l of his dearly
beloved and only son, Hamnet. The plaudits for the author of the most
successful play of the season--"_Romeo and Juliet_," which was then
taking the town by storm at the Curtain Theatre--were little heeded by
the grief-stricken father as he urged his horse over the rough roads of
the four days' journey, arriving just too late for a parting word from
dying lips. But private sorrows are not for those who are called to
public duties; a writer must trim his pen not to his own mood, but to
the mood of the hour. And Queen Elizabeth, old in years, but ever young
in her love of fun and frolic and flattery, must be made to forget the
heaviness of time and the infirmities of age. If she may no longer take
part in out-door sports--the hunting, the hawking, the
bear-baiting,--she still may command processions, fetes, masques, and
stage-plays. It pleases her now to see this wonderful fairy piece, of
which she has heard so much since, two years ago, it graced the nuptials
of the Earl of Derby. Does she not remember also that pretty impromptu
verse of the author when acting the part of King in another man's play,
two years ago at Greenwich? Did she not twice drop her glove near his
feet in crossing the stage? And how happily had he responded to the
challenge! True to the character as well as to the metre of his part, he
had picked up the glove, presenting it to its owner with the words:--

"And though now bent on this high embassy,
Yet stoop we to take up our cousin's glove."

[Illustration: Old Graves in Trinity Churchyard, Stratford]

Seats are taken, the manuscript is opened, and the club becomes a
green-room conference. The play is not to be recast entirely, the
changes from the early version being mainly to introduce certain
touches to flatter the royal ears, and to suit it to the more
elaborate equipment of the Whitehall stage. Quill in hand, the reader
as he proceeds crosses out from his manuscript everything that clogs
the movement or detracts from the playfulness; giving free rein to his
luxuriant imagination, he scatters the choicest flowers of fancy to
create a vivid and animated picture. The lovers meet and part with
pretty rhymes and repartee; the hard-handed men--the tradesmen and
tinkers--bring their clumsy efforts to serve the wedding-feast; the
fairies, graceful, lovely, enchanting, dance amidst the fragrance of
enameled meadows.

[Illustration: Old Warwickshire Cottages

"And all