ch his mysterious departure for
London does not weaken, and his long absence, his infrequent visits to
Stratford, the Duke's injunction to Viola--"let still the woman take
An Elder than herself"--and the ironical bequest of his second best
bed, neither diminish nor destroy.

The seven years succeeding the birth of Hamnet and Judith are a blank
in Shakespeare's biography. He disappeared even from the reach of
rumor and tradition. One hundred and fifty years after his death
Oldys, the antiquarian, exhumed an ancient legend, to the effect that
he fled to London to avoid the consequences of lampooning a
neighboring nobleman who had prosecuted him for killing a deer in his
park, and sought employment at the theatre. Unsupported anecdotes
represent him as holding horses at the door of the play-house, then as
a servant to the company, and at last as general utility man on the
stage. As an actor he made no impression, although he continued to
appear in subordinate parts, and played in Ben Jonson's "Sejanus" at
its production in 1603, when he was forty years old. The first public
notice he received was in 1592, in a letter of Robert Greene, a
dissolute writer, who accuses Shakespeare and Marlowe of plagiarism,
conceit, and ingratitude. Chettle, the publisher, soon afterward
printed a retraction so far as Shakespeare was concerned, and
eulogized his manners, his honesty, and his art. Our acquaintance with
his life of twenty years in London, which closed probably in 1613, is
almost exclusively confined to the appearance of the plays and poems
bearing his name, and the date at which these were produced is
generally a matter of surmise or inference. During this interval he
became a large shareholder in two theatres, speculated in real estate,
loaned money, grew rapidly in wealth, and was a man about town. He
belonged to no church, nor to any political party, and sustained no
recorded relations with the scholars, soldiers, or statesmen of his
time.

[Illustration: Shakespeare arrested for Deer Stealing.]

The two volumes of poems, "Venus and Adonis," and "Lucrece," were
published respectively in 1593 and 1594, and the "Sonnets" in 1609.
The dramas were acted between 1587 and 1612, and are grouped by
critics in four periods of intellectual growth and development. They
are of unequal excellence. Some are mere versions and adaptations. The
plots and stories are generally borrowed. Some of the worst are
unspeakably bad, but the best,