Even Ben Jonson, "the greatest man of "the last age," according to Dryden, had no such assurance in his day, if we may judge from his own account of his literary life, which shows that he had to struggle for a subsistence, as no printer was found glad, or felt himself blest, to pay him dear for the cream, much less the very "dregs of his wit." He told Drummond that the half of his comedies were not in print, and that he had cleared but 200 pounds by all his labor for the public theatre. It has been said by one: "In the "breadth of his dramatic quality, his

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range over every kind of poetic excel"lence, Jonson was excelled by Shakes"peare alone." (p. 437, "A Short His"tory of the English People.") When not subsidized by the court he was driven by want to write for the London theatres; he lived in a hovel in an alley, where he took service with the notorious play broker. To such as he, reference is made. by Henslow, who in his diary records "the grinding toil and the starvation

"wages of his hungry and drudging "bondsmen," who were struggling for the meanest necessities of life. This Titan of a giant brood of playwrights, in the days of his declension wrote mendi-cant epistles for bread, and, doubtless, in his extremity recalled Robert Greene, the admonisher of three brother poets "that "spend their wits in making plaies." "Base minded men, all three of you! if by "my miseries ye be not warned, for unto "none of you, like me, sought those burrs "to cleave, those puppits, I mean that "speak from our mouths those antics "garnisht in our colors. Is it not strange "that I, to whom they all have been be"holding, shall, were ye in that case that "I am now, be both at once of them for"saken? O that I might in"treate your rare wits to be employed in "more profitable courses, and let those "apes imitate your past excellence, and "never more acquaint them with your ad"mired inventions."

It was one of this breed of puppets, we

are told, who awakened incarnate envy in the breast of Robert Greene, and engendered rivalship against William Shakspere, whose votaries, in their dreams of fancy, see him revising the dramatic writings of Robert Greene, the most resourceful, versatile, tireless and prolific of literary men. He was a writer of greatest discernment from the viewpoint of the people of his time, "for he pos"sessed the ability to write in any vein "that would sell." He only, of all the writers of his time, gave promise of being able to gain a competence by the pen alone, a thing which no writer did, or could do, in that day, by writing for the stage alone. Hon. Cushman K. Davis in "The Law in Shakespeare" says, "He "(Shakspere) is the first English author "who made a fortune with his pen." In the absence of credible evidence, Mr. Davis assumes that the young man who came up from Stratford was the author of the plays. The senator does not seem aware of the fact that Shakspere of

Stratford was a shareholding actor, receiving a share in the theatre, or its profits, in 1599; a partner in one or more of the chief companies; a play broker who purchased and mounted the plays of other men; and that he, like Burbage, Henslowe and Alleyn, speculated in real estate. He was shrewd in money matters and became very wealthy, but not by writing plays. Suppose that William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon had authored all the plays associated with his name, that alone would not have made him wealthy. The price of a play varied from four to ten pounds, and all Shakspere's labors for the public theatre would have brought no more than five hundred pounds. The diary of Philip Henslowe makes it clear that up to the year 1600 the highest price he ever paid was six pounds. The Shakespeare plays were not exceptionally popular in that day, not being then as now, "the talk of the town." Not one of them equalled in popularity

Kid's "The Spanish Tragedy," or Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus."

Shakespeare was soon superseded by Fletcher in popular regard. Only one of the Shakespeare tragedies, one historical play, and eight comedies were presented at the Court of James First, who reigned twenty-two years. Plays, written by such hack writers as Dearborn, or Chettle, were quite as acceptable to princes.

Robert Greene's romances were "a bower of delight," a kind of writing held in high favor by all classes. Sir Thomas Overbury describes his chambermaid as reading Greene's works over and over again. It is a pleasure to see in the elder time Greene's writings in hands so full of household cares, since he labored to make young lives happy. Robert Greene's works express every variation in the changing conditions of life. The poetry of his pastoral landscapes are vivid word pictures of English sylvan scenes. The western sky on amorous autumn days is mantled with sheets of burnished gold.