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Purification, which feast and All-Hallown Day, according to Dugdale, “are the only feasts in the whole year made purposely for the Judges and Serjeants of this Society, but of later time divers noblemen have been mixed with them." The order of entertainment on these occasions is carefully recorded by the same learned antiquary.* The scarlet robes of the Judges and Serjeants, the meat carried to the table by gentlemen of the house under the bar, the solemn courtesies, the measures led by the Ancient with his white staff, the call by the reader at the cupboard "to one of the gentlemen of the bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to give the Judges a song," the bowls of hypocras presented to the Judges with solemn congees by gentlemen under the bar,— all these ceremonials were matter of grave arrangement according to the most exact precedents. But Dugdale also tells us of " Post Revels performed by the better sort of the young gentlemen of the Society, with galliards, corantos, and other dances; or else with stage plays." The historian does not tell us whether the stage plays were performed by the young gentlemen of the Society, or by the professional players. The exact description which the student gives of the play of Twelfth Night would lead us to believe that it had not been previously familiar to him. It was not printed. The probability therefore is that it was performed by the players, and by Shakspere's company. The vicinity of the Blackfriars would necessarily render the members of the two Societies well acquainted with the dramas of Shakspere, and with the poet himself. There would be other occasions than the feast days of the Society that Shakspere would be found amidst those Courts. Amongst "the solemn temples" which London contained, no one would present a greater interest than that ancient edifice in which he might have listened, when a young man, to the ablest defender of the Church which had been founded upon the earlier religion of England; one who did not see the wisdom of wholly rejecting all ceremonials consecrated by habit and tradition; who eloquently wrote-" Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power." It was in the spirit of this doctrine that Shakspere himself

wrote

"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order."

He

Dugdale's Origines' was published six years after the Restoration. speaks of the solemn revels of the Inns of Court, with reference to their past and to their existing state. They had wont to be entertained with Post Revels, which had their dances and their stage plays. This was before the domination of the Puritans, when stage plays and dancing were equally denounced as "the very works, the pomps, inventions, and chief delights of the devil." § *Origines Juridiciales,' p. 205. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' Book I.

Troilus and Cressida, Act 1., Scene 111.

§ Prynne's Histrio-Mastix.'

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There is a passage in Dugdale which shows how the revels at the Inns of Court gradually changed their character according to the prevailing opinions: -"When the last measure is dancing, the Reader at the Cupboard calls to one of the Gentlemen of the Bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to give the Judges a song: who forthwith begins the first line of any psalm as he thinks fittest; after which all the rest of the company follow, and sing with him." This is very like the edifying practice of the Court of Francis I., where the psalms of Clement Marot were sung to a fashionable jig, or a dance of Poitou.* Shakspere had good authority when he made the clown say of his three-man song-men, "They are most of them means and basses: but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes." + This is one of the few allusions which Shakspere has to that rising sect, which in a few years was to become the dominant power in the state. Ben Jonson attacks them again and again with the most bitter indignation, and the coarsest satire. The very hardest gird which Shakspere has at them is contained in the gentle reproof of Sir Toby to the steward, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" In this very scene of Twelfth Night he ridicules the unreasoning hostility with which the Puritans themselves were assailed by the ignorant multitude. Sir Toby asks to be told something of the steward :-

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* See Warton's History of English Poetry,' Section xlv.

+ Winter's Tale, Act iv., Scene 11.

See The Alchymist,' and ' Bartholomew Fair.'

"Mar. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan,
Sir And. O, if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog.
Sir Toby. What, for being a Puritan? thy exquisite reason,
Sir And. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason good enough."

dear knight?

This is in the best spirit of toleration, which cannot endure that any body of men should be persecuted for their opinions, and especially by those who will show no reason for their persecution but that they "have reason good enough." In May, 1602, Shakspere made a large addition to his property at Stratford by the purchase, from William and John Combe, for the sum of three hundred and twenty pounds, of one hundred and seven acres of arable land in the town of Old Stratford. The indenture, which is in the possession of Mr. Wheler of Stratford, is dated the 1st of May, 1602.* The conveyance bears the signatures of the vendors of the property, of which the following are fac-similes.

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But although it concludes in the usual form, "The parties to these presents having interchangeably set to their hands and seals," the counterpart (also in the possession of Mr. Wheler) has not the hand and seal of the purchaser of the property described in the deed as "William Shakespere, of Stratford-uponAvon, in the countie aforesaide, Gentleman." The counterpart is not signed, and the piece of wax which is affixed to it is unimpressed with any seal. The acknowledgment of possession is however thus recorded:

Soald and dohned po to Gilbert Shakespere to ter use of the within named william Shakespere in to presome of

Mugom very he & Sphon Washe
Within Sheldon

Humfron Maymaange

Horand many

*The document, which contains nothing remarkable in its clauses, is given in Mr. Wheler's History of Stratford-upon-Avon.

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 x" to Burbidge's players for Othello, Ixiiij" xviija. 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

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

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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.'

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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

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