ed men! Lord Southampton went to the theatre every day. As early as 1570, one, and probably two, regular theatres existed in London. In 1583, a short time after the temporary victory gained by the Puritans over the performance of stage-plays in that city, there were eight troops of actors in London, each of whom performed three times a week. In 1592, that is, eight years before the time when Hardy at length obtained perinission to open a theatre in Paris, which had previously been impossible on account of the useless privilege possessed by the “Brethren of the Passion,” an English pamphleteer complained most indignantly of ‘‘some shallow-brained censurers,” who had dared “mightily to oppugn” the performance of plays, which, he says, are frequented by all ‘‘men that are their own masters—as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London.”[1] Finally, in 1596, so vast a multitude of persons went by water to the theatres, which were nearly all situated on the banks of the Thames, that it became necessary considerably to augment the number of boatmen.
A taste so universal and so eager could not long remain satisfied with coarse and insipid productions; a pleasure which is so ardently sought after by the human mind, calls for all the efforts and all the power of human genius. This national movement now stood in need only of a man of genius, capable of receiving its impulse, and raising the public to the highest regions of art. By what stimulus was Shakspeare prompted to undertake this glorious task? What circumstance revealed to him his mission? What sudden light illumined his genius? These questions we
- ↑ See Nash, ‘‘Pierce Penniless’s Supplication to the Devil,” p. 59, reprinted by the Shakspeare Society in 1842.
