y, his only legal punishment
consisting in having the inside of his thumb branded with the Tyburn
"T," and it is unlikely that even this was inflicted.

While a university degree thus enhanced both the social and legal status
of sons of yeomen and tradesmen, the sons of equally reputable people
who became actors were correspondingly debased both socially and
legally.

Though the established status which the actors' profession attained
during Shakespeare's connection with the stage--and largely through his
elevating influence--made these legal disabilities of an actor a dead
letter, it still continued to militate against the social standing of
its members. John Davies leaves record that at the accession of James
I. it was gossiped that Shakespeare, had he not formerly been an actor,
instead of being appointed Groom of the Privy Chamber, might have
received the higher appointment of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. This
idea owed its birth to Shakespeare's friendship with the Earl of
Southampton, whose influence in the early days of the new Court--when he
himself stood high in favour--secured the office for his other protege,
John Florio, one of the gentlemen by the grace of a university degree
who joined issue with the "university pens" against Shakespeare, and who
in consequence--as I shall later demonstrate--shall be pilloried to
far-distant ages in the character of Sir John Falstaff. Though
Shakespeare had acquired a legal badge of gentility with his coat of
arms in 1599, the histrionic taint--according to Davies--proved a bar to
his official promotion.

"Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion to a King
And been a King among the meaner sort."

Arrogance towards social inferiors, as well as servility to superiors,
is always manifested most offensively in the manners of those who are
themselves conscious of equivocal social standing. I shall adduce
evidence to prove that from the time we first begin dimly to apprehend
Shakespeare in his London environment, in 1588-89, until his final
return to Stratford in about 1610, he was continuously and spitefully
attacked and vilified by a coterie of jealous scholars who, while lifted
above him socially by the arbitrary value attaching to a university
degree, were in no other sense his superiors either in birth or
breeding. It was evidently, then, the contemptuous attitude