quickly fashioned into
the laminated steel of dramatic excellence.

_"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves."_

CHAPTER VIII.

GROWING LITERARY RENOWN. ROYAL PATRONS.

_"Follow your envious courses, men of malice;
You have Christian warrant for them, and, no doubt,
In time will find their fit rewards."_

* * * * *

_"O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."_

The literary and dramatic world of London in the years 1589 to 1592 was
stirred with pride and astonishment at the productions of William
Shakspere, and from the tavern and guilds of tradesmen to the crack clubs
of authors, lords and royalty itself, the Dramatic Magician of the
Blackfriars was praised to the skies and sought for by even Queen
Elizabeth, who saw more than another Edmund Spenser to glorify her reign
and flash her name down the ages with even finer, luminous colors than
bedecked the sylvan pathway of the Faerie Queen!

The Earl of Leicester was one of the first great men of England to
recognize the divine accomplishments of the Warwickshire boy who had made
his first theatrical adventures through the domain of the old Earl, and who
was ever the friend of old John Shakspere, the impecunious and agnostic
father of our brilliant Bard.

On the death of the old Earl in the autumn of 1588, his domain reverted to
his stepson, the young Earl of Essex, who continued to be the patron of
letters and often attended the Blackfriars, with his friend, the handsome
and intellectual Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, who took the
greatest interest in the plays of "Love's Labor's Lost," "Two Gentlemen of
Verona," "King John," "Henry the Fourth," "Henry the Fifth," and "Henry the
Sixth," that were then fermenting in the brain of William.

He had ransacked the history of Hollingshead and others to illustrate on
the stage the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, known as
the war of the Red and White Roses, with canker and thorn to pester each
royal clan and bring misery on the British people because of a family
quarrel!

_"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."_

* * * * *

_"What have Kings that privates have not too,
Save