has been called in question; but our hearts, at least, lean to the belief of it.

Having entered on his undramatic poems, I am tempted to continue the subject, and to bring them under one view-postponing for the present the consideration of some of his dramas, that were written earlier than some of those untheatrical pieces.

His "Sonnets," and "A Lover's Complaint," were published together in 1609. Several of his sonnets had certainly been composed many years before that date, for Meres, in 1598, alludes to "Shakspeare's sugared Sonnets among his friends." They appear to have been thrown off at different periods of his life.

Some of those effusions, though not all, seem to me worthy of Shakspeare. Among the most admirable, are the eighth, the thirtieth, and, above all, the hundred and twenty-third.—

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, etc.

This, of a truth, is Shakspeare's own; it is Love looking at his own image in the stream of poetry. As a whole, however, these sonnets are no more to our Poet's fame, than a snow-ball on the top of Olympus.

In describing great men, Dugald Stewart marks as one of their characteristics, that they stamp their character on that of their age. But the generality of these sonnets exhibit the age stamping its character on Shakspeare, rather than the converse. It was an age of fantastic conceits; and from these the immortal sonneteer himself is not exempt. It was an age of hyperbolical expressions of friendship between men; for, in those days, it was as common for a gentleman writing to another, to subscribe himself "your devoted lover," as it is now to say, "I am your obedient servant." Now in these sonnets our Poet compliments his male friends in a manner totally different from modern usage, and to be explained only by the fashion of coeval language.

The greater portion of the sonnets is addressed to a male friend, whom Mr. Boaden, I think, has proved to have been the Earl of Pembroke; at least we must believe so till a better claimant shall be found.

Augustus W. Schlegel vituperated the commentators of Shakspeare for not having discovered in the above productions a mine of information respecting the Poet's biography. But beyond some general expressions of his natural feelings, Shakspeare's sonnets give us no access to his personal history. Schlegel says, that they paint his passions unequivocally-but they do no such thing; for they paint his friendship hyperbolically, and mixed with jealousies that belong not to manly friendship. Nor though some twenty of his sonnets are addressed to a female, with whom he feigns himself in love, is it certain that his erotic language, even in these, was not tinged with phantasy? He threatens his female idol with the danger of his going mad, and of his accusing her falsely of favours which she had never conferred upon him. There is no denying, in the first place, that he seems to speak in these sonnets to a sweetheart, either real or imaginary, who was younger than himself. At the same time his menacing her with exposure, begets a doubt of his having been deeply attached to the object whom he could thus threaten. I have a suspicion, moreover, that if the love affair had been real, he would have said less about it. Nevertheless I am far from entertaining the opinion that Shakspeare never felt the passion of love for any other woman than his wife Anne Hathaway. She married him, or rather perhaps decoyed him into a marriage, when she was in her twenty-sixth year, and when he was a boy of eighteen. Setting aside the suspicion of Susanna Shakspeare's birth

having been premature for her mother's reputation, the very circumstance of a full grown woman marrying a stripling of eighteen is discreditable to her memory, and leaves us with no great sympathy for her, if Shakspeare, amidst the allurements of London, forgot his conjugal faith.

But it is painful to find the worthy Dr. Drake so much distressed upon this subject. He first of all denies the possibility of Shakspeare having had any love affair in London, because he was married and was the father of children. Soon afterwards he laments that these sonnets, addressed to a bad, black-eyed woman, cannot be proved to have been addressed to an unreal object. But by and by he discovers, in his own mind, a perfect conviction that they were addressed to a purely ideal object. Nay more, Dr. Drake vituperates this ideal woman for having been one of the most wicked females that was ever described by the pen of a poet. Now surely this is a hard case, that a poor black-eyed young lady should first of all have her existence disproved, and then that she should be had up to be rated for faults committed by her during her state of nonentity!

Another of Shakspeare's undramatic poems is a " Lover's Complaint." It has many beauties, mixed with as many conceits. "The Forsaken Maiden, in describing her lover, conjures up a being that seems to be Shakspeare himself :

For, on the tip of his subduing tongue,
All kind of arguments and questions deep;
All replications prompt, and reasons strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep,

To make the weeper laugh-the laugher weep.

In the miscellany of the "Passionate Pilgrim," some portion of the poetry is said to have been written by our bard; but this miscellany seems to have gone to the press without Shakspeare's consent, or even his knowledge, and how much of it proceeded from his pen cannot now be discovered.

CHAPTER IV.

I Now revert to his theatrical life. On his arrival in London, his first employment must have been that of an actor. He left Stratford unaccompanied by his family, and lived at London in lodgings. The place of his abode in the metropolis before 1596 has not been traced; but at, and probably after, that period, he lodged in Southwark, near the Bear Garden.

The speculations of George Chalmers and Dr. Drake as to his having spent the most part of every year of his life in Stratford, even after his migration, are not conclusive; although it cannot well be supposed that he never, or even unfrequently, revisited Warwickshire during his London life. On the contrary, his final return to his native place, indicates no unfriendly separation from it. One can fancy him actuated by the feelings so beautifully described by Goldsmith,

I still had hopes-my long vexations past,
Here to return and die at home at last.

That he must have had his vexations, is only saying that he was a man. At the same time we have indications of his having become, at no tardy period, pretty prosperous in London. Within a very