and beauty of Chaucer known to the multitude only by tradition of his fame; but because time has overshadowed his poems by the cloud of an obsolete dialect? Happily, however, this is not the case with Shakspeare, and the illustrations which his writings require are to be found in books and documents perfectly intelligible in our day, but contemporary with himself. I have been led to these observations, by finding in my note-book an extract from a MS. formulary of public acts in the reign of James the First, which is an exact running commentary on that passage in the play of Hamlet, where Polonius enumerates the various kinds of dramatic performances in which the itinerant players who visit the court at Elsinore are skilled, and attests them to be "the best actors in the world either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral," &c. &c.

It points at once to the precise meaning of the Prince, when he requests one of the players to give him a taste of his quality, a passionate speech. It shews that this "quality" was exercised either for the performance of Dramas on the Greek model; Histories, being the personages and events recorded in our chronicles, thrown into the dramatic form of dialogue and action; Interludes, of an allegorical character; Morals or Moralities, compiled at once for the edification and amusement of the auditors. This document also shows how the players were protected from being considered in the eye of the law as masterless vagabonds, being certified as sworn servants of a Prince or nobleman; and describes the places where their performances were usually given, either in houses of their own

*

providing, the amphitheatres or "wooden Os," (used, by the by, also for cock fighting and bear baiting,) the halls of Corporations, of Public Schools, or of the Universities.

However well known some of the above circumstances may be, it is pleasing to see them confirmed by the original form of—

"A licence for players to use their quality in his Majesty's" (James the First's) "dominions." After the usual preamble, the letters patent set forth in the King's name that certain persons are authorised as sworn servants of our dear son the Duke of York and Rothsaie, with the rest of their companie, to use and exercise the art and quality of playing comedies, histories, enterludes, moralls, pastoralls, stage plays, and such other like as they have already or hereafter shall studie or use for the recreation of our loving subjects, and for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think fit to see them; and the said enterludes or other to shew and exercise publiquely to their best commodity, as well in and about our City of London, in such usual houses as themselves shall provide, as also within any townhalls, mote-halls, guild-halls, schoolhouses, or other convenient places within the liberties and freedom of any other city, university, or borough whatsoever within our realms and dominions." Then follows a reservation of such authority, power, privilege and profit, as may appertain to the Master of the Revels by letters patent or Commission granted by the late Queen Elizabeth, or by his Majesty King James, to Edward Tilney, Master of the said Revels, or Sir George Buck, Knight.†

In connexion with this subject it may be further observed, that passages of Shakspeare are sometimes found to be illustrated not only by contemporary documents and authors, but by circumstances in which little connexion with his writings could be expected. Thus some years since I pointed out to your readers what a practical commentary on a passage of King John was afforded by a mere mechanical operation. The King, when suffering under the excruciating torments of the poison exclaims,

"I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen Upon a parchment, and against this fire Do I shrink up."

In the Chamberlain's office of the City of London, were found about the time referred to some records on parch. ment much damaged by fire. The writing in these was shrunk to a fourth of the original size by the action of the element on the membrane, preserving, notwithstanding, the form of the characters beautifully clear. Several of the Cottonian MSS. present a similar appearance from the same cause.

When Hamlet tells the Lady player that she is nearer Heaven than when he saw her last, by the “altitude of a chopine," an incidental contemporary passage shews me that a chopine, which some commentators have explained to be a measure for liquids, was an article of dress, probably a highheeled shoe or clog. A familiar letter of which I have a note, dated Dec. 25, 1623 says "A post has arrived from Spain: a proclamation has been issued that the Infanta be no more called Princess of Wales. In sign of her sorrow she put off her shoppins."

An epistle by Toby Matthew of Sept. 20, 1598, proves that the First Part of Henry IV. was written before that date; for he says, "Sir Francis Vere is coming towards the Low Countries; with him Sir Alexander Ratcliff and Sir Robert Drury; well, honour pricks them on, and the world thinks that

honour will quickly prick them off again," which are the very words of Falstaff's soliloquy on honour, in the battle field at Shrewsbury. The same letter speaks of Ben Jonson's celebrated comedy as a new play then lately acted, called "Every Man's Humour."

In

In the Second Part of King Henry IV. Falstaff says of Bardolph, “I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield; an I could get me but a wife in the Stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived." Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, the first edition of which was published A.D. 1621, we have the following passage remarkably coincident with that just quoted, which shews that the allusions it contains were proverbial.

"He that marries a wife out of a suspected inne or ale house, buyes a horse in Smithfield, and hires a servant in Paul's, as the diverbe is, shall likely have a jade to his horse, a knave for his man, and an arrant honest woman to his wife."*

That obscure denunciation of ancient Pistol against Master Slender, whom he challenges to combat as "a latten bilbo," which has puzzled the annotators, was explained at once by an old account of the office of the Revels preserved among the MSS. at Loseley, to mean an imitation of a Spanish or Bilboa sword, made of latten or mixed metal instead of steel; for among the mock equipments of the Lord of Misrule are "one Sclavoye (Sclavonian) blade and one Bylbo (Bilboa) bronde, &c."

I am persuaded, Mr. Urban, that a man of judgment, leisure, and research, conversant with the writers of the latter half of the sixteenth and earlier portion of the seventeenth century, might form an entertaining volume of illustrations of Shakspeare drawn from contemporary publications and MSS. preserved in our public depositories. The Right Hon. T. P. Courtenay has lately done something in this way for

Merry Wives of Windsor, act 1. s. 1.

Loseley MSS. p. 86.

Shakspeare's "Histories," by a careful comparative analysis, in a series of Essays, of those productions with the old English Chronicles.

With regard to the orthography and accentuation of Shakspeare's name now under discussion in your pages, I observe with pleasure that the remarks of your acute and impartial correspondent Mr. Bruce, by no means enforce the necessity, that we should, in compliance with the orthography which he advocates, pronounce it with barbarous elision Shack-spear. It were as absurd to call him Shackspere as to style with some syllabically precisian cockneys the towns of Greenwich and Woolwich - Green Witch and Wool Witch.

The observance in conversation of the orthography instead of the norma loquendi, generally the correct authority, has, in my own days, changed the name of the village of Lewisham (Lew'sham) into Lewis Ham, although I recollect we have evidence in the laconic apophthegms of Lord Bacon that in King James's time it was called familiarly Lew'sham. The King, on his way to Knole, passing through this long straggling village, asked what place it was; he was told Lusom. After a considerable interval, dragging on in a heavy state coach of the day through a miry road, he again asked where he was; he was told still in Lusom. I hope, said the monarch, jestingly, that I am king of this Lusom; which appeared comparatively of interminable extent.

What authority indeed can there be that the a in Shak-spere should be accented grave (à)? Might it not, with equal caprice, be considered broad and open (a)? I have heard northcountrymen call him, ore rotundo, Shawk-spear. The inflections of dialect may be harsh; but those of a refined pedantry are, to practised ears, ridiculous.

Yours, &c. A. J. K.

MR. URBAN, Bridgnorth, Jan. 21. As Mr. Joseph Morris, of Shrewsbury, has requested you to correct what he pleases to say is a very erroneous assertion which appeared in the memoir of the late Sir T. J. Tyrwhitt Jones, Bart. in your number of the Gent. Mag, for December, 1839, viz.

"He was lineally descended in the female line from the ancient patrician stock of Jones, of Chilton-grove, in the parish of Atcham, and of Shrewsbury. Of that family was the Regicide Colonel John Jones, brother-inlaw of Oliver Cromwell, and also his secretary, whose residence was at Fonmon-castle, co. Glamorgan," &c. I must request you will insert the following detail in corroboration and confirmation of the above statement, which was obtained from the mouth of the late deceased Baronet some years ago before the occurrence of his melancholy accident, who was very conversant with the history, and well acquainted with the biography of his ancestors and family, and no one could reverence them more. At that time he showed the writer of the above passages a very excellent painting of that colonel in his dining room at Stanley-hall, and also several beautifully executed miniatures of Oliver the Protector, which shortly before the colonel's execution had been packed up and sent from one of the colonel's residences to his relations, the Joneses of Shrewsbury. From them these pictures, with the protector's very large silver-faced repeating watch, almost globular, were afterwards conveyed to their relations, the Huxleys of Stanley-hall, near to Bridgenorth, from whom these paintings eventually became the valuable property of the late Baronet. But the Reverend Mr. Hartshorne, of Broseley, marrying one of the co-heiresses at Stanley, possessed himself of the very curious and interesting piece of mechanism, the silver watch of Cromwell, and presented it to his friend and virtuoso, Captain Henry Livingstone, of Blacklands, Bobbington, who, a short time before his decease, bestowed it upon a lady, a distant relative of the Huxleys and the late Earl of Powis, the Huxleys at that period being all dead;

and it is now in the custody of a gentleman residing within a few miles from Bridgnorth, as the collateral descendant and representative of the same lady. The Rev. Mark Noble, in his Memoirs of the House of Cromwell, observes of Colonel John Jones, the Regicide, (whose residence he does not state,)" that the Repub