In London Shakespeare's work was mainly done. There his reputation and fortune were achieved. But his London career opened under many disadvantages. A His associa London. young man of twenty-two, burdened with a wife tion with and three children, he had left his home in his little native town about 1586 to seek his fortune in the great city. Without friends, and without money, he had, like many another stage-struck youth, set his heart on a two-fold quest. He would become an actor in the metropolis, and would write the plays in which he should act. Fortune did not at first conspicuously favour him; he sought and won the menial office of call-boy in a London playhouse, and was only after some delay promoted to humble duties on the stage itself. But no sooner had his foot touched the lowest rung of the theatrical ladder, than he felt intuitively that the topmost rung was within his reach. He tried his hand on the revision of an old play in the theatrical repertory, a play which was about to be revived. The manager was not slow to recognise the gift for dramatic writing. III The period of proba tion. Shakespeare's period of probation was not short. He did not leap at a bound to fame and fortune. Neither came in sight until he had worked for seven or eight years in obscurity and hardship. During these years he accumulated knowledge in very varied fields of study and experience. Rapid power of intuition characterised many another great writer of the day, but none possessed it in the same degree as himself. Shakespeare's biographers have sometimes failed to make adequate allowance for his power of acquiring information with almost the rapidity of a lightning flash, and they have ignored altogether the circumstance that to some extent his literary contemporaries shared this power with him. The habit of viewing Shakespeare in isolation has given birth to many misconceptions. Use of law terms. The assumption of Shakespeare's personal association in early days with the profession of the law is a good illustration of the sort of misunderstanding which has corrupted accounts of Shakespeare's career. None can question the fact of Shakespeare's frequent use of law terms. But, the theory that during his early life in London he practised law in one or other professional capacity becomes perfectly superfluous as soon as his knowledge of law is compared with that of other Elizabethan poets, and its intuitive, rather than professional, character appreciated. It is true that Shakespeare employs a long series of law terms with accuracy and is in the habit of using legal metaphors. But the careful inquirer will also perceive that instances of bad law' or unsound interpretation of legal principles are almost as numerous in Shakespeare's work as instances of good law' or right interpretation of legal principles. On that aspect of the problem writers are as a rule tantalisingly silent. If we are content to keep Shakespeare apart from his contemporaries, or to judge him exclusively by the practice of imaginative writers of recent times, the circumstance that he often borrows metaphors or terminology from the law may well appear to justify the notion that personal experience of the profession is the best explanation of his practice. The habit of contemporaries. But the problem assumes a very different aspect when it is perceived that Shakespeare's fellowwriters, Ben Jonson and Spenser, Massinger and Webster, employed law terms with no less frequency and facility than he. It can be stated with the utmost confidence Spenser's use of law that none of these men engaged in the legal profession. 'For that a waif, the which by fortune came It to replevie, and my son reprieve, So shall you by one gift save all us three alive.'1 terms. In the second passage a definite form of legal practice is fully and accurately described: 'Fair Mirabella was her name, whereby He which doth summon lovers to love's judgment hall. Unto the bar whereas she was arraigned; But she thereto nould plead, nor answer aught 1 Faerie Queene, Bk. Iv., canto xii., stanza xxxi. Faerie Queene, Bk. vI., canto vii., stanzas xxxv. and xxxvi. Spenser's recondite law It will be noticed by readers of these quotations that Spenser makes free with strangely recondite technical terms. The verb 'replevie,' in the first quotation, means 'to enter on disputed property, after giving sephrases. curity to test at law the question of rightful ownership'; the technicality is to modern ears altogether out of harmony with the language of the Muses, and is rarely to be matched in Shakespeare. with pre Such examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely from Shake- Spenser, Ben Jonson, and scores of their contemspeare's conformity poraries. The questions Was Spenser a lawyer?' or 'Was Ben Jonson a lawyer?' have as far as my biographical studies go, not yet been raised. Were they raised, they could be summarily answered in the negative. vailing habit. No peculiar biographical significance can attach therefore, apart from positive evidence no title of which exists, to Shakespeare's legal phraseology. Social intercourse between men of letters and lawyers was exceptionally active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In view of the sensitiveness to environment, in view of the mental receptivity of all great writers of the day, it becomes unnecessary to assign to any more special causes the prevailing predilection for legal language in contemporary literature. The frequency with which law terms are employed by Shakespeare's contemporaries, who may justly be denied all practical experience of the profession of law, confutes the conclusion that Shakespeare, because he used law terms, was at the outset of his career in London a practising lawyer or lawyer's clerk. The only just conclusion to be drawn by Shakespeare's biographer from his employment of law terms is that the great dramatist in this feature, as in numerous other features, of his work was merely proving the readiness with which he identified himself with the popular literary habits of his day. All Shakespeare's mental energy, it may safely be premised, was absorbed throughout his London career by his dramatic ambition. He had no time to make acquaintance at first hand with the technical procedure of another profession. IV Shake It was not probably till 1591, when he was twenty-seven, that Shakespeare's earliest original play, Love's Labour's Lost, was performed. It showed the hand of a beginner; it abounded in trivial witticisms. But speare's early plays. above all there shone out clearly and unmistakably the dramatic and poetic fire, the humorous outlook on life, the insight into human feeling, which were to inspire Titanic achievements in the future. Soon after, he scaled the tragic heights of Romeo and Juliet, and he was rightly hailed as the prophet of a new world of art. Thenceforth he marched onward in triumph. The Earl of ton. Fashionable London society befriended the new birth of the theatre. Cultivated noblemen offered their patronage to promising actors or writers for the stage, and Shakespeare soon gained the ear of the young SouthampEarl of Southampton, one of the most accomplished and handsome of the Queen's noble courtiers. The earl was said to spend nearly all his leisure at the playhouse every day. It is not always borne in mind that Shakespeare gained soon after the earliest of his theatrical successes notable recognition from the highest in the land, from Queen Elizabeth, and her Court. It was probably at the suggestion of his enthusiastic patron, Lord Southampton, that, in the week preceding the Christmas of 1594, when Shakespeare was thirty, |