what drama is in a prothetic condition. The
date of the next play, Love's Labour's Lost, is
fixed by reference to a passage in the play itself,
as to Bank's Horse, about the period of 1588;
and in the same year, Hamlet probably saw the
light. In fixing the dates of these early plays
even approximately, there is, of course, much
difficulty. Commentators appear to be pretty
well agreed that Shakespeare began his career
as a dramatist about the year 1585. Hamlet,
in its original state, is alluded to very early. In
1589, Nash, in Greene's Menaphon, says of some
poet, that "he will affoord you whole Hamlets;
I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches."
Was this Shakespeare or Kyd, who is also said
to have written a Hamlet? The probability is,
that the Hamlet alluded to was an early draft
of Shakespeare's tragedy. If this deduction be
correct, Hamlet was the earliest of Shakespeare's
tragedies. Subsequently, it underwent much
revision. Thus, Hamlet's contrast between
Horatio's character and his own, which he
delivers just before the performance of the play
of the murder of Gonzago, and the allusions to
the meaning of his part while acting, are
additions. The brief soliloquy at the end of the second
scene of the third act is also an addition: "'Tis
now the very witching time of night," &c. The
King's soliloquy in the next scene is much
altered. As it originally stood, it probably
belonged to Kyd; the corrections are Shakespeare's
additions. The fourth scene in the fourth act,
where Hamlet meets with Fortinbras and his
troops, and soliloquises on the fact, is also an
after-thought. The need for such enlargements
indicates that the poet felt that, in its first state,
the treatment was crude, and would bear further
handling with advantage. He likewise produced,
in a subsequent play, All's Well that Ends Well,
a character, that of Helena, as an obvious
contrast to that of the Danish prince. It is evident,
also, that the poet took great pains with his new
play; for it was remodelled after its first
production, when it bore the name of Love's
Labour's Won. We have next Shakespeare's
second tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, in which he
was much assisted by Arthur Brooke's poem,
which in the development of his subject he had
closely followed. There is internal evidence of
this drama having been composed in 1591.

Four years previously to this date (1587), the
Queen's players had made their appearance in
Stratford. This, in fact, was Burbadge's
company, which had been incorporated as the
Queen's in 1583; and it has been imagined that
Shakespeare had already become connected with
it. He was probably, at this time, also a sharer
in the Blackfriars theatre. His reputation had
begun to culminate. He is supposed to be
alluded to by Thomas Nash, in his Anatomie of
Absurditie, as a writer of songs and sonnets,
whose education extended no further than "a
little country grammar knowledge." If this is
intended of Shakespeare, as it might be of Thomas
Greene, his fellow-townsman, it may be cited in
support of the supposition that Shakespeare had
been educated in the Stratford Free School.
Spenser, about the same time, in his Tears of
the Muses, recognised him; but preferred his
comedy to his tragedy, lamenting that he had
ceased to write the former, and taken to the
latter.

One remark may be ventured here on these
two first tragedies of Hamlet and Romeo
and Juliet. The poet had not yet delivered
himself from the example of his age, and in
both dramas overcrowds his last scene with
slaughter and death. The stage is covered with
corpses, as in Webster's Duchess of Malfi,
and Kyd's famous Spanish Tragedy. Shakespeare
saw at length the absurdity of this practice,
and in the later tragedies carefully avoided it.
But at this stage of his development he studiously
kept to precedent, both in the form and
matter of his plays; in Romeo and Juliet,
particularly, following closely in the steps of
Brooke's poem.

We find him doing the same thing in relation
to the historic dramas which he now began to
edit or recompose. In the First Part of Henry
the Sixth, adapted from the work of an older
drama, he scarcely altered anything. Having
become a theatrical manager, he availed himself of
others' labours, and commenced a new walk in
dramatic production with the utmost caution.
He leaves the order of the chronicle, and the
chronicle-play, alike untouched. He affects
no artistic arrangement, but depends entirely
on his materials and his fidelity to his
authorities. He now appears to have formed the design
of producing a series of historical dramas; but
he did not immediately pursue it. He laid his
hand upon another play which had already
appeared, and out of it, by alteration and
addition, constructed The Taming of the Shrew.
The addition he obtained from another old play,
entitled, The Supposes, and used it as an under-
plot. He then turned to the subject of Henry
the Sixth again, and produced two other parts,
resorting for this purpose to two anonymous
plays which were printed in 1594 and 1595,
but which probably he had previously seen in
manuscript, and altered for his own theatre,
the Blackfriars'. In their unaltered state,
they were acted by the Earl of Pembroke's
servants.

In 1595, Shakespeare became part proprietor
of another theatre, the Globe, the building of
which was completed in that year. Richard
Burbadge, the actor, and others of the sharers
in the Blackfriars', were co-speculators with
him. Lord Southampton, on this occasion, is
supposed to have given Shakespeare a considerable
sum of money which enabled him to undertake
the speculation. It was one that proved
very profitable, and the credit of its prosperity
is due chiefly to Shakespeare's management,
who continued at its head until the year 1604,
when he withdrew from the concern, and
forthwith it fell into trouble. At the close of that
year, the company gave offence to the court by
the performance of a drama upon Gowry's
conspiracy; and in 1605 by an insult offered to the
City authorities. In 1606 a complaint was
made to the King by the French ambassador
that, in a play by George Chapman, the Queen