arranged
sonnets with a clear perspective, and to keep the Sonnet story
uninvolved by subsidiary argument, I now demonstrate not only the
beginning of the acquaintance between Shakespeare and the Earl of
Southampton--which has not hitherto been known--but also take a forward
glance of several years in order definitely to establish the identity of
John Florio as Shakespeare's original for Falstaff, Parolles, and
Armado. His identity as the original for still other characters will be
made apparent as this history develops in the Sonnet period.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Dr. Georg Brandes' _William Shakespeare: A Critical Study_,
is by far the best attempt at an interpretation of Shakespeare's plays
upon spiritual lines that has yet been made; but the biographical value
of this excellent analysis is involved by the fact that Dr. Brandes, at
the time he wrote,--now over thirty years ago,--accepted Thomas Tyler's
Pembroke-Fitton theory of the sonnets, and with it the distorted
chronology for the plays of the Sonnet period, which it necessarily
involves.]

[Footnote 2: _A Life of William Shakespeare_, by Sir Sidney Lee, 1916,
p. 59.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._ 61.]

[Footnote 4: _A Life of William Shakespeare_, by Sir Sidney Lee, 1916,
pp. 61, 55.]

[Footnote 5: "Between 1586 and 1592 we lose all trace of Shakespeare."
_William Shakespeare: A Critical Study_, Georg Brandes, p. 18.]

[Footnote 6: _English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1641_, vol. i. p. 57. By
John Tucker Murray.]

[Footnote 7: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 8: It is probable that previous to 1587 the Rose was an inn
used for theatrical purposes.]

[Footnote 9: _Mistress Davenant, the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's
Sonnets._]

CHAPTER II

THE STRATFORD DAYS

"What porridge had John Keats?" asks Browning. So may we well inquire of
what blood was Shakespeare? What nice conjunction of racial strains
produced this unerring judgment, this heaven-scaling imagination, this
exquisite sensibility? for, however his manner of life may have
developed their expression, these qualities were plainly inherent in the
man.

The name Shakespeare has been found to have existed during the
thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries in various
parts of England, and has been most commonly encountered in and about
Warwickshire. While it is spelt in many different ways, the commonest
form is _Shaxper_ or _Shaxpeare_, giving the _a_ in the first syllable
the same soun