This is excellent testimony to their character and quality. Who would not like to belong to a company that had "wit, courage, good shape, good parts,' and were "generous in mind and mood"? Such were the men with whom Shakespeare associated; such were the characters with whom he played and for whose acting he wrote his plays.

It is exceedingly probable, from various circumstances in his family history, that Shakespeare knew something of these players before he left Stratford; for his father is known to have been friendly to the actors who visited Stratford, and I am inclined to believe that he was the personal friend of some of them. Several of those who subsequently acted with Shakespeare in London and elsewhere-notably Burbage, Green, and Tooley-were from the same county as himself, and it is probable that these townsmen of of his his were the personal

friends of his father as well as of himself. Even if they were not, it is not likely that when there came to London the son

of the former chief magistrate of Stratford, who had been the friend and patron of the players that visited the town, he would have been received with coldness or indifference. We may be sure that young Shakespeare took advantage of his father's generous hospitality toward the strolling players, not only to witness their performances, but to cultivate their personal acquaintance in Stratford.

A gentleman named Willis, born in the same year as Shakespeare, 1564, gives, in a narrative of his life, an account of "a stage-play which he saw when he was a child," which seems strongly to fortify the supposition that Shakespeare witnessed such plays in his youth. "In the city of Gloucester," says he, "the manner is, as I think it is in other like corporations, that, when players of enterludes come to towne, they first attend the Mayor to enforme him what nobleman's servants they are, and so to get licence for their publike playing; and if the Mayor like the actors,

or would shew respect to their lord and master, he appoints them to play their first play before himselfe and the Aldermen and Common Counsell of the city; and that is called the Mayor's play, where every one that will comes in without money, the Mayor giving the players a reward as hee thinks fit to shew respect unto them. At such a play At such a play my father tooke me with him, and made mee stand betweene his leggs as he sat upon one of the benches, where we saw and heard very well." Then he gives a detailed account of the play, which was called the "Cradle of Security," and which is now lost.

"Who can be so pitiless to the imagination," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, "as not to erase the name of Gloucester in the preceding anecdote, and replace it by that of Stratford-on-Avon?" And who can be so pitiless to the imagination. as not to fancy John Shakespeare the name of the mayor, and his son, the little boy between his knees, watching the play? We may, at all events, rest as

sured that his son was likely to have aided in the generous welcome to the players, and the players were likely to have remembered the intelligent lad, and tried to requite the kindness of the father by their hospitable reception of the son. Who can help thinking, too, that it was perhaps the sight of one of these oldfashioned plays which, like young Molière's sight of the comedy at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, first awakened in him a desire for better things than he had known, kindled a love of poesy, and a passion for the drama? Oh, there will come a time when some one, some genial master hand, will work all this up in some lifelike story, some fascinating romance, that will charm all mankind!

Under these circumstances, nothing can be more likely than that the magistrate's son received a generous welcome at the hands of the actors in their London home, and that they secured him a position in their fraternity. Besides, it is well known that those coming from the provincial or rural parts of England to

the great metropolis often seek out and associate with their townsmen and compatriots, who, glad to hear from home, generally receive them with kindness and favor.

Those who have resided in London know what clannishness there is, even at this day, among those hailing from the same county or town in that small island of Britain, and how generously and kindly the absentee from home takes to a new arrival from his native hills. I have seen this myself; for even as late as 1861-2, when I was in London, I was surprised to find that there were in that great metropolis associations of Yorkshire-men, Caithness-men, Welshmen, etc., expressly formed for mutual assistance and friendly intercourse. "At all events," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, speaking of Shakespeare's acquaintance with Richard Field, who was a Warwickshire man, and who printed the first edition of his Venus and Adonis, "there was the provincial tie, so specially dear to Englishmen when at a distance from the