placed on performances during "the hours of prayer." Only four years afterwards the privy council forbad the acting of plays in Lent, and subsequently, on Sundays. It will not create surprise that little attention was paid to these mandates, and that successive endeavours were, in vain, made for their enforcement, when it is found that masques and plays were constantly exhibited in the courts, and in the presence of Elizabeth and James, on Sundays, and days of religious festivity. The virtue of the Master of the Revels relaxed on the payment of a stipulated fee, and performances in Lent were only deemed profane when not exhibited under the protection of his special licence.

Though they were associated under the authority of royalty itself, and extensively patronised by the nobility, the theatrical companies of the sixteenth century laboured under difficulties which are now only to be met with amidst the poverty of the meanest strollers. Between the number of characters to be represented, and the corps of actors, a lamentable disproportion often existed, and the Protean qualities of the buskined hero were not uncommonly tasked by the assumption of two, and sometimes even three characters in the same play. Masques were oc

casionally resorted to for the concealment of such incongruities, as well as of an equally inherent defect in the constitution of the old theatrical companies, the entire absence of female performers; no woman appearing on the stage till after the restoration.

The actors on the old stage were divided into two classes, sharers and hirelings. The sharer was remunerated by a proportion of the profits of the theatre, and an allowance of four, five, or six shillings a week was given to his boy who played either juvenile or female characters. The hireling was engaged at a weekly salary, and his services sometimes secured, by special articles of agreement, to a particular theatre for two or three years. His stipend was naturally proportioned to his abilities: one notice occurs of the engagement of an actor at five shillings a week for one year, and six shillings and eightpence for the second.

And here I shall resume the biography of Shakspeare. It is improbable that he ever obtained more than six shillings and eightpence a week for his services on the stage. He was at first engaged in a very mean capacity, and was so little distinguished afterwards for any extraordinary excellence as an actor, that the Ghost in his own Hamlet was considered his most suc

cessful effort.* It was usual in old plays to mention the names of the actors, but not to distinguish the character which each player performed. The name of Shakspeare frequently occurs, but it is only further known that he was the representative of Adam in As You Like It.t In the theory of the art of acting, Shakspeare was, however, perfectly skilled. The directions of Hamlet to the players are a keen censure upon the boisterous rant, and impertinent ignorance of his contemraries, and an admirable epitome of general principles for the guidance of the actor. But deficient in those peculiarities of nature that are necessary to the formation of a first-rate performer, it was in vain that Shakspeare entertained the highest ideas of the perfection of which scenic personification is capable. His name was, to all appearance, on the point of sinking to oblivion, but a spirit burnt within him which not the chilling influence of poverty could repress, nor the degradation of his situation long obscure, and the actor of mediocrity aspired to distinction as a writer for the stage.

Among the dramas produced antedecently to 1590, there were many felicitous ideas, both of circumstance and passion which the half

#

Rowe, Note M.

+ Oldys, Note N.

formed tastes, of their authors had imperfectly described. But as the love of theatricals became general, and the principles of dramatic composition better understood, the adaptation of the early plays to the more modern stage was a common practice. Encouraged by an easy acquisition of pecuniary reward, for no comparison existed between the task of revisal and the labour of original composition, authors of the highest talents did not disdain the employment. Decker, Rowley, Hayward, Jonson, and others, were frequently thus engaged in conferring value on the works of others, and to this ungrateful task the first efforts of Shakspeare were modestly confined. The second and third parts of Henry VI., (with the first part, Shakspeare had undoubtedly little, if any thing to do,) are vast improvements upon preceding dramatic productions by no means destitute of merit, and their success was such as to embolden the bard to risk a higher flight.

The utmost efforts of industry, seconded by a prudence too seldom found among the votaries of the Muses, were barely adequate to the supply of nature's simplest wants. The price paid by the managers for a new play was twenty nobles, or 67. 13s. 4d., for which consideration

the author surrendered all property whatever in the piece. If, as was sometimes the case, the play was not absolutely purchased by the theatre, the poet looked for remuneration from the profits of a third night's representation, the precarious produce of the sale of his play, when published, at sixpence a copy, and the hardearned fee of forty shillings for an adulatory dedication to a patron. The sums given for the alteration of old plays varied extremely, and were, doubtless, regulated by the quantity of new matter furnished, and the success attendant upon the revival: as little as ten shillings was sometimes paid, and the highest remuneration was short of what was given for a new play. Dramatic writers were, therefore, generally poor: they were bound to theatrical managers either by favours past, existing debts, or the perpetual dread of one day needing their assistance. Their wants often compelled them to solicit, nay, their very existence appears sometimes to have depended on, advances on the embryo productions of their brains, and the labours of to-day were devoted to cancel the obligation which the necessities of yesterday had contracted. It is truly pitiable to find the great Ben Jonson soliciting from Henslowe, the advance of a sum so paltry as "five shillings."