d family to support.

We have no positive information to tell us what he did for the next
seven years after the birth of his twins. Tradition says that he
joined a group of hunters, killed some of the deer of Sir Thomas Lucy
at Charlecote Park, and fled from Stratford to London in consequence
of threatened prosecution. There is reason to doubt the truth of this
story, and Shakespeare may have sought the metropolis merely because
it offered him more scope to provide for his rapidly increasing
family.

Connects Himself with the London Stage.--The next scene of
Shakespeare's life is laid in London. In 1592 Robert Greene, a London
poet, dramatist, and hack-writer, wrote:--

"There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
his _Tyger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide_, supposes he is as
well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being
an absolute _Iohannes fac-totum_, is in his owne conceit the only
Shake-scene in a countrie."[21]

The best critics agree that the "upstart Crow" and "Shake-scene" refer
to Shakespeare. The allusion to "Tyger's heart" is from the third part
of _King Henry VI_. and is addressed by the Duke of York to Queen
Margaret of Anjou:--

"O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!"

Greene's satiric thrust shows that Shakespeare was becoming popular as
a playwright. We can only imagine the steps by which he rose to his
ascendancy as a dramatist. Perhaps he first served the theater in some
menial capacity, then became an actor, and assisted others in revising
or adapting plays before he acquired sufficient skill to write a play
entirely by himself.

In 1593 he published the non-dramatic poem, _Venus and Adonis_, which
he dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. This nobleman is said to have
given Shakespeare, on one occasion, "a thousand pounds to enable him
to make a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." This would show
that Shakespeare had a capacity for attracting people and making
lasting friendships. In 1597 he purchased "New Place," the stateliest
house in Stratford, and we hear no more of his father's financial
troubles.

Twentieth-century Discoveries.--In the first decade of the twentieth
century, Professor C.W. Wallace discovered in the London Record Office
a romantic story in which Shakespeare was an important figure. This
story opens in the year 1598 in the London house of a French Huguenot,
Christopher Mountjoy, wig-maker, with who