of hundreds of watermen. The vocabulary of profanity and vituperation was nowhere richer; every boat's load on its way up or down the stream abused every other boat's load in passing; the shouts "Eastward Ho!" or "Westward Ho !" were deafening.

In 1586 London was responding to the impetus which rapidly increasing trade had given the whole country, and was fast outgrowing its ancient limits. Neither the Tudor nor the Stuart sovereigns looked with favour on the growth of the power of a community which was never lacking in the independence which comes from civic courage and civic wealth. James I. said, with characteristic pedantry, that "the growth of the capital resembleth that of the head of a rickety child, in which an excessive influx of humours draweth and impoverisheth the extremities, and at the same time generateth distemper in the overloaded parts." The instinct which warned the father of Charles I. against the growth of London was sound, as the instincts of James often were; but there was no power within reach of the sovereign which could check the growth of the great city of the future. That growth was part of the expansion of England; one evidence of that rising tide of racial vitality which was to carry the English spirit, genius, and activity to the ends of the earth.

CHAPTER V

THE LONDON STAGE

A YOUTH of Shakespeare's genius and charm of nature needed only a bit of earth on which to put his foot in the arena of struggle which London was in that day, and still is, in order to make his way to a secure position. That bit of ground from which he could push his fortunes forward was probably afforded by his friendship with Richard Field, a Stratford boy who had bound himself, after the custom of the time, to Thomas Vautrollier, a printer and publisher in Blackfriars, not far from the two theatres then in existence, The Theatre and The Curtain. Richard was the son of "Henry ffelde of Stratford uppon Aven in the countye of Warwick, tanner," a friend of John Shakespeare. Young Field, who had recently. ended his apprenticeship, came into the possession of the business by marriage about this time, and his name will always be kept in memory because his imprint appears on the earliest of Shakespeare's publications, the "Venus and Adonis," which was first issued in 1593 and reissued in 1594 and 1596; and on the title-page of "The Rape of Lucrece" in 1594. The relation of this printer and his predecessor to the poet was intimate in the true sense of the word:

Field not only gave to the world Shakespeare's earliest poems, but brought out several books which deeply influenced the young poet; in 1589 he printed Puttenham's "Arte of English Poesie" and fifteen books of Ovid's "Metamorphoses"; and he brought out at least five editions of North's translation of Plutarch's "Lives," that "pasturage of noble minds," upon which Shakespeare must have fastened with avidity, so completely did his imagination penetrate and possess Plutarch's great stories.

The theory that Shakespeare worked for a time in the printing establishment is pure surmise; there is not even tradition to support it. Friendship with James Burbage, one of the leading actors of the day, with whom Shakespeare became intimately associated, has been taken for granted on the assumption that Burbage was a man of Stratford birth; and on the same ground it has been assumed that he knew John Heminge, who became at a later time his associate and friend; it is improbable, however, that either of these successful actors was a native of Warwickshire. Nor is there good ground for the surmise that the poet began his career as a lawyer's clerk; his knowledge of legal terms, considerable as it was, is more reasonably accounted for on other grounds.

Tradition is doubtless to be trusted when it connects Shakespeare from the beginning of his career with the profession which he was later not only to follow with notable practical success, but to practise with the insight and skill of the artist. His mastery of the mechanism of the play as well as of its poetic

resources was so complete that his apprenticeship must have begun at once. Assuming that he connected himself with the theatre at the very start, that period of preparation was amazingly brief. It is highly probable that the stories which associate him with the theatre in the humblest way are true in substance if not in detail. The best known of these is that which declares that he began by holding, during the performances, the horses of those who rode to the theatres. It was the custom of men of fashion to ride; Shakespeare lived in the near neighbourhood of both theatres; and James Burbage, the father of Shakespeare's friend the actor, was not only the owner of The Theatre, but of a livery stable close at hand, and may have given him employment. This story first appeared in print in 1753, and it was then an old tradition. The poet was not long in finding his way from the outside to the inside of the theatre.

If he did not attain eminence as an actor, he knew the stage business and the management of a theatre from first-hand knowledge, and down to the minutest detail. No man has ever kept the theory and the practice of an art more thoroughly in hand or in harmony. The plays hold the first place in poetry to-day because their literary quality and value are supreme; they were successful in the poet's time largely because they showed such mastery of the business of the playwright. Shakespeare the craftsman and Shakespeare the artist were ideal collaborators. Rowe's statement that " he was received into the company then in being at first in a very mean

rank" has behind it two credible and probable traditions the story that he entered the theatre as a mere attendant or servitor, and the story that his first service in his profession was rendered in the humble capacity of a call-boy. The nature of the work he had to do at the start was of no consequence; what is of importance is the fact that it gave him a foothold; henceforth he had only to climb; and climbing, to a man of his gifts and temper, was not toil but play.

Shakespeare began as an actor, and did not cease to act until toward the close of his life. His success as a playwright soon overshadowed his reputation as an actor, but, either as actor or shareholder, he kept in closest touch with the practical and business side of the theatre. He was for many years a man of great prominence and influence in what would to-day be known as theatrical circles; and while his success on the stage was only respectable, his success as share holder and manager was of the most substantial kind. It is clear that he inherited his father's instinct for business activity, and much more than his father's share of sound judgment and wise management. His good sense stands out at every stage in his mature life in striking juxtaposition with his immense capacity for emotion and excess both of passion and of brooding meditation. His poise and serenity of spirit were shown in his dealing with practical affairs; and his success as a man of affairs is not only a rare fact in the history of men of genius, but stood in close relation to his marvellous sanity of nature. He steadied his spirit by resolute and wholesome grasp of realities.