dancing performance upon the stage. In the plain unobtrusive language of our day, as well as in Elizabethan English, the word "shake"-the first element in "Shake-scene" is interchangeable with "dance," and, when given a specialized meaning with a view to theatrical matters in the year 1592, with Kemp and Shakspere claimants for Greene's reproof, who could doubt that the name which was so loudly acclaimed is identifiable with the spectacular luminary of the times, William Kemp? In setting up the comic actor and jig-dancer as claimant for Greene's objurgation, we promise the reader attestative satisfaction by establishing the truth of our contention by particular passages in "the address" when explained by the context as transcriptive of Kemp's actual history.

We now direct the attention of the reader specifically to the arrogant and boastful comedian, William Kemp. This man, according to Robert Greene's view,

the personification of everything

detestable in the actor-whose profession he despised. We think the biographers and commentators have mistaken the spectacularity of William Kemp for the rising sun of William Shakspere. In the closing years of the sixteenth, and the early years of the seventeenth, century there lived in London the most spectacular comic actor and clown of his day, the greatest "Shake-scene" or (dance-scene) of his generation, William Kemp, the worthy successor of Dick Tarlton. He had a continental reputation in 1589. This year also Nash dedicated to Kemp. one of his attacks upon Martin Marprelate entitled "An Almond for a Parrot." "There is ample contemporary evidence "that Kemp was the greatest comic actor "of his time in England, and his noto"riety as a morris-dancer was so great "that his journeyings were called dances. "He was the court favorite famous for "his improvisions, and loved by the pub"lic," but hated by academic play-writers and ridiculed by ballad-makers. Kemp,

in giving his first pamphlet "The Nine "Days Wonder" to the press in 1599, turned upon his enemies and in retaliation called them "Shake-rags," which he used derisively and as contumeliously as Greene had used "Shake-scene." The use of the word "Shake-rags" by Kemp in his first and only published work is prima-facie evidence, that he also made use of the same term, orally and in his usual acrimonious manner, either against Greene, or those of his fellowship. The first element in the compound words "Shake-scene" and "Shake-rags" is governed by the same general law of movement or rhythmic action exemplified in dancing and rhymery. In 1640 Richard Brown in his "Antipodes" refers to the practice of jesters, in the days of Tarlton and Kemp, of introducing their own wit into poet's plays, Kemp, writing in 1600, asserts that he spent his life in mad jigs and merry jests, although he was entrusted with many leading parts in farce or broad comedy. His dancing of jigs at

the close of a play gave him his chief popularity ("Camden Society Papers"). "The jigs were performed to musical ac"companiment and included the singing "of comic words. One or two actors at "times supported Kemp in his entertain"ment, dancing and singing with him. "Some examples of the music to which "Kemp danced are preserved in a manu"script collection of John Dowland now "in the library of Cambridge University. "The words were, doubtless, often impro"vised at the moment, but, on occasions, "they were written out and published. "The Stationers Register contains licen"ses for the publication of at least four "sets of words for the jigs in which "Kemp was the chief performer."

According to Henslowe's Diary, William Kemp was on June 15, 1592, a member of the company of the Lord Strange players under Henslowe and Alleyn, playing a principal comic part in the "Knack to Know a Knave," and introducing into it what is called on the title

page his "Applauded Merriments," a technical term for a piece of theatrical buffoonery. In 1593 Nash warned Gabriel Harvey "lest William Kemp should make merriment of him." "As early as 1586, "Kemp was a member of a company of "great importance which had arrived at "Elsinore where the king held court. He "remained two months in Denmark, and "received a larger amount of board "money than his fellow actors. In a let"ter of Sir Phillip Sidney, dated Utrecht "March 24, 1586, he says, 'I sent you a "letter by Will (Kemp), my Lord Leices"ter's jesting player.' It was after his "return from these foreign expeditions. "that we find Kemp uniting his exertions "with those of Alleyn at the Rose and "Fortune theatres, as Prince Henry's "servants. During this whole period "from his return in 1586 from Denmark, "to the year 1598, he did not stay unin"terruptedly at the theatres of the Bur"bages. From February 19, to June 22, "1592, a part of Lord Leicester's com