ds
ridiculed by Shakespear, under the well known character of Justice
Shallow.

It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have
made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. Here I cannot forbear
relating a story which Sir William Davenant told Mr. Betterton, who
communicated it to Mr. Rowe; Rowe told it Mr. Pope, and Mr. Pope told
it to Dr. Newton, the late editor of Milton, and from a gentleman, who
heard it from him, 'tis here related.

Concerning Shakespear's first appearance in the playhouse. When he
came to London, he was without money and friends, and being a
stranger he knew not to whom to apply, nor by what means to support
himself.----At that time coaches not being in use, and as gentlemen
were accustomed to ride to the playhouse, Shakespear, driven to the
last necessity, went to the playhouse door, and pick'd up a little
money by taking care of the gentlemens horses who came to the play; he
became eminent even in that profession, and was taken notice of for
his diligence and skill in it; he had soon more business than he
himself could manage, and at last hired boys under him, who were known
by the name of Shakespear's boys: Some of the players accidentally
conversing with him, found him so acute, and master of so fine a
conversation, that struck therewith, they and recommended him to the
house, in which he was first admitted in a very low station, but he
did not long remain so, for he soon distinguished himself, if not
as an extraordinary actor, at least as a fine writer. His name is
painted, as the custom was in those times, amongst those of the other
players, before some old plays, but without any particular account of
what sort of parts he used to play: and Mr. Rowe says, "that tho' he
very carefully enquired, he found the top of his performance was the
ghost in his own Hamlet." "I should have been much more pleased,"
continues Rowe, "to have learned from some certain authority which was
the first play he writ; it would be without doubt, a pleasure to any
man curious in things of this kind, to see and know what was the first
essay of a fancy like Shakespear's." The highest date which Rowe has
been able to trace, is Romeo and Juliet, in 1597, when the author was
thirty-three years old; and Richard II and III the next year, viz. the
thirty-fourth of his age. Tho' the order of time in which his several
pieces were written be generally uncertain, yet there are passages in
some few of the