probably still less endurable.

But they were all the seats of gaiety, throwing a veil over fears and jealousies and feverish ambition. Our business is not with their real tragedies.

From about the period of Shakspere's first connection with the stage, and thence with the Court, Henry Lord Hunsdon, the kinsman of Elizabeth, was Lord Chamberlain. It is remarkable, that when Burbage erected the Blackfriars Theatre, in 1576, close by the houses of Lord Hunsdon and of the famous Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, Lord Hunsdon was amongst the petitioners against the project of Burbage. But the Earl of Sussex, who was then Lord Chamberlain, did not petition against the erection of a playhouse; and he may there fore be supposed to have approved of it. The opinions, however, of Lord Hunsdon must have undergone some considerable change; for upon his succeeding to the office of Lord Chamberlain upon the death of Sussex, he became the patron of Shakspere's company. They were the Lord Chamberlain's men; or, in other words, the especial servants of the Court. Henry Lord Hunsdon held this office for eleven years, till his death in 1596. Elizabeth bestowed

upon him as a residence the magnificent palace of the Protector Somerset. Here, in the halls which had been raised out of the spoliation of the great Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, would the company of Shakspere be frequently engaged. The Queen occasionally made the palace her residence; and it can scarcely be doubted that on these occasions there was revelry upon which the genius of the new dramatic poet, so immeasurably above all his compeers, would bestow a grace which a few years earlier seemed little akin to the spirit of the drama. That palace also is swept away; and the place which once witnessed the stately measure and the brisk galliard-where Cupids shook their painte wings in the solemn masque-and where, above all, our great dramatic poet may first have produced his Comedy of Errors, his Two Gentlemen of Verona, his Romeo and Juliet, and. have been rewarded with smiles and tears, such as seldom were bestowed in the chill regions of state and etiquette, that place now sees the complicated labours of the routine departments of a mighty government constantly progressing in their prosaic uniformity. No contrast can be more striking than the Somerset House of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain, and the Somerset House of Queen Victoria's Commissioners of Stamps and Taxes.

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"How chances it they travel?" says Hamlet, speaking of the players Their residence both in reputation and profit was better both ways." Ham

3

jesty's players." The complaint of the Vice-Chancellor on was a principal amongst them; and Dutton's company accounts of the Revels as early as 1572. But for this might have concluded that the Queen's players were the hakspere belonged; and that his acquaintance with Cambuildings, and its noble institutions, was to be associated a dispute that is little creditable to those who resisted the authority of the University. The Queen and her courtiers ed upon this contest in something of the spirit of mischieve months after the dispute, Dr. John Still, then Vice-Chanrinity College, and Bishop of Bath and Wells, writes thus to Council: "Upon Saturday last, being the second of December, - from Mr. Vice-Chamberlain by a messenger sent purposely, n that her Majesty's own servants in this time of infection her Highness with their wonted and ordinary pastimes, his ved our University (as he writeth that he hath also done the to prepare a comedy in English, to be acted before her Highour students in this time of Christmas. How ready we are that may tend to her Majesty's pleasure, we are very desirous testify; but how fit we shall be by this is moved, having no English vein,* and being (as we think) nothing beseeming our

vein had gone out of use. In 1564, Ezekias,' a comedy in English by Dr. 3 performed before Elizabeth in King's College Chapel.

let's "tragedians of the city" travel because "the boys carry it away." But there were other causes that more than once forced Shakspere's company to disperse, and which affected also every other company. That terrible affliction from which England has so long been free, the plague, almost invariably broke up the residence of the players. They were in general scattered about the country seeking a precarious maintenance, whilst their terror-stricken families remained in the fated city. In the autumn of 1592 the plague raged in London. Michaelmas term was kept at Hertford; as in 1593 it was at St. Albans. During this long period all the theatres were closed, the Privy Council justly alleging "that infected people, after their long keeping in and before they be cleared of their disease and infection, being desirous of recreation, use to resort to such assemblies, where through heat and throng they infect many sound persons.”. In the letters of Alleyn the player, which are preserved in Dulwich College, there is one to his wife, of this exact period, being dated from Chelmsford, the 2nd of May, 1593, which exhibits a singular picture of the indignities to which the less privileged players appear to have been subjected:-"I have no news to send thee, but I thank God we are all well, and in health, which I pray God to continue with us in the country, and with you in London. But, mouse, I little thought to hear that which I now hear by you, for it is well known, they say, that you were by my Lord Mayor's officers made to ride in a cart, you and all your fellows, which I am sorry to hear; but you may thank your two supporters, your strong legs I mean, that would not carry you away, but let you fall into the hands of such termagants."* On the 1st of September, 1592, there was a company of players at Cambridge, and, as it appears, engaged in a contest with the University authorities. On that day the Vice-Chancellor issues a warrant to the constable forbidding the inhabitants to allow the players to occupy any houses, rooms, or yards, for the purpose of exhibiting their interludes, plays, and tragedies. The players, however, disregarded the warrant; for on the 8th of September, the Vice-Chancellor complains to the Privy Council that "certain light persons, pretending themselves to be her Majesty's players, &c., did take boldness, not only here to proclaim their interludes (by setting up of writings about our college gates), but also actually at Chesterton to play the same, which is a village within the compass of the jurisdiction granted to us by her Majesty's charter, and situated hard by the plot where Stourbridge fair is kept." The Privy Council does not appear to have been in a hurry to redress the grievance; for ten days afterwards the Vice-Chancellor and various heads of colleges repeated the complaint, alleging that the offenders were supported by Lord North (who resided at Kirtling, near Cambridge), who said “in the hearing as well of the players, as of divers knights and gentlemen of the shire then present," that an order of the Privy Council of 1575, forbidding the performance of plays in the neighbourhood of universities, "was no perpetuity." It was not till the following year that the Privy Council put an end to this unseemly contest, by renewing the letters of 1575. The company of Shakspere was not, we apprehend, the "certain light persons, pretending them

*Collier's 'Memoirs of Edward Alleyn,' p. 24.