ving Stratford is not known; but we
cannot well set it down as later than 1586. His children, Hamnet and
Judith, were born, as I have said, in the early part of 1585; and for
several years before that time his father's affairs were drooping. The
prosecutions of Sir Thomas Lucy, added to his father's straitness of
means, may well have made him desirous of quitting Stratford; while
the meeting of inclination and opportunity in his acquaintance with
the players may have determined him where to go, and what to do. The
company were already in a course of thrift; the demand for their
labours was growing; and he might well see, in their fellowship, a
chance of retrieving, as he did retrieve, his father's fortune.

Of course there need be no question that Shakespeare held at first a
subordinate rank in the theatre. Dowdal, writing in 1693, tells us "he
was received into the playhouse as a servitor"; which probably means
that he started as an apprentice to some actor of standing,--a thing
not unusual at the time. It will readily be believed that he could not
be in such a place long without recommending himself to a higher one.
As for the well-known story of his being reduced to the extremity of
"picking up a little money by taking care of the gentlemen's horses
that came to the play," I cannot perceive the slightest likelihood of
truth in it. The first we hear of it is in _The Lives of the Poets_,
written by a Scotchman named Shiels, and published under the name of
Cibber, in 1753. The story is there said to have passed through Rowe
in coming to the writer. If so, then Rowe must have discredited it,
else, surely, he would not have omitted so remarkable a passage. Be
that as it may, the station which the Poet's family had long held at
Stratford, and the fact of his having influential friends at hand from
Warwickshire, are enough to stamp it as an arrant fiction.

We have seen that the company of Burbadge and his fellows held a
patent under the great seal, and in 1587 took the title of "The Lord
Chamberlain's Servants." Eleven years before this time, in 1576, they
had started the Blackfriars theatre, so named from a monastery that
had formerly stood on or near the same ground. Hitherto the several
bands of players had made use of halls, or temporary erections in the
streets or the inn-yards, stages being set up, and the spectators
standing below, or occupying galleries about the open space. In 1577,
two other playhouses were in o