, or a reference to, another
writer we may be assured that Shakespeare has recently come from a
perusal of the writer in question. If the allusion is of a social or
political nature it will refer to some recent happening or to something
that is still of public interest. Should such an allusion be in any
sense autobiographical and pertaining to his own personal interests or
feelings, it is still more likely to refer to recent experience.
Whatever may have been the reason for his caricature of Sir Thomas Lucy,
its cause was evidently of a later date than his departure from
Stratford. It was no shiftless runagate nor fugitive from justice who
went to London in, or about, 1585-87; neither was it a wrathful
Chatterton, eating out his heart in bitter pride while firing his
imagination to

"Paw up against the light
And do strange deeds upon the clouds."

It was a very sane, clear-headed, and resourceful young man who took
service with the Players, one, as yet, probably unconscious of literary
ability or dramatic genius, but with a capacity for hard work; grown
somewhat old for his years through responsibility, and with a slightly
embittered and mildly cynical pose of mind in regard to life.

An early autobiographical note seems to be sounded in Falconbridge's
soliloquy in _King John_, Act II. Scene ii., as follows:

"And why rail I on this commodity?
But for because he hath not woo'd me yet;
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand,
When his fair angels would salute my palm;
But for my hand, as unattempted yet,
Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary.
Since kings break faith upon commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee."

I have new evidence to show that this play was composed by Shakespeare
in 1591, and though it was revised in about 1596, the passage quoted
above, which exhibits the affected cynicism of youth, pertains to the
earlier period. Aside from the leading of the natural bent of his genius
it is evident that the greater pecuniary reward to be attained from the
writing rather than from the acting of plays would be quickly apparent
to a youth who in this spirit has left home to make London his oyster.

As research and criticism advance and we are enabled, little by l