In London Shakespeare resided near the theatres. According to a memorandum by Alleyn (which Malone quoted), he lodged in 1596 near ‘the Bear Garden in Southwark.’ In 1598 one William Shakespeare, who was assessed by the collectors of a subsidy in the sum of 13s. 4d. upon goods valued at 5l., was a resident in St. Helen's parish, Bishopsgate, but it is not certain that this tax-payer was the dramatist (cf. Exchequer Lay Subsidies City of London, 146/369, Public Record Office; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 418).

Elizabethan actors performed not only in London but in the provinces, and a fewShakespeare's alleged travels.occasionally extended their professional tours to foreign courts. In Denmark, Germany, Austria, Holland, and possibly in France, many dramatic performances were given by English actors between 1580 and 1630 (cf. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, 1865; Meissner, Die englischen Comödianten zur Zeit Shakespeare in Oesterreich, Vienna, 1884; Jon Stefansson on ‘Shakespeare at Elsinore’ in Contemporary Review, January 1896; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 43, xi. 520). Shakespeare may be credited with faithfully fulfilling all his professional functions. The many references to travel in his sonnets were doubtless reminiscences of acting tours through English country towns, and it has been repeatedly urged that he visited Scotland with his company (cf. Knight; Fleay, Stage, pp. 135–6). In November 1599 English actors went to Scotland under the leadership of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin. The former was a colleague of Shakespeare in 1603, but is not known to have been one earlier. Shakespeare's company never included an actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the visit in October 1601 (MS. State Papers Dom. Scotland; P. R. O. vol. lxv. No. 64; Fleay, Stage, pp. 126–44). There is nothing to indicate that any of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's company. That Shakespeare visited any part of the continent is even less probable. He repeatedly ridicules the craze for foreign travel (cf. As you like it, iv. i. 22–40). His name appears in no extant list of English actors who paid professional visits abroad. To Italy.To Italy, it is true, and especially to the northern towns of Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, he makes frequent and familiar reference, and he supplied many a realistic portrayal of Italian life and sentiment. But the fact that he represents Valentine in the ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ (I. i. 71) as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, and Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ as embarking on a ship at the gates of Milan (I. ii. 129–44), renders it almost impossible that he could have gathered his knowledge of northern Italy from personal observation (cf. Elze, Essays, 1874, pp. 254 seq.). He doubtless owed all to the verbal reports of travelled friends or to books, the contents of which he had a rare power of assimilating and vitalising.

Although the old actor William Beeston asserted that Shakespeare ‘did act exceedingly well’ (Aubrey), Shakespeare's rôles.the rôles in which he distinguished himself are very imperfectly recorded. Few surviving documents directly refer to performances by him. At Christmas 1594 he joined the popular actors William Kemp, the chief comedian of the day, and Richard Burbage in ‘two several comedies or interludes’ which were acted on St. Stephen's day and on Innocents' day (27 and 28 Dec.) at Greenwich Palace before the queen. The three players received ‘xiiili. vjs. viiid. and by waye of her Majesties rewarde vili. xiiis. iiijd., in all xxli.’ (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 121; Jahrbuch d. deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1896, xxxii. 182 seq.). Neither plays nor parts are named. Shakespeare's name stands first on the list of those who took part in the original performances of Ben Jonson's ‘Every Man in his Humour’ (1598) and of his ‘Sejanus’ (1603), but the character allotted to each actor is not stated. Rowe identified only one of Shakespeare's parts, ‘the Ghost in his own “Hamlet,”’ which Rowe asserted to be ‘the top of his performance.’ John Davies noted that he ‘played some kingly parts in sport’ (Scourge of Folly, 1610, epigr. 159). One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, assumably Gilbert, often came, wrote Oldys, to London in his younger days to see his brother act in his own plays, and in his old age, when his memory was failing, he recalled his brother's performance of Adam in ‘As you like it.’ In the 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare's ‘Works’ his name heads the prefatory list ‘of the principall actors in all these playes.’

That Shakespeare chafed under some of the conditions of the actor's calling appears from the sonnets. He reproaches himself with making himself ‘a motley to the view’ (cx. 2), and chides fortune for having provided for his livelihood nothing better than ‘public means that public manners breed,’ whence his name received a brand (cxi. 4–5). His ambitions lay elsewhere, and at an early period of his theatrical career he was dividing his labours as an actor with those of a playwright.

The whole of Shakespeare's dramatic work was probably begun and ended within two decades (1591–1611), between his twenty-seventh Dramatic work.and forty-seventh year. If, on the one hand, the works traditionally assigned to him include some contributions from other pens, he was perhaps responsible, on the other hand, for portions of a few plays that are traditionally claimed for others. When the account is balanced, Shakespeare must be credited with the production, during these twenty years, of an annual average of two plays, nearly all of which belong to the supreme rank of literature. Three volumes of poems must be added to the total. Ben Jonson was often told by the players that ‘whatsoever he penned he never blotted out (i.e. erased) a line.’ The editors of the first folio attested that ‘what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.’ Signs of hasty workmanship are not lacking, but they are few and unimportant when it is considered how rapidly his numerous compositions came from his pen.

By borrowing his plots he to some extent economised his energy, but he transformed most of them, and it was not His borrowed plots.probably with the object of conserving his strength that he systematically levied loans on popular current literature like Holinshed's ‘Chronicles,’ North's translation of ‘Plutarch,’ widely read romances, and successful plays. In this regard he betrayed something of the practical temperament which is traceable in the conduct of the affairs of his later life. It was doubtless with the calculated aim of exploiting public taste to the utmost that he unceasingly adapted, as his genius dictated, themes which had already, in the hands of inferior writers or dramatists, proved capable of arresting public attention.

The professional playwrights retained no legal interest in their plays after disposing of the manuscript to a theatrical manager, and it was customary for the manager to invite extensive revision at the hands of others before a play was produced on the stage, and again whenever it was revived. Shakespeare doubtless gained his earliest experience as a dramatist by revising or rewriting behind The revision of plays.the scenes plays that his manager had purchased. Possibly not all his labours in this direction have been identified. In a few cases his alterations were slight, but as a rule his fund of originality was too abundant to restrict him, when working as an adapter, to mere recension, and the results of most of his labours in that capacity are entitled to rank among original composition.

The exact order in which Shakespeare's plays were written depends largely on conjecture. External evidence is accessible Chronology of the plays.in only a few cases, and, although always worthy of the utmost consideration, is not invariably conclusive. The date of publication rarely indicates the date of composition. Only sixteen of the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to Shakespeare were published in his lifetime, and it is questionable whether any were published under his supervision. But subject-matter and metre both afford rough clues to the period in his career to which each play may be referred. In his early plays the spirit of comedy or tragedy appears in all its simplicity, but as his powers grew to maturity he depicted life in its complexity, and portrayed with masterly insight all the gradations of human sentiment, and the mysterious workings of human passion. Comedy and tragedy are gradually blended; and his work finally developed a pathos such as could only have come of ripe experience. Similarly the metre undergoes emancipation from established rule and becomes flexible and irregular enough to respond to every phase of human feeling. In the blank verse of the early plays a pause is strictly observed at the close of each line, and rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually the verse overrides such artificial restrictions; rhyme largely disappears; the pause is varied indefinitely; extra syllables are, contrary to strict metrical law, introduced at the end of lines, and at times in the middle; recourse is more frequently made to prose (cf. W.S. Walker, Shakespeare's Versification, 1854; Charles Bathurst, Difference in Shakespeare's Versification at different Periods of his Life, 1857). Fantastic and punning conceits which abound in early work are rarely accorded admission to later work. At the same time allowance must be made for ebb and flow in Shakespeare's artistic progress. Early work occasionally anticipates features that become habitual to late work, and late work at times embodies traits that are mainly identified with early work. No exclusive reliance in determining the precise chronology can be placed on the merely mechanical tests afforded by tables of metrical statistics. The chronological order can only be deduced with any confidence from a consideration of all the internal characteristics as well as the known external history of each play. The premisses are often vague and conflicting, and no chronology hitherto suggested receives at all points universal assent.

There is no external evidence that any piece in which he had a hand was produced before the spring of 1592. No play by him was published before 1597, and none bore his name on the title-page till 1598. But his first essays have been with confidence allotted to 1591. To ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ ‘Love's Labour's Lost.may reasonably be assigned priority in point of time of all Shakespeare's dramatic productions. Internal evidence alone indicates the date of composition, and proves that it was an early effort, but the subject-matter suggests that its author had already enjoyed extended opportunities of surveying London life and manners, such as were hardly open to him in the very first years of his settlement. ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ embodies keen observation of contemporary life in many ranks of society, both in town and country, while the speeches of the hero Biron clothe much sound philosophy in masterly rhetoric. Its slender plot stands almost alone among Shakespeare's plots in that it is not known to have been borrowed. The names of the chief characters are drawn from those of the leaders in the civil war in France, which was in progress between 1589 and 1594, and was anxiously watched by the English public. Contemporary projects of academies for disciplining young men; fashions of speech and dress current in fashionable circles; recent attempts on the part of Elizabeth's government to negotiate with the czar of Russia; the inefficiency of rural constables and the pedantry of village schoolmasters and curates are all satirised with good humour (cf. ‘A New Study of “Love's Labour's Lost,”’ by the present writer in Gent. Mag. October 1880; Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, pt. iii. p. 80*). The play was revised in 1597, probably for a performance at court. It was first published next year, and on the title-page, which described the piece as ‘newly corrected and augmented,’ Shakespeare's name first appeared in print as that of author of a play.

Less gaiety characterised another comedy of the same date, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ which dramatises a romantic story of love and friendship. There is every ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona.’likelihood that it was an adaptation—amounting to a re-formation—of a lost ‘History of Felix and Philomena,’ which had been acted at court in 1584. The story is the same as that of ‘The Shepardess Felismena’ in the Spanish pastoral romance of ‘Diana’ by George de Montemayor. No English translation of ‘Diana’ was published before that of Bartholomew Yonge in 1598, but manuscript versions may have been accessible. Barnabe Rich's story of ‘Apollonius and Silla,’ which Shakespeare employed again in ‘Twelfth Night,’ doubtless gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the ‘Two Gentlemen,’ but passages of high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, Launce and Speed, overflow with farcical drollery. The ‘Two Gentlemen’ was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having, in all probability, undergone some revision (cf. Fleay, Life, pp. 188 seq.).

Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the ‘Comedy of Errors’ (commonly known at the time as ‘Errors’), at boisterous farce. It may have been founded on a play, no longer extant, called ‘The Historie of Error,’ which was acted in 1576 at Hampton Court. ‘Comedy of Errors.’In subject-matter it resembles the ‘Menæchmi’ of Plautus, and treats of mistakes of identity arising from the likeness of twin-born children. The scene (act iii. sc. i.) in which Antipholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house, while his brother and wife are at dinner within, recalls one in the ‘Amphitruo’ of Plautus. It is possible that Shakespeare had direct recourse to Plautus as well as to the old play; no English translation of Plautus was published before 1595. In the ‘Comedy of Errors’ (which was first published in 1623) allusion is made, as in ‘Love's Labour's Lost,’ to the civil war in France. France is described as ‘making war against her heir’ (act v. sc. ii. 125).

To more effective account did Shakespeare in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (his first tragedy) turn a tragic romance of Italian origin, which was already popular in the English versions of Arthur Broke in verse (1562) and William Painter ‘Romeo and Juliet.’in prose (in his ‘Palace of Pleasure,’ 1567). Shakespeare made little change in the plot, but he impregnated it with poetic fervour, and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the humour of Mercutio, and by grafting on the story the new comic character of the Nurse (cf. Originals and Analogues, pt. i. ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shakspere Society). The fineness of insight which Shakespeare here brought to the portrayal of youthful emotion is as noticeable as the lyric beauty and exuberance of the language. If the Nurse's remark, ‘'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years’ (i. iii. 23), be taken literally, the composition of the play must be referred to 1591, for no earthquake in the sixteenth century was experienced in England after 1580. There are some parallelisms with Daniel's ‘Complainte of Rosamond,’ published in 1592, and it is probable that Shakespeare completed the piece in that year. It was first anonymously and surreptitiously printed by John Danter in 1597 from an imperfect acting copy. A second quarto of 1599 (by T. Creede for Cuthbert Burbie) was printed from an authentic version which had undergone much revision (cf. ‘Parallel Texts,’ ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shakspere Society; Fleay, Life, pp. 191 seq.).

Three other pieces of the period, of the first production of which we have direct information, reveal Shakespeare undisguisedly as an adapter of plays by other hands. On 3 March 1592 a new piece, called ‘Henry VI,’ was ‘Henry VI.’acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's men. It was no doubt the play which was subsequently known as Shakespeare's ‘1 Henry VI.’ On its first production it won a popular triumph. ‘How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French),’ wrote Nash in his ‘Pierce Pennilesse’ (1592, licensed 8 Aug.), in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot's death (act iv. sc. vi. and vii.), ‘to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!’ There is no record of the production of a second piece in continuation of the theme, but it quickly followed, for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI's reign, attracted much attention on the stage early in the following autumn.

The applause attending this effort drew from one rival dramatist a rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on 3 Sept. 1592, wrote on his Greene's attack.deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled ‘Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.’ Addressing three brother dramatists—Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge—he bade them beware of puppets ‘that speak from our mouths,’ and of ‘antics garnished in our colours.’ ‘There is,’ he continued, ‘an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is in his owne conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie. … Never more acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.’ The ‘only Shake-scene’ is a punning denunciation of Shakespeare. The tirade was probably inspired by an author's resentment of the energy of the actor—the theatre's factotum—in revising professional dramatic work. The italicised quotation travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of Shakespeare's ‘Henry VI:’

    Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.

But Shakespeare's amiability of character and versatile ability had already won him admirers. In December 1592 Greene's publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed to his ‘Kind Hartes Dreame’ an apology Chettle's apology. for Greene's attack on the young actor. ‘I am as sory,’ he wrote, ‘as if the originall fault had beene my fault because myselfe have seene his (i.e. Shakespeare's) demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that aprooves his art.’

The first of the three plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI was first published in the collected edition of Shakespeare's works; the second and third plays were previously printed in a form very different from that which they assumed when they Divided authorship of ‘Henry VI.’followed it in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond doubt that in these plays Shakespeare did no more than add, revise, and correct other men's work. In pt. i. the scene in the Temple Gardens, where white and red roses are plucked as emblems by the rival political parties (act ii. sc. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the impress of his style. A play dealing with the second part of Henry VI's reign was published anonymously from a rough stage copy in 1594, with the title ‘The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster.’ A play dealing with the third part was published with greater care next year under the title ‘The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.’ In both these plays Shakespeare's hand can be traced. The humours of Jack Cade in ‘The Contention’ can only owe their savour to him. After he had hastily revised them, perhaps with another's aid, they were doubtless put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts by his own company (Lord Strange's men), and the third, under some exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare was not content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, possibly for a revival, he undertook a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with another writer. The first part of ‘The Contention’ was thoroughly overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in the folio ‘2 Henry VI;’ there more than half the lines are new. ‘The True Tragedie,’ which became ‘3 Henry VI,’ was less drastically handled; two-thirds of it was left practically untouched; only a third was completely recast (cf. Fleay, Life, pp. 235 seq.; Trans. New Shakspere Soc., 1876, pt. ii. by Miss Jane Lee; Swinburne, Study, pp. 51 seq.).

Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two revisions of ‘Henry VI’ cannot be determined. The theory that Greene and Peele produced the original draft of the three parts of ‘Henry VI’ may help to account for Greene's indignation. Much can be said, too, in behalf of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatest of his predecessors, in the first revision which resulted in ‘The Contention’ and the ‘True Tragedie,’ and that Marlowe returned the compliment by adding a few touches to the final revision, for which Shakespeare was mainly responsible.

Many of Shakespeare's comedies—notably ‘Midsummer Night's Dream’ and ‘Much Ado about Nothing’—exhibit familiarity with the dramatic work of John Lyly. Elsewhere traces may be found of an appreciative study of the writings of Samuel Daniel, Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge. But Marlowe alone of Shakespeare's contemporaries can be credited with exerting on him any Marlowe's influence.substantial influence. Marlowe was in 1592 and 1593 at the zenith of his fame, and two of Shakespeare's earliest historical tragedies, ‘Richard III’ and ‘Richard II,’ which formed the natural sequel of his labours on ‘Henry VI,’ betray an ambition to follow in Marlowe's footsteps. In ‘Richard III’ Shakespeare takes up the history of England near the point at which the third part of ‘Henry VI’ left it. The subject was already familiar to dramatists, but Shakespeare sought his materials in Holinshed. A Latin piece, by Dr. Thomas Legge, had been in favour with academic audiences since 1579, and in 1594 the ‘Richard III.’‘True Tragedie of Richard III’ was published anonymously; but Shakespeare's piece bears little resemblance to either. Throughout Shakespeare's ‘Richard III’ the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeniable. It is, says Mr. Swinburne, ‘as fiery in passion, as single in purpose, as rhetorical often, though never so inflated in expression, as “Tamburlaine” itself.’ The turbulent piece was naturally popular. Burbage's impersonation of the hero was one of his most effective performances, and his vigorous enunciation of ‘A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’ gave the line proverbial currency.

‘Richard II’ seems to have followed ‘Richard III’ without delay. Subsequently both were published anonymously in the same year (1597) as they had ‘been publikely acted by the right Honorable the Lorde Chamberlaine his servants;’ but the deposition scene in ‘Richard II,’ which dealt with a topic distasteful to the queen, was omitted from the early impressions. Though ‘Richard II’ was in ‘Richard II.’style and treatment far less deeply indebted to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly suggested by Marlowe's ‘Edward II,’ which it imitates at many points in the development and collapse of the weak king's character—the leading theme. Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his embellishments are numerous and include the magnificently eloquent eulogy of England which is set in the mouth of John of Gaunt. Prose is avoided throughout the play, a certain sign of early work. The piece was probably composed very early in 1593. The ‘Merchant of Venice,’ which is of later date, bears a somewhat similar relation to Marlowe's ‘Jew of Malta.’

In ‘As you like it’ (iii. 5, 80) Shakespeare parenthetically commemorated his acquaintance with, and his general indebtedness to, the elder dramatist by apostrophising him in the lines

    Dead Shepherd! now I find thy saw of might:

    ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?

The second line is a quotation from Marlowe's poem ‘Hero and Leander.’

Between February 1593 and the end of the year the London theatres were closed, owing to the prevalence of the plague. But Shakespeare was busily employed, and before the close of 1594 gave marvellous proofs of his rapid powers of production.

‘Titus Andronicus’ was in his own lifetime claimed for Shakespeare, but Edward Ravenscroft [q. v.], who prepared a new version in 1678, wrote of it: ‘I have been ‘Titus Andronicus.’told by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters.’ Ravenscroft's assertion deserves acceptance. The tragedy contains powerful lines and situations, but is far too repulsive in plot and treatment, and too ostentatious in classical allusions to connect it with Shakespeare's acknowledged work. Ben Jonson credits ‘Titus Andronicus’ with a popularity equalling Kyd's ‘Spanish Tragedy,’ and internal evidence shows that Kyd was capable of writing much of ‘Titus.’ It was suggested by a piece called ‘Titus and Vespasian,’ which Lord Strange's men played on 11 April 1592 (Henslowe, p. 24); this is only extant in a German version acted by English players in Germany, and published in 1620 (cf. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, pp. 155 et seq.). ‘Titus Andronicus’ was doubtless taken in hand soon after the production of ‘Titus and Vespasian’ in order to exploit popular interest in the topic. It was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on 23 Jan. 1593–4, when it was described as a new piece; but that it was also acted subsequently by Shakespeare's company is shown by the title-pages of the first and second editions, which describe it as having been performed by the Earl of Derby's and the lord chamberlain's servants (successive titles of Shakespeare's company), as well as by those of the Earls of Pembroke and Sussex. It was entered on the ‘Stationers' Register’ to John Danter on 6 Feb. 1594 (Arber, ii. 644). Langbaine claims to have seen an edition of this date, but none earlier than that of 1600 is now known.

For part of the plot of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ Shakespeare seems to have had recourse to ‘II Pecorone,’ a collection of Italian novels by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino. ‘Merchant of Venice.’There a Jewish creditor demands a pound of flesh of a defaulting Christian debtor, and the latter is rescued through the advocacy of ‘the lady of Belmont.’ A similar story figures in the ‘Gesta Romanorum,’ while the tale of the caskets is told independently in another portion of the same work. But Shakespeare's ‘Merchant’ owes much to other sources, including more than one old play. Stephen Gosson describes in his ‘Schoole of Abuse’ (1579) a lost play called ‘the Jew .… showne at the Bull [inn] .… representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers and bloody mindes of usurers.’ This description suggests that the two stories of the pound of flesh and the caskets had been combined before. The scenes in Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates with Shylock are roughly anticipated, too, by dialogues between a Jewish creditor Gerontus and a Christian debtor in the extant play of ‘The Three Ladies of London,’ by R[obert] W[ilson] 1584.

Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ betrayed for the last time his discipleship to Marlowe. Although the delicate comedy which lightens the serious interest of Shakespeare's play sets it in a different category from that of Marlowe's ‘Jew of Malta,’ the humanised portrait of the Jew Shylock embodies reminiscences of Marlowe's caricature of the Jew Barabbas. Doubtless the popular interest aroused by the trial in February 1594 and the execution in June of the queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez [q. v.], incited Shakespeare to a new and subtler study of Jewish character (cf. ‘The Original of Shylock,’ by the present writer, in Gent. Mag. February 1880; Dr. H. Graetz, Shylock in den Sagen, in den Dramen und in der Geschichte, Krotoschin, 1880; and New Shakespere Soc. Trans. 1887–92, pt. ii. pp. 158–92). The main interest of the ‘Merchant’ culminates in the trial scene and Shylock's discomfiture, but there is an ease in the transition to the gently poetic and humorous incidents of the concluding act which attests a rare mastery of stagecraft. The ‘Venesyon Comedy,’ which Henslowe, the manager, produced at the Rose on 25 Aug. 1594, was probably the earliest version of the ‘Merchant of Venice.’ It was not published till 1600, when two editions appeared, each printed from a different stage-copy.

To 1594 must also be assigned ‘King John,’ which, like the ‘Comedy of Errors’ and ‘Richard II,’ altogether eschews prose; it was not printed till 1623. The piece was directly adapted from a worthless play called ‘The Troublesome Raigne King John.of King John’ (1591), which was fraudulently reissued in 1611 as ‘written by W. Sh.,’ and in 1622 as by ‘W. Shakespeare.’ There is very small ground for associating Marlowe's name with the old play. Into the adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy, and the theme grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. The three chief characters—the king, Constance, and Faulconbridge—are in all essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed with a sureness of touch that leaves no doubt of his developing strength.

At the close of 1594 a performance of Shakespeare's early farce, ‘The Comedy of Errors,’ gave him a passing notoriety that he could well have spared. The piece was played on the evening of Innocents' day (28 Dec.) 1594, in the The performance of ‘Comedy of Errors’ in Gray's Inn Hall.hall of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience of benchers, students, and their friends. Shakespeare was not present; he was acting on the same night before the queen at Greenwich. There was some disturbance during the evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, who, dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded them, retired in dudgeon. ‘So that night,’ the contemporary chronicler states, ‘was ever afterwards called the “Night of Errors”’ (Gesta Grayorum, printed in 1688 from a contemporary manuscript). Next day a commission of oyer and terminer inquired into the causes of the tumult, which was attributed to a sorcerer having ‘foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions.’ (A second performance at Gray's Inn Hall was given by the Elizabethan Stage Society 6 Dec. 1895.)

Two other plays attracted much public attention during the period under review (1591–4)—‘Arden of Feversham’ (licensed 3 April 1592, and published in 1592) and ‘Edward III’ (licensed for publication 1 Dec. 1595, and published in 1596). Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the ground that their dramatic energy is of superior quality to that found in the extant efforts of any contemporary. There is no external evidence in favour of Shakespeare's Early plays doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare.authorship in either case. ‘Arden of Feversham’ dramatises with intensity and insight a sordid story of the murder of a husband by a wife which took place in 1551, and was fully reported by Holinshed. The subject is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is known to have treated, and although the play may be, as Mr. Swinburne insists, ‘a young man's work,’ it bears no relation either in topic or style to the work on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a period so early as 1591 or 1592. A play in Marlowe's vein, ‘Edward III,’ which Capell reprinted in his ‘Prolusions’ in 1760 and described as ‘thought to be writ by Shakespeare,’ has been assigned to him on even more shadowy grounds. Many speeches scattered through the drama, and one whole scene—that in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses the advances of Edward III—show the hand of a master (act ii. sc. 2). But there is even in the style of these contributions much to dissociate them from Shakespeare's accredited productions, and justify their ascription to some less efficient disciple of Marlowe (cf. Swinburne, Study of Shakspere, pp. 231–274). A line in act ii. sc. i. (‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds’) reappears in Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets’ (xciv. l. 14). It was contrary to his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line was doubtless borrowed from a manuscript copy of the ‘Sonnets.’

During these busy years (1591–4) Shakespeare came before the public in yet another literary capacity. On 18 April 1593 his friend Richard Field, the printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a license for the publication of ‘Venus and Adonis,’ a love poem, written with a license which stamps it as a product of youth. It was published a month or two Publication of ‘Venus and Adonis.’later, without an author's name on the title-page, but Shakespeare appended his full name to the dedication, which he addressed in conventional style to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. ‘I know not how I shall offend,’ he wrote, ‘in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop for supporting so weak a burden. … But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.’ ‘The first heir of my invention’ implies that the poem was written before Shakespeare's dramatic work. The title-page bears a Latin motto from Ovid's ‘Amores.’ Lodge's ‘Scillas Metamorphosis,’ which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c c), but opens with the same incidents, and deals with them in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of his inspiration (Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Lodge's Scillas Metamorphosis, by James P. Reardon, in ‘Shakespeare Society's Papers,’ iii. 143–6).

A year later, in 1594, Shakespeare published another poem in like style, but in seven-line (Chaucer's rhyme royal, a b a b b c c) instead of six-line stanzas. It was entered in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ on 9 May 1594 under the title of ‘A Booke intitled the Ravyshement of Lucrece,’ and was published in the same year under the title ‘Lucrece.’‘Lucrece.’ Richard Field printed it, and John Harrison published it and sold it at the sign of the White Greyhound in St. Paul's Churchyard. Samuel Daniel's ‘Complaint of Rosamond’ (1592) stood to ‘Lucrece’ in something of the same relation as Lodge's ‘Scilla’ to ‘Venus and Adonis.’ Again, Shakespeare dedicated the volume to the Earl of Southampton, but instead of addressing him in the frigid compliment that was habitual to dedications, he employs the outspoken language of devoted friendship: ‘The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end, whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. … What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.’

Both the poems were widely read and appreciated. They drew upon Shakespeare a far larger share of public notice than his early dramatic productions. No less than Enthusiastic reception of the poems.seven editions of ‘Venus’ appeared between 1594 and 1602, and an eighth followed in 1617. ‘Lucrece’ reached a fifth edition a year earlier. ‘Lucrece,’ wrote Michael Drayton in his ‘Legend of Matilda’ (1594), was ‘revived to live another age.’ In 1595 William Clerke [q. v.] in his ‘Polimanteia’ gave ‘all praise’ to ‘Sweet Shakespeare’ for his ‘Lucrecia.’ John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to ‘Honey-tongued Shakespeare’ in his ‘Epigramms’ (1595), eulogised the two poems as his main achievement, although he mentioned Romeo and Richard and ‘more whose names I know not.’ Richard Carew at the same time classed him with Marlowe as deserving the praises of an English Catullus (‘Excellencie of the English Tongue’ in Camden's Remaines, p. 43). There is a likelihood, too, that Spenser was drawn by the poems into the ranks of Shakespeare's admirers. There is little doubt that Spenser referred to Shakespeare and Spenser.Shakespeare in ‘Colin Clouts come home againe’ (completed in 1594), under the name of ‘Aetion’ (a familiar Greek proper name derived from Aetos, an eagle)

    And there, though last not least is Aetion;

      A gentler Shepheard may no where be found,

    Whose muse, full of high thought's invention,

      Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound.

The last line seems to allude to Shakespeare's surname. The admiration was doubtless mutual. That Shakespeare knew Spenser's work appears from a plain reference to his ‘Teares of the Muses’ (1591) in ‘Midsummer Night's Dream’ (v. i. 52–3). But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in the ‘Teares of the Muses’ referred to Shakespeare when deploring the recent death of ‘Our pleasant Willy.’ A comic actor, ‘dead of late’ in a literal sense, is clearly intended [see under Tarleton, Richard]. The ‘gentle spirit’ who is described in a later stanza as sitting ‘in idle cell’ rather than turn his pen to base uses cannot be more reasonably identified with Shakespeare.

Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal esteem outside the circles of actors and men of letters. His genius and ‘civil demeanour’ of which Chettle wrote arrested the notice of noble patrons of literature and the drama. His summons to act at court with the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas of 1594 was possibly due in part to Patrons of the court.personal interest in himself. Elizabeth quickly showed him special favour. Until the end of her reign his plays were repeatedly acted in her presence. The revised version of ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ was given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and tradition credits the queen with unconcealed enthusiasm for Falstaff, who came into being a little later. Under Elizabeth's successor he greatly strengthened his hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed that the queen's appreciation equalled that of James I. Jonson wrote of

    Those flights upon the banks of Thames,

    That so did take Eliza and our James.

To Shakespeare's personal relations with men and women of the court his ‘Sonnets’ owed their existence. Between 1591 and 1597 no aspirant to poetic fame in England failed to seek a The ‘Sonnets.’patron's ear by a trial of skill as a sonneteer. Shakespeare applied himself to sonneteering when the fashion was at its height. Many critics are convinced that throughout the ‘Sonnets’ Shakespeare avows the experiences of his own heart (cf. C. Armitage Brown, Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, 1838; Richard Simpson, Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1868). But the two concluding sonnets (cliii. and cliv.) are directly suggested by an apologue illustrating the potency of love which figures in the Greek anthology (Palatine Anthology, ix. 627). Elsewhere many conceits are adapted from contemporary sonnets. While Shakespeare's poems bear traces of personal emotion and are coloured by personal experience, they seem to have been to a large extent undertaken as literary exercises. His ever-present dramatic instinct may be held to account for most of the illusion of personal confession which they call up in many minds. Their style suggests that they came from a youthful pen—from a man not more than thirty. Probably a few dated from 1591, and the bulk of them were composed within a brief period of the publication of his two narrative poems in 1594. The rhythm and metre display in the best examples—for the inequalities are conspicuous—a more mellowed sweetness than is found in those works. The thought is usually more condensed, and obscure conceits are more numerous. But these results may be assigned in part to the conditions imposed by the sonnet-form and in part to the sonnets' complex theme. External evidence confirms the theory of their early date. Shakespeare's early proficiency as a sonneteer and his enthusiasm for the sonnet-form are both attested by his introduction of two Their early date.admirably turned sonnets into the dramatic dialogue of ‘Love's Labour's Lost’—probably his earliest play. It has, too, been argued—ingeniously, if on slender grounds—that he was author of the sonnet, ‘Phæton, to his friend Florio,’ which prefaced in 1591 ‘Florio's Second Frutes’ (Minto, Characteristics of English Poetry, 1885, pp. 371–382). A line from a fully accredited sonnet (xciv.) was quoted in ‘Edward III,’ which was probably written before 1595. Meres, writing in 1598, mentions Shakespeare's ‘sugred sonnets among his private friends’ in close conjunction with his two narrative poems. That all the sonnets were in existence before Meres wrote is rendered probable by the fact that William Jaggard piratically inserted in 1599 two of the most mature of the series (Nos. cxxxviii and cxliv) in his ‘Passionate Pilgrim.’ Shakespeare speaks of himself in the first of these two sonnets as feeling the incidents of age (‘my days are past the best’). But when the two poems fell into Jaggard's predatory hands in 1599, the poet was only thirty-five. Hence there is no ground for the assumption that the many references to his growing years demand a literal interpretation and prove a far later date of composition (cf. xxx. lxii. lxxiii.). The ‘Sonnets’ were first published in 1609, but Shakespeare cannot be credited with any responsibility for the publication. There was appended a previously unpublished poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of ‘Lucrece’), entitled ‘A Lover's Complaint,’ in which a girl laments her betrayal by a deceitful youth. If, as is possible, it be by Shakespeare, it must have been written in very early days.

Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets’ ignore the somewhat complex scheme of rhyme adopted by Petrarch and followed by nearly all the great English sonneteers. Their form.Seeking greater metrical simplicity, they consist of three decasyllabic quatrains with a concluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alternately. It is rarely that a single sonnet forms an independent poem. As in the sonnets of Spenser, Sidney, and Drayton, the same train of thought is pursued continuously through two or more. The collection, numbering 154 sonnets in all, thus presents the appearance of a series of poems, each in a varying number of fourteen-line stanzas. It seems doubtful if the order in which the sequences are printed preserves that in which they were penned. It is rarely that a single sonnet or a short sequence of sonnets betrays much logical connection with those that precede or follow (cf. cxlv. cxlvi. and cli.).

No clear nor connected story is deducible from the poems, which divide themselves into two main groups. In the first (i.–cxxvi.), Shakespeare addresses for the most part a young man. The subject-matter.In the opening sequence, the right of which to priority seems questionable, the youth is urged to marry that his beauty may survive in children (i.–xvii.). Elsewhere the poet insists, in language originally borrowed from classical literature but habitual to sonneteers of the day, that his verse will perpetuate for ever his friend's memory (xviii. xix. liv. lv. lx. lxiii. lxv. lxxxi. cvii.). In four sequences (xxvii.–xxxii. xliii.–lvi. xcvii.–xcix. cxiii.–cxiv.) the poet dwells on the effects of absence in intensifying love. At times the youth is rebuked for sensuality (xxxii.–xxxv. lxix.–lxx. xcix.–xcvi.). At times melancholy overwhelms the writer; he despairs of the corruptions of the age, and longs for death (lxvi.–lxviii. lxxi.–lxxiv.). In one sequence the writer's equanimity is disturbed by the favour bestowed by a young patron on a rival poet (lxxviii.–lxxxvi.). The first group concludes with a series of sequences in which the poet declares his constancy in friendship.

In the second group, most of which are addressed to a woman (cxxvi.–clii.), Shakespeare, in accord with a contemporary convention of sonneteers, narrates more or less connectedly the story of the disdainful rejection of a lover by an accomplished siren with raven-black hair and eyes. In one group of six sonnets (xl. xli. xlii. cxxxiii. cxxxiv. cxliv.), which stands apart from those that immediately succeed or follow them, a more personal note seems to be struck. The six poems relate how the writer's mistress has corrupted his friend and drawn him from his ‘side.’ Sonnet cxliv. (published by Jaggard in 1599) suggested the state of feeling generated by this episode:

    Two loves I had of comfort and despair,

    Which like two spirits do suggest [i.e. tempt] me still;

    The better angel is a man right fair,

    The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

The story of intrigue developed in these six sonnets is not easily paralleled. It may owe its origin to a genuine experience of the poet himself.

Many attempts have been made to identify among Shakespeare's contemporaries the anonymous persons to whom the poet seems to refer, but no result hitherto reached rests on sure foundations. Identification of the persons noticed.The sole clue the text offers lies in the plain avowal that a young man was a patron of the poet's verse, which had derived from him ‘fair assistance’ (Sonnet lxxviii.). Shakespeare is not known to have formally acknowledged any literary patron except Southampton, and some of the phrases in the dedication to ‘Lucrece’ so closely resemble expressions that were addressed in the sonnets to a young friend as to identify the latter with Southampton. Southampton, Shakespeare's junior by nine years, was a patron of literature and of the drama. On 11 Oct. 1599 he was spoken of as passing ‘away the tyme in London Lord Southampton.merely in going to plaies every day’ (Sidney Papers, ii. 132), and when Queen Anne of Denmark visited him in London in January 1604–5, Shakespeare's ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ was performed (Hatfield MSS.; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 83, 167). John Florio [q. v.] may be reasonably included among Shakespeare's early London friends, although there is little ground for regarding him as the original of Holofernes in ‘Love's Labour's Lost,’ and he was long in Southampton's ‘pay and patronage.’ An independent tradition confirms the closeness of Shakespeare's intimacy with Southampton. According to Rowe, ‘there is one instance so singular in its magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.’

Shakespeare's description of the rival poet, ‘of tall building and goodly pride,’ and the references to ‘the proud full sail of his great verse,’ would (it is commonly suggested) apply to George Chapman, George Chapman.and allusions have been detected in Sonnets lxxxii. and lxxxvi. to Chapman's devotion to Homer, and to phraseology employed by Chapman in his ‘Shadow of Night,’ 1594 (cf. Minto, Characteristics, p. 291; Leopold Shakspere, ed. Furnivall, lxv.). But Chapman was only one among many of the protégés of Southampton, and another of them, Barnabe Barnes, has claims to be considered ‘the rival poet’ of the ‘Sonnets.’ Southampton married in 1598, against the queen's wish, Elizabeth, daughter of John Vernon, a lady of the court, but there is no ground for identifying her with the conventional lady of the ‘Sonnets’ (cf. Gerald Massey, Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1888).

Other theories of identification rest on wholly erroneous premisses. Shakespeare undoubtedly plays more than once on his own Christian name, Baseless theories.Will (cxxxv.–vi., cxliii.); but there is nothing in the wording of these punning passages to warrant the assumption that his friend bore the same appellation (this misinterpretation is attributable to the misprinting in the early editions of the second ‘will’ as ‘Will’ in cxxxv. l. 1). No more importance can be attached to the fantastic suggestion that the line describing the youth as

    A man in hue all hues in his controlling

(xx. 7), and other applications of the word ‘hue,’ imply that his surname was Hughes. There is no other pretence of argument for the conclusion that the friend's name was William Hughes. No known contemporary of the name answers either in age or position in life the requirements of the problem (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. v. 443).